The shadows right

In a place both known and unknown to every mortal mind there was a sky. This sky was constructed from a smorgasbord of wishes. From death to godhood. The sky held it all. Below and contrasting this sky was a floor.

This floor was made from the sorrow of wishes unfulfilled. The failed CEO. The failed god. Every failure. Every shattered fantasy was held there.

Next came the air. The air was constructed of something in between wishes and failures. Half successes. The demigods. The people who died only in body but not in spirit. The CEO who made millions but only from their failure.

Of course logically. That place was the most massive.

Within all that there were shadows. Four to be exact. One was constructed of flickering black lines that twined around each other and constantly faded in and out of existence. It had no face. There were only the lines constructing it. It was on its hands and knees and pierced through its torso were an uncountable and ever-shifting number of shining spikes.

Standing around this flickering shadow were three flowing shadows. The darkness made them flow like a stream. They had white smiles carved onto their faces and white dots for their eyes.

The three of them varied in height. One was the size of a small child. One was the size of an average adult. And one was a towering giant.

The shadow made from lines tried to pull itself to its feet with faltering force, only for the three smiling shadows to create spikes of light from their dot eyes. They stabbed the shadow again.

The shadow collapsed to the ground. Again, it tried to stand, for it knew that to stand meant agony. But to fall meant certain death.

It would survive. It would suffer.

Because that’s what it had always done.

……..

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John jolted away from his pile of rubble. His brow was covered in a cold sweat and his lips quivered with fear.

“FUCK!” John screamed to the sky.

He did not have even the vaguest idea of what that dream meant. But what he knew for sure was that it could not be good. So he screamed the most appropriate word to his current situation.

That word was fuck of course.

“CHARA Skan de!”

John turned his head in the direction of the sound. There, atop a pile of rubble was a dragon. It looked at John with its sharp eyes.

John stared at the dragon for a second. He was frozen solid.

~It’s going to kill me! It’s going to kill me!~

The weight of John’s fear was so insurmountable that he couldn’t even muster the courage to speed shuffle away.

The dragon opened its mouth. John could see the fire gathering at its throat. And it’s fangs glistening. The sight quickly soothed John of his fear. He spun around on his back foot and shuffled away as quickly as possible.

John slowly approached a pile of rubble. With as much force as possible, he shuffled behind it.

The second he thought he was behind cover John collapsed onto the ground.

~The dragon will leave me alone now right?~

It had to. Although for an average person, John would be moving at a slow jog or a fast walk. For him, it was an all-out, soul-shattering sprint. So he couldn’t even muster the strength to stand right about now.

“I sure hope so,” John said to himself.

That was all he could do. Hope…

……

Travel log Day two

I found myself quite gobsmacked when the creature that I had seen when I took Bob’s retarded deal to enter this world was standing over me.

It might have been watching me sleep. Just the thought gives me chills.

I threatened it with my breath weapon and it walked away.

I don’t know why but for some reason it elected to walk rather than run when it saw me. It also breathed quite heavily while walking away. I’m guessing it’s some kind of ritual that they use to scare their enemies.

Well, I hate to break it to you! I AM NOT AFRAID! I’m a badass dragon. I don’t feel fear. I definitely don’t feel fear.

Anyways I plan to wake up at midnight tomorrow night to see if it really was watching me sleep. If it is then I’ll kill it. Hopefully, I’ll be fine.

………..

John looked to the ground. His eyes glinted with hopelessness.

Sometimes, it just takes time to sink in. But now it had sunk within John’s shadow. In his shadow was death itself. With every step he took it would follow him. If he turned his head it would turn with him. If he ran from it it would be there running at his side.

Right now John was in the middle of a warzone. Things might be quiet now but death would always be around the corner. And there was only one way to increase his odds of survival.

“No matter how many times I think about it. It always circles back to strength. I have to get stronger. For me. For my mother.”

John stood up. He walked through piles of rubble and hundreds of charred corpses. He searched for only one thing. Good food.

……..

After a few hours of searching, John found a well-cooked but not too burnt alien. The well-cooked aliens provided John with the most energy. So they are always the ones he tried to eat.

{100,000 calories consumed. +1 to strength and toughness.}

John smiled. At this rate, he would be able to grow strong very quickly. He did the math. His strength and height modifiers meant that gaining one stat point a day would actually he the equivalent of gaining more than ten stat points.

That effectively means that he would be the strength of one additional person each week. He could quickly become a one-man army.

{ERROR! OVERCONSUMPTION DETECTED. STAT POINT GAIN COOLDOWN FOR TROLL ACTIVATED! Remaining time: 14 days.}

John looked at the blue screen in front of him. There was a simmering anger on his face.

“SHIT!”