Across hundreds of cities, diamond-shaped objects tore through the sky, leaving streaks of fire and light that mirrored apocalyptic visions. When they struck the ground, the world braced for destruction akin to a meteor's wrath. But as the dust settled, no craters marred the earth. Instead, the diamonds stood upright, suspended on their tips, glowing with an otherworldly energy. Sparks of electricity crackled around them, and at their core, a pulsating orb of light began to expand, erasing buildings in its path as though they had never existed. This continued until the orb reached 30 meters. Then it stopped. For several moments it was all over. The orbs around the world just sat there pulsing. Waiting.
Screams filled the air as people fled, some crying out to loved ones, others frozen in place as their surroundings dissolved into nothing. Those brave—or foolish—enough to approach stared, wide-eyed, as the orbs pulsed with a hypnotic rhythm, their fear overridden by the sheer strangeness of the sight."
Individuals that were nearby approached the sphere of light cautiously. And when they were close enough, many tried touching it. Some were just quick enough to stick their hand into the light, finding soon after they no longer had a hand any more. It was painless. Their hand, or whatever they had passed through the light just were no longer there when they pulled back from the light, if they had the chance to. They did not think on this long however, as their blood poured out from where their body parts had been, but even this was not long thought on as the next phase of events began.
Thick tendrils of miasma oozed from the orb, unfurling like a living fog across the land. The air turned sour and heavy, saturated with the sickly stench of rot and decay that clawed at the back of the throat. The ground beneath it seemed to writhe as though the earth itself rejected the tainted fog. The very air seemed to boil with stink. People stumbled and gagged, clutching at their throats as the miasma seeped into every crevice. Panic turned to despair as the fog engulfed entire neighborhoods, the sound of retching and sobbing swallowed by the oppressive stillness. And this was only the beginning.
When the miasma covered most of the orb, shadows of beasts and humanoid figures appeared and spread throughout it. In mere moments millions died, their last memories being of squelching sound approaching as they tried to hold the contents of their stomach from spewing out of their mouths, only to suddenly feeling a sharp pain in one their limbs, sharp teeth easily ripping into their flesh, repeatedly, before they were torn to pieces, often times seeing their body eaten by… something. And then darkness, never to know life again. Hours passed and the invaders spread out from the portal, attacking every living thing that they came across.
Matt returned to normal, his body changed, strengthened, revitalized. His phone’s emergency announcement signal rang out, alerting him to the events happening. He opened a social media app and opened the first live stream that was reporting what was happening as he looked up information on where the portal had dropped in his area. Maps had been updated with their locations and then live updated every few moments with the demarcations of where the miasma had spread. He gave a relieved sigh seeing that he should be safe for the moment, but he was right outside the territory the portal covered in its fog of rot. It meant that he would have a little while, at least, to check and set up his skills and abilities he had set.
“Menu,” he said aloud, hoping that it’d work.
In front of his face, a display, similar to what one would find in just about any modern game appeared. More so it resembled an old school RPG in terms of layout with the left side having a profile picture of himself with his vital stats; Health, Mana, and Spirit, displayed with empty space beneath it. On the right hand side there were sub-menu options for Store, Inventory, Map, Encyclopedia, and then Options. It took a minute, but it dawned on him that there was no status, skill, or ability sub-menu option which meant if someone hadn’t gotten the Store ability or selected them already they may not be able to unlock those functions, but then he thought, maybe leveling up gave those abilities or something over time, but if not, he would have a giant advantage.
Out of curiosity, he chose ‘Options’. A new window popped up, but all it did was allow him to adjust the color, opacity, size of the font and positioning in his vision of the menus. He felt disappointed, but the (F) rank seemed to imply it was upgradable so maybe there were some better options that are hidden in more advanced ranks of the ability.
Moving on, Matt chose ‘Encyclopedia’ next and all the sub-categories he had gotten. Hoping there was something there, he chose Weapon ‘Recipes’... and nothing, just pages with blanked out items and blanked out ingredient lists for each of them. He had hoped that these would be a bit more useful, but he’d worked with item crafting systems like this in a few games. It would be wasteful, but he knew that eventually these recipe books would become incredibly useful, but even now, he suspected that when he found an ingredient it would reveal it for the recipe. That would prove helpful if he could find enough ingredients to go through the recipe list.
Matt knew time was ticking, that whatever was coming out of the portals would not stop at the border of the miasma. He made the decision that he had to get a weapon and armor as soon as possible, and a weapon came first. As soon as he was done with looking at the recipes he didn’t bother to look at his map or use detect, because he had an idea of where he could find, at least a beginner weapon - his basement, where he had stored a bunch of stuff about a year ago when he was renovating a little bit. Among the items placed in the storage space were a few katanas, a long sword, a tanto, and some weight lifting equipment. There were also some two-by-fours lying around. He wasn’t sure any of it could be used in synthesis, but it was a starting point. If nothing else he’d have a weapon to fight with.
