Caleb yelled at the sky, unleashing his frustration on whatever gods were listening. One particularly angry god sends a bolt of divine punishment. It strikes the man but harmlessly passes through.

Time passed, and Caleb eventually calmed down. The evening sun dipped below the horizon, releasing the night terrors. Unaffected, Caleb walks down the road. One particularly ambitious terror tries possessing the man, only to find itself subsumed. The cries of anguish from the Terror is enough to cause the rest to flee.

Caleb walked all night, his mind thinking back to before the world went crazy, before he stopped caring.

The world wasn't always like this, obviously. It all used to be very normal. No insane hentai hive minds, no bug hive minds either. No, everything was just very normal. People drove cars, they went to work, they earned money. Sometimes they even spent that money on things they enjoyed.

Now everything was crazy. Overnight, monsters and other horrors invaded. Systems came along and gifted power to users, gods granted blessings to the faithful, cultivators granted insane powers, and somewhere along the way Caleb learned he was immortal.

Not immortal in the traditional sense either. Caleb couldn't be killed, he was certain of that, but most immortals could improve themselves. Caleb was fixed. At least as far as he could tell. Nothing he did affected him.

Caleb remembered everything that happened on Overnight. When the world ended he was in his room gaming. One of those really popular single-player games that never gets old, featuring a silent protagonist. He remembered his computer, phone, and every other electronic switching to a blank screen. At first, he was swearing, he hadn't saved his game in three hours. Then he saw the words displayed.

"Congratulations, due to the unique structure of your universe, you have been chosen to join the Allworld. Please stand by as upload occurs. What the hell?" It sounded like a joke. Maybe a hacker found some giant backdoor into everything. He couldn't get the message to quit. Heck, he couldn't even get the computer to turn off.

"Jesus this hacker really did a number," Caleb said. He decided to walk to his neighbor's and see if they had the same problem. But before he could, another message appeared on the screen.

"Well this is truly a surprise," He read. "It seems your world is strong enough to resist the upload, we kept getting an overflow error. So instead we'll be downloading everything to yours!"

Overflow error? Download? What in the world? This hacker had a real sense of humor.

And then a creature snarled next to Caleb. He turned. It was a thing of chitin and teeth. That's really all he saw on first look. Some bug with giant teeth. Startled, he fell back off his chair. The creature dove forward at that moment, teeth embedding into the chair's plastic wheels.

Scrambling, Caleb rolled off his chair and slammed into his bedroom wall. He put his hands up in a mockery of a defensive stance only to see that the bug thing was munching on his chair. He stared, the razor-sharp teeth shredding through the plastic like soft cheese.

Like an idiot, Caleb did the third option in the fight or flight response. He froze. He watched as the bug ate through his chair. Then watched some more as it turned, searching. In only seconds, the monster had homed in on Caleb.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Caleb stared as the abomination rose, sharp claws grinding on the hard floor. He stood frozen in horror as the thing lurched forward, teeth ready to snap down. In a final move of desperation, Caleb threw his arms forward and closed his eyes. He didn't want to see himself getting eaten. He felt the thing's hot breath as it came close and bit.

Caleb screamed. The pain was so bad his nerves tickled. Wait, it wasn't his nerves. It was his skin. His skin tickled. Opening his eyes put him in the strangest situation he could imagine.

The terrible bug with teeth (he decided to call it a razorshell) was trying to gnaw on his arm. Except it couldn't break his skin. Blue slobber was dripping down from his arm to the floor as the razorshell tried in vain to munch.

"What. The. Fuck." Caleb stared.

He moved his arm up, trying to get a better look at the thing. It had little legs, and lots of them, like a centipede. Except the thing wasn't segmented at all. It was more like a beetle shell, smooth and glossy. The mouth was shaped like a lamprey's. A gaping hole with teeth. Caleb could feel the teeth rotating on his arm, trying to penetrate his skin.

"What the fuck." He said again.

