That night I ended up getting woken up unnaturally three times. The first was the one I had planned, three hours into the sleep at 11:32 my phone’s alarm went off. I must have been sleeping pretty hard because when I heard the sound I woke up super confused and disoriented, wondering why the light jingle I woke up to every morning was coming from my right on the mattress rather than to the left on top of the lazy boy right next to my bed. I also was wondering why I had set the alarm for the god forsaken time of 11:32.

  I was really thirsty though and I was quickly returned to reality after I stumbled to the door and saw my dresser blockading it. Oh yeah, I was in this place still. I was very disappointed to find out it wasn’t a bad dream.

  Fortunately, everything seemed to be going as planned, and I scanned the room while illuminating it with my light blue heal skill. I wasn’t infected yet and a brief look through identify showed me that while my walls and ceiling were infected, most of the things inside my room were still relatively clean. My only disappointment was after I had quenched my thirst, cleansing the water container and filtering its contents into my plastic tub again, when I discovered that my wynot rations were not holding up nearly as well as I thought they would. They were by no means spoiled but it seemed that the infection liked to focused on these. I already saw signs of decomposition and I hurriedly cleansed them again. Looks like it will be difficult to keep food unless I cleanse it every few hours, that’s going to be a real pain.

  I went about my room and cleansed it again, haphazardly this time. I just wanted to reinforce my protection here before I went back to sleep. I used up all my water too, I would have to get more in the morning before I left.

  The second time I woke up was much more alarming. It was that notification sound again and I was jerked awake to this screen staring at me in the face.

Warning! You have been attacked by instance soul curse!

Countdown until death

  Blast, this seems to be a recurring phenomenon too. I looked up to my top left and saw another timer there, counting down from about five minutes.

  Jeeze, this thing is pretty unforgiving. This curse business is no joke. I bet it's like the avada kedavra curse, it just kills, no messy causes, just instant plain death. Not nice.

  Fortunately, I have a cure and I cleanse myself easily, watching the timer disappear along with 20 of my mp. That’s a costly one.

  Looking at the other timer for Pesos, (my phone was dead now, only had a day and a half of juice in it), I calculated that it was about two in the morning. I suspect that this will be a daily thing for me too, but I am actually kind of glad for it. It will wake me up in the middle of the night every night, allowing me a time to reinforce my cleansing in my room between sleep. Perfect.

  The last time I awoke was much more unpleasant and the most alarming out of the three. There was a hot burning sensation across my throat that startled me awake and a strange dampness was starting to spread across my chest.

  Also, I suddenly couldn’t breathe either.

  Quickly putting my hands up to my throat I felt my warm blood gushing out of me through a large cut there, accompanied by a feeling of drowning as my lungs also filled up with the hot fluid.

  Unfreakingbelievable, it looks like I just got my throat sliced while I was sleeping. Let me tell you, it doesn’t actually hurt that much. The feeling of drowning is much more distressing than the pain from the cut on my neck. I can hear my strangled gurgled coming from my mouth as I attempted to breath.

  Its pitch black here; I cannot see a thing, nor hear anything else beside my own wet gurgles. I was scared but not totally panicked until I used the heal skill on myself, closing up my neck wound and bringing a slight luminescence to the room.

  In the dim light, I easily saw the smiling skulls of two skeletons staring down at me on each side of my bed. The one on the right had its knife up and it was dripping with blood. My blood.

  I was fortunate they didn’t just immediately start stabbing me repeatedly, I guess they thought they had given me a mortal wound and were enjoying my death throes. Bad judgement call on their part.

  That said, I freaked out, and instead of taking advantage of their carelessness I screamed and curled up towards the head of my bed, pulling my covers around me as if they offered me a modicum of protection. Then I proceeded to cough up a large amount of blood from my lungs onto the bed spread.

  If the skeletons were surprised by my liveliness they show it in only a brief hesitation of non action before they start stabbing me through my protective cotton blanket.

  The pain was awful, just how you would imagine daggers piercing you in the sides, gut, and arms would feel. Fortunately, my instinctive curling protected my chest, along with my rib cage, so a fatal stab to my heart was avoided. But I was amazed at how many stabs a human could take without losing function of the body.

