"To begin, you are no longer in your home reality Earth"
"You are not dreaming"
"You are not Hallucinating"
"The words and World you see are realer than the hair on your head or the nails on your fingers"
The blue scrawl of text just described an isekai to her. She knew she was intelligent, but she was not capable of dreams this cohesive or understandable. What type of dream tells you it isn't a dream?
Her vision was still dark, but she could feel the nails on her hands, the slight breeze of air her heart beating heavily. The chair she sat upon was so comfortable, that it was too comfortable. The air that entered her lungs and re exited tasted stale.
"Due to shock, sudden blackouts, and mental distress caused by these realizations, your tutorial segment will have a pause option for anytime you desire to take a break"
"At any time, you can say or think the words "Pause" and the tutorial will not resume unto you do the same for the word "Resume"
'Pause'
"Pause function used"
"No further instructions or explanations will be given until the command word "resume" is used"
So her dream text boxes were readable. You aren't supposed to be able to read in your dreams. She was also not aware of any edible drugs that could cause her to experience an alternate reality.
Oh
My
FUCKING
GOD
it happening
its really happening
She got hit with the "gamer goes to another world" while she was asleep. This was a the dream, (not an actual dream).
She fucking loved isekai. it was THE genre she read when she was growing up, going through every manga, manwha, manhua, and litrpg series she could get her hands on. The inner MMORPG player in her got exited when she got to see the number on the spreadsheets get bigger.
Alyssa breathed in a deep breath.
If she was really dreaming right now, a giant horse made of fire will now interrupt her dream in 5 seconds.
..
...
.......
Her laughter echoed against the walls of the castle, letting the sound be carried on the wind.
//
After her multiple minutes of joyous celebration, she cracked her neck and rolled up her mental sleeves.
the only thing that bothered her was that her hands and face didn't feel right, but she let that slide. More then likely she got transmigrated or the body was made for her. The second one would explain the kneeling cultist in her castle.
'Ha'
Her castle.
It had a certain ring to it.
'Time to figure out how high the learning curve is'
'Resume'
"You, Alyssa, are a dungeon master, aka DM"
So she was in a city builder style game. She was already good with minimaxing, but though in several hundred resources and management tasks, and she was gonna have a blast.
For some reason, the concept of building a city felt right to her.
Maybe some statues of her mighty likeness placed on every street corner and in every home as they worship the very idea of her existence or el-
She had to forcibly shake the thought in her head.
That was most definitely not something she wanted to do.
'What the fuck game, why are you fucking with my thoughts?'
"You may or may not have noticed the compulsion for expansion, it is a natural side affect of being a Dungeon master"
That damped the mood slightly.
'I mean, i was gonna make stuff anyways, but being compelled is a bit annoying'
"Normally a dungeon is spawned without sentience, but in the case of a transmigrated individual, the compulsion is there to ensure that mortal slothfulness does not cause stagnation."
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
That was-
Kinda smart actually.
She could imagine that once she had proper defenses and and some progression going, she would would probably just end up sitting on her ass, eating brownies and watching shitty anime again.
(Not that either of those things exist here, but you get the gist)
"To begin the next part of the tutorial, please say or mentally command the words: Status"
'Time to get into the good stuff'
'Status'
Nothing happened.
She sat, maybe thinking there was some kind of loading happening in the background, then realized that was only for machines, and the floating words probably wasn't from a machine, and more like a divine omnipresent, omniscience, omnipotent source.
Or maybe said source was a machi-
The darkness that had overtaken her vision disappeared as she looked onto a new horizon.
A room, filled with nothing but the color white, blinded the shit out of her.
She was standing now, her throne and castle were gone, instead she was in this bright ass room.
Alyssas eyes looked around her and she was in the perfect cube. An annoyingly perfect cube. not a single imperfection or fuckup that she could see. there wasn't even dust.
'Magic'
So there was a loading time for magic, it seems.
Alyssa sighed, now knowing damn well that she couldn't avoid looking at her body any longer.
Her new skin was grey, not just any grey, but a sickly wicked grey, wrapped around almost nonexistent legs.
