Jonathan’s eyes cracked open to a throbbing headache, the kind that reminded him of too many beers on a night out on the town. He squinted and put his hands to his head. Finding himself slumped in an odd position on his knees, he stood stiffly.
Strange blue rectangles floated in his vision, like those damn pop-up windows on a website. He blinked hard, but they stayed where they were.
“What kind of VR nonsense…” Jonathan tried to wave them away and nearly lost his balance as his hand passed through the ethereal text. His boot caught on something which sent him stumbling forward.
That’s when the smell hit him. It was the thick, metallic smell of blood in the air. Only then did his memories of the fight just before blacking out return. He’d been about to go into impossible odds.
He began to conduct a quick assessment of his own state. He flexed his fingers, rotated his shoulders, and shifted each leg. He felt like everything moved smoothly, with no injuries.
Too smooth, considering what he remembered from before the fight.
His eyes swept the clearing as he continued his check, and his hands froze mid-motion. The rocky corpses of the trolls lay scattered like broken, bloody masonry.
Jonathan had seen his fair share of violence overseas, but he’d never seen this kind of carnage before. It didn’t look like they’d been killed. They had been smashed, battered, and broken. It looked personal.
Even when compared to the horrific memories of IEDs and the firefight aftermath, the scene before him looked like something out of a horror movie.
He looked at the remains of the trolls and remembered the fistfight he’d seen the two eight-foot trolls have before his ambush. But what he was seeing didn’t line up with those durable bodies covered in protective armor that he’d seen. Their limbs were broken, and the carapace was smashed and cracked.
I did this?
He looked down at his hands. His knuckles were raw with fresh pink skin. Other than the dried blood on them, they were unmarred. His tactical gear was torn in places, spattered with that strange dark blood, but his body felt… good. Considering the beating that he took, he should barely be able to walk, let alone feel better than he had in years.
His hand came up to his chest. The deep gash across his torso was gone, leaving only torn fabric as evidence it had ever existed.
He swiped the air again, attempting to make the pesky floating blue windows scatter.
Movement beyond the windows caught his eye before he could begin to look at the text. More rock trolls emerged from the shadows, their heavy footfalls sending tremors through the ground. Three of them, just like he remembered from before.
The three were bigger than the previous group, all reaching several heads taller than Jonathan.
Jonathan rolled his bad shoulder, pleased to feel that it no longer clicked. Giving the three approaching monsters a smile, he felt his heartbeat pick up, and he bent down to grab a fallen stone axe. He ignored the floating screens that cluttered his vision and stepped forward as one of the trolls came in range.
From how his previous engagement had gone, Jonathan expected there to be a great rending of rock flesh as the large hatchet connected. Instead, the first swing barely chipped the lead troll’s hide.
The beast’s counterattack sent him rolling across the rocky ground and caused pain to flare in his ribs. He pushed himself up, spitting blood.
Come on. This is it. This is what I came for.
The thought sparked something inside him. Heat bloomed in his chest, and he screamed his son’s name. That same heat continued to spread through his limbs like molten metal in his veins. The pain faded, replaced by rage.
While he could feel the strength in his muscles as he crouched and flexed his arms, the sensation was foreign. It felt wrong. Every instinct from his years of training screamed against letting go of control.
Focus. Stay in control.
He dodged another attack, feeling stronger despite his injuries. His next swing of the axe bit deeper into the stone flesh, drawing a roar from the troll. Spittle flew from the monster's mouth, and Jonathan could see its jagged and broken teeth set in black gums.
He felt a deep desire to scream back at the beast. To let out the pain and rage for taking away his eldest.
Despite how tempting the surge of strength was, the red creeping into the edges of his vision set off warning bells in his mind.
The second troll blindsided him, its massive fist catching him in the side. Pain exploded through his ribs again as he hit the ground. He rolled with the impact.
He grabbed a second hatchet from one of the nearby fallen trolls. Standing, he laughed and tasted blood in his mouth. He held both axes out to his side and looked up to the sky, past the annoying blue windows in his vision.
A damn good day to die.
The strength flowing through him felt far too good. Like the best parts of combat, without the fear of hesitation. Red crept further into his vision and his thoughts began to blur.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Have to… stay…
The third troll charged, and Jonathan met its attack with one of his own. He felt something primal well up within him, and he let the anger that had been building in him explode outward. His own roar matched the troll’s as his newest stone axe connected with stone flesh. The chop connected with the creature’s shoulder and sunk several inches through rocky hide, causing a spray of black blood to coat his face and beard.
