Matt pulled himself up off the ground. It turned out that not all forms of travel to various system worlds were created equal. The fact that he was still alive meant the Gaians had got it at least partially right, but being sucked through the aether between the two worlds with their portal was not an experience he suspected would ever become popular.
The bits and pieces of it he even remembered were horrifying, all stars whizzing by and eternal blackness while he himself was stretched in 3,000 impossible directions. The fact that all of this felt like it was happening under the watchful gaze of unknown horrors he couldn’t actually see hadn’t added much to the appeal.
“Did you get any of that, Lucy?”
“Any of what?”
“The stretching, the whole dread being from beyond the void vibe?”
“No. What? No. I can’t quite explain what happened to me during the ride. It was like I got tucked into a pocket of your soul or something. It was weird. But it wasn’t what you just said*.”*
Matt nodded. He would have liked to compare notes, but it was just as good for Lucy to have missed the experience entirely. It had been minutes since he landed on solid land, and he still felt vaguely like his soul was about to puke.
Ding!
Welcome to Ra’Zor, Realm of 1000 Bleedings
Welcome, Invader! You have somehow earned the right to make a foray into the world of Ra’Zor, pillaging where you will, taking what you like, and generally causing mayhem.
Or not. The invasion system is complex, and each being’s concept of invasion tends to vary. As a general rule, the amount you gain from a particular invasion is most closely tied to the general amount of change you cause during the invasion. Killing a king is worth a lot of points, but so is saving one who would have otherwise died, and that sort of thing.
Note that while you will be awarded achievements, experience, and related rewards during your time on Ra'Zor, the bulk of your rewards will be rewarded by the Ra’Zorian system at the time you return to your usual world.
Yes, you can still die here. No, most of your stuff isn’t with you. It will be returned when you arrive back on your home world, safe and sound.
I am the Ra’Zorian system instance, and I am here to help you in just the same way the system of your home world does. Invasions are meant to be shake-ups in a particular realm, and most of your information has been withheld from me to prevent too much adaptation to your particular style of fighting. In the same way, every system instance manages its planets in a slightly different way, so various aspects of your trip might seem strange or foreign until you learn more about them. It’s fun! We will learn about each other as we go.
Once again, welcome to Ra’Zor, invader. Enjoy your stay!
Matt read off the message to Lucy.
“Well, that’s friendly. I wonder if he really will help us, just like our normal system instance does.” Matt and Lucy were very aware that the system instance could listen in on normal speech, and had decided beforehand not to show their cards too soon if they could help it.
“Probably not. That joker is so crazy.”
“Yup. But this one seems nice, so far.” Lucy put the emphasis on the inevitable change. Neither of them expected things to stay friendly forever.
“Yeah.” For the first time since arriving, Matt took a look around. “You know, I’d like it if just once I could end up in a place that isn’t almost entirely red.” His shovel had made the trip with him, but otherwise Matt was almost completely disarmed, including his pack. He was clad in beginner clothes, which on Ra’Zor appeared to be a white cloth shirt and a pair of white-drawstring pants. Or they would have been white, if they weren’t already covered in blood-red dirt.
“Right? It would look the same, if it wasn’t for those.” Lucy gestured over in a slightly-less barren direction, where a few dead trees sat by the edge of some kind of maintained path. The sun was giant and reddish here, either from some trick of the atmosphere or just because Ra’Zor had a giant red sun. Matt didn’t care one way or another. He just hoped it moved.
He swung his shovel a few times, experimentally. Everything at least felt normal, and his status screen was unchanged. There wasn’t much more they could get in terms of orientation from sitting around. It was time to get a move on.
“The place lives up to its name, at least. Do you think that the whole planet is like this? Barren?”
“I doubt it. Maybe, but that sword guy seemed pretty… soft, I guess? It was like fighting with a super-strong child. I can’t see him being that way if he had to survive this kind of environment.”
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“It really is pretty barren.”
“Compared to Gaia, it’s practically a botanical garden. Look, a shrub!” Matt gave a quick kick to a large, paper-dry bush that was struggling to survive by the edge of the path.
This almost immediately turned out to be a mistake. As soon as the rustling from the bush being kicked died down, Matt heard a buzzing. The sound intensified over the split second it took for him to bring his shovel into fighting position, just in time for a dozen shiny black forms to burst out of the bush at him.
“Matt, dodge! They are called Arrow Ants!”
Matt flared Spring Fighter just in time for the group of chihuahua-sized ants to whiz by. The amount of force in their jump was surprisingly large, and they overshot him by quite a few feet before they could stop themselves in the air with their wings. One particularly fast ant actually made it to the other side of the path and impacted a tree, getting momentarily stuck when its mandibles sunk into the dead wood.
