Nobody home. Good, Jamie really wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. He looked around for a key, or something. No matter, he could just see if any of the windows opened. They were made of thinly knit straw… And didn’t open. How inconvenient. Well, there was an easy solution. He held the axe overhead and brought it down, giving himself an opening. That was easy, and wouldn’t be too difficult to fix. He honestly wouldn’t be able to understand why the resident would be mad at him. He wouldn’t mind being home invaded himself, as long as nobody took anything he cared too much about. And who would invade his crappy little apartment anyways? Nobody, and he was glad to be rid of it. He climbed through, and looked around. It was a nice place- rustic, lots of plants, and and its own library. Huh, maybe he would find something that could tell him more about this place. But he had other things on his mind. He looked over to a door, presumably a pantry. Glancing around, he opened it, and was surprised to feel a gust of cold air. He stared, confused. This place entirely lacked electricity, yet he was pretty sure that this was a fridge. Maybe it was enchanted…? If you could be sent to other worlds after being killed then he was sure that simple enchantments were possible. The food in it was certainly strange… Out of the alien contents, he selected something that vaguely resembled cheese, and a large, yellow, spiky fruit that he recognized from a certain type of tree he’d seen every now and then on his way over, although it was too high up to be reached. It… didn’t look poisonous. He had an idea, just to be sure. A person living out in the woods all alone with no access to society would have to have a foraging guide somewhere. Looking carefully through the home library, he spotted a book called “A Guide to Rethis Woods Flora”. Just his luck! Pulling it out, he sat down and flipped through it until he found a match. Yeah, it was Rethis sunfruit. Edible. He didn’t read too much about it. But he had to crack it open, though. Well, he had an axe, which he was surprisingly very good at using. Taking a small bite out of the cheese(?), he managed to cut it in half, revealing a red, gooey inside. Licking it up, he instantly felt better.
AH OH GOD- shaking his head, he chuckled in spite of himself. What the hell was Mana? He was sure he would find out. But it seemed low, whatever it was. But wow, he should read up on this strange fruit. Apparently, along with healing all health, it has a 50% chance of raising your intelligence score by one point, 70% of raising your vitality by one point, and 55% of raising your Mana by one point. Yeesh, was his Mana really that low? Anyways, it was also illegal. And had a 5% chance of making you lose your mind. So pretty cool plant, all in all. He spat out an unbroken seed, putting it in his pocket. Maybe he could grow one. He could grow this illegal plant. Jamie was beginning to realize just how little he cared about the law. Wow, he’d never thought of that before. He leaned back, ready to rest, when he noticed something… off. One of the books looked more like a wooden block than anything else. Just… a wooden block, painted to look like a book.
“Huh?”
He stood up and tentatively reached for it, stumbling over when instead of being pulled from the shelf, it clicked, the bookshelf sliding back.
“Woah…” he muttered, pulling himself from the ground and picking up his axe. It revealed an imposing stone staircase, lit by a few torches here and there. He stared, stroking his chin. Well, best case scenario, there was treasure down there. But hey, no harm in looking, right? Unless whoever lived here slammed the door on him, trapping him in there until he starved to death. Eh, he had an axe. Seemed to be good for most things. He gulped, making his way down the stairs.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the end, and OH GOD. Now it made sense that this person lived alone. They were probably an insane person. Chained to the wall by their wrists were five humanoid beings, walls streaked with blood… One of them, a woman with pointed ears and the top halves of her fingers missing, looked up. Oddly enough, seeing someone other than her captor wasn’t enough to rouse any sort of excitement.
“Get out while you can.” Nope. He wasn’t going to do that. Without a word he rushed over to the nearest prisoner, and swung his axe at the chains. It did nothing. Aw. The prisoner, who appeared to be a satyr of sorts, shook his horned head. “It’s no use. The chains are enchanted. The only way to get us out is if you somehow get the key, which she keeps around her neck. You should leave before she comes back.” The three other prisoners were unconscious. Or possibly dead. Oh man, he hoped the poor blokes were alive. He could see some weak breathing, so he sighed in relief. Good, he’d had enough of death lately, especially of innocents. He sighed and whistled. Then he walked away, turning and waving.
“Hang tight, I’ll be back.”
Time to get back outside as fast as he could. He ran out as fast as he could, resetting the secret door and throwing himself out the window. He ducked behind a tree, panting. Okay, so, the lady who owned this house was a serial killer, probably. An actual serial killer! Maybe she didn’t intend to kill them, instead opting to just keep them in there to torture them. Or both. Probably both. She probably abducted the travelers and was going to torture them as long as possible until they die. Either way, didn’t seem like a very good person. Hell, she might be even worse than Kevin! KEVIN. He waited, probably for about an hour, when he saw the woman. Yeah, she looked like the kind of person who would live in the woods and torture strangers. She appeared to be your average stereotypical crone, with shaggy white hair, a hunched back, and shriveled skin that nearly displayed her skeleton. But she also had razor sharp teeth and nails from the looks of it. He waited, formulating a plan. It was a simple plan, really. If anything, it was an impulse, which is different than a plan, but he had a good feeling about it. The second she was inside the house, he ran over, knocking on the door. “In a minute!” she croaked. More like a second. When she foolishly opened it, he grinned, axe slung over his shoulder.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Hi there.”
