Anni had no compass, but she would eventually learn that her initial point of lacustrine egress was to the west. The people that had attacked her there were tribally-tattooed grey aliens, and their territory was dotted with not only excruciating hunting traps, but also the beasts said traps were presumably aimed at. After bleeding out in her third pit-trap, she started trying other areas.
A heard of territorially aggressive cow-things trampled her. She was torn apart by dog-sized velociraptors. She was bitten by a venomous dragonfly. She was carried off to the lair of a cannibal necromancer cult by a hoard of zombies. Swallowed by some kind of toxic slime. Impaled by a turret trap. Swarmed by little fairy-sized imps. Stinging insects. A crow the size of a minivan. Monitor lizard. Quicksand. Tree-beast. Bears.
Anni was crushed to death by a rockslide, then when she tried waiting in a safe place for it to pass, she was crushed by something so large that she never saw what it was.
Her best attempt at the lake began when she climbed up a ridge to the north, and found herself swamped by a massive swarm of little gold coin-looking things. They picked her up and carried her into a cave, where she met a very nice and shiny, if naked, yellow lady.
The lady introduced herself as the queen of the coin’s hive, and offered Anni some tea. The tea was astringent, but extremely calming, and Anni soon found herself unable to keep any secrets from the golden monarch. They chatted and laughed about friendly things together for hours and hours, until Anni eventually fell asleep.
Her second visit to the hive had seen her eaten alive by the coins at first contact, before she even saw the cave.
----------------------------------------
In the tunnels and chambers beneath the castle of the Demon King, in the magical equivalent of a dimensional server room, in a state of distress, a certain purple demoness was hurriedly conducting a diagnostic ritual.
The flow of time on the island had been skipping like a bad record for what amounted to weeks, and this loop was the first time she had been able to access the latwork for long enough to accomplish anything.
The ritual’s progress icon finished spinning, and displayed its conclusions: Installation lag was affecting some processes, resulting in a designated fodder having somehow been assigned a time-loop ability…Of course it would be her fault. Everything was these days, wasn’t it?
Her intervention, debugging that weirdo had immediately borne even weirder fruit, which was currently installing itself in the hardrunes of the island’s Solid State Arrays via the Central Processing Obelisk... That really wasn’t supposed to happen during operation, but it wasn’t as if the magical laws of this reality could just be turned off and on again, so it made sense for the admagistrative systems to hit a snag or two in the interim.
The demoness quickly moved to isolate the castle from the island’s annoying temporal hiccups, and four hours later the loop reset before she could finish, effectively undoing all her work.
Several tries later, when she finally managed it, she made her report on the issue to her father… only to learn that he hadn’t noticed the skipping in the first place.
----------------------------------------
The river’s steady clip ate a good three meters per second, as Anni floated carefully along its rapids, rushing down a mountain, pretending to be dead. She held some kelp(?) around herself, and kept her body very still and loose, letting it follow the current like a dwarf in a barrel.
This was, to her knowledge, the only possible way to exit the lake without losing what little clothing she had. It was also the only stretch of time where she could be sure nothing would try to jump her while she was distracted. She gathered her nerves.
“Show status.” She whispered the words aloud, once thinking them yielded no results. She desperately hoped this adventure would include some kind of progression. Knowledge gates went poorly with trial and error.
“Start, info, help, menu-”
The screen made a noise as it appeared. A kind of... Bwooweep!
Greetings! Welcome, new [fodder] to the island [Intimation]
Notice: Your home dimension is magically barren. Encounter magic to attune your magical affinity.
Notice: Your home dimension is dimensionally isolated. You have no rights under any interdimensional treaty.
You will be assigned the [Victim System]. Grow your your [Suffering], and become [Less Useless].
Your status has been rated:
Aniron Honemashite: Level 0
Class:Fodder
Physiological:120/120
Paraphysical:-ER/240
Physiculpable:56/70
Physical:14
Physically:18
Physicality:11
Nonphysical:24
Psychophysical:15
Aphysical:9
Astrophysical:-13
Metaphysical:22
Physiclical:7
Geophysical:5
Anni stared at the little stat screen. Through an effort of sheer will, she managed not to scream or shout.
And when she finally asked, “What… does any of that mean?” it was in a whisper.
As if in answer, the box closed itself due to inactivity. Anni did the only thing she could: She continued waiting and thinking and floating along down the river.
This was fine. Everything was totally, completely fine.
