Another flash of memories, like a lightning bolt, flickered before my eyes, causing a new bout of unbearable pain. It seemed like my skull was ready to burst, like an overripe watermelon. But my head turned out to be stronger in reality, having withstood this, the third attack in the last few minutes.
Without asking me whether I wanted it or not, someone else's memory invaded my mind, literally cramming a yet unexperienced life into me in seconds. A life that was foreign and, at the same time, my own.
Days, weeks, months, years.
My mind was unable to accept and process such a stream of information in such a short time. And each surge, like a waterfall of memory washing over me, caused a sharp attack of severe migraine. A low moan escaped my lips through clenched teeth. In order not to fall, I involuntarily stretched out my hand and grabbed onto something. Immediately, from my instinctive movement, the pile of construction debris in front of me swayed and crashed onto the floor with a sound that seemed unnaturally loud in the surrounding silence.
The sudden sharp noise made me freeze in place. Biting my lower lip, I sank to one knee.
The faint hope that the noise I had made would go unnoticed immediately dispersed, like a thin smoke under a hurricane wind. Somewhere below, there was a guttural growl that penetrated to the very bones, and a moment later, there was the sound of tearing metal.
A chill ran from my heels to the top of my head. I knew what these sounds meant! The guardian of the skyscraper woke up and broke free. Broke free much earlier than it was supposed to.
And I was clearly and unmistakably warned: "No noise!".
A couple of minutes ago, I would have panicked, run away, anywhere, just to get as far away from the place where I was right now. But that would have been the "me" who I was just recently, before the first wave of someone else's memories washed over me.
Obeying the fragmentary images flashing in my mind, instead of running headlong, I approached the open elevator shaft and looked down. In the dim flickering light, it was hardly possible to count how many floors were under my feet, but thanks to a miraculously preserved plaque in the elevator hall, I knew there were forty-two floors. And exactly twenty more up, which, however, is not so important.
The barely tolerable pain and flashes before my eyes did what no internal persuasions, meditations, and other attempts at self-control could do. A few minutes ago, I was panicking and mentally screaming at the top of my lungs, cursing and wailing, angry at the universal injustice that dragged me into all of this! Essentially, I was wasting precious time.
Now all my senses are focused on the headache, and even the very real threat of being torn to pieces and then devoured by an unknown creature has receded into the background. Moreover, now I knew for sure: last time, even without a package of someone else's memory, I coped with this trial.
"Last time?!" - This thought seemed strange, but it was immediately washed away by another bout of migraine.
The quester recommended not making noise, giving me this task, and the words of these entities usually had to be taken almost verbatim. But not this time. I had exposed myself too much, making such a noise a few seconds earlier. And simply running away, going up a couple of floors higher, might not be enough.
Approaching a pile of construction debris, I grabbed a handful of aluminum pipes and threw them into the open elevator shaft. The noise caused by these actions was much stronger than what I had caused earlier, and it lasted longer and didn't fade until the items I dropped reached the first floor.
Most likely, my trick will not throw off the creature that lives here for long. But I know for sure that the monster hunting me is not only immensely strong, fast, and dangerous, but also incredibly stupid.
Know?!
Yes, I received information about this monster in the very first flash of memories. Perhaps I should not have unconditionally believed everything that poured into my head in those moments as a murky stream of unclear consciousness. Maybe I would have doubted. If only… If only the foreign memory pouring over me wasn't simultaneously my own. Belonging to the "me" who has lived and experienced much more. All of this is incredibly strange, scary and has a cloying smell of madness. But after what has already happened to me, even this does not seem to be something out of the ordinary.
Waiting for the noise downstairs to subside, I carefully examined the elevator shaft. It seemed to be the simplest way out of the situation. What could be simpler - descend down it instead of making my way through the floors, bypassing blockages and traps, risking being devoured at any moment? But the quester clearly said that the elevator shaft is a "simple path, often leading to death." In the "last time," I listened to his words.
