How deep was this hole going to be?
It felt like hours, although it couldn’t have been more than seconds. The earth was crumbling slower than his own descent, providing a soft, albeit debris-filled cushion that carried him downwards without the risk of a fatal fall. Something was rapidly swallowing the material under him and the cause wasn’t a mystery. This was a sinkhole opened by a fracture.
The fractures always opened underground, much like what he was currently experiencing. Nine years ago, when they’d first started to appear, mankind had been defenseless against the horrors pouring forth from those subterranean voids, but as if events were running on a schedule, people had simultaneously begun to experience changes in their bodies, impossible feats becoming matters of will and skill rather than imagination.
And now, at the advent of what appeared to be the world’s second collapse, Eik had awakened to his own abilities. Unfortunately, that confidence boost was soured considerably by the thought of being eaten down here.
After what felt like another couple of hours, the roiling mass began to slow in its descend, the parts underneath coming to a rest. At once Eik’s head was free of the cascade, but his legs and most of his torso remained buried. Blinking soil and sand out of his eyes, he tried to take stock of wherever this was. The blinding light was the first to become apparent. A bright, pulsating disk which Eik, during a moment of blissful hope, mistook for the sun.
The fracture hung free in the air, swirling lazily like a glass of milk stirred with a spoon. An actual fracture. Fear driving him, Eik pushed through the debris and tried to get to his feet, but a blinding stab of pain sent him back down again. Examining his leg wound in the light of the fracture revealed a deep gash, and while the healing sphere seemed to have done some good, they were by no means a miracle substance.
On his knees he dug around the pile of soil and sand, quickly uncovering the brown paper bag with medicine that had made the descent with him. He popped another sphere, and then another for good measure, the bitter tang of the mixture pulling his jaw muscles taut.
With proper dosage and no fatal injuries, they could, rather than curing a wound to completion, provide some stability and improvement until proper treatment could be given. Eik sat, knees pulled to his chest, and waited. His body was aching all over and hope seemed a distant fantasy. Above, the world of the living was represented by a circle of sunlight so small that all it took to cover it was the palm of his hand. Down here, where death lurked, there was nothing to save him.
The script on his forearm still glowed dimly, awaiting a decision. It seemed a cruel joke now. He’d always tried to hide it, but bitterness over his lack of abilities had dwelled in the back of his mind ever since people had begun to awaken. Eik had tried to get the script to appear hundreds of times over the years to no avail, but now, as he sat there waiting for monsters to come out of a fracture and tear him to pieces, the damn letters wouldn’t go away.
He traced the neat writing, his finger drawing faint lines across the skin. When an awakened attempted to carve the patterns into a surface to reveal their personal information or interacted with the script, they could effortlessly do so, even with just a finger.
A circle with a dot inside would reveal one’s name, race, and a bizarre sequence of letters and numbers followed by the word “NEW”.
Two dots for the power rank, Eik’s newly awakened strength being third stage F-rank. Especially concerning physical prowess and abilities, the stated ranks had proved to more or less reflect their potency accurately.
A circle with three dots corresponded to an overview of personal abilities, such as the ones Eik was now being offered.
[Blades]
[Concentration]
[Resistance: Toxin]
[Blades] would do him no good. Not only was he a measly F-ranker, but the “small blade” he had at his disposal was a work knife designed to make thin and precise cuts, not slice off a limb or open up a torso from shoulder to waist.
[Concentration]… What was that even? An unknown power couldn’t be relied upon.
And [Resistance: Toxin]. A defensive ability that could do a lot of good in the right situation, but not much good in actual combat without a proper way to fight back.
There was no point in making a choice anyway. He’d be dead as soon as the monsters arrived, with nowhere to run. It was common knowledge that fractures didn’t allow for entry, only exit, so even if he’d thought his chances better in whatever pit of misery the monsters originated from, he couldn’t even attempt it. Non-biological matter went through no problem though. He could only wait, the low hum of the fracture inducing a strange sense of morbid tranquility—A calm before the storm.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The time to wait was brief and sparks soon danced across the fluid-like surface of the fracture. It rippled and flowed, putting Eik’s heart into overdrive. He felt dizzy and nauseated, his breakfast threatening to climb back up his esophagus. The ripples grew steadily more prominent, appearing to reach some sort of climax. Just when Eik thought the fracture might explode, a slender appendage hacked into the ground with a dull, reverberating thunk. A horrifying visage followed, revealing the first monster to be of the Xaraxis-series.
Spiders. Or at least closer to spiders than anything else. Xaraxis-3 by the looks of it. Eik had handled many corpses in his work with antivenom—and taken accidental doses a number of times as well, both from dead and living specimens, saved only by his own antiserum products.
