That day, I did not dream with survivor tales nor anything magical.
No.
On that day, when I closed my eyes, all that I saw was blood. My blood. Their blood. Blood of people I did not know and blood of people I had met before in my life.
Screams, pleads of mercy, and cries of despair echoed inside my head composing an unending requiem of death. Endless killing. I tried to stop, but my hands moved by themselves. My stained soul did not forgive me as much as theirs didn't. That was all I could manage to think as I butchered every face I had ever seen in my life, one after the other. I felt my pain and then I felt their pain, but still, it was not enough to pay for what I was doing to all those people. Despairing, all I could do was to look inside those sparkling eyes and ask for forgiveness I knew I wouldn't get.
I remember, blurrily, waking up a few times between those nightmares, to drink water or consume some of the moss around me. Moved by habit, my body even scratched lines on the ground with my new dagger, signaling the passing of days. The pain from all my wounds was terrible, but I could easily push through it. My mind, however, was simply a mess.
I may have had a fever, because the feeling I was suffering from was very similar to it, you know? That weakness that makes you want to sleep all day. It disarrays all kinds of structured thought and punishes you with waves of pain when you try to fight against it.
It was only today, after three days - if the marks on the ground could be trusted - that I have woken up feeling like myself again. I still have some minor headaches, but overall, I am much better. My bodily wounds, unsurprisingly, have miraculously closed. After the surge of information that entered my mind back there after I... defeated... those goblins, I know why it happened.
Since I got here in this cave, all those strange things have been happening and I have been pretending to not notice the parallels they have with things I actually understand. And all this time, in the back of my head, my conscience has been screaming at me all those similarities. Fighting against it all, I have been just telling myself: That is not possible, right?
But now, as I get up and use the water from to stream to look back at my reflection, I ponder.
The claw scars given to me by the first goblin I killed crisscross from my eye down to my cheek, all the way to my jawline. The pudgy fat I had under my chin is completely gone, together with any softness my face may have had. My eyes look deep, having gained dark contours and a brownish glint - maybe from all those days without eating real food. My bony cheekbones give you the impression of a hardened and dangerous man. Looking down, even my body, always soft, is now shaped and strong looking. Together with the numerous scratches and the white horizontal scar that circles the right side of my stomach, it all makes me feel like another person.
Altogether, what I see is very similar to what an edgy young videogame player might want his character to look like. A role-playing game character, maybe.
Hahaha...
Shit.
Isn't it just too much? I have been trying to pretend I have not noticed how much this all looks like those games I have played before, but everything seems to lead me back to this point. And the information that flowed inside my head when I killed those goblins was the last straw.
The first time it happened, when I had just woken up inside this cave, I just shrugged away the experience as a one-time spiritual awakening or some similar bullshit. I ignored what it had told me and had made me feel in order to keep my sanity. On the days following that, as I realized the changes that had been made to my body, I just accepted it as part of the mysterious situation I am in.
But now. Now I can't deny it any longer.
This all looks like a fucking game.
A very cruel, dangerous, bloody and hardcore game. Exactly the kind of game I would love to play back in my place, but definitely not something I would want to live into.
When I got here, that thing told me I was a Survivor, like if it was a game Class or something. Then it told me I could understand about enduring things, and therefore should be rewarded with «Endurance».
It is just me, or doesn't that sound like a fucking Skill reward?
And then, after I kill those goblins, I get rewarded again.
Fuck you. That is a Level Up! From killing things! What kind of sadistic shit is this? That shouldn't happen in real life!
And then I get another Survivor Skill, which the game tells me is called «Regeneration». Because, supposedly, I understood about sacrificing my flesh and mind for survival - and surprise! It allowed me to heal from those grisly wounds I got while fighting. That was why I knew I would live.
But it didn't stop there. Right after that, it gave me another class, called Fighter.
Hahahahaha! As if. Me, a fighter?
As if hearing my thought, the game shut me up by giving me another skill. «Unarmed Combat», it told me it was called.
Stolen story; please report.
And it was in that moment, with a brain-frying surge of information, that I knew for sure this was a game. Because then I really became a fighter.
Stances, flowing forms, exercises, wrist locks, kicks, punches and many other fancy moves I had no names for. I knew it all. Techniques people should take years to master were all simply wired into my brain, like a fucking cheat sheet.
If this wasn't a game, nothing made sense anymore.
After coming back to my Moss Cave and recovering from those wounds which should have killed normal people without medical treatment, I am even more sure of this fact. 'How?', 'Why?', 'Where?', those questions were not as important as that single realization. Because knowing this was a game freed me in the same amount as it distressed me. It may be a dangerous and cruel game, but every game had to be winnable, right?
And I always win my games.
So it was towards that goal, that I was now doing for myself what every proper game should have:
A character sheet!
Making for myself another sharp stalactite, as I had lost my last one in the goblin infirmary, I prepared myself to write my stats down.