Again this "last time"?
No matter.
Now I know: if someone hangs on the cables and starts descending the shaft, the elevator frozen on the very top floor will immediately break loose and fall. And the fate of someone who let the quester's words go in one ear and out the other would be quite tragic.
With certain efforts, it was possible to trigger the collapse of the elevator artificially, thus freeing a physically challenging but otherwise quite safe way down. And this, perhaps, would be the most correct and simple solution to complete the task at hand. At least a minimum of five people did just that, and since they were able to recount their experience, their attempt was clearly and unambiguously successful.
"Five"?
"Recount"?
I shook my head, obsessing over questions that were not important at this second was definitely not the best choice. The foreign and simultaneously my own memory comes to me in pieces, fragments. And if I want to live a little longer than the next five or ten minutes, I shouldn't think about whether these memories can be trusted.
Once again looking at the elevator ropes, wincing from another attack, I regretfully stepped away from the shaft. My trick with the garbage thrown down will hardly distract the creature for long, and I better not linger here.
The unevenly flickering, dim light from the fluorescent lamps, miraculously preserved in the local wreckage, gave the surrounding an even more eerie impression. Although… how much worse could it be?!
Just half an hour ago, you were going to bed after a hard but quite ordinary work day. And now you have one task: to leave the abandoned skyscraper that is collapsing right before your eyes. Moreover, you must exit this building through the central exit of the first floor and no other way. And failure to complete this task leads to erasure. Whatever that erasure might mean.
Just accepting all this, realizing that everything happening is not a dream, that you can really die or be erased if you fail to complete the task… an ordinary person needs time to grasp all this. For some, it's minutes, for others hours, for some days. "The first time," if the foreign memory is to be trusted, I hid in a corner and spent more than three hours there, simply not believing in everything that was happening. And only the proximity of the creature, or more precisely, the fear caused by its appearance, forced me to believe in the reality of what was happening and start acting.
Now I have a kind of head start. Thanks to the memories of the "past life," I don't have to realize anything and come to terms with something. I just know that everything around me is reality. A reality that is strange, cruel, contradictory, but I will have no other. There will be no ordinary, such familiar life, which I lived for many years. Home, work, hobbies, the former such simple and calm life - all this is in the past, that past which will not return.
It will never return.
That's it.
Period.
My life has just been divided into two parts: what was "before" and what has become now.
The trouble is that due to my carelessness, by collapsing the garbage pile, I woke up the creature much earlier than it was supposed to, depriving myself of the advantage that the memories of the "past me" gave me.
The "past" me knew one person who immediately accepted everything as it was and started going down as soon as he listened to the quester's instructions. That "acquaintance" calmly left the skyscraper and thus fulfilled the conditions of the task, never having met the creature. True, he almost died in the traps, but he survived and passed the first "quest" in record time, thereby receiving a unique achievement and a significant bonus that came with that achievement. I think I even "remember" the name of this person…
An attempt to delve into the new memory and remember the name was interrupted by a prolonged roar, which made the glass tremble, and even the floor under my feet slightly swayed. Not good. My trick with the garbage thrown into the elevator shaft indeed did not distract the monster for long. Judging by the roar, it is very close, literally on the floor below.
Just one floor. Only one!
The budding panic was immediately swept away by a new wave of pain. Clenching my teeth to avoid screaming at the top of my lungs, I, barely seeing anything around me due to the flashes in front of my eyes, found the door leading to the staircase and opened it. Falling on all fours, I immediately slipped forward. Something flashed overhead, and a sharp smell of ozone hit my nose. The wall behind my back blackened as if struck by a ball lightning. In fact, why "as if"? That's exactly what struck it. If I had entered the door at full height, only part of me would be left by now - the part below the waist. The rest would have been incinerated by the trap activated by the door opening.