Whatever ran this system seemed to think she was fodder, and that she’d just lie down and die because it said she should. Fuck that. Anni had infinite tries, and she would drown this shitty island in her own damned blood if she needed to, and she…
Anni grit her teeth.
I guess I’ve internalized my death as a strategy now…
Her watery transportation was kind enough to hide her tears, if not her sobbing. Crying like this helped nothing, and it put her in danger… But the tears felt right, so she let them flow, and when she did return her attention to her stats, she felt refreshed.
The system had called it a rating, so she would have to assume they corresponded to her actual attributes, as a normal human. The three at the top must be… Health, Mana and Stamina? The way they were written as resources meant there wasn’t much else they could be, and the one with the error was clearly her mana stat, judging by that first notice.
The real issue was the other TEN. The D&D classic six might be in there somewhere, but the extra four meant that process of elimination was probably out of the question. Actually, wait…
Anni’s ‘nonphysical’ stat lined up exactly with the un-errored part of her mana, meaning it was probably the equivalent to INT, or something similar. She realized she could probably figure each of them out… some way or another.
I’ll just have to hope the shitty ones aren’t anything important…
She pulled up her screen again to see if it had at least updated any of the names. It hadn’t.
This system sucks turkey eggs through a hose.
Eventually, the river brought her over a little waterfall, into another lake. It seemed similar to her starting point, but with faster currents, and-
OHMYGOD what is that!?
A long pink tentacle undulated towards her, underwater. Anni tried to swim away, but it caught her hair, and dragged her back with it into the depths of this (apparently) unreasonably deep lake. She managed to struggle and thrash her way out of the first tentacle’s grip, but by then more tentacles had come, and she was surrounded.
The last thought to cross Anni’s drowning mind in that attempt was: ‘Of fucking course there’s a kraken…’
In her very next try, she avoided it easily, by letting it grab some of her kelp.
----------------------------------------
“Status”
Nothing happened for a few seconds…
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Then, Ping!!
[Name: Dannon Byrnik]
[Species: Human]
[Gender: @%$$#King]
[Age: 26]
[$^atus: No Sta#42]
[Active Quests: empty]
[Current Quests:]
(Get head)
[Details: Defeat the Demon King, take his head, and free the island of his foul control.]
[Reward: ??????(??????)]
(Unalone)
[Details: Safety in numbers isn’t complicated, forehead. Find people.]
[Reward: New friends! (Yay!)]
(Recon)
[Details: Forewarned is forearmed. Lay low, get the lay of the land, don’t get laid out, so eventually you can lay down the law.]
[Reward: ???(Uncommon)]
[Repeatable:]
(Thirsty;)
[Details: Hydrate before you die-drate. Drink 99% of your bottle's contents, and I’ll refill it for free! Yes, that is worded strangely. I'm testing something.]
[Completed:]
2 X (Thirsty;)
[Reward: Refill]
(Nameless)
[Reward Failed: Answers]
(Long Lost Shoe)
[Details: Somewhere on the island is a shoe that perfectly matches the one you’re wearing. Find it, and claim it as your own.]
[Reward Claimed: small random treasure(Unique)]
Yes, this explained SO much… and yet…?
This can wait until food and/or society exists.
Dan fumbled with his menu until he managed to get his (unalone) quest to register as active. The little twinkle in the distance confirmed his suspicions.
He stood up, dusted himself off, and started walking. No need to complicate things.
Did I guess lucky, directionally speaking? Or was it gonna point the direction I’d picked either way? Whatever. Dan yawned, and started walking again.
When Dan finally saw the people his quest was pointing him to, he perked right up, and quickened his pace.
It was group of four people, so far as he could see. One of them was blue and shiny all over, probably some kind of bodysuit. Over the shiny suit, she wore what looked like a belly dancer outfit… made entirely out of bridal veils and dirty dreams. At her feet, a small, pale, blonde woman, sat in a skimpy green bikini, the sand, and obvious distress. Someone with dark hair and a whitish lab coat looked to be bandaging the blonde’s arm, though Dan couldn’t quite see from so far away. Standing over them was a plump, tall, brunette woman, wearing a rich, poofy, minstrel’s outfit with rich furs and bright colors. The tall minstrel woman also carried a large, intricate, two-stringed instrument.
Definitely a motley group, but strange people were almost always better than solitude, and hopefully, they’d know literally anything about what was happening.
----------------------------------------
After solving her kraken problem so easily, Anni was entirely unprepared for what came next. She hadn’t particularly kept track of her total number of deaths, but she knew that it took seventeen tries to even see what was happening when the spider-creature ambushed her, stabbing its spear through her neck.
