Kent was not a happy man.

In fact, it could be argued that Kent wasn’t a man at all at that particular moment. Though pointing that out would have been a bad idea, seeing as Kent was very likely to utilize his new brass knuckles on anyone brave enough to say anything about the fact that he was currently a kangaroo.

And say what you will about kangaroos, they definitely pack one hell of a punch. Even before you add in the brass knuckles.

The whole day was just one aggravation after another.

He woke up in a field of grass, with a blue box blocking off his sight. Which wouldn’t have been that bad, really. The blue box was new, but he’d woken up outside in a random field before, after a serious binge-drinking night. The problem was that he didn’t seem to have any cigarettes in his pockets.

Or any pockets.

Or clothes, for that matter.

And then, at about the same time that he’d discovered he was wearing his birthday suit, Kent also realized that he seemed to be a kangaroo.

If anyone had been around to hear it (and had the ability to understand isekai’d marsupials. Which is a rather less common skill that one would expect), they’d have been amazed at the amount and variety of swear words Kent was producing.

Kent did not like animals, other than on his plate, and he was not shy about letting the world know it.

The world did not see fit to response to Kent’s complaints. It did open up another blue box at some point. But the box just shoved the fact that he was a kangaroo in Kent’s face again, which really didn’t help his temper.

When he’d calmed down a little, Kent tried to explore his surroundings.

Which is when the next aggravation showed its face. Walking around as a kangaroo was a lot harder than Kent would have imagined. If he’d ever actually bothered to imagine it. Which he hadn’t.

Kent’s (back) legs just refused to move independently of each other. No matter what he’d tried.

He could lean forward to put his hands (paws) on the grass and sort of half hop forward to get around.

But he’d be damned to hell if he’d crawl on all fours like an animal!

Kangaroos were known for their jumps, so Kent tried to jump.

Only for another blue box to jump in front of him, letting him know that he had an “innate ability” to jump.

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

But the box had also told him that jumping would move him seven spaces clockwise. Whatever the hell that meant.

…It meant that when he’d landed, he wasn’t standing on the grassland any more.

Instead, he was standing on some sort of circular stage in the middle of a strange white building. It looked like some sort of Greek temple, with white marble columns and statues of naked people between them.

Kent didn’t mind the naked women, of course. But did they have to add statues of naked men as well? He could have spent his whole life without seeing some weirdly named dude’s marble Johnson.

A couple of minutes after Kent had found himself in the strange temple, he started to hear a sound. A familiar sound, at that. The sound of cards being shuffled.

Before he could look around for whoever was doing the shuffling, three large cards just appeared in front of him.

The cards were hanging in the air in front of him, with what must have been their backsides turned towards him. They were as tall as his kangaroo body, and decorated by an ornate question mark. One was a bright red, the second green and the third was blue.

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Even without the blue box that popped up in front of him, it was obvious to Kent that he was supposed to pick one of the cards. However, He’d be damned if he cooperated with whatever the hell was going on. It was far better to jump again and go somewhere else. Hopefully somewhere he could get some answers.

Which, naturally, didn’t work. Jumping didn’t get him anywhere new, and instead just brought him so close to the middle, green, card that he nearly touched it by accident.

He also got yet another blue box, this time telling him that he couldn’t leave the space before choosing and resolving a card.

Cursing up a storm, Kent went around the cards to look at their front. Why choose a card blindly when you can peek at the front first?

…Because you can’t peek at the front, apparently. The front of the cards looked the same as their back, giving away nothing other than their color.

With no other choice, Kent angrily chose the red card. Red because it fit his mood more than the other two.

The two unchosen cards faded out of sight, and as the last card flipped around, Kent was completely unsurprised at the fact that the face it showed him wasn’t the question mark any more. Unsurprised, yet still annoyed at its blatant disregard for anything resembling how the world should work.