Unlike Earth spiders, they produced no webs and had slim, light abdomens, allowing for rapid directional shifts. Their venom, however, was frighteningly potent, able to leave a grown man dead in minutes. Even Awakened, though incomparably more resilient than regular people, would be hard-pressed to come out of a venomous encounter unscathed.
Pressing his back hard into the crumbling soil, he hoped to disappear into a hole as the first monstrosity fully emerged from the fracture. Appearing slightly disoriented, the Xaraxis-3 seemed to gather itself and looked to the light above. It uttered a string of dissonant screeches, the sound grating on Eik’s senses.
With barely any hesitation, the beast approached the side of the hole and dug its thin limbs into the earth. At first, it climbed in a rather uncoordinated manner, but after only a few clumsy maneuvers, it began to pick up speed. As the horror ascended the hole in short, rapid leaps, Eik almost couldn’t believe it. Had he just been ignored by the big, scary monster? Did it fail to notice him in its eagerness to join the fight above?
For one wonderful moment, Eik was struck by an unexpected sense of optimism, but when the second one arrived, another damned Xaraxis-3, that hope was dashed. This one, too, took a second to situate itself in the world, and then followed its sibling, leaving Eik to stare dumbfounded in its wake.
What the hell? If it wasn’t for the fact that he was still alive, he would almost have felt insulted. He was breathing a tentative sigh of relief when the third Xaraxis-3 stumbled out of the fracture, visibly more disoriented than the first two. A rumble emerged from its throat as it rocked back and forth on spindly legs.
At once, it skittered forth towards the side. Eik’s side. A few paces before it would have stepped on his stomach, it froze into stillness. Two yellow, beady eyes bore into him as he lay defenseless. Without hesitation, it launched itself straight at him with a guttural hiss. With his good leg he leapt to the side as best as he could, his new strength surprising him by actually allowing him to leave the ground, but the arachnid instantly adjusted its own course.
The dog-sized Xaraxis-3 barreled into his chest, the unnatural momentum of an awakened monster carrying him bodily to the ground. Pinned, Eik could do little more than put an arm out between himself and the insane murder spider. The wicked, needle-like fangs of the Xaraxis-series were specialized for venom injection, not for ripping and tearing. Unfortunately, that fact did little to alleviate the flood of agony that assaulted Eik as the biological syringe was buried in his bicep.
He felt the venom enter, the increased internal pressure at the injection site building like a bubble. He screamed shrilly, a mix of fear and despair. In his mind’s eye he saw Tracy’s unconscious form again, rendered essentially dead without help. Help that he had provided for her. Nobody was here now to provide that for him.
He was alone.
He was dying.
And he was screwed.
It only took a few instants of hectic wrestling before he began to feel his limbs tighten and heat up. Fear diluted in panic, he headbutted the bastard and kicked it off. Even with strength belying its size, it didn’t weigh much, and despite his injuries he was stronger than he had ever been. The paper bag of medicine wasn’t far away—six hand spans, at most, but it felt like a marathon on all fours as the venom slowly but surely continued to do its work to weaken him.
When he finally grasped the rim of the grimy bag, a new point of suffering descended like a bolt of lightning. Even as he fumbled to uncover the healing spheres from his own annoyingly secure packaging, he spared a glance back to see the damned spider, its fangs sunk into his calf.
“No, no, no,” he chanted through tears and a mouthful of four more bitter healing pills, heedless of the dirt and blood that now stained them. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to… Olivia, save me…” As sickly heat spread through his leg, he saw memories of his brother as vividly as if he’d been watching a movie.
Torbjørn and Olivia had been perfect for each other, always holding hands and giving each other pecks of the cheek—to the point where Eik had gagged at the sight. In truth, he hadn’t been disgusted by it, but younger brothers had to act out a bit, didn’t they? It was part of the contract, one could say. After Torbjørn died, all Eik had been able to think about was how much he wanted to see the two of them lovingly weave their fingers together again.
Another stab of pain in his leg pulled him out of the dream with an exhausted gasp.
The healing spheres were doing something, but not faster than the venom was incapacitating him. He tried to kick the Xaraxis-3 in the face, but his leg barely obeyed him anymore, the power he could employ hardly rattling its head. It just wouldn’t let go.
As Eik fished for more healing spheres in the brown bag, hoping to find some antiserum as well, he noticed once more the glow along his forearm.
The three choices.
[Blades]
[Concentration]
[Resistance: Toxin]
Without further consideration, he traced a line through [Blades] and [Concentration], leaving only [Resistance: Toxin] intact. The script faded unhurriedly, replaced by new text.
[Acquired Resistance: Toxin — Lv. 1]
[Inherent proficiency considered—Acquired Resistance: Toxin — Lv. 14]