I’d been sitting on my formerly abandoned couch, reading my favorite popcorn power fantasy novel on my six year old phone. Out of nowhere, a swirling blue portal appeared in my studio apartment.

I must be dreaming.

There was a countdown in a digital screen above it which had started at five minutes. This was it, my big chance. I knew it in my heart of hearts. Something was offering me passage to another world. Rushing like crazy, I emptied my rice-drawer into a plastic box and stuffed it into the hardiest shopping bag I owned. Wide sweeps of clothes from my closet joined the pile. Time was running out. Weapons. My wooden bokuto katana and biggest kitchen knives entered another plastic bag. Twenty seconds. In the last moments, I scrounged up a bunch of electronics and dove headfirst through the portal.

It felt like going into warp-drive, a tunnel filled with starry lights whisked me away.

Earth zoomed out. Planets flew past. Stars turned into bright streaks and soon solar systems became but specks of light. Even the galaxy turned into a pinprick eventually. The sensation of increasing velocity sped up more and more. Within moments, the whole universe disappeared behind me.

But it didn’t slow down.

I couldn’t make out anything anymore. It all turned into a blur, but my excitement remained. A new world, a new reality awaited me. I wondered what it would be.

I hope I’ll get a System. Or maybe cultivation. Why not both? Ooh, I hope there’s going to be a harem. There has to be a harem, right? What weapon should I use? Well, swords obviously. And magic. Definitely loads of magic. Oh beloved beautiful Isekai goddess, give me a void and blood affinity.

Something closed rapidly. I’m here! It approached too quickly for me to make out anything. And then it happened, the first thing to go horribly wrong.

Apparently interdimensional portals maintained momentum. I figured this out in a split second, right before crashing headfirst into a rock.

Grogginess filled me and my eyes refused to open, crusted shut. For a moment I couldn’t figure out what was going on until remembrance surfaced. Well, mostly it was sparked by the black outlined beige System-screen taking up my field of vision. Aw yeah, this is the good stuff. There was an entire list of notifications but five in particular caught my eye.

Status unlocked.

Status: BEING EATEN ALIVE!!!

Toughness unlocked.

Toughness +1

Toughness +1

That was when the pain hit. Sharp piercing spikes radiated from my left calf, and then something tore. My eyes shot open and some kind of unholy amalgam of a fish and a stick-figure was hunched over, gnawing on my goddamn leg.

I kicked it with my other foot but it wouldn’t let go. Notifications scrawled in the corner of my vision while I kept stomping it until it finally let go. My leg still carried my weight and both of us rose up to our full height.

It was about half my size, blue skinned and scrawny with jagged yellow teeth. Anger consumed me and I wailed into it, an uppercut with all my might behind it connected squarely on its jaw and knocked it out. It also broke one of my fingers. Between labored, panic induced breaths, I realized something was terribly wrong.

My skin was a tone of grey and strange, white bonelike protrusions emerged from it. In some places it was almost like natural armor, where it covered random parts of my body in plates that dove in and out of my skin.

Checking up on my leg revealed it only bled slightly. The gnawing hadn’t gone that deep and the fish stick monster had apparently been focused on pulling a bit of bone out of the way. Looking around proved fruitless. A thick mist surrounded me, showing nothing but the coarse yellow sand beneath my feet. All my stuff was nowhere to be seen either.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And that’s when my would-be eater woke up and screeched. Wild shrieks suddenly answered from every direction, except behind me. I turned around and saw the vague outline of a sun high on the horizon, and ran like hell.

Or I would’ve except I couldn’t pick up a decent amount of speed no matter what. The shrieks intensified behind me. Nothing weighed me down either, only a half-torn rag covered my waist. System notifications scrolled by but I didn’t have time for them.

Strange roots threaded through the sand, turning the terrain treacherous. Only staring at my footing kept me upright. I ran and ran on bare feet, gaining speed ever so slowly.

