After an indeterminate period, Melvin finally regained consciousness, but he still felt very disoriented and groggy. He felt as if he had just woken up from a very long strange dream that he could barely remember.
His eyes felt heavy, and after some struggle, he managed to pry them open. Once he stopped fighting to open them and paid attention to other things, he was overwhelmed by a dual onslaught of pain and nausea that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Fixing his gaze on the cloudless morning sky, a heaviness settled over his eyes once again, tempting them to shut. The presence of a potent odor, the worst he had ever smelled in his life, wafted through his nostrils, making his situation even worse.
His mind struggled to make sense of the flood of sensations, leaving him in a state of confusion, unlike anything he had ever experienced. He had never felt this intense sense of discomfort before as he flowed through these seemingly endless negative stats.
"Ughh.. what is happening..." A weary voice reached his ears, shocking him. He knew he had just spoken, but the tone of voice felt different from his usual mature voice.
He tried to raise his hand, only to be hit by another bout of pain before a small smooth hand, quite different from his own, rose in front of his eyes.
Lying on his back, disoriented, and struggling to comprehend his surroundings, he decided to stand up hoping that it would help. With determination to fight the pain and discomfort, he pushed against the strangely soft ground with his palms, trying to leverage himself upright.
However, as he shifted his weight to one side, his right hand lost its grip, causing him to lose his balance and fall awkwardly. The sudden movement intensified the pain coursing through his body, leaving him momentarily stunned.
Opening his eyes again, he was greeted by a pervasive light brown color, the source of which remained a mystery. The soft ground beneath him added to his confusion. Unconsciously moving his head to the right for a clearer view, he was petrified by the scene before him. Melvin had never seen such a disturbing sight. A headless, rotten corpse surrounded by an unholy amount of green-headed flies.
Trying to understand more, his eyes darted left and right, but all he could see around him were corpses—men, women, old, young—all filling the area. His surroundings were blocked by deep, earthen brown, rough walls. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he realized with a start that he was in a pit—a burial pit, filled with the remains of the dead.
He also realized that the earlier light brown color obscuring his sight was cheap fabric draped over another corpse, whose back had inadvertently become his focus when he fell.
The air was thick with the stench of decay, and he could hear the faint buzz of flies. It was a sea of bodies, piled haphazardly atop one another, their faces twisted in expressions of agony and despair.
Beneath him lay a layer of dead bodies, causing him to fall due to the unsteady footing. Before panic could set in, an even more unexpected sight unfolded.
Golden bold characters materialized out of nowhere, forming a peculiar language that, inexplicably, he could comprehend.
[Unlocked Legendary Class: Rune Mythomancer]
[Triggered Quest: Weave the True Rune of Jacob The Snake's Death.]
...
"What's this? 'Legendary Class, Jacob's Death?'" Melvin's gaze fixated on the bold, golden characters before him. Confusion washed over him, replacing the initial panic that had surged within.
He understood the meaning of each word separately, but their combination left him bewildered. Moreover, the sudden appearance of these words felt surreal, as if he were hallucinating.
A dull ache emanated from his hand, which he used to steady himself and prevent further tilting to the side. Struggling to understand the situation, Melvin returned to his previous position, lying atop another elderly man whose protruding pelvic bone caused extreme discomfort to his back.
Attempting to distract himself from the discomfort and nausea creeping up his throat, Melvin focused once more on the golden, bold characters. His attention honed in on the first word before another startling development unfolded.
Before him materialized a sizable interface reminiscent of a video game, with a pitch-black background that obstructed his visibility to what lay beyond. Golden characters filled the interface, creating an enigmatic display before his eyes.
***
Name: Melvin Miller(Jacob)
Age: 25(19)
Status: [Poisoned] - [???]
Class: Rune Mythomancer(Legendary)
Class: None
Tier: Initiate
Rank: 1(0%)
Titles: [The Heretic] | [The Storyteller's Charm]
Health Points, HP: 33/60
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Mana Points, MP: 30/30
Stamina Points, SP: 36/36
Mental Energy, ME: 25/25
Vitality: 6
Strength: 7
Agility: 11
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5
Charisma: 4
Available Stats Points: 0
Skills: [Storyweaver, Lv1]
Ongoing Quest: [Jacob The Snake's Death]
Resistances: None
***
'Whaaat?!' Is the thought that kept echoing through his mind as his eyes darted left to right reading through the whole interface, and at the end of it, his mouth widened in shock. All of his previous fears, discomforts, and pains both physiological and psychological seemed to be pushed into the back burner in the face of this mind-boggling sight.
His gears were rapidly turning in an attempt to make some sense of this situation but to no avail.