With that simple success, his resistance crumbled.
Red completely tinted his vision. His awareness retreated, pulled back into his own subconscious desire for violence.
Then, the darkness took him.
----------------------------------------
Consciousness returned slower this time. Jonathan lay face-down on something hard and uneven. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest as he tried to move. He felt like he’d done a 12-mile ruck march and then gotten hit by a truck for good measure.
Everything hurt.
With an effort of will, he pushed himself onto his side. The movement sent waves of pain and exhaustion through his body, but his training and natural desire for survival urged him to act.
His thoughts stilled as he saw what he’d been lying on. Not rocks, but bodies. The trolls’ remains were barely recognizable after the battle, pulverized into gravel and gore. His stomach lurched, and he scrambled backward until his shoulders hit stone.
Those damned blue screens were still floating in his vision, multiplying by the looks of it. The text swam in his vision, refusing to come into focus. One message flashed more insistently, layered over the top of the others.
Congratulations and Welcome to the System, newly Awakened.
Trait Manifested: {Rage}
“What in the hell?” His voice came out hoarse as if he’d been screaming.
The floating text reminded him of those mobile games David kept trying to get him to play when he was in high school.
Jonathan closed his eyes, but the messages remained there, hovering in the darkness behind his eyelids. His head throbbed worse than any hangover he’d ever experienced, and the coppery taste in his mouth made him wonder how much of the blood was his.
Using the large rock formation for support, he forced himself to stand. His legs shook with the effort, and he had to stop halfway up as dizziness threatened to bring him to his knees. The exhaustion felt bone deep and was worse than any training or combat exercises he’d endured before.
Need to move.
He stumbled away from the carnage, and each step felt like his body was threatening to revolt. The air felt cool to his addled mind, and he wondered if he was in shock. He knew how hot the air had been when he was in his right mind. After what felt like miles but couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards, he found a comfy-looking patch of stone ground and collapsed into a small space between rock formations.
The blue text continued its silent assault on his vision.
He knew that whatever was happening to him had to do with the messages. More importantly, they might explain why he was still alive when every instinct told him that he should be dead.
Giving in, he focused on the topmost message.
Congratulations and Welcome to the System, newly Awakened.
Trait Manifested: {Rage}
It refused to move or disappear so he could read the others, no matter how much he blinked or tried to wave it away.
“Dismiss?” he tried. “Clear? Roger?”
The message remained. He groaned, annoyed at the idea that technology had somehow managed to make its way into his head. Heat began to rise up in his chest, and he recognized it as the same rage building from his frustration.
His eyes widened, he shoved the feelings down and smothered the heat as quickly as possible. His body felt like it had gone twelve rounds with a heavy bag; there was no way he could handle another rage out.
“Come on, you old fart,” he muttered to himself. “You’ve cleared rooms in Fallujah. You can figure out some damned floating text.”
He stared at the text again and read through it another time.
Alright, I get it. Fuck off.
The message vanished. Jonathan blinked.
He shifted against the rock wall and settled in to deal with the stack of notifications.
You have slain Rock Troll - Level 5 You have slain Rock Troll - Level 5 You have slain Rock Troll - Level 5
New Skill Learned: [Rending Strike] (Novice - Level 1)
Do you accept? Yes/No?
Yes?
That one disappeared easily enough without him needing to curse at it.
Congratulations Awakened. You have leveled up!
You have 3 Free Points to distribute
Free Points?
Even though he had hoped it would do something, the thought didn’t cause the notification to react. Sighing, he told the window to fuck off, deciding that he’d figure out what the points did later.
He had three more repeat notifications for the first trio of rock trolls that he’d killed and realized that the notifications he was seeing were in reverse order. The last of his three notifications made that obvious.
Personal Quest: Culling Rock Trolls
Kill 10 Rock Trolls. Rift Quest: Slay the Chieftain
Take down the Chieftain of the Rock Splitters Tribe.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that one, but if it was just killing the beasts within the Rift, he had every intention of fighting until he couldn’t anymore.
Moving on, he read the last of his notifications. There was another triple set of Rock Troll slaying ones that he waved away in irritation. Jonathan hated when his cell phone sent him too many notifications, this felt like more of a nightmare than the thought of fighting more trolls.
Congratulations Awakened. You have leveled up!
You have 3 Free Points to distribute
He dismissed more of the Free Points and saw his most recent and final notification.
{Rage} has ended. Exhaustion debuff applied.
Rage… No shit.