———————————————————
Jamie had decided to continue to axe the old woman after he had already chopped off her head. Must be a pretty good axe to cut it off so easily. But anyways, he had no way of knowing whether she could survive without her head, being an entity from another dimension and all, so he decided to completely butcher her corpse, and he smashed her skull as well. No kill like overkill. He scooped up the key from a pool of blood, and made his way back to the dungeon, and yeah, he wasn’t the one they expected to come down there, especially in his state. The woman with the chopped fingers cried out in a mixture of relief and alarm. The satyr stared, mouth gaped. Jamie didn’t care, simply unlocking everybody’s restraints, happy they would live to see the outside world again.
“There you go. Might not wanna look by the door though.” He sneered a little, wiping some blood from his cheek. “It’s gross.”
The conscious pair exchanged glances. Well, he seemed nice enough. He saved their lives and all. He also axed their captor to death. Maybe he wasn’t all there, but they were happy he came.
Jamie wished he had saved some of the sunfruit. Would the unconscious members even survive? He helped the woman to her feet, and was about to help the satyr, but he managed to get up on his own, which struck Jamie as highly strange.
“You…”
The woman shrugged. “He’s got high vitality. Has to do with his god.”
“Yeah It’s a religious thing.”
Jamie nodded. “Cool.” Seemed reasonable enough, considering his situation. He took that to mean that vitality had something to do with health recovery. Ah yes, and that meant that Jamie recovered 31 every hour. Oh, he meant to ask.
“How do I view my stats?” He felt exasperated by the way they looked at him. Maybe stats wasn’t the right word?
“Is that what you call them? Stats?” Their weird looks got weirder. He sighed, pulling a girl with feline features to her feet. “Sorry, not from around here.”
The woman glanced at her horned friend and back at Jamie, before helping up a man with a bird head.
“Must be somewhere really far away for you to not know about the system.”
“You have no idea.”
———————————————————
NAME: Jamie Steve
AGE: 20
OCCUPATION: None
FORMER OCCUPATION(s): Salesman, Fast food employee
SKILLS:
Axe wielder (0)
Focus (0)
Sales (5)
-
HEALTH: 150
VITALITY: 31 ph
STAMINA: 25
ENDURANCE: 26
STRENGTH: 20
SPEED: 45
AGILITY: 45
INTELLIGENCE: 203
MANA: 3
MANA RECOVERY: 50 ph
Jamie sighed, displaying his card. At least he had Mana. “Feels pretty unbalanced.”
The woman without fingers- Sata, apparently- was haphazardly rifling around in drawers. She was pretty intent on her task, but looked up, surprised by what she saw.
“Yeah, what the hell’s up with your Mana?”
Jamie furrowed his brow, curious about any similarities between this place and his place of origin that he could find. “You know what hell is? Oh, and how come you speak English?”
Sata nodded. “Yeah, the Collective has a communal hell. Also, I don’t know what English is, but the gods of speaking have made it to where anyone in the Collective can understand each other regardless of their language. Pretty cool.”
Jamie nodded, continuing on. The sooner he becomes fully accustomed to the Collective, as it’s called, the better. Now, he believed this last part came down to Mana.
AFFINITIES:
FIRE: 1
WATER: 5
AIR: 1
EARTH: 60
DARK: 3
LIGHT: 3
MIND: 65
SPACE: 2
TIME: 1
LIFE: 1
DEATH: 20
BODY: 55
???: 1,000
???: 120
-
RESISTANCES:
FIRE: 20
WATER: 20
AIR: 20
EARTH: 150
DARK: 50
LIGHT: 20
MIND: 65
SPACE: 20
TIME: 20
LIFE: 80
DEATH: 490
BODY: 1,000
???: 3,009
???: 1,512
Jamie blinked, getting the sense that something was very wrong there. “Uh, hey Sata?”
Sata looked up from her rummaging, which had moved on to a small chest in the corner of the room.
“Yeah?”
Without a word, Jamie showed her his affinities and and resistances. She did not take this very well.
“Excuse me?” She was alarmed, granted, but not as alarmed as she was when he made his little bloodstained appearance. The satyr guy, healing their friends in the other room, leaned his head in. “You good?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, the guy who saved us is just pretty weird!” She turned back to her pretty weird savior. “I can’t even begin to describe just how wrong your stats are, so let me just show you mine!”
AFFINITIES:
FIRE: 13
WATER: 14
AIR: 12
EARTH: 20
DARK: 21
LIGHT: 21
MIND: 14
SPACE: 5
TIME: 5
LIFE: 15
DEATH: 15
BODY: 0
-
RESISTANCES:
FIRE: 2
WATER: 1
AIR: 1
EARTH: 5
DARK: 20
LIGHT: 2
MIND: 1
SPACE: 2
TIME: 0
LIFE: 1
DEATH: 1
BODY: 0
Jamie was dumbstruck. What the… He had so many questions. What does ??? mean? And why was it so high?
At least he was confused. Otherwise, her confusion would turn to terror. However, he was definitely less confused than she was, so Sata was definitely concerned. “My resistances are definitely lower than average, but even then they tend to be around 10, with most people having scores of nine, save for time, space, and especially body. You should see a stat technician when we get to the city, for sure. You’re some kind of… anomaly.” He was an anomaly? Cool! He weirdly felt pretty good about that. Sata went back to her rummaging after more nervous staring, before yelling out in triumph.
“Yes! My fingers!” She found her fingers! That’s nice.