  I eventually came to my senses, after a lot more screaming, and did not find out how many stabs a human could take before becoming immobile. I steeled myself and grabbed ahold of the arms of the skeleton on my right as he stabbed me in the stomach and I dragged myself toward him, half pulling him toward me. Fortunately, skeletons are rather light and have much less strength than me in a crazed state, so I fell out of my bed and on top of him, even as he continued to stab me as quickly as possible, intending to eviscerate me. When I landed on top of him, I drew back my right hand and coated it with flare. The other skeleton had lost its position to attack me when I had gotten off the bed, but he was moving around it hastily as if to save his friend from imminent doom. He was too late of course as the bright light from the skill filled the room in heavenly illumination before I brought the holy flame smashing down upon the skeleton’s skull. It blew up spectacularly and, I must say, quite satisfyingly.

  Before I could recover myself though, the second skelton was on me, stabbing down at me with a vengeance. I was at a disadvantage being on the floor and was feeling very weak but the daggers my bony friends used were rather short. I used the same tactic again, grabbing at the arm as it came down at me, ignoring the wounds I was getting. This seems to be a winning strategy I can abuse considering my skill set.This one reacted much better than the first skelton, trying to draw back out of my reach, but it was to no avail. I started healing myself too, illuminating my body in blue flame and I pulled the offending skelton down into a bear hug, even as it resisted my advances.

  I was able to pull its upper torso down at me, but I couldn't bring him all the way down. We struggled against each other, our heads were only inches apart. I stared back into its dark empty eyes for several seconds as it too stared into mine, as if his soulless sockets could end me with a look. I then used my fourth skill, the flare head butt. While not an official skill, this attacked has now saved me twice.

  In spectacular fashion again the skull exploded upon contact, sending bone splinters into my face and neck. It immediately crumpled to the floor, disassembling like the previous three skeletons. Once the clattering of the bones fall ended, the only sound left was my heavy breathing.

  Oh man. I still had two daggers still in my stomach. I closed my eyes, not bearing to look, and pulled each out as quickly as possible. White hot pain shot through me each time and loud sharp gasps escaped my throat. Somehow, taking these out seemed to hurt more than when they went in.

  I focused on healing my body and stole a glance up to my status to check my mp. I was at 15, apparently using over 30 in a matter of seconds. Had there been a third skeleton, I am not sure I would have had the mp to survive.

  Still, I had enough for healing the major wounds I had, keeping a close eye on on my remaining mp as it drifted down to ten, to six. I stopped using it at three. I hadn’t completely healed myself yet, but i wasn’t going to bleed out or have my guts spill out onto the floor.

  I closed my eyes and sat upright, leaning back against the front of my lazy boy, an ugly brown chair my mother detested. I didn't think it was so ugly, but I generally defer to non-colorblind people in these situations.

  Funny story on how I got that chair too, my freshman year at university had me in a shared dorm on campus of course. This chair was originally my roommate's, he had brought it from his parents house who apparently found its worn dark brown cloth ugly enough to lose at a university campus. My roommate used it to play his video games, far too many video games. At the end of his first semester he stopped going to classes completely, either not able to manage his time by himself, or getting lost in a freshman psyche, but halfway through the second semester his parents came in brought him home, ending his university career. That’s twenty-four thousand dollars of his parents money down the drain. All I had to remember him by was this brown chair they left behind.

  I feel a little bit guilty about the whole scenario to this day, wondering if I should have held him more accountable and encouraged him to take his classes seriously. Nonetheless, what is done is done and I am now a proud owner of an ugly brown lazyboy, thank you very much. It is very comfortable.

  Dang, my whole body hurts. Like I had been bowled over by my brother's forty pound muscle dog, which has happened before. Everything is sore, especially my arms which took the most damage but were the least attended to by heal. But considering what had happened to me, I am lucky to be alive.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  That said, how did those bastards get into my room? I have no idea and I don't have the mp to spare yet for a look around the pitch black room. I can’t imagine how they got in without me waking up. Plus, I didn’t think they would have the strength to break my windows, much less drag my dresser away from the door. Unless there is a gaping hole in my room that I somehow missed, I just don’t see it.

  As I wait for my mp to regenerate I glance up at the Pesos timer. It stood there at 364:43. I think that means it's about… 4:30ish? Also, I only have a few more hours until Pesos returns, another thing I am looking forward to.

…

  Man, this place sucks. I'm going to have to put “being ambushed by a pair of dagger weilding skeletons” on my list of horrible experiences. But maybe it will turn into good story material for future conversation? I have, tragically, very few exciting stories to tell others in my life. While others may have lots of cool and awesome experiences that they can share with others at appropriate occasions, like campfires or parties, I really only have one. But it is a very good one that ends with me being at the wrong end of a police handgun. Very exciting stuff, I almost had my head blown off by an innocent misunderstanding. (It wasn’t actually that close) But I guess trying to jump a couple of police officers in the middle of the night is a bad idea. Too be fair, we didn’t think they were police officers at the time, we thought they were a pair of friends pranking us. I guess the lesson learned is “look before you leap”.

