Marc woke up to pain. He was lying on the ground, curled up awkwardly on the floor, every part of his body feeling like it had gone through a blender. He rolled over, groaning at the way his body ached protestingly. His entire body felt like one big bruise.

He tried to push himself to a sitting position with his arm propped against the grimy floor. The attempt sent a hot lance of agony shooting through his chest and he fell on his side, his breaths coming in short, rapid gasps. A dull ache spread from his chest and every breath he took felt like he was being stabbed by a burning dagger.

Scritch.

The sound of something skittering in the dark near him caused Marc to instantly cease all motion. He held his breath, ears strained for any other sound.

Nothing. Slowly, carefully, he shifted himself into a sitting position, trying not to gasp at the ever-present burn in his chest. He peered unseeing into the darkness, his eyes sweeping across trying to find something, anything that seemed different in the absolute dark.

The area around him was completely dark and gloomy but nothing like the almost-solid, oppressive miasma the truedark was. The air was stale and wet, with a strange odour that was barely perceptible. Occasionally, sand dripped down from the hole he had fallen from, slightly off to his side, landing in silent whispers.

After a minute of listening and hearing nothing suspicious, he exhaled in relief. Maybe he had misheard. There was probably nothing around him. He slowly stood up, wincing a bit as he did.

He had no idea what he was going to do. He was underground, who knew how many miles below, with at least one of his ribs broken. He didn't even have any essence points he could spend in the hope of increasing his options, absent as they were. He regretted not killing at least one goblin when he had the chance to.

Marc walked slowly over to beneath the hole, guided by the sound of the softly trickling sand. He swept his feet about, trying to find his possessions, which he had lost in the fall. His bare foot kicked against a hard object and he bent to pick it up. It was the makeshift torch, the snuffed-out top dry and slightly warm.

He needed light and thankfully, he knew how to create one. He focused past the constant pain and soreness and felt within him for the flow of energy that nestled within his self. It responded eagerly to his will. Too eagerly. Ether wanted to create, wanted to destroy; it wanted to manipulate the winds and also stir the earth.

It also wanted to burn, and this aligned with Marc's will to create a fire. However, it didn't want to do just that. It wanted to create vast conflagrations and burn forests to deserts; it wanted to detonate stars and ignite meteors. He had to struggle to direct the ether to just create one simple flame, had to trim away the grandiose images and visuals that came to him, knowing if he gave rein to them he would be drained dry of all that he was, soul, spirit and body.

The aching and tiredness made it harder for him to focus properly but Marc had succeeded in creating fire with ether before. After a period of time that seemed longer than it must have been, a spark ignited on Marc's finger, blossoming into an unmoving orange flame that lit up the dark slightly.

Marc pressed the flame to the torch and was gratified as the remnants of cloth on the rough wooden haft kindled, growing into a steady, crackling blaze. The now-lit torch cast a cherry glow on his surroundings. Marc looked around quickly to ensure there were no other living creatures around.

None. That was good. He walked around to gather up his scattered possessions - the ivory knife he hadn't gotten to use, the goblin bag and the foodstuff and runestones that had spilled out of it. Some of his food was missing but he assumed it had been lost while he was falling.

He was in a cave or a large tunnel with wide, roughly curved walls. To one side was a heap of rock and sand from the hole he had fallen from. The floor was littered with debris, mostly stones of all sizes, and it felt damp to his bare feet. Touching a finger to the ground, it came up sticky with a mostly dry gunk. He tried rubbing it away on the wall and only came away with more of the gunk. He rubbed it off on his pants and tried not to think of what it could be or the fact he was standing barefoot on more of it.

He exhaled slowly. There was nothing immediately dangerous to him nearby. He examined himself, passing the torchlight over his body. He was bruised and scraped all over and his clothes might as well have been rags. His pants fared better as he hadn't torn strips out of it but the tunic was a lost cause. A single pull stripped the tattered tunic off him easily and he pocketed it after balling it up.

He pressed a hand gently to his chest and hissed softly as the pain intensified. Breathing deeply hurt so he tried to keep his breaths as shallow as he could. The pain was bad but it wasn't as bad as the last time he had fractured a rib. This was probably because of his improved Physique. The pain was distracting but he could ignore it momentarily. He could only hope leveling up healed it.

Raising his torch high, he couldn't see the ceiling or the hole that had brought him here so he concluded they were too high for the light to reach. He was lucky he had survived.

The falling sand from the hole told him he was still too close to it, though. If some monster fell through the hole and survived just like he had, he might not be able to kill it. Granted, it was highly likely said monster would also be injured just like he was but no need to risk it.

Both directions of the tunnel looked the same, nothing to differentiate one as better than the other. The tunnel didn't have any visible slope and he couldn't tell where air was coming from except from the hole. He just had to hope he would be able to survive whichever direction he went.

He started walking on one path, torch sweeping in front of him for any dangers.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

With nothing to occupy him as he walked, Marc thoughts wandered to the villagers. The monster horde had reached them by the time he started running. Some of them might have died already. Did he regret abandoning them? Yes, but it wasn't as if his presence could have helped in any way.

Ultimately, it was all the fault of the System. If it hadn't brought him here, he wouldn't be facing any of this. Why did it pick Earth, of all worlds it could have taken? Life on Earth wasn't the best it could have been but at least he didn't have to run away from man-eating monsters.

Marc was jolted from his thoughts when he heard a scratching noise. He stilled instantly. That was the same noise he had heard before. He waited for a few seconds and once again, the sound came to him, clearer this time.