When her attempts to explore the banks at any point on her starting river were hampered by overwhelming monsters at every turn, Anni had finally decided to follow it’s flow as far as it would take her… Apparently, it took her right into the path of this naked-person-looking, freaky spider thing.
The first time it had speared her through the chest before she had even known it was there, was also the first time she had died frustrated, rather than terrified. This spider was the only thing, (so far), to pay her any attention as she floated along playing aqua-possum. The severely lacking alternatives meant that Anni hadn’t wanted to just give up on her river strategy, so she had tried again and again. Each time, she had tried to keep a better eye out, with the idea being that once she knew what was wrong, she could make plans for the next attempts… But eventually she had to give up on seeing the attack coming… for her sanity, if nothing else.
Landing upstream and sneaking her way closer had at least let her see the thing. It was a tall, muscular humanoid, more than two meters. It wore no clothes or armor over its shiny, light-ish grey skin, but two of its six arms were used as a bra at most times. The other four wielded an overly long fishing spear with what Anni could only assume was skill, having none herself for reference.
Like most of the creatures she’d come across, it would’ve been monster-girl-style attractive, if not for one horrible feature. In this case, that was the awful, nightmare inducing spider-face.
As nice as it was to finally know what had been killing her, the info didn’t help much. Even after watching it for a while, all Anni learned was that this thing just watched the river all day, possibly for days at a time.
Anni knew from previous attempts that if she survived long enough she would get hungry, and even getting this far required almost two full days of floating downstream.
Slowly, carefully, she moved to leave her spot behind some bushes… She glanced down at the shrubbery, and idly realized they were the same kind that had broken her fall, during that first onshore attempt with the kidnappers and the flower monster.
The second she looked away, the spider-thing hurled its spear at her, the hefty shaft bit into her thigh, shattering bone and probably hitting an important artery.
“Gyhaaaa! What’s your shiting problem?!” Anni demanded, clutching at her leg and perhaps hoping her volume would attract other predators.
The creature walked forward, tilting its repulsive head, like a curious pet… She never expected the thing to talk. None of the other monster-girl-things had talked.
“The creature stalking, wishes for talking?” rasped the spider… without moving its face?
“You-you’re… wearing a mask?”
A sound came, that might have been some kind of laugh.
“She dons the fearsome visage for battles. Sight comes not from the chitin, little one.”
If Anni had been less actively bleeding to death, she might’ve thought this was really cool. Communicating with a wholly alien species was exactly the kind of fantastic adventure she’d always been interested in… Hadn’t that been why she'd hit yes on that mysterious text box?
“I… Sorry, I thought you were a monster, like- like one of the things upriver.”
The huntress flinched, andslowly lifted the awful mask.
“Well, she had thought you as a creeping ghoul. Mammalia are seldom seen so east.”
The face that appeared was… still distinctly spider-like, but compared to the mask’s hairy, trypophobic horror show…
Whatever. Gather info for next time, she told herself, grasping at anything to distract her from the spear still embedded in her leg.
Anni saw a pair of normal non-compound eyes, sat right where they would be on a human, with a symmetrical pattern of secondary eyes around them. The compound nature of the extra eyes meant they were completely black, so Anni’s brain read them as beauty marks. Those, along with the cute button nose, sleek eyebrows, and high cheekbones gave the huntress an air of nobility… that was completely ruined, both by plush, overly full lips, and a delightfully perky black ponytail.
Would, Anni thought, before she could stop herself. Then, attempting to disabuse herself of such ideas, she tried to focus on the little tusk-looking things, just barely poking out of those… DSL.
She tried to imagine them unfolding into a predator mouth… But this backfired spectacularly, and she felt herself blushing, even growing lightheaded… though actually that was probably the blood loss.
This was not the kind of info I wanted to gather, Anni whined to herself.
The terrib-beautiful tusks wiggled a little as the spider asked, “Should that she lets the injured mammal live, carries it to her village on her back, what promise could the sneaky mammal give, that it would not take that chance to attack?”
Anni found herself saying, “Yurr really pretty,” as she fainted from blood loss.
In her next attempt, she tried to safely contact the spider-lady, now that she knew she was sapient/friendly.
The spear through her chest helped Anni to realized that what she’d thought was a respawn system, was actually closer to a time loop. It was nice to know, of course, potentially opening new options for her… eventually. At the moment though, her best lead and main goal, was still to make it to the spider village without bleeding to death.
It took a few more of the multiple-day-long attempts, but eventually, a lucky dodge on her part meant that she only had a normal crippling leg wound, rather than a deadly one.