  But, once I make it out of here, I think successfully fighting off a pair of knife wielding skeleton assassins at night will give me another story to follow up with at parties. Oh joy, I can hear their raucous laughter already. That said, I am not sure when an opportunity to share a near death experience like this will come, I’ve never been good with timing these kind of things and I don’t want to needlessly freak people out. Maybe we all would need to be drunk for the story to work well, I don’t know. I have never been drunk before.

  My mp had reached a reasonable level again and I am done healing myself, finishing off with a good cleanse as well. I stand up slowly, making sure my healing didn’t screw up or something, putting my guts in backwards or some other horrible possibility. Thankfully, that didn’t appear to be the case and I stood up and stretched, feeling fresh and rejuvenated. Man, this healing is good stuff, if I didn’t know better I would say its like drugs. Not that I ever had drugs before. This is why I don’t have any good stories.

  In each of my hands or the two daggers I had pulled from my body. They are still wet and dripping with my blood. In fact, Ithis whole place is just covered in my blood. Does heal replace the lost blood. I think so at least, because I feel fine, but maybe that is just the lightheaded feeling of an anemic.

  I hold up the dagger in my right hand and say, “identify”.

Crusted Skeleton Dagger

  I am not surprised, I cleanse it, watching my blood and then the rust and crustiness of it turn to dust and fade away. I am surprised at how much this thing was able to cut me despite how horrible its condition was. I Identify it again.

Skeleton Dagger

  That’s about right. I cleanse the other dagger and move to add it to my growing collection of daggers. I cast heal to create some light and move forward.

  My feet knock into a pile of bones, scattering the mess like I had knocked down a jenga tower. The noise startles me.

  Oh yeah, I have too nice piles of skeleton bones in my room now. How did they get in again?

  I brush the bones aside for now and extent my hand up to illuminate the room as much as possible. Neither of the two windows appear to be broken, that’s good I guess. I turn to the door and see the dresser is still there. That’s good too. Then I look behind it and see the door is wide open. It’s not like there was a lock on it before.

…

  Hm, my door opens outward, so I guess putting a dresser in front of my door really doesn’t barricades it much. I step closer and peer around the dresser. I get a nice view of my new front lawn, nothing is moving out there so I don’t have to worry about a bunch of zombies. Looking closer at my dresser, it really doesn’t cover the entirety of my door despite my efforts. Those skeletons were pretty skinny too, considering they don’t have any flesh to worry about.

  I look at the small openings around the dresser with a considering eye. Yeah, a cat could definitely squeeze through, and I bet those skeletons are just as slippery. Looks like I underestimated those bastards, again. How dumb is that, that carelessness would have quite easily killed me if the skeletons were a little bit smarter about what they are doing. Fortunately, I have two dressers in my room so I should easily be able to completely block up the door. I reach out and close the door again, for all the good it did.

  As I move the second dresser over, ignoring the piles of bones on my flor and the blood everywhere, I think about my defeated foes. They are surely more intelligent than I gave them credit for. Sure, the door wasn’t locked, but they still needed to turn and pull the handle, something I didn’t think they would be able to do. Next, they snuck in, apparently knowing to keep quiet as I slept, despite they themselves not needing sleep (probably). Then they sliced my throat before I could put up any resistance and they seemed to think that would have been enough to kill me. Clearly, these people have had experience with humans before to know a weak point such as that. Or, as human skeletons, they retain some memories of human lives to know that. I am sure there are other possibilities too.

  They did seem single minded in their intent to kill me though, despite my obvious advantage. If I was the second skeleton, I would have beat a hasty retreat once I saw my partner being taken out so easily, especially after what should have been a sure kill. They obviously did not have a full grasp on my abilities.

  This leads me to wonder, are these the same skeletons I killed earlier, respawned? Possibly, but I think not. Unlike Pesos who dissipated when she was KO’ed by the door, the skeletons left behind impressive piles of bones for me to deal with. Also, I had showed clear signs of healing during my first encounter with them yesterday, you would have thought they would have remembered something like that.

  Still, they came in a pair again, so maybe new ones just generate eventually?