It was with my own hands and a stalactite that I wrote down all I knew of myself:
Name: Jack Coast Race: Human Age: 23
Classes:
Survivor (2)
Level 1: Endurance
Level 2: Regeneration
Fighter (1)
Level 1: Unarmed Combat
Skills:
« Endurance »: Helps me resist and ignore the effects of hunger, thirst, diseases, and things like that. I think it also helps with mental health. Otherwise, I would be crazy, right?
« Regeneration »: Boosts the natural regeneration of my body from injuries and diseases.
« Unarmed Combat »: Gave me knowledge about fighting. With my fists and legs, I guess?
When I am done, I just have to laugh out loud.
Hahahahahaha! What the fuck.
I never, ever, thought I would write down something like that. When you put it down into words, it sounds really simple, you know?
I laugh, and laugh and then suddenly I am crying. Wait, what?
Aahh. This is so fucking crazy. I don't want any of that.
The craziest of it all is that back when I had a normal life, if someone talked to me about getting into living inside a game I might actually have entertained the idea. Anything to escape that colossal boredom I constantly felt while leading that meaningless life, right?
But now, thinking back... Was it really that boring, my life? Was it really that terrible, to eat anything I wanted with a touch on my phone, or to sleep every day under warm blankets? I don't know.
All I know is that this isn't what I wanted. I may be stronger than ever and have health that would best even the most competent of athletes, but still, I don't feel happy. Not in the slightest.
Here, cold, alone, with a scarred and naked body, all I can think is of all the things I could have done, if I were back in my city, working on my boring job and playing my harmless games.
It was like that that I spend the rest of my day: looking into those nonsensical words written down in stone, daydreaming about what the "me of now" would do if he was in the place of the "me of then". It hardly felt like if I was here only for 10 days. It felt more like a decade.
When night came and the light from above dimmed, I laid down on my usual spot and prepared myself for another night of bloody nightmares. No matter how game-like this place felt, I knew those goblins I killed had been real, living creatures. I had been watching them for too long to think otherwise.
Was it really okay to do what I had done? Wasn't it... murder?
They may be ugly, smelly and aggressive, but still... it did not feel right.
Those thoughts consumed me that night just as they had for the past three nights. It took a while, but soon, I was asleep.
Surprisingly, that night I did not have nightmares. Just blackness. Total absence of conscience. A reward for my acceptance, maybe.
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The creature rose through the uneven stones with the dexterity of someone who had done it more times than it could count. Leaving the tunnel it had walked through for a long while, it and its companions stalked through the dark stone cave with shared intent: hunting.
Looking around, it realized this cave was dangerously close to the surface. Not a place one of his kind would ever dare to make a home of. They knew all too well the dangers the outside held.
No. For them, the deeper, the better. The closest they got to the source the stronger they would be. Alas, those places were not available for young ones like him or his companions. They were reserved for their betters. Older beings.
And so they hunted. They hunted to get better, to bring more strength to their tribe and, more importantly, to please the source.
Do it enough times, and maybe the creature would be worthy of one of the deepest lairs.
But alas. Admonishing himself for his distraction during such an important hunt, the creature looked back at its prey.
Across the slow stream of water that ran over the cave's grey stone, a human slept.
The Goblin Killer. The murderer of his brothers.
It was a creature the goblin had never seen before that fateful day. He knew it was called human, from the knowledge imbued into himself upon birth by the source, but he had never actually seen one. They were rare, as far as he knew. Maybe one of his elders had seen one, but he hadn't. He was young, with less than a hundred days of life.
The knowledge he had about the humans, however, was a curious one: they could be as harmless as a small rodent or as dangerous as a direwolf. Maybe even more dangerous. It all depended on the individual.
For the goblin, it was a strange notion. A direwolf was a direwolf. It could kill you in the blink of an eye and rip your inwards out from you before you could even scream a warning for your tribe. But that was it. There were no harmless direwolves and there were no direwolves that would be able to survive a true goblin swarm. It was natural.
But not this man.
He fell from the hole in the ceiling like a dizzied bat and then rushed at his brother like a foolish newborn. His brother promptly punished such incompetence, cutting into his flesh and then following to finish his prey.
But then the man changed. Like a berserking bear, he overturned his brother and killed him in a show of strength, right before grabbing for his other brother and butchering him, together with his third brother. A massacre.
That must be what the source's knowledge meant about their strengths varying, the goblin thought.
It was only his arrogance that made the man leave him alive, wounded as he was.
Now with arms and legs recovered from the previous hunt, the goblin had gathered a few of his tribemates and came for vengeance.
Together, the nine creatures crossed the water stream and approached the sleeping form of the man. The vision of his brother's weapons laying around the man fueled the goblin's rage and gave surety to the fact that this was his prey.
And that today he would have his vengeance.