Quintin pinched the bridge of his nose, which elicited a stuffy groan. He cracked open his right eye, which was met by an overwhelming whiteness and forced him to reclose it. With a wince, he brought his hand over to brush his left eye but found it empty.
His right eye flared open, and he shifted into a sitting position as he pressed a finger around the socket.
"Empty. Gone! What... happened to me?"
In his confusion, he did not notice that the pain was fleeing, nor that a blue pulsation steadily began to build from the place his left eye once was.
"Oltoi!"
Broken plinks of sound escaped his dry throat, out into the dense fog that surrounded him.
"Oltoi! Yell out if you're out there!"
He breathed in quicker and quicker as the realization that he was alone, somewhere unknown, began to grow.
"Oltoi... please. Brother, if this is a joke, you've won already. Just... come out. I'm not well. I need your help... Master..."
Nothing responded but the cold and bitter ground against his legs. His hands came up to cover his face. After a moment, he finally realized that his hands felt strangely icy there.
"What... what's this feeling? Like someone is pressing cold steel metal against my cheeks."
Looking at his hands as he slowly brought them away and into focus, he became horrified with shock as he held them out in front.
"These are not my hands! They're completely changed! Where are my hands!?"
In a panic, he tried to remove them like a gauntlet or glove, but they stayed firmly attached. His hands all the way up and around the elbows were wrapped in a metal of some design and function. Five rivulet lines ran down the length, ending in five nodules a bit bigger than a quarter of roundness each.
"You've got to be joking! What is this? Where am I?"
Distraction was quick to come when the apparition of a blue, text-filled box became strong enough for him to notice.
"What now?"
System Initialization: 99%
Version: Error%
Upgrades: Pending Discovery
.
[System] now operational.
.
.
.
Welcome to Whorrl,
User Designation: [Quintin J. Abbasi]!
[General Skills]:
—[Pain Tolerance Lv. 1] Gained
—[Concentration Lv. 1] Gained
**Be aware: certain functions [Locked] at this time
***Post response: go forth and discover.
—Command Prompt:
[Status]
[Skills]
[Titles]
[Inventory:Locked]
[Quests:Locked]
[Body Modifications: Locked]
[Information: Keyword] Usable: *Error/Error*
.
The invasive script caused no small measure of surprise. He clambered straight up with a large dose of perplexity written on his face. Ever so gingerly, a metallic hand groped around the edge of the blue box. However, the thing boasted phantom qualities that made it unassailable via physical means.
"I suppose wherever I am, whatever this is... I'm not done yet," he said a prayer for the ghosts.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Unafraid of apparitions and otherworldly features, Quintin studied the sentences one by one. The information was terse, but that only meant easier digestion. Most of the text spoke about [Skills] and [Menus] given by the [System]. What Whorrl stood for became the first point of curiosity because it sounded like the name of a place.
Under the command prompt, [Information: Keyword] stuck out as a potential lifeline. Though, whether it would provide answers or only further doubts became the burning question. He decided to try speaking the command out loud.
"Here goes nothing, Information Whorrl?" Quintin went into an attack-ready posture out of uncertainty.
After a few awkward moments, the text information changed.
[Information: Whorrl]
Classification: Planet
Designation: Error
Reconfiguring data based on [Host Background]...
Designation: Fantastical Land
Hostility Index: Very Pronounced, Extremely Deadly
Races:
[Human]
[Elf]
[Dwarf]
[Demi-Human]
[Beastkin]
[Demonic]
[Dragonoid]
[Homunculus]
[Godling]
.
The cruel details knocked him squarely to ground, back on his butt. According to the [System] query he no longer stood on Earth. An uncomfortable truth if real; though a noise from his righthand side seemed more than capable of confirmation.
The sharp, wheezing intake of breath resounded. Squinting toward the sound, the vague outline of a charcoal creature made its appearance known. The thing clung from a higher vantage point off the ground, through the fog.
[General Skill] gained:
[Identification Lv. 1] [Intruder Wolf] Lv. 5
—Pack Beast
—Mountain Climber
—Territorial
Male wolves vie for female attention by climbing up mountains.
Their suicidal competition breeds stronger, more fit packs.
Those who descend as champions have the right to mate,
and challenge for new positions in the pack hierarchy.
Even under duress, his wealth of martial experience instilled an unwavering readiness. The beast revealed itself by bounding down onto the earthen platform. Long dagger thin claws gouged away at the terrestrial connection. Muscle tension cut the grooves deeper as a show of its aggressive authority. A wiry mat of bristling black fur accentuated its pointed, snarling face of razor-sharp teeth.
Barely a moment was allowed for Quintin to register the abdomen-high wolf in front of him before it leaped again to close in in an attempt to sweep him aside. The wolf's paw raked out in a frontal sweep when it landed, but Quintin was prepared. His right arm whipped out underneath the paw, gripped, and guided the sweep down to the ground.
A crunching sound tickled his ears like twigs through a wood chipper, followed by a torrent of blood as the wolf's paw and a section of its lower leg were wrenched away by his grip. Quintin frowned and made to back up, while the remnants of the paw slipped through his metallic fingers and plopped to the ground in a wet puddle. The wolf yipped madly, and seemed to have other ideas besides giving up in the ensuing chaos.
The wolf pivoted off its remaining three legs and went barreling through the short distance between them. At that moment, Quintin knew he had no chance to dodge. He had planned to diffuse the force downward, not dismember its leg, and because of that, the wolf was able to body-check him onto the ground in a tangle of limbs and squirming desperation.
Pain rocked Quintin's body while trapped within a blur of thrashing movements. His sight turned bleary, and his mind turned into mud. The wolf's claws dug trenches into his skin, leaving scrapes and dig-points all over. He reached out for anyone or anything in a mad grab of frenzied flailing and finally grasped a handhold of dense, bristling back-fur.
He pulled and twisted his body out, using his handhold of fur as leverage and climbed onto the wolf's back. The wolf tried to stand as his elbow entwined its neck and began to strangle it. Quintin screamed out at the top of his lungs while bringing his left arm around to connect with his other and pulled back hard.
Crunch.
Pop.
Snap.
Gurgle.
The wolf's head detached and propelled forward, a spray of blood shot out from its neck covering Quintin's upper body in the steamy, hot liquid.
[Intruder Wolf] Lv. 5 defeated
—[Level UP] +1