Now that his panic had died, the bug on his arm felt more like a massage than a whirlwind of death and teeth. Shaking his arm, Caleb tried to dislodge the monster only to find its tiny legs were clamped on his arm. Annoyed, he tried shaking it harder, and then realized how stupid that was and just slammed the thing into the wall.

Caleb had done his best to use his entire body in the attack. Years of sports as a kid had given him some athleticism. But that had all been replaced by computer games and a sedentary job. So while the attack felt strong, Caleb did nothing more than dent the wall with his strike.

"I am not walking around with you on my arm." He said.

An idea came to him. Walking out of his room and into the open area that was his living room, dining room, and kitchen; Caleb opened the large storage closet he used to hold everything not his clothes. Inside sat empty plastic bins used for moving, an ironing board and iron, a window fan for the really bad summer days, his safety box, a wall-mounted television stand that had broken, and various other junk that had been collected over his years renting apartments. He kicked aside an old box and grabbed his toolkit.

"Alright, let's see you deal with the concentrated power of a hammer," Caleb said. A part of him wondered how intelligent this thing was. It was still trying to eat his arm.

He opened the toolbox with one hand and pried out the hammer he had sitting in it. Caleb then strode over to the small table he used for eating and rested his occupied arm on it. He performed a few practice strikes, he didn't want a hole in his table because he missed, and then brought the hammer down in full force.

The metal head of the hammer cracked the exoskeleton of the razorshell, stunning the thing. Caleb brought the hammer down again, attempting to strike the same spot. He was a little off, but close enough that the hammer broke through the crack and into the soft flesh. Finally, the creature spasmed, loosing its hold on Caleb's arm. Quickly, Caleb shook the razorshell off his arm. If flopped down onto the table, twitching.

Following suit, Caleb flopped down into the chair. He took heavy breaths, the adrenaline finally draining. He watched as the bug twitched, and then went still. It seemed like the hammer did the job.

"Okay, so the world's gone crazy." He said to himself. Speaking his thoughts aloud grounded him. "And I'm invulnerable or something?"

Caleb took a look at his body. He didn't feel invulnerable. He felt normal. He pinched his arm and felt the pain. It felt no different than normal. Maybe he was going crazy.

Caleb checked his phone, the weird message was still there. He restarted his phone, hoping the message would go away. Surprisingly, it worked. The first law of IT had succeeded again.

Caleb went to work contacting everyone he could. He first called his family. He brought the phone up to his ear, listening to the ring.

A growl interrupted his memories.

Caleb looked up. He had forgotten to pay attention again. A giant cat prowled before him, grey fur bristling.

"That's a big fuckin' kitty." He said in his best trailer park impression.

"Stop right there!" A voice commanded.

From behind the cat came a woman. On her shoulders rested a small kitten, and Caleb noticed her entire wardrobe was cat-themed. Her boots were furred, the pants had tiger stripes while the shirt's collar was like a lion's mane.

"Who are you and why are you naked?" The woman demanded.

"I'm the emperor!" Caleb yelled back. "And these are my new clothes!"

"Don't joke with me! Or I'll have Jim-Jam tear out your throat!" She threatened.

"My name's Caleb! I just got done with wiping out that hive mind over that way!" Caleb pointed back in the direction he came. "I was going to head back to a city and track down this mechanical girl hentai hive mind since they killed my Bat!"

The woman stared. Caleb noticed her body was poised like a cat ready to pounce. "You killed that devourer swarm?" She asked.

"That's a much better name than what the robot girl called it, but yeah!" Caleb answered.

It seemed Caleb's answer was enough to mollify the woman. She untensed and hopped down the pile of rubble she and the cat were on. The pile shook as she moved but the woman wasn't even fazed. As she landed, her hands rummaged in a pack, bringing out a set of clothing.

"Here, it's not much but you'll be decent." She said.

Caleb took the clothes, "Thanks. Its such pain going into places without clothes. I'm Caleb."

"You said that." The woman replied. "I'm Alex."