A worm. A goddamn worm. Taka stared down at their new scriggly body, no larger than a toothpick. A status window suddenly appears in front of his small face.
NAME: ??? RACE: High Worm CLASS: [UNASSIGNED] MAGIC: Earth, Psychic, ë̶͙͈́̋̽̃̽̆v̵̨̡̯̭̭̮̼́ͅi̸̟͓͈̲͋̒͆̐̎̅̇͆l̶̩͉͙͉͕̓̉̓̈́͌ SKILLS: Telepathy, Burrow, Charm
Taka blinked at the floating display. High Worm? What made him different from a normal worm? And no name, or class, and that weird magic??? There were too many questions, too many unknowns to even begin to figure out what was going on. It seemed like one of those games or terrible isekai shows his friend Dylan made him watch, but there was no level indicator, or mana bar, but there was still magic and skills.
Deep breaths, Taka thought to himself, what would Dylan do?
"Dude, I promise, this one is like, different!" Dylan croaked out between rips from his oversized cat-shaped bong. "I know you didn't like the last one but this-"
"Who the hell sees a show called I was attacked by a shark and died from sepsis from the untreated wound, so I've decided to bring modern medicine to a medieval world and thinks, oh, you know what? Watching that would be a really good use of my time!" Taka shouted back, snatching the glass from Dylan's hands.
"That's not the title, you added a bunch of words-"
"I DON'T CARE."
"Taka, dog, I think you're not appreciating the art of this kind of such a... such a story."
"Enlighten me, sensei" Taka sneered as he took a massive rip.
"You gotta think about it beyond the title," Dylan began. "Yeah, there's a lot of the same shit out there, like a lot, but, each of them have their own little quirks that make the worlds unique and put the characters into interesting situations that haven't been explored before. Like, if I were the MC in Second Chance after a Shark Attack: Modernizing Medicine in a Medieval World, I wouldn't be able to do nothing because I dunno jack shit about modern medicine, ya feel? But because the dude was like, a doctor before he died, he could actually do something cool in his second life. If it were me, I'd probably just like, chill, y'know? Use my superior knowledge of the world to make things easy for me."
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"The only thing you have superior knowledge of is packing a bowl" Taka replied cattily.
"Damn right!"
Nope, nothing Dylan has ever said would be of any help. Thinking like him would be a shortcut to death. Before he could dwell on the words of his friend any longer, a screeched pierced through the air. Taka looked up, and saw a small, blue pigeon bird in a nose dive headed directly toward him. Without thinking, he activated his BURROW skill and in an instant, he was head-first, a full foot underground. The bird crashed into the dirt above him, angrily pecking away at the soil, trying to reach for Taka with its beak.
That burrow skill could actually be useful, but I need to get rid of that bird...
Taka concentrated on himself and willed the status window to open again, this time closely examining the skill section of the window: TELEPATHY, BURROW, CHARM. He mentally clicked on the TELEPATHY skill and found that he could let his mental awareness extend beyond himself -- he focused on the sound of the digging bird and locked on to its presence.
Hey! You! Can you understand me?
The pecking stopped for a moment, but then continued to dig. Taka could feel something now though, a sensation from the bird. Maybe it didn't have the intelligence to communicate with formal language, or maybe they just didn't speak the same kind of language, but he could feel something coming from the bird; it was emanating something that he could pick up on... it was primal, tense, necessary... hunger. The bird was hungry. And Taka was going to be its meal.
Heya, Mr. Bird... how about you find a meal somewhere else? Taka sent to the bird with TELEPATHY.
This time, however, the bird ignored him and kept digging, inching closer to where Taka was under the shallow bed of soil. He tried to activate the BURROW skill again, but an error message popped up.
WARNING: Skill: BURROW still has 00:03:34 until next activation.
It seemed like his BURROW skill had a 5 minute cooldown, and the bird would definitely reach him before it'd be usable again. He moved on to his CHARM skill, but a different error popped up.
WARNING: Skill: CHARM can only be activated on targets in LoS (Line of Sight). Additional conditions may apply depending on target's stats.
No dice. The sound of the shuffling dirt drew closer, and if Taka was able to sweat, he would. It seemed like there was only one skill he could use right now to get out of this, so he activated TELEPATHY again. But this time, he didn't send it a message of words. He thought of the fear of dying, the feeling of being eaten alive, and the thought of the bird being burnt to dust. The bird shrieked and the sound of dity flying ceased, replaced by the pattering of flapping wings, which quickly faded into the distance. Taka breathed a deep sigh of relief, and was jolted alert by a new status update.
Update: Skill: FEAR acquired.
That was all -- no further description or any other indicators that anything had changed. Taka wriggled his way up through the path he had burrowed, only needing to go a few inches up to return to the surface the bird had dug up. He finally had the chance to take in his surroundings:
He was on the edge of a forest, trees extending as far as the eye could see in one direction, and open plains, maybe farms, in the other. It certainly looked like the setting of a fantasy world, a place where orcs would suddenly appear and ambush a caravan of traveling merchants. What he didn't expect, however, was the big blue eyes of an elf child staring down at him from the trees above to meet his. Before he could stop himself, he activated his TELEPATHY skill and thought:
Who are you?
The child yelped as they fell out of the tree, down right towards the tiny worm.