“Get your ass up, slug!" A rough shove sent Tom sprawling, his forehead scraping against something coarse. Was it concrete? He couldn't tell. His breath hitched. The air was thick, causing him to choke on his own saliva as he tried to take in as much air into his lungs as he could, only to find that he couldn't. He coughed. Darkness pressed against his vision. He blinked hard, trying to activate his AUI. Nothing. Just black. Panic twisted in his gut. Another shove. Harder this time. His forehead dragged over the ground again, fresh pain blooming across his skin. A sliver of light cut through the dark. "Oh no, I think he's bleeding out. We have to get the heck out of here!”

A boot connected with his ribs, sending pain lancing through his side. Tom gasped, his body instinctively curling in on itself. The coarse ground beneath him felt unsteady, like gravel mixed with something wet. Was it mud, maybe? Blood? His? Someone else’s? Again, he couldn't tell.

His body rolled over to the side, his vision momentarily spinning before colliding with a rough wooden object, causing him to puke up a mouthful of blood as he gasped for air, pain flaring through his ribs like searing flames.

Screams… Though the voices themselves sounded distant.

“Someone called the ambulance! I think he’s dying!” a voice shrieked, barely audible over the pounding in Tom’s skull. Footsteps scuffled nearby, as a few hands grabbed him, dragging him aside as his vision blurred.

"Oh no!!! He’s bleeding!!" Another voice, this one closer said, "God, there’s so much. What do we do? He’s barely moving!”

Eventually, everything faded away into darkness. The sounds of countless people screaming overhead at him faded away into the back of his mind as his body took its last breath.

Was this… really the end?

"Hey, don't close your eyes! Come on, stay with me!" Tom tried to move, to respond, but his body wouldn’t listen. His chest burned, his limbs felt like dead weights, and his mind teetered on the edge of nothingness. He wanted to hold on, to fight, but the pull of unconsciousness was relentless. His eyes turned to the person who had spoken to him, his blood-soaked hands reaching upward towards the sky.

His ribs ached, his lungs burned, and his vision blurred at the edges, consumed by an encroaching darkness that swallowed the world piece by piece. The shouts and frantic footsteps around him became distant sounds that faded into the lower spectrum of his mind, as even the pain he was feeling all over his body became completely dulled to his senses.

His heartbeat slowed, and with his eyes widening in shock, it became completely still.

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“I gave you a second life… and please, for the love of all that is dear, don't waste it this time.”

“Haaaah”

Tom gasped, his lungs heaving as if they had been starved of air. A deep, burning pain lingered in his chest. He bolted upright, his hands clutching at his body, expecting torn flesh and shattered bones to greet him, but instead, he felt... whole. Different, maybe? He still couldn't tell if he was alive. No – not quite alive. He remembered that he had died. But he wasn’t completely dead, either. So, what had happened?

‘Where… the heck am I?’

He had so clearly and vividly remembered everything, all the way to the attack, the pain, the fear, and the feeling of his heart giving out as he died on the ground. Yet here he was, alive and well, as if nothing had happened. His head throbbed, a dull ache settling behind his eyes as he tried to process everything.

He scanned his surroundings, his gaze settling on the jagged rocks jutting out around him, their rough surfaces occasionally pulsing with a faint blue glow. Despite it being a cave, towering trees stretched toward the sky, their bioluminescent leaves shimmering in the dark, which gave him the ability to see.

He was in pain, a lot of pain, and a quick scan down at his abdomen immediately confirmed what was causing it. His breath caught in his throat. His fingers trembled as he reached toward his abdomen, where the cold glint of metal jutted out from his side. It was a sword. His fingers hesitated over the hilt. Pulling it out could be a death sentence, but leaving it in wasn't exactly ideal either. His fingers curled around the hilt, slick with a warm liquid that he quickly recognized as his blood.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He braced himself, exhaling sharply before pulling. The moment the blade slid free, an agonizing, white-hot pain seared through his body, sending him collapsing onto his knees. The pain was unimaginable, and nothing he had felt before it could possibly match what he was feeling now.

it was like his insides were burning.

"I'm going to die." His vision wavered, darkness dancing at the edges of his sight as he clutched at the wound, his fingers slick with blood. Tears raced down his cheeks as he desperately tried to close the gash in his abdomen but to no avail. "I don't want to die." His body convulsed, his limbs trembling violently. He wanted to scream, to cry, to beg for something, anything to make it stop. But no sound escaped his throat. The coppery tang of blood flooded his mouth as he bit down on his own lip, the sheer agony locking every muscle in his body in place.

“I don't want to die!!!!”

But he couldn't help it.

There was no way to stop the inevitable. He knew that, but he prayed and begged for a miracle. Whichever cruel person brought him to a cave to die clearly intended for him to suffer for as long as possible, and he wouldn't stand for it. Anger be damned, he'd rather beg for his life and have a chance at living than die on the floor a miserable death.

Mustering up as much strength as he could, he tried to yell out for help, his eyes darting around for anyone nearby, but to no avail. When he did yell out, what met him wasn't his own voice but instead the sound of him choking on his own blood and saliva. His vision blurred, and the sudden loss of air made his body panic even more, which was enough to completely take him out as his body gave up on the spot. The tiny, barely imperceptible hold his body kept on his spirit vanished, and he died.