She was so incredibly thin that the saying "could fall over with a light push" was an actually accurate statement, without a hint of hyperbole.
Her feet were webbed talons, like she was staring at a frogs and an eagles feet that got mashed together.
her hands had claws, thin, almost hyper thin needles that retracted as soon as they went near her face. The fingers tied to said talons were as grossly thin as the rest of her.
Alyssa felt her midsection, seeing the gap between her ribcage and her stomach was ridiculous. She looked like a starving corpse.
Maybe that what she was?
She transmigrated, that doesn't mean the body she was in was ALIVE.
Maybe some kind of lich or undead?
"Your status is locked behind the; Trials Creation Sequence"
'The fuck is a creation sequence and why does it sound important'
"You will now undergo Trials numbered; 1.34, 7.89. and 9.99"
'Wait wh-'
The cube around her shattered, the outward force enough to cause the sound of breaking glass to reverberate in her already thin bones.
The letters formed again, this time taking a reddish hue;
Trial 1.34; Goal: Slay _/1 Monsters.
The even newer place was a forest. A big, fuck all, oversized, hostile and hot forest.
Vibrant and hateful green suffocated almost every other color possible, with the expulsion of brown, witch was only on the trees. Said trees stood at 4 to 9 times her height.
"Temporary access to the HUD is provided until Trial completion"
The most basic HUD she could have ever seen popped into vision, providing her with multiple bars and a permanent reminder of her new mission 'Slay _/1 Monsters' stayed bright red in the upper left.
On her upper right she was given what she would hope was the color codes for Health, Mana, and a mysterious yellow bar.
That seemed kinda odd, but at least she could understand the majority of what was happening. She was more than likely doing some kind of placement test, since it was in reference to some creation sequence.
Performance = Starting strength.
An odd system, but not one in which she could argue with.
Without further idling, Alyssa stepped into the new environment, the issue became apparent almost immediately
The weakness in her bones and unmuscular features becoming more and more of an issue with every step. It was like someone was injecting inflammation directly into her legs. The burning sensation increased and spread all though her legs, eventually forcing her to sit down.
She was here to hunt down a monster, but it was all quiet on the western front. It was quiet on every front.
Outside of her feet and breathing, there wasn't a single insect, toad, snake, spider or any critter anywhere.
The silence was louder then any gunshot.
Slowly, Alyssa felt unease creep in. it didn't just creap in, it had barged into her house and made itself home.
The eeriness mounted by the second.
She wasn't even close to feeling ok, but she needed to move. Alyssa's scrawny corpse legs struggled, but she was able to force them to function, despite the screams of protest coming from them.
The silence was interrupted, but not by her.
Three dots, smaller then pinpricks showed through the bush to her left.
The sight had startled her so much that she almost fell over.
The dots followed her.
'Eyes'
There was no scream, no declaration of assault, no warning, as whatever IT was, plunged a something into her abdomen. Unlike every other time in her life when she had felt something break skin, it wasn't hot.
Usually the feeling of being sliced or stabbed left an ultra hot sensation, but that's not what she felt.
It was cold.
Cold enough that it reminded her of the suffocating darkness.
Of the endless, airless place, where no scream could be heard.
Her needled hands stabbed forward, a fear response spawned from the threat of the ever consuming dark.
The three eyed imp had its skulled pierced by the 4 talons the protruded from her hand, its ugly and small face distorted into a smile still, even as Alyssa's claws held the corpse in place.
Alyssas talons held the body of the gremlin up, the cold sensation in her stomach disappearing as the corpse faded from existence, into a blue and red dust that floated into the wind. The blood stuck to her talons even after the body was gone, a greenish icor that matched the green color of skin.
That was how it got the jump on her, its skin was the same color os the bushes, trees, and almost everything in the forest. It was even the same shade. There was zero difference between the color of the blood on her hand and face, then the color of the leaves above and bushes around her.
"Trial 1.34 has met minimum requirements, moving forward to Trial 7.89"
She was not fucking ready.
This wasn't the isekai story she wanted to be in.
Cause it was terrible here.