Arthur's senses returned slowly, like pieces of a shattered mirror reforming one fragment at a time. He couldn't remember the moment it had happened—the second where everything that made him him had been ripped away. But there was no question about it. Something had changed.

He tried to scream, but his mouth wouldn’t open. Panic gnawed at him. He tried to breathe, only to find that he didn’t need to. His entire body felt wrong. Not just wrong—foreign, alien.

What’s happening? Where am I?

His vision slowly adjusted to the murky, dark blue world around him. He was underwater. He could feel the water pressing in on him, tugging gently at what should’ve been skin but now felt like something thicker—something harder.

His limbs—or what he assumed were his limbs—jerked awkwardly as he struggled to make sense of his new form. His mind raced. He wasn’t human anymore. There was no doubt about that. Everything felt smaller, compressed, and heavy. His body responded sluggishly to his attempts at movement, and panic surged through him again.

Breathe... I can’t breathe!

But the need for oxygen never came. His body didn’t scream for air, and instead of suffocating, there was only an odd, cold calm.

As his mind slowly settled, Arthur’s thoughts spiraled. How did this happen? One minute, he’d been... where? Earth? That felt right, but the memory was fuzzy, like trying to grab mist. The details of his previous life slipped further and further away with each passing second.

No! No! Focus!

He tried to control the rising sense of helplessness. There had to be a reason for this. He wasn’t dead—at least, he didn’t think so. But if not, what was this new existence? A nightmare? Some sick, twisted hallucination?

He forced himself to take in his surroundings. Shadows danced across the seafloor, and strange, sharp ridges jutted out of the rocky ground. He could make out jagged, coralline structures rising toward the surface, and far beyond them, the faint red glow of the horizon—heat? Fire? Whatever it was, it was far off in the distance.

The Scorching Badlands?

The name flared into his consciousness out of nowhere. He didn’t know how or why he knew it, but somehow, it made sense.

Arthur’s limbs—or what passed for them—twitched as he instinctively tried to push himself up. He was low to the ground, close to the seabed, and when he focused on his surroundings, it wasn’t just the water’s muted pressure he felt. There was something slick and segmented where his legs should have been—scaly, even. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shard of rock nearby, and what stared back at him was something reptilian.

His heart—or whatever was beating inside him—lurched.

I’m...

The thought wouldn’t complete itself. Instead, he blinked at the creature in the reflection. The small, agile form had four muscular limbs, a tail for balance, and rows of sharp teeth barely visible behind a bony snout. He could almost feel the pulsing of primal energy in his veins, like raw power just waiting to be unleashed.

This is real.

The cold certainty of it finally settled into his mind. He was no longer human. He had been reborn as a primal, monstrous creature in a world that felt utterly alien. It was terrifying, but also... oddly thrilling? No, that was wrong. It should have been thrilling. Instead, fear crept back in like a tidal wave.

Arthur tried to move again, dragging his new body across the seabed. His tail swished through the water, propelling him clumsily forward. His new legs—thicker and tougher than anything he’d ever had before—pressed into the ground, trying to find traction. The motions felt instinctual, even if his mind hadn’t fully caught up yet.

I need to figure this out. Focus. Survive.

But the primal ocean wasn’t giving him time to think. There was movement up ahead—a glint of something small but sharp in the corner of his vision. Before he could react, it lunged.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Pain shot through him as something clamped down on his tail. Instinctively, he whipped around, thrashing wildly. His attacker was small, but vicious—a crab-like creature, about the size he was, with snapping claws that had already torn into his hide.

Arthur roared—or tried to, but what came out was a guttural hiss. He flung his body at the crab, slamming it into the rocks with a force that surprised him. The crab skittered back, but it wasn’t finished. Its pincers snapped with deadly intent, and it darted forward again.

The fight was raw, clumsy. Arthur didn’t know how to control his new body yet, but desperation drove him. He slashed with claws he barely understood, ripping at the creature’s armor until finally, with one final strike, he crushed the crab beneath his weight.