While being carried princess-style through the forest by the spider-huntress, Anni learned that her name was ‘Whooshy’.
“Za’s a pretty name.”
“Perhaps it is, yet it is also true; she moves at speeds that make the sound of wind.”
Anni found herself relaxing into Whooshy’s warm embrace. For the first time in… She didn’t- couldn’t know how long she had… How many times she… She had…
No, it didn’t matter. At least for now, Anni was safe. And so, she slept.
----------------------------------------
Dan’s light jog soon ate up the intervening stretch of sand, and as it did, both his view and his situational awareness got better. The four women had stopped talking, and the two unoccupied by the blonde’s injury were watching his approach. He slowed to a walk, giving himself time to think of what to say…
What’s my goal here? Join a group, don’t end up alone. Are these women real, or quest NPCs? Or both? No, that doesn’t matter. Did they get here in a group? Am I weird for being alone? Or for being the only dude here? What if they think I ate my teammates?
Statistically speaking, how likely is it that I’d’ve found them without that quest? More importantly, will they realize that it’s odd, and ask about it? How much should I tell them? No, that’s stupid. I don’t know enough about anything to have secrets at this point. They don’t look sinister, do they?…
When he looked up to check, the musician was waving at him, so he waved back and couldn’t help flashing her a grin, as the simple friendly motion upended his thought process, replacing it with: ‘She’s pretty… ‘
But as he thought that, he realized that… her hair was… strange? Not any of the usual brown hair colors, it was closer to a metallic beige. Like if rose-gold was made with cardboard instead of roses…
No, this’ll be fine. Odds are, they’re as stranded as I am. This is just social anxiety, and I have nothing to worry… about…
What he saw then, derailed not only his train of thought… but perhaps his entire worldview.
The shiny blue lady… she wasn’t wearing a suit, that was her skin. With plain, generic features, and an hourglass figure, she looked roughly like a sex toy carved from solid, translucent sapphire...
Despite her lascivious attire, she held herself with an innocent, almost excited air. As he watched, she glanced around, and she… She jiggled when she moved?
A slime girl.
The system earlier was one thing, but this was an actual real monster girl… was this the cause for his concern? Dan felt very strongly about the fact that cute monster girls were bad news… but he couldn’t even begin to remember why. Something inside him just insisted on screaming fear and caution. The other three people there with the slime seemed more normal, but he noticed that they also inspired the same feeling of foreboding.
The blond was an elf, and had clearly been on the receiving end of some kind of violence. Her pale skin was leopard-spotted in ugly bruises. Some were soft, brownish scuffs and others… were difficult to look at. The gaunt, almost haunted looking elf wore an expression of total misery, and an outfit of leaves that covered more than he’d initially thought.
The woman treating the elf seemed in even worse shape, though from neglect, rather than abuse. Her short-ish dark hair was matted and ratty, sticking out at odd angles. He couldn’t quite see her face, but she had thin, squarish, doctor-style glasses, and a lab coat, so well-loved that it was difficult to tell if it had originally been white. She also wore something he couldn’t see well enough to recognize on her left leg… and nothing else. She was essentially, completely naked.
Why does sexy nonsense always happen to me?
The thought hit Dan like a freight train. He double and triple-checked and, no, he still had no memory of anything before waking up here… or perhaps just no conscious memory?
This is bullshit. This is all bullshit. I don’t fucking care anymore... and look, I'm already here
He paused there, just in front of the group of girls, but not too close. He was very aware of how they might feel threatened by him, and had eyeballed what seemed like a respectful distance... So apparently he knew some social trends and niceties?
This amnesia shit feels so goddamn arbitrary, but I can't tell why I feel that way, since I don't know what all I can't remember... and now I've been standing here for way too long. Whatever, just say something.
“Hi, I’m Dan,” he said, with a tired smirk. “You ladies come ‘round here often?”
After another awkward pause, and before anyone could reply, a loud “Ping!!” announced another textbox:
[Quest complete: (Unalone)]
[Reward: New friends! (Yay!)]
Wait, does that mean-
SPLASH!!
Everyone present looked out to where an airplane was starting to sink quickly into the ocean, just offshore.
That wasn’t there before. What are the chances...
Even the silence was stunned, as they watched the abrupt aeronautical device slowly sink…
Then Dan heard shouting from the craft, and that jolted him into action. Before he really knew why, he had left his bag, shoes, and shirt with the girls, grabbed his knife, and dived in after the already submerged plane.