And no, there was nothing about this trap in the memory package I received. It's just that, despite all the pain that tormented my head, I started paying attention to details. For instance, above the door leading to the staircase, there was a warning, clearly indicating that it was dangerous to just walk in there. How else would one interpret the sign on which a full-height walking person is crossed out, and a crawling one or moving on all fours is highlighted with a green circle?!
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Yes, the first "quest" is indeed quite simple. To complete it, you only need three things. First – to accept everything as reality. Second – not to forget what the quester told you. And third – to look around and see hints scattered everywhere. Of course, you could add: don't make noise, beware of the creature, and five more conditions, but the quester already mentioned them before the start of the trial.
Pressing my ear to the concrete, I listened intently. It's bad, even worse than I thought. The creature is definitely moving in my direction. Trying not to make a noise, still on all fours, I quickly climbed up to the next floor and looked around. Colored chalk drawings on the wall, looking entirely out of place here, resembling child graffiti, hinted at the next trap in my way.
I freeze in place for a moment. What if I lure the creature into the trap?
Another surge of pain and stars before my eyes suggested that this idea was useless. The monster is far more resilient than a human, and the local traps wouldn't do it much harm. There were those who managed to lure the beast into the elevator shaft and drop the elevator on it. But even that didn't kill the monster!
Where do I know this from?!!
A guttural growl interrupted my digging into the foreign memory and forced me to speed up. To avoid the trap, I had to stand on the railing and walk a few meters up it. This nearly ended fatally! Another bout of migraine hit me at the wrong time, and I almost fell onto the booby-trapped staircase. In the last second, having already lost balance and falling, I managed to grab onto the railing and stay up.
I got lucky!
This time.
Having climbed three floors higher, I left the stairwell and found myself in a huge hall occupying almost the entire floor. Most likely, a gigantic open-plan office, where hundreds of clerks worked, used to be here. Now, this place resembled a dump of almost rotten partitions, non-working office equipment, and computers. Strangely, some miraculously intact monitors continued to flicker with an otherworldly blue color. They flickered, despite not being connected to the power supply.
Carefully watching my step so as not to cause another debris collapse inadvertently, I moved forward, trying to increase the distance between myself and the monster.
If only I hadn't clung to that aluminum pipe! Everything would have been so much easier. It's not necessary to kill the monster that's chasing me to complete the task. The quester specifically mentioned that such actions are overly dangerous, as the "guardian of the skyscraper" is on a completely different level of power. My only task is to leave this crumbling building through the central doors. That's it. How I'll do it doesn't matter.
Last time, "I" managed to be quiet and inconspicuous enough, as well as extremely attentive, to accomplish the task. It took the past me over nine hours to do so. An average result.
Alas, due to the migraine attacks I'm currently experiencing, I can't trust my body. Besides, I managed to wake the creature much earlier than it was supposed to and drew the monster's attention. One more mistake, one more noise caused by me, and the monster will surely be on my trail. And then, disaster. Total disaster. Out of the many test subjects, only three managed to kill the monster. And each of those three was a Shard. Which puts the task of killing the creature at a practically unattainable level for an ordinary person, just transported from Earth and thrown here.
"Shards"? "Level"?
A new wave of pain washed over me, nearly knocking me off my feet. In order not to fall, I clung to a pipe protruding from the wall. When my vision cleared, I realized that I was standing by a window. Behind the multi-layered window, nothing could be seen but a dense pinkish-gray fog. This fog was swaying very close. As if obeying the breath of an invisible creature, it moved closer to the walls of the skyscraper by a meter, then receded almost a dozen steps. According to the quester, this fog is essentially "erasure." Whatever that "erasure" means. Touching it is certain death, and even something more and much worse than death. How this is possible, I don't know, although, in my new memory, there is an answer to this question. But to reach this answer, I need to…
The next wave of the attack twisted and contorted me in unbearable pain.