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“Ah, fantastic! It seems I may have made a slight error in assigning you that body. Look, do try not to panic next time, okay? Dying repeatedly is terribly inefficient, and I'd rather not waste divine resources on your learning curve.”

“Haaaah”

Tom's lungs seized again, his chest convulsing as he sucked in another ragged breath. His eyes snapped open, his hands scrambling over his body. To his relief, there was no sword plunging straight through his abdomen and on the other side of his body, and thankfully, there were no wounds. The pain, though still lingering at the back of his nerves, had vanished like a bad dream. He was... alive.

His heart pounded as he sat up, panting. He had no idea what the hell had just happened, and while looking around for the sword, he found it lying nearby on top of a small hill of rocks and scattered debris. In what appeared to be… a giant monkey, the sword was plunged deep into the animal's body, its lifeless eyes staring at him as he approached, its legs dangling slightly over the edge of the pedestal it was on as blood dripped down its body.

“You will need that. The giants of this land are carnivorous, and they do eat humans, especially the giant apes. Be fortunate that this was a monkey and a dead one, too.”

“Who… who are you?” His voice sounded a bit hoarse as he scanned his surroundings again, searching for any signs of life beyond the cave to try to see who it was that made the noise. He wasn’t sure if he had imagined the voice, but something about it felt too real to be a hallucination. The cave itself was impossibly vast, but as far as he could tell, he was the only one in it.

After a while of just looking around and trying to confirm that he was not crazy, he eventually chalked up the whole thing to just being a part of his imagination trying to make sense of what was going on, which, to be honest, sounded much better than just admitting that he was going crazy. The alternative was too unsettling to dwell on.

Shaking off his unease, he turned his focus to the sword. Climbing the pile of rubble was more difficult than he had anticipated, and a loose stone that conveniently shifted beneath his feet almost sent him tumbling back down. Before he could, though, he lunged forward, grasping at whatever he could to steady himself. His fingers found the hilt of the sword, and he tightened his grip, using it as an anchor to prevent himself from falling.

But that turned out to be a terrible idea. The moment he yanked on the sword for support, he felt an unexpected resistance before it completely went away. Unable to react in time, he saw the blade tear free from the decomposing flesh of the monkey, and the sudden lack of resistance sent him falling backwards.

And some of its blood fell on him.

“Ew.” he said in disgust.

The thick, coppery scent of blood filled his nostrils as he scrambled to his feet, brushing frantically at the dark, viscous liquid clinging to his clothes. He gagged. Even worse was the fact that it was still warm, which meant that it hadn't been that long ago that the animal had died. "Fantastic," he muttered, suppressing another wave of nausea.

He glanced down at the sword in his grip. Now that it was free of the corpse, he could see it better. The blade was long and slightly curved, with strange engravings running along its length. The hilt was wrapped in a material that felt almost like leather, but something about it was a bit off.

"Ughhh, there's no way I'm still on Earth," he finally decided. "Monkeys don’t get that big—hell, it's almost the size of a gorilla. And those trees… since when do trees glow like that?”

He didn’t have a sheath to protect the sword, nor anything to wrap it in to shield it from the elements. He could use his shirt to do it, yes, but one of the rules of survival was to stay as warm as possible. Of course, there was also the risk of suffocation, drowning, and such without water and food, but he could worry about that later.

And he couldn't rely on magically waking up alive again after the whole ordeal he had just undergone. This wasn't a video game, and it, like everything else, was very real. He didn't want to throw his life away like that. Right now, above all else, he needed to get out of the cave.

He searched around in the cave for quite a bit, but all he came across were patches of stubborn grass, the occasional decaying carcass, and scattered bones. Strangely, he also found some tools lying around on the ground. They were not very advanced, but rather primitive. Animals did not often use tools, and the only types of animals that he knew of that did were primates, and not the particularly friendly ones either. Eventually, though, he stumbled upon the exit while he was about to explore the top layer of the cave.

The biting cold in the air confirmed to Tom that he was heading in the right direction. With ease, he hurled a few rocks aside, marveling at his own strength as one of the boulders shattered into countless fragments upon impact. Just as he was about to do it again, a sudden gust of icy wind struck him, sending a violent shiver down his spine, which was made worse as the brightness of the Sun momentarily blinded him.

As he blinked rapidly, his eyes slowly began to adjust to the sudden onslaught of light. But afterward, when his sight finally came back to him, what he saw took his breath away.

Towering over the distant mountains, a colossal corpse lay sprawled across the land, its lifeless eyes fixed upon him in an unblinking stare. Ice clung not only to its massive body but had spread across the entire forest, the trees and everything around it completely covered in snow or ice as violent outbursts of blue energy peeled off its body in waves. Though its face bore a semblance of humanity, the heavy brow, elongated jaw, and ape-like features told him otherwise.

And it was not alone, though not nearly as tall as the Titan that towered above the mountains, animals the size of trucks and trees walked all over the land, most of them keeping away from one another as they moved.

And he felt like a grasshopper compared to them.