My panicked sprint carried me out of the fog, right into the scorching sun. It didn’t matter. I kept going, driven by fear and the will to live. Everything turned into a haze until I finally found a shadowed cubby in a nearby huge sandblasted rock.

Somehow the bleeding on my calf had completely stopped along the way. I could’ve sworn the wound had gotten smaller as well. My attention turned to my System notifications and what they said. Thinking about it brought up the screen.

Interface unlocked.

…

There were a lot of notifications. The gist of it seemed to be that experiencing something for the first time unlocked it, more or less.

My current status showed as idle. Underneath it was a simplified depiction of my body, with numbers on each part. It was weird. My blood showed as 120/125, until it ticked up to 121/125. All my limbs, chest, stomach and head had their own numbers attached, maxing out at 125. Only my left leg and right arm were damaged. Leg sat at 112/125, while my arm was at 118/125.

There were also attributes and skills. My only skills were athletics and martial arts, clocking in at 6 and 3 respectively. Attributes showed a toughness of 4, along with strength and dexterity, both at 2. There were a lot of others in both categories but they had black bars covering them, like redactions in a document.

Sitting down and shifting a bit to get comfortable made me notice a lump in my rags. Hidden within a fold and miraculously still with me despite the frantic escape, I found a sandwich. It was coarse, hard to the touch and had some kind of green paste as filling. But the desperate fleeing had made me hungry and I took a bite.

Disgusting. I nearly spat it out. The damn thing tasted like dust and wood shavings, so dry it nearly scratched my throat. Swallowing it was like forcing down cardboard. I couldn’t bring myself to take another bite yet.

I wanted to think real hard about what was needed to unlock more stats and get my power-ups going but this damn world just refused to cut me some slack.

There was an ever-present heat haze. Combined with the endless dunes littered with random rusty scrap and huge rocks that seemed to be scattered about everywhere, well suffice to say I couldn’t see very far. Someone approached from the distance however and I strained my eyes, trying to make it out. Another notification popped up but I ignored it.

It looked vaguely humanoid and like it was pointing at me. It also shouted something I couldn’t understand. The meaning became clear quickly enough when it emerged out of the shifting blur, with friends no less.

They were human at least, carrying sticks and dressed in rags similar to mine. It wasn’t all we shared either. Aside from the obvious changes, my body also looked heavily malnourished, like I’d been wasting away for some time. In much the same way, the group of raggedy folk approaching me at a run probably missed their last twenty or so meals.

Even though we had something in common, they didn’t seem all that friendly. I got up and tried to speak, sandwich in hand, but they neglected to respond. Instead they yelled something in a strange language and attacked.

The front one tried to smash me with its stick but I weaved away just in time and countered with a punch to the face, sending a spike of pain through my right arm. Clutching it proved a mistake, as the others surrounded me and kept beating me with their sticks. Blows rained down despite my attempts at resistance. Before too long my consciousness faded away amidst screams for help and cries of pain.

I came to an indeterminate amount of time later. Once again, System notifications scrolled by but that was the last thing on my mind. Hunger cramped my stomach and my throat was so dry even breathing hurt. The sandwich was gone. Salvation loomed not too far off however.

An incredibly buff man dressed in white robes had walked right past. The priest-like bodybuilder probably thought I was just a corpse. He carried a book with a strange symbol on it, like a rendition of a sun but with tentacles instead of artistic depictions of spreading light. On his back rested a huge ornate sword shaped like a cross. The blade was long, definitely a two-hander, and had no tip, ending in a flat section. There were others, but this guy looked like he was in charge.

My cry for help turned into a cough, but it caught his attention still. He waved to one of his buddies, or subordinates, and then pointed at me. Finally, a stroke of good luck. I reached out while another ripped guy sauntered over and started rummaging in his backpack. My heart dropped when I saw what he pulled out.

He closed iron shackles connected with a chain around my ankles and locked them with a rusty makeshift key. No, no, no. My trashing and shaking pissed him off, which caused him to pull out a fancy metal stick and smack me in the face with it.

For the third time today, I got knocked out.