…

  Hey, if that is true, what does that say for the law of conservation of mass? Are these things being generated out of nothing, like codes in a video game? Wouldn’t that mean that, eventually, my yard and this whole area will just be covered with more and more bones and zombies until everything was completely filled up? That doesn’t seem reasonable.

  Now I know why the corpses always disappear in the games.

  I shake my head, maybe when the sun comes up and I can see outside I will find that all the zombie corpses and bones from yesterday have disappeared too. That would be ideal, them I would not have to worry about the boies as much and save myself a lot of trouble.

  Looking down at the first pile of bones, I say, “identify.”

Skeleton Soldier (remains)

  Huh, a soldier, eh? I guess that means there is some kind of organized military force I am dealing with. It's not too surprising, but it looks like there is a will behind this attack, not just some angry monsters trying to kill me. Its gotta be related to whoever sent Pesos after me. That scum.

  I would have liked to have seen the level of these skeletons. I cast identify on the other pile of bones but I get the same response. I should have identified them before I killed them, but no use crying over spilled milk. Something tells me I will have plenty of chances to identify them in the future.

  There is blood all over my bed now, not to mention my shirt. Or what's left of it, this shirt is now going to have to be considered rags now. I cast cleanse on it and am pleased to see all the blood crumple into grey dust and blow away from my shirt and my body. Nice, its not like there are showers here anyway.

  I cast cleanse on my bed again, aware that all the blood is a huge magnet for the mushrooms anyway. The blood here too turns to a fine grey dust and I shake the sheets and blankets to clear it away. Well, not too far away, it’s all over the rest of my room now. I am going to have to do some serious dusting soon, everything I own is now covered in a fine grey film. But, hey, it's a clean grey film.

  I sit back down on my bed with a sigh, but I don’t think I will be able to get back to sleep tonight. It's only a few more hours until sunrise anyway, unless the days and nights here are out of whack. I illuminate my hand again with heal, giving me some light. After a moment, I use identify on my hand.

Hand (Heal)

  I wonder…

  I coat my hand in flare, giving out a much more impressive light and cast identify again.

Holy Hand

  Ha, that’s what I expected. That’s funny, especially considering I probably gave the second skeleton a Holy Head Butt. Imagine if I had yelled out my technique’s name as I did it, screaming out, “Holy head Butt!” as I slammed my head against his. That would be funny.

  Or maybe I should go for cool and say something like, “Rest in peace!” as I slay my undead foes. That might be too cliche though, maye I should be more clever and say, "Rest in peices!" when I defeath the skeletons. Eh, I think I’ll just keep to what I have been doing an what has been working for me, screaming like a little girl at everything that happens. I’m not sure I could come up with the computing power to add in extra words during these fights anyway, it's always some do or die thing

  I look up at the countdown again 333:26. Looks like I am going to have to face Pesos basically at sunrise. How am I going to deal with her this time? If she was smarter, she wouldn’t come charging blindly at me again. Heck, if she got really smart, she wouldn’t even attack me openly, but just wait for an opportunity to come out while skulking me in the shadows. Then come bursting out at the right moment to rip my throat out, probably during a fight with a bunch of zombies or something. I could probably heal through a ripped out throat anyway…

  I wish I had a shield to work with, but nothing I have in this room is of the right shape or size. If I had a shield, I could just shield bash everything with Holy Shield. Wouldn't that be nice, Pesos is too short for me to use Thor’s hammer against her effectively. I suppose I could just tackler her while coated in flare. A Holy Tackle. That would probably finish her in one go and I might get a chance to hug the furball again. Still, a shield would really minimize the risk to me.

  I sigh again, and look around gloomily. I am getting real tired of this place, it seems I can’t do anything without my life being saved by the slimmest of margins. My only hope is in defeating my enemy tomorrow and hoping his end also means the end of this game. There’s not even a guarantee of that, for all I know I could be stuck in this wasteland forever. I don't think I could handle that. Tom Hanks in Castaway at least had the hope of getting rescued sometime, if I lose my hope of a return I might have to end this whole thing myself. Permanently. The loneliness alone would be enough to drive me too it. Even if they could talk, I don’t think the murderous skeletons could count as company.

  I push the dark thoughts from my mind, there is no use speculating. I’ve got a plan and I am sticking to it. Come first light, I am packing up and marching out to face my real enemy. Come hell or high water or zombies I need to figure out what is happening here and end this damned game.

…

  In the meantime, I’m going to try to eat another wynot. I can tell they are already starting to go bad.