For about three minutes, my body was turned inside out in unsuccessful attempts to clear my stomach of what wasn't there in the first place. I was retching bile, as is usually the case with an empty stomach. When the attack was over, I clearly realized that it was not the time to dig into my "updated" memory! I need to let the new information settle in my head, no matter how long it takes. Because right now, any conscious attempt to access newly acquired knowledge triggered another, each time worse, attack.
Leaning against the wall, I stood up on shaky legs. The roar of the creature, coming from below, intensified this shaking even more. No matter how stupid the monster was, I failed to throw it off my trail.
If I could control the attacks, I could easily fool the beast now, doing several rounds on the floors. Leave it behind and calmly, avoiding traps, go down, and complete the task. The trouble is that if I have another attack at an inappropriate moment, I could expose myself. And in such a combination of circumstances, there would be no escape from the creature.
The only thing that saved me from the monster was that I was not moving downwards, but upwards, not approaching, but rather moving away from the target. Did I cut off my escape routes with my reckless actions? The scraping of claws on concrete suggested that the monster was almost catching up with me and was no more than a floor below.
"Last time," the former me managed to hide in a small storeroom. "I" sat quietly, inconspicuously, barely breathing, and the creature passed within a dozen meters, not even noticing me. "Then," taking advantage of this, waiting until the monster went a floor higher, "I" managed to complete the descent and leave the skyscraper. Of course, I could try to repeat that trick now. But! What if another bout of pain hits when the creature is nearby? One careless sob, loud breathing, moan - and I will die.
Can I take such a risk? The answer was a new attack, due to which I bit my lip, miscalculating the force. As if in slow motion, I watched a drop of my blood from the bitten lip fall to the floor.
And when that drop fell, I bolted from my spot with all my might.
That's it.
I made an irreparable mistake. Now the monster will never lose my trail.
Not caring about the silence of movement, I ran as high as I could, trying to break the distance with the monster while there was such an opportunity. When I climbed three floors higher, I heard a victorious howl. The triumph of a predator that had picked up a trail. The creature found my blood. As soon as the howl ended, a terrible noise sounded under my feet. Plaster fell from the ceiling on me. The monster stopped holding back and went straight. Literally. Ignoring the stairs, it tore through the concrete floors in a matter of seconds and rushed upwards.
The memories that were supposed to give me an unprecedented head start, providing an incredible gap due to knowledge of the future… They seem to be what's going to bury me. Or rather, their side effect in the form of bouts of overwhelming pain.
I ran onto the skyscraper's roof just a couple of minutes ahead of the creature. The pink fog hung over me only about ten meters away, and one glance at it made my body cringe from surreal existential horror.
Just yesterday, or even an hour ago, I would never have staked my life on a story I'd heard before. Even more so if the story was not heard by me in the present but by "past me" or "future me," depending on how you look at it! But I had no choice. If I want to survive… I need to kill the creature. Otherwise, there is no way for me to complete the trial.
And not completing the task equals erasure.
And, feeling the fog looming over me in every fiber of my being, I definitely didn't want to be erased. I'd rather be eaten than die like this, in this fog! I don't know why, but that seemed to me to be an indisputable truth right now.
Rushing to the fire fighting equipment storage, I smashed the thin glass with my elbow. I wasn't interested in the shovel, a bucket of sand, or even the fire axe. That axe, if it hit the monster between the eyes, wouldn't make it blink, let alone inflict any significant damage. I was interested in something else. With shaking hands, I grabbed the fire hose and started to unwind it frantically. I had barely had time to wrap the hose around my waist when, just a dozen meters from me, the roof's concrete cracked and exploded from a powerful blow from below. Sharp, long claws with an obsidian gleam appeared on the surface. A couple of seconds - and almost the whole creature had crawled out onto the roof.