“Got it. How do you know that?”
“This system instance is feeding me information! But maybe we should…”
The ants had turned in the air to face him, still buzzing angrily. As a group, they suddenly cocked their wings forward, sharply, and began falling in place. Matt heard a clicking sound like the wings were locking against something, then another as the wings suddenly slapped backwards hard against the air. All the ants that had been falling towards the ground suddenly launched forward, directly at his face.
“Shit!”
“Yeah, let’s talk about other stuff later. Get to work!”
Matt scrambled out of the way. And then once more as the ants regrouped for another go at him. On the third launch, Matt was ready. Lucy shouted out to let him know that once the ants had locked their wings in position, the arrow-attack was nearly certain, like they were too committed to pull out of it once they had started. He managed to get two of them on his first shovel-swing, cutting the head off one and the wings off another. He stomped on the grounded, still living ant, accidentally covering his foot in ant-goo as he did.
“Gross!” Matt yelled. The stuff wasn’t corrosive or poisonous that he could tell, but that didn’t mean he liked it. It was on now. After that, it was a bloodbath. A half-minute and several ant-launches later, the path was littered with various kinds of insect parts and green blood.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad.” It really wasn’t. Only one of the ants had made contact, and most of the damage had already healed.
“No, it wasn’t. And to answer your previous question, it looks like this system instance feeds me information on new enemies I see. I have no idea why, or if that’s normal, or if it’s going to keep happening. But at least for these ants, I got a pretty good breakdown of what they were and basic combat capabilities.”
“That’s… honestly, that’s really good. It’s going to help a lot here.”
“Yup. And, for the record, those ants were categorized as something called “demon variant animals”. No idea what that means.”
Matt patted his arm as Rub Some Dirt In It closed up the last bit of wound on his shoulder. The fact that they cut him was not completely implausible, but these didn’t exactly seem like heavy-hitter enemies to Matt. Calling up his status screen and taking a closer look revealed that getting hurt was a little more plausible than he thought for a simple reason. None of his Palate of the Conqueror’s traits had survived the trip.
“Looks like we are eating these ants, Lucy.”
“Is that going to work, away from Gaia?”
“I’m not sure. But if it doesn’t, our loadout just got a lot worse.”
Matt was without matches and a torch, but for once, not without ready supplies of wood and kindling. He built the makings of a small fire on the ground, piling twigs and leaves high. He then went to try to do something he had never actually done before, rubbing two pieces of wood together to make a fire. It turned out this was only hard on Earth because people weren’t walking around with ten times the physical ability of normal humans. Once he dialed in the amount of STR he needed to get into play to create maximum friction without actually breaking the wood, his superior DEX score gave him a flaming branch within moments.
Roasting the ants didn’t do much to make them more appetizing to Matt, but it at least solidified the insides enough that he didn’t have to literally pour them into his mouth. He scooped out a double-fingerful of roasted ant with his index and middle finger, then grimaced as he put it into his mouth.
“It tastes like oranges. Why does it have to taste like oranges?”
“Ants have a high formic acid content.”
“It was more of a hypothetical, but thanks.”
Ding!
Unknown Skill Detected
One of the skills you have used is foreign enough to the local system logic that the system instance has failed to immediately recognize what it is, or how to supply it with the resources it needs to function.
The skill is currently under analysis and will likely begin to function at some later time. As a non-functioning skill decreases your chances of survival during your invasion, compensation will be made. The skill in question is not labelled as a class-vital combat skill, so the reward is somewhat smaller than would otherwise be the case, but an effort was made to select an award that is still relevant to your current needs.
Reward: Reinforced Boots
“Looks like my eating skill won’t work for now, Lucy. I’ll have to go buffless for a while. The system instance says it’s working on it.” Matt mentally claimed the reward, and a pair of boots materialized in the air next to him before flopping into the dirt of the path and kicking up a small cloud of red dust. “But these make up for that a little. I just wish I had water with me to wash the dust off my feet. Dirty feet in shoes suck.”
Ding!
A reasonable appeal for a larger reward had been made and granted.
Additional reward: Pedicure Token
Matt immediately called up the description for the pedicure token.
Pedicure Token
Somehow, you’ve made the system laugh. Pedicure tokens belong to a group of obscure, nearly value-less prizes sometimes given out as novelty rewards for small-but-amusing achievements. It has a near-zero value, but really does do what the name implies it will. Enjoy!