Something was behind him.

Slowly, he turned around, trying not to make any unnecessary noise. He saw it as soon as he did.

It was a rodent of some kind, looking like a rat or a hamster, the size of a large dog. It had jet-black fur and no visible eyes. Its snout was upturned and facing him and it opened its mouth to unveil several long tentacular tongues with tiny sharp teeth rimming them. The tentacle tongues waved aimlessly in the air and the creature took a step forward, clawed paw scratching against the tunnel floor.

It looked hungry.

Shit.

Marc stepped slowly backwards, gulping nervously. His torch-holding arm shook briefly before he stilled it with an act of will. His grip on the bone knife tightened as the creature padded towards him.

It leaped at him and he slashed at it with the knife. He missed.

The monster landed against his chest, claws digging in and eliciting a terrified scream from Marc. It's weight threw him to the floor roughly and both the torch and the knife were flung from his hands.

A starburst of agony exploded from his chest and Marc momentarily blacked out from the pain, his vision whiting out for an instant. When he came to, the monster jumped off his chest, sending another shock of agony through him. He was left lying there, gasping and crying and only the thought of the ugly creature eating him made him raise his head.

Thankfully, despite its fall, the torch's light hadn't gone out. Its flickering glow still lit up the tunnel.

The creature was crouched just a foot away from him, tearing into the goblin bag he'd been wearing at his waist. He hadn't even felt it pulling up the bag from him. It was eating the dried meat in the bag, its long tongues grasping the meat strips and rubbing against each other to shred them to pieces. The small leatherskin bags that had contained his water had been punctured and the water it had contained glimmered in the faint light, spilled all over.

At his movement, it turned its eyeless face to him, mouth tentacles lashing out wildly, before it returned to feasting on his food. His only food.

A sudden wave of anger came over Marc. He wasn't going to die in some godforsaken underground tunnel on a godforsaken world, not to some stupid early game monster.

An ice dagger formed in his hand and, ignoring the burning ache in his chest, he thrust it out at the creature beside him. This time he didn't miss and the dagger stabbed into the side of its head, eliciting an ear-piercing shriek from it. Its fur had and skin had prevented the dagger from piercing deeply. The ratlike monster pulled forcefully away from him, blood coating its fur.

Marc pushed himself up from lying on his back to a sitting position. The adrenaline rushing through him temporarily made his body's aches and pains distant. The creature was shaking its head, looking punch drunk for a moment before its face turned towards him again, tongues flailing.

Marc was ready when it charged at him hissing. He tried once more to stab it in the head but only got off a glancing hit that it ignored in favor of slashing at him with its claws and entangling its tongues around his arm, attacking him in an enraged frenzy.

Marc felt sharp pain from his arm and chest but didn't let it stop him as he continued to brain the monster. Both of them got more desperate; the monster's slashing and clawing grew even more frenzied, and several times its claws neared his throat; Marc bashed in its head as hard as he could with the all the weight of his Level Three Physique, trying to make each hit stab deeply despite the lack of space and time to accumulate force.

[Killed T0 Creature, +480 Essence]

The monster stilled and Marc relaxed. He pushed the monster off him and its short claws slid out of him. With its tongue still tangled around his arm, he laid back on the ground, breathing as hard as he dared to without stressing his fractured rib. That had been exciting. It was nothing like his previous fights with monsters. In those fights, he'd been in control; he had the option of running away.

He did not want to experience something like it again. If the creature hadn't been interested in his food the first time it attacked... If the creature had been smarter and aimed its claws or tongues for his throat... He closed his eyes. No, he didn't want to imagine that.

He brought up his Schema, dismissing any thoughts of his death. The ethereal screen remained unchanged save for the extra 480 points. Not enough to hit Physique Level Four. Still, he added everything to the attribute without hesitation and sighed as a jolt of ecstasy hit him, momentarily making him forget his pain. Almost immediately, it passed and the pain came back, only a bit diminished.

Increasing his Physique hadn't removed his injuries, only improved them slightly. He could only hope hitting Level Four completely healed them.

He laid there for a minute before he sat up. He slowly peeled off the monster's toothed tongues from his arm, hissing as each removed tongue came off with tiny shreds of skin. When he'd removed all the tongues, he grimaced at the sight of his arm. Although the wounds weren't deep, there were plenty of them, all bleeding. His chest was also bleeding; the monster had made a lot of cuts on his torso, some deeper than others.

He stood up and retrieved the fallen torch before setting it against the monster's corpse so its light could shine brighter, forcing down his disgust at touching a cadaver.

He recovered his scattered belongings, including a folded goblin bag he'd placed into his main goblin bag. Most of his food was irrecoverable. His meat was almost completely gone and the dried fruit and nuts were mostly wet, with some trampled.

He also found the two runestones he'd had and picked up his bone knife. He only recovered two leatherskin bags still containing water; one of them was whole while the other had leaked out over half of its water.

He drank some of the water in the leaking bag before using the remnants to wash his wounds and then wrapped his arm and chest with the fabric of his tunic.

All that done, he prepared to set off again. He cast one last glance at the monster that had almost killed him. The idea of butchering it for meat came to him as he considered his dwindled supply of food but he dismissed it. The creature was too big and that would take some time. Better to keep walking. He was bound to find food sooner or later. After all, a creature like that had to eat smaller creatures.

He stared at the monster and vowed to himself. He would do his best not to get as close to death as the dead monster had brought him. If death came, he would resist it with every fiber of his will.

Exhaling softly, he turned away and continued walking.