It was an interesting start to a very nightmarish couple of weeks. As he hopped in the car on the very long ride to school.
“Hey, buddy, ready for the SAT” Karl asked as he got in.
“About the same as you I think?” Toby answered, “ Wait don’t answer I think I already know”
“What gave it away, was it the missing backpack or the shorts and T-shirt?” he replied
“It was the crocs and socks” Toby replied, Karl was a good friend and the only of the two with a driver's license. Also the only one in the entire school with access to the broken-down vending machine in the janitor's office.
***
After taking his medicine and rushing to class, he noticed that all the desks were thrown around and the horrifying pool of blood leaking under the door.
“Hello, is everything okay? Did the food dye package break?” It was starting to smell a lot like copper, Toby quickly went to the nurse's office to check and see if the nurse knew anything. Turns out nobody was there as well, he didn't even meet anyone in the hallways.
This was starting to become nerve-wracking, he checked the office and turned on the PA system,” Mr. Peterson this isn’t funny anymore, tell Karl to come out now”
“Karl, David, Max?”
[Ka-chunk]
[Scanning…… Initializing]
Tomboy suddenly realized this wasn’t fake, also that something starting up in your brain made it clear that this wasn’t a prank.
[Location discovered: Durgjirnack]
[Tutorial Initialization failed]
[ Player is not in the tutorial area]
[Solution found, Tutorial is now level scaled]
[Player: Toby Vance given quest [Kill 20 Dire titan wolves]
“What is the average level of the wolves?” Toby ventured.
[Level:?]
“What level am I,” he asked, he was freaking the hell out cause you can’t just fake that it was right in his head.
[Player is currently too far to display status]
Everything suddenly went black
____________________________________________________________________________
Pov Karl
Karl suddenly asked himself where everything went to hell. They eventually stopped chasing them but all the buildings were gone and trees started growing out the earth.
“Has anyone seen my sister, she is about 5 ft long black hair and has a hello kitty shirt on”
“Has anyone-” Karl couldn’t find Toby one moment he was right beside him grabbing stuff out of his locker, then poof. All the lockers and the school were gone, some of the people on the second floor fell on the kids near him and the floor was gone. Some people in the general direction of the bathrooms screamed. Then the war cries started and someone screamed and ran.
He started following the mob of students trying not to get crushed.
“Hey, watch it!” someone said
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He was pretty sure he could almost hear the bodies fall as the arrows went thunk right into people's skulls. He looked behind and cursed some green humanoids with disproportionate bodies right behind him, needless to say, he sped up. They just kept running and running and some of the people who didn’t do much exercise started failing to catch up, and when they finally stopped running they didn’t recognize the trees, trees? weren’t they running towards the swampy area with all the trails?
“ Does anyone know where we are?” a girl said
“No this is behind the trees and the thicket right, wasn’t this area all muddy with practically no plant life,” the boy beside her said
“Well it's here now,” said the middle schooler “ Let's all gather up and try to figure out what's happening”
After they all spent almost an hour bickering and pushing, they finally managed to gather up. Then the kid he learned was Henry assumed a leadership role.
“Alright everyone, most of you know me as Henry the kid who helps make announcements but we all need to make a game plan right now”
“From what I can see most of the adults were- targeted in the arrows” Henry continued “But we need to figure out if we can let anyone know where we are”
Karl grabbed his phone and the first thing he saw was the lack of service. And then like a prelude to a movie they heard [Ding]
[System initialized]
____________________________________________________________________________
FInal pov switch of the chapter
He woke up in moderate pain, his head was throbbing and his nose felt like shit. Then Toby remembered the whole you have a system now, and you're on a different planet.
Then he tried to call his friend” The caller you are trying to reach has been disconnected”
He walked outside the school to get some fresh air.
“Fuck I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore”
It was a vast landscape scattered with mountains and a volcano, with a huge jungle between him and any of the buildings he saw peeking over. He pinched himself to check if it was real and it was, oh boy he was royally screwed.
“System?” he asked “where am I”
[User is currently on the planet Durgjirnack]
“Can I see my status”
[User is currently too far to show an accurate scan]
[Issue lies with higher mana the system can currently scan through at your distance]
“Any direction you could point me in since I am currently very screwed”
[System suggests gathering supplies and finding a safe location]
“Why a safe location, aren’t I safe right where I am,” he asked
[User location is not safe]
[Tracking path of mana dictates that you have 20 minutes before creatures arrive]
“Shit” Toby scrambled to get in his school and fill his backpack with the needed medical supplies. He found Aleve and Tylenol and also several others of his required medication, enough to last him 14 weeks if he only took a pill or two for his symptoms.
This wasn’t going to last if he was on another planet for the potentially rest of his life. The system said that there were monsters so he “raided” the school gym for baseball bats and hockey sticks, and he grabbed a bow and three quivers worth of arrows. Around 36 arrows, he grabbed another backpack and rope to bind it all together and filled the extra bag with nonperishables. The food would last 8 weeks, the waters and soda, Gatorade, Powerade, apple, and orange juice. Would last him 4 weeks, first off was to secure water and shelter as he didn’t know how cold it would get at night. Also, with the school fire ax, he could grab enough wood to last the night.
With the flint and magnesium, he could start a fire with the knife in the contraband bin. Before he started running he asked what direction from him was the mana signature coming from.
[Right behind you it is recommended to run in a straight line from the school entrance]
While running he saw a myriad of colorful frogs, and also a strange white deer that just stared at him. A tree hurtled behind him from the east as a shockwave formed for a moment and ran west-north. He didn’t run into anything different than what he saw before besides the ever-increasing amount of vines before he started seeing fewer and fewer animals.
That was fine with him until while surrounded by vines he saw one choking a squirrel corpse. They hadn’t attacked him yet so he would keep an eye on them as the shockwave was more pressing. As the sun started to set he stopped and grabbed some wood from a dead dry tree and cut it into the smallest of pieces before putting kindling on it and surrounding it with logs and rocks.
The plants visibly wilted around him and moved away from a little, enough so that even if they stretched toward him he could sleep soundly.
“That is good to know, at least the plants act normal and don’t like fire” Toby snarked
By the night he had cobbled together a lean-to with enough on top that if it rained it wouldn’t soak him. The skyline was so thick with leaves and vines that he couldn’t see the sky.
“At least this world has the excuse that its Monday”
He started asking the system a few questions.
“Why am I here”
[Interferences in space]
“Why are the creatures all strange”
[Natural mutations caused by mana]
[Would the user like an overview of the planet]
“Yes”
[This world is called Durgjirnack, it is filled with poisonous plants and even more toxic animals, various behemoths wander and fight over territory. The user is currently in one of the medium-level zones. Low-level zones are all filled with undead, miasma, and a toxic veil. The medium level zones have creatures that eat various gasses and other animals that make the best area for the user currently]
[High-level zones only have ONE animal in them, The user is safe to eat most of the fruits but should not eat green, purple, white, black, blue, and yellow fruits. The rest are safe to eat and are filled with essential things to thrive. It is not recommended to eat brightly colored animals in the immediate future.]
“So besides the impending death, the environment won’t immediately kill me”
Toby slowly drifted off to sleep as the vines twisted and curled in of themselves wherever the smoke touched.