The new face of the card showed a man wearing a toga. Though Kent was fairly sure Greek togas weren’t blood red. He was also sure that Greek people didn’t have five-centimeter-long fangs.

The longer Kent stared at the card, the more it seemed to be less a two-dimensional image and more a three-dimensional room behind a doorway. And just as Kent realized that fact, the man stepped out of the card and stood in front of Kent.

Smiling with his fang-filled mouth, the man started speaking.

“Welcome, Player, to my lair,

Where my fortune you might share,

Hear my riddle, if you dare,

Answer it, but take good care.

To my words now you must heed,

Speak with wisdom, not with speed,

If to guess you don’t succeed,

You will bleed, and I will feed!”

Rhymes. Kent did not like rhymes. And a riddle. Kent absolutely hated riddles.

But the man didn’t care for Kent’s likes or dislikes, and kept on talking.

“Why did the vampire bite the marsupial?”

It took Kent a few minutes to get over his shock.

That’s your riddle? All of those annoyingly overdone rhymes, and that’s your riddle?

The man, or probably vampire, didn’t answer. Having said his piece, he stood unmoving and looked at Kent.

This is going to have a really stupid answer, isn’t it?

No answer was forthcoming.

Kent had no idea what the answer could be. He thought furiously, but couldn’t come up with even one answer that might be relevant.

In the end, the vampire gave Kent fifteen minutes to try and find the answer, and when the kangaroo couldn’t solve the “riddle”, he smiled viciously.

“It wanted a taste of Quokka Cola.”

…Of course it was a pun. Kent really hated puns, but he had very little time to dwell on it before the vampire moved, faster than he could see, and a sharp pain blossomed in his neck.

The pain lasted for several minutes, and forever, before the vampire vanished, leaving a woozy Kent alone in the temple.

A blue box informed him that he’d suffered a minor wound, and another gave him an achievement for getting wounded, and bandages he managed to use to reduce the wound to slight. It still took another hour before Kent felt well enough to leave the temple, and he hoped never to set foot in it again.

When he landed, he was informed that he’d reached the Ogre Hills, and that he needed to kill ten ogres to get something called a skill shard.

Beating up on some Shrek wannabes sounded like a good way for Kent to vent out some of his anger at the way the day was treating him, and he walked around eagerly, searching for his green targets.

It only took a few minutes for him to realize that these ogres had less to do with Shrek and more to do with huge freaking giants carrying entire tree trunks as clubs.

Kent didn’t even hesitate a single second before jumping away, though by that point he had little hope for any better luck.

And as if trying to confuse him on purpose, the next area was a ruined city, and his target were rats. He was cautious at first, after the ogres, but the rats proved to be nothing more than that.

His first kill awarded him a set of brass knuckles which increased his punch damage from lesser to slight. He had no idea what that meant, but more damage was probably better.

Eager to hit more things, he pushed deeper into the ruined city, managing to kill a few more rats, before he reached a town square, and managed to get surrounded by a whole pack of them.

He was starting to take some hits from the annoying pests, but he was still giving better than he was getting, for once, and he was certainly not expecting a wombat to charge at the rats.

He was at eight rat kills out of the ten he needed, and there were three of them left, and he really didn’t want to go look for more of the stupid things, so he rushed in to kill the last two he needed before the Wombat could. Which meant that he took a few more hits that he could totally have avoided if he wasn’t in a hurry.

Which is why he was really angry when the wombat tried to talk to him.

Can you understand me? The Wombat asked.

Of course I can bloody understand you! Kent yelled at the other marsupial. What the hell are you doing here? I didn’t need any help!

Yeah, ‘cause you were doing so well on your own, the wombat snarked right back at him. You do know these bastards’ claws are poisoned, right?

Whatever! You’re lucky you only killed one of them! I needed the rest of them to finish off my quest, and if I was short one because of your interference, I’d check to see if you count as a rat!

Angry, tired, and in pain, Kent waved away all of his notifications, and jumped away, leaving the annoying wombat behind.