The rush of adrenaline—or whatever replaced adrenaline in his new form—flooded through him as the crab lay still beneath him. He could feel its energy, its life force slipping away, and in the strange new biology of his body, something clicked. He had won.

For a moment, the quiet of the underwater world returned, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He had just fought for his life—for the first time in this new existence—and the weight of that realization pressed heavily on him.

What now?

As if in answer to his unspoken question, something new appeared in his mind. A pulse, like a flicker of light, danced at the edge of his consciousness, and then...

[SYSTEM ACTIVATED]

Congratulations, Arthur, you have defeated your first enemy: a Lesser Abyssal Crab.

You have earned access to [Map].

Arthur blinked, his mind reeling from the strange, disembodied voice. It felt alive, yet cold and detached, as if it were reading off from some kind of manual.

Map?

As soon as he thought the word, a dull, translucent map appeared in his vision, floating just outside his range of focus. It was hazy, incomplete—a series of blurry lines that traced the rough outline of his immediate surroundings. The area around him was mostly a vague blob of blue and dark gray, with no precise detail, and a small blinking dot marked his location.

Not exactly useful...

The map was basic at best, providing no helpful information aside from his position in the world. It didn’t tell him what dangers lurked nearby or where safety could be found. Still, it was something—an anchor in the midst of his confusion.

Arthur’s mind raced. The system—whatever it was—hadn’t given him much to go on. But if it was the key to survival, he needed to understand it, exploit it. He focused on the crab’s body, still lying crumpled before him.

No further information followed, and the system remained eerily quiet. Frustration flickered through him, but he buried it quickly. No one was coming to save him. This world, this body—everything was new, and no amount of longing for his past life was going to change that.

He was alone. And survival was all that mattered.

Arthur glanced back at the map. The glowing dot that represented him was barely moving, and there were no signs of anything else in the immediate vicinity. His fight with the crab had been chaotic, raw, but now, with a moment to breathe, he could think more clearly. There had to be more to this system.

He focused, searching for commands, for options, but nothing else appeared. The system offered only the map, and even that seemed frustratingly limited. But then again, why would he expect more?

I’ll figure it out... eventually.

For now, he needed to move. He didn’t know what other predators might be lurking nearby, but staying still wasn’t an option. He was vulnerable, weak. 

He needed to grow stronger, to evolve.

Evolution.

Almost immediately, Arthur snapped. Arthur’s body convulsed violently, his mind split between reason and instinct. A sudden, overwhelming force hit him like a tidal wave. He wasn’t thinking anymore. He couldn’t think. The primal urge surged through him, powerful and all-consuming. His vision blurred, darkened at the edges. His new body moved before his mind could catch up, driven by a hunger that was far beyond the need for food—it was a need to survive, to dominate, to evolve.

His jaws snapped open. He dove down on the crab’s lifeless body, tearing into it savagely, desperate to satisfy the gnawing hunger that twisted his insides. Flesh and shell crunched under his teeth, and with each bite, the hunger seemed to deepen. He ripped through the creature’s body, gorging on it in a wild frenzy, as though nothing else in the world mattered.

Then, suddenly, it hit him. A warmth, radiating from deep within the crab’s broken form. He paused, blood and fragments of shell dripping from his maw. The sensation pulsed through him, a foreign energy that wasn’t his own, but it was intoxicating, compelling him to take more. Without hesitation, Arthur sank his teeth deeper, biting into the source of the warmth.

A pulse of heat surged into his body like liquid fire, flowing through his veins and filling every corner of him. His muscles tightened, his senses sharpened, and for the first time since waking in this new world, he felt a flicker of power. A core of some kind—warm and alive—transferred from the crab’s body into his own. It felt like something ancient, something primal had been absorbed into his very being.

The world around him dimmed, and a strange pressure built up inside his chest. He didn’t know what it was, but instinctively, he understood: this was more than just sustenance. It was a piece of something far greater than either of them—a fragment of power passed down through the ages.

Ding!