Simultaneously, the fact that his vision was entirely consumed by the interface, leaving him unable to see anything beyond its confines, and his already building anxiety prompted him to reflexively flail his arms in a futile attempt to remove it. However, his efforts proved fruitless, intensifying the rapid thudding of his heart in response.
Surprisingly, the moment his mind moved to the reactionary thought of, 'I don't want this', the interface instantly disappeared into thin air as if what he had been seeing was but a figment of his imagination.
Breathing in the god-awful stench Melvin tried to calm down his loudly beating heart, and slowly but surely his heartbeat slowed down and he rested in that state for a minute or so.
Fortunately, his mind which had already seemed too exhausted for pointless and incoherent fears finally did something of substance and started connecting some dots.
What caught his attention was not just the remarkable event that left the deepest imprint on his memory that day; it was, without a doubt, the most absurd encounter he had experienced in his nearly three decades of life: his conversation with the being that rescued him from the Gods.
As he slowly went through it once again, his current situation started to make some sense when those factors were taken into consideration. He gazed blankly at the cloudless blue sky, deep in thought. "It did mention the existence of advanced worlds, granting access to unimaginable power," he murmured to himself, recalling the being's concluding speech about whether he deserved something.
A bold and shocking realization finally dawned on him, but when he thought about his current situation and the things he had read in that interface it seemed more and more plausible, 'Am I in that world that has access to power? And the power came in the form of an interface like a game?'
When he thought about that, he knew that to get any substantial answers he had to study that interface once again. Yet, the method eluded him. Nonetheless, as he reflected on the events leading to its disappearance, a glimmer of possibility rose in his mind.
He began visualizing the black interface in front of him in the backdrop of the cloudless sky, and sure enough, his guess turned out to be correct and it once again blinked into existence in front of him.
The first thing he locked his gaze on was none other than the name between the parenthesis after his.
Name: Melvin Miller(Jacob)
Age: 25(19)
How could he not understand that this body wasn't his after noticing the different lighter skin tones, and the smooth smaller hands? A stark contrast from his previously manly rough hands, and sun-tanned skin from endless outdoor pursuits under the relentless sun.
Similarly, his formerly neatly trimmed light brown hair had been replaced with a cascade of black locks, now evident from the corners of his eyes.
'Is Jacob the previous owner of this body?' The question was naturally rhetorical and it was simply a way for him to voice out his astonishment and his inability to process the reality of the matter regardless of the obvious evidence.
When he saw the age below the name he continued, 'He must've been 19 years old.'
At the same time, this also explained to him another important matter, and when he thought about it, a new interface appeared in front of his face that had a light golden background with black characters that he could see the black interface through.
***
Quest Name: Jacob The Snake's Death.
Objective: Find out the story behind the death of Jacob The Snake and create a Life Rune around it.
***
'I need to find out why this young man died. But what does creating a Life Rune around it means?' This time it didn't take him long to realize what this might mean as he immediately connected it to another thing that he wasn't able to comprehend in the main interface.
Skills: [Storyweaver, Lv1]
When he focused his eyes on that seemingly clickable skill, another very small interface appeared in front of him.
[Storyweaver(Level 1): The user can grasp the essence of a story and extract runes from it. The attributes and effects of these runes are dependent upon various factors, including the narrative's weight, way of writing, details, and the materials employed in the process.]
For some reason, the moment this particular interface was in front of him, he felt as if his mind was absorbing some foreign knowledge that appeared out of nowhere enabling him to understand exactly what the skill meant, and not just that he understood even the crafting process of some of the necessary materials.
In essence, he had to create both the ink using a special method, and then he had to write a story using it with a Quill on a piece of parchment.
Once all of that was done, he would be able to use the skill using his mental energy to weave the story into a rune that would have some attributes. Then, he could infuse those runes into both living beings and inanimate objects.
He also instinctively felt that the limit of runes this new body of his could hold was three, and everything else could only hold a single one.
'What?!' To say Melvin was shocked by the power he was holding would be an understatement, and he finally understood the full weight of what the being meant when he said people from advanced worlds had the opportunity to reach a godly level of power.
Even he at this level was capable of such astonishing feats, and he couldn't help but feel some trepidation in his heart when he recollected how he was insulting those people with seemingly god-like powers, and the fact that the being who helped him, said they would be looking for him only made things more terrifying for him.
However, he quickly dismissed those thoughts because something had been tugging at his mind for a while now, and he just dreaded even thinking about it.
Gritting his teeth, he focused his eyes on the Status section, and soon new windows opened offering deeper explanations about his current state.
[Poisoned: You are currently under the influence of a lethal toxin. Immediate treatment is required to prevent death.]
[???: Through an unknown power, the poison inside your body stopped running. The protective effect is temporary and will dissipate in 1 hour and 47 minutes.]