"Last time," I had only seen the monster's shadow, which reminded me of the Alien Queen from the famous sci-fi horror movie. But now, looking at a nearly three-meter tall, more than five tons, covered with black translucent scales monster, my new memory gave me the answer. Before me, poised to pounce and rip apart with a graceful, even captivating beauty, the beauty of destruction, stood the Hound of the Demon Lord. One of the highest monsters in the hierarchy of demons. If not for the suppression helmet, greatly reducing the creature's abilities, which now tightly covered its head, fogging not only its senses but also its mind, no one would ever be able to complete this task.
Another flash.
"My past self" had once fought a similar monster. Much more powerful, skillful, trained, knowledgeable, armed with an artifact sword and clad in armor forged by an almost self-aware deity. Then "I" had been victorious, if you can call it a victory, when after killing the creature, "I" had to stuff my intestines back into my belly torn by the Hound… And if not for the Superior Restoration potion, "my" life would have ended then. Apparently, I'm getting used to the attacks because even despite the pain twisting me, I didn't stop and freeze in fear.
The monster's victorious roar nearly burst my eardrums. But I was glad that the creature was wasting its time on such a display of triumph. When it finished growling and slightly opened its monstrous maw, showing fangs that could easily tear me apart, I had already reached my goal.
The monster's massive tail, covered with magic obsidian spikes capable of piercing mithril, as "I" already knew from "my past experience," struck the concrete, causing numerous cracks. Like a giant cat, the creature crouched, froze for a second, and then leaped forward in a long jump.
Simultaneously with this movement of my opponent, I took a step back. Just a step back.
A step off the parapet.
A step into the void.
I had calculated everything correctly, but the demonic Hound still almost got me! Already dying, flying with all its massive body into the pink mist surrounding the skyscraper, the creature reached out to me with its paw. The deadly claws managed to rip the sleeve of my shirt before the monster finally disappeared into the fog.
A sharp pain in the waist. The tension of the fire hose, a powerful hit of my entire body against the facade of a skyscraper - and an acrid exhale of pink fog, frozen just a few centimeters from my face.
Bound by irrational fear, I froze, just hanging on the hose, afraid to even breathe.
The fog moved closer.
And then suddenly retreated, rolling back almost ten meters from me.
Gathering my strength, I began to pull myself up, my fingers white with strain clutching the taut, like a stretched string, fire hose. Did I manage? Even after completing the climb and pulling my entire body onto the parapet, I couldn't believe I was still alive. I couldn't believe it. Because I just couldn't act so calculated and precise. The "me" from an hour ago would have shrunk in fear at the sight of the creature. I would have panicked, trying to shield myself with my hands, nothing more. No, I was never a coward, I was an ordinary person, and this would have been the reaction of ordinary people to one of the higher demonic creatures. And yet, I killed the Hound!!!
I!
I killed!
Becoming the fourth to do so.
And I don't care that I followed someone else's story. That I used the knowledge of the future. None of that matters. I, an ordinary person, did what only Shards had managed to do before!
This thought took my breath away. It took it away much more than even the moment when I stepped off the parapet into the void. Now I don't understand who the Shards are and why it's so important for me that I managed, even for a moment, to stand on an equal footing with them. I just recognize with all my being, uniting both of my "selves," my current self and my past one, that it is important.
"Thanks for the story, Nate, future God of War; your words turned out to be true," my lips whispered aloud.
Why did I say this? Who is Nate? And why did I call him the God of War, and even the future one? The answer is definitely somewhere in my "new" memory, and I will surely find it out.
But.
Later.
Untying the knot with some effort, I dropped the now-unneeded fire hose and headed for the exit from the roof. The descent down all sixty-two floors of the abandoned and trap-filled skyscraper took me just over an hour. I was in no hurry. The guard of this place was destroyed, and dying in some trap due to carelessness would be the height of stupidity.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed the doors of the main exit and stepped out onto a small lawn surrounded by the familiar pink fog.
Sitting down on the grass, I smiled. The first trial was behind me. And it was completed with flying colors, which would bring an appropriate reward.
I didn't smile for long. Because the thought of the "FIRST" trial reached me. Because if it's the first, there will be more…