Opening up his menu again and going to ‘Weapon Recipes’ he looked through the pages. Nothing showed up on the ingredient lists other than the Stainless Steel. Matt thought for a second and then put all the items in his inventory. This time he checked ‘Items’ and it listed them off along with what they were made of.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
‘Oh! I get it!’ he thought as he pulled out each of the blades and dismantled them so that each of them were broken down to the various pieces and materials and then shoved them back into his inventory. All the ingredients appeared in several options. He flipped between them trying to figure out if he could tell which one would produce which weapon. He looked at the names and the quantities of material used. It allowed him to remove some of them, but it didn’t dawn on him that it was fairly easy to tell the type of weapon from a silhouette that was on each page. He was glad that he figured that out, before attempting to make something and possibly wasting the material, but now he had to choose what to make and he had to use his materials effectively. Unfortunately, the system didn’t allow for multiple windows in the encyclopedia to be open at once so he had to write everything down that he saw that he thought he could make and what it was. It took him almost a half hour to look through and write down all of his options, divide all the choices into things he wanted and needed and ranked them in terms of importance in his mind.
Mentally activating his [Weapon Synthesis] on the page in the ‘Weapon Recipes’ encyclopedia caused his body to act on its own, sitting down on the floor with his hands on coming to in front of his chest just several inches apart. In between them a ball of glowing light formed. In his periphery a timer started counting down from 20 minutes.
“Do not move.”
“Moving may result in failure, material lose, or inferior quality”
He grumbled, but he knew he had no choice. It took all his patience to not move. It’s not like his body wasn’t moving, but he just couldn’t take control.
Twenty minutes passed.
“[Laminated Steel Blade Wakizashi (F)] created successfully”
Matt looked the weapon over, nodded, and put it in his inventory, before continuing.
“[Laminated Steel Blade Wakizashi (F)] created successfully”
“[Laminated Steel Gauntlet (F)] created successfully”
“[Laminated Steel Gauntlet (F)] created successfully”
“[Laminated Steel Greave (F)] created successfully”
“[Laminated Steel Greave (F)] created successfully”
“[Laminated Steel Breastplate (F)] created successfully”
Nearly three hours had passed since the portal’s arrival. Matt’s hands trembled with fatigue and adrenaline as he completed his final preparations, the hum of his crafted equipment offering a fragile sense of security. He knew these tools might not be enough, but they were all he had.Guilt gnawed at the edges of Matt’s mind as he realized he hadn’t checked on his mother. Every instinct screamed at him to run upstairs, but he forced himself to focus. What good would he be to her—or himself—if he wasn’t prepared? She depended on him. She always had, even before all of this. The thought of her confused, frightened, and alone in this madness tightened his chest, but he pushed it aside. There wasn’t time for doubt. She had likely not understood the situation, the character creation screen, or what she should do to fix her mental issue, being mentally handicapped. But now, it was time to see how she was doing.
A glass broke upstairs and he rushed up to the room he heard it come from. The door was open and there was a large trail of blood leading outside. He knew what that meant. He steeled himself, prepping for a fight. He squeezed the hilt of his new weapons, before he charged out the door. In the last moment he remembered he had the [Detect] skill and used it. It pinged back that there was something with spirit right above the door. His sword shot upward as he dropped down. The slash cut through a green arm with a clawed green hand. It fell to the ground behind him, green blood draining from the stump of the creature that it came from, pooling around it.
The creature crouched above him and the door, its short but sinewy green body slick with a foul-smelling substance. Lanky limbs twisted unnaturally, each movement like a predator toying with its prey. Its wide face was a grotesque mockery of humanity, with large pointed ears and an overstuffed maw full of razor sharp teeth dripping with a mixture of saliva and dark blood. Matt’s stomach churned as its glowing emerald eyes locked onto his through long scraggly dark hair, radiating a malevolent intelligence. The blood was most likely his mother’s. The creature was definitely a goblin.
Regardless of what this thing actually was, for now, Matt was going to call it a goblin. As he locked eyes with it, he saw a yellow aura around it. Not sure, but confident that what he was seeing is the [Threat Detection] ability in action he had to assume that the rules were similar to MMORPGs. They had been so far, and if it held, yellow was a challenge but not nigh undefeatable. It followed suit that a tutorial creature would be yellow. Probably not even a real challenge, but tutorial mobs always tended to be rated a higher threat level, but lower relative difficulty to equally ranked threats later on. Matt smirked, believing that the goblin was probably already half dead if it followed the same logic, but there were so many things that a game could not replicate and none could account for nerves or the sickening feeling one got when forced into real combat.
Matt wanted to drop his weapons and run, but he knew that was impossible. It didn’t matter how much he wanted to, he had to get over it, survive, and get stronger, but before he could pull himself together to attempt to kill the creature it had already leapt from the place it was above the door at him, leaving no more time for thought or cowardice.