The first thing that Max noticed when he exited his apartment was how much louder the rumbling from outside was.
The walls for each of the apartments were fairly well sound-proof, mainly because it would be hell to live here if he had to listen to all 11 people on his floor, as well as the other rooms above and below him 24/7, which meant that now that he was out of the padded area, it was a lot louder.
His apartment was only on the second floor, so he only had one flight of stairs to go before he reached the ground floor, so he hurried towards them, an eerie feeling following him through the hallway.
Shuffling echoed from above and below him… as if people were walking around really slowly. He felt a pit enter his stomach as years of reading and watching stuff featuring various kinds of monsters flew through his mind.
Ideas about what could be waiting for him in the lobby flew through his head as he slowly picked up speed, his steps turning into a jog as the noises around him got louder and louder.
He hesitated for a moment when he reached the bottom of the stairs, dreading what he was about to see in the lobby, the sound of rustling so similar to the noises he’d heard in zombie games and shows.
‘Alright, cmon Max. You gotta at least get out of the building. Once you’re outside you can hunt down a TEST FRACTURE and then you’ll have your feet under you. From there… fuck, I’ll have to just wing it.’
He sucked in a deep breath, readied his cricket bat, holding it like a club, and charged around the corner, into the front lobby, coming face to face with… a giant plant? As he looked around the lobby, he was able to match the rustling noises he had been hearing since he exited his apartment with the giant leaves of the gigantic plant that had seemed to sprout from every possible entrance into the room, even breaking through the wall and floor in some parts.
It was a greenish-blue colour, with silvery white spines in the leaves, and it was the coolest-looking plant that Max had ever seen. It also helped hammer home the reality that Mana was a thing now, and that shit was different on a fundamental level.
A realisation he honestly expected to have a few more times, assuming he survived that long.
He started moving towards where the entrance of his apartment building used to be, the automatic sliding doors having been torn off their tracks by the plant’s (presumably) sudden and rapid growth. There was luckily enough of a gap for him to be able to squeeze out, but it might be a tough fit.
Before he could reach the exit, however, he spotted something sparkling in the corner of his sight, and this time it wasn’t an unremovable blue dot. Stopping in place, he looked over at the sparkle and blinked in wonder at the fruit that the plant seemed to have grown.
He moved towards the fruit, climbing the massive roots filling the lobby area to reach it. When he was finally right next to it, he was able to see that it was about the size of three apples put together and shone with the purity of polished steel.
Reaching out, he grabbed the fruit on instinct, and when he did, his SYSTEM pulsed, a small box appearing in the lower middle of his vision.
Special Item Obtained!
Max nearly jumped out of his skin as the silver fruit in his hand started to evaporate, the silver dust it created diving into his chest, going straight through his clothing and armour as if it were nothing.
After the dust had fully disappeared inside him, he felt himself… solidify? Kinda? A weird feeling of invincibility flooded through his body, before fading away just as quickly. It left him with tingles all over, and even he could sense that something had just happened to his body, even with nothing like this ever happening to him before.
Silver Spirit Fruit Absorbed!
Spirit fruits are created when Fruit-bearing plants are exposed to extreme levels of Mana, exceeding their natural resistances, but somehow survive.
They are known to increase the user’s stats by 1 permanently, the stat in question marked by the colour of the fruit.
[Silver] Spirit Fruits affect Endurance.
Max’s eyebrows raised as he read the box that had appeared after the dust was completely gone… if he trusted the blue box, which he had no reason not to trust right now, with the crazy stuff going on, he had absorbed the Silver fruit thing… and it had made him more durable?
He pulled up the menu from before just to double check, and nodded to himself when he saw his ‘stats’.
Maxwell Clark
[Class]: None
[Level]: 0
[Stats]:
* Strength: 1
* Dexterity: 1
* Endurance: 2
* Intelligence: 1
* Charisma: 1
* Luck: 1
[Ability List]
> None
[Spell List]
>
[Equipment]
> None
There it was, the number next to his ‘Endurance’ stat had gone up by 1! ‘Obviously I can’t say anything for sure right now, but I would never say that being more durable could be a bad thing.’
Now that his shock had worn off from the fruit disappearing on him, he looked back up to the plant that had created the fruit. Whatever sort of luck smiled upon his was more than welcome, and he was grateful for the help right at the very start.
Placing a hand on the plant, he closed his eyes, feeling a little silly as he mentally sent it his thanks for the fruit. He didn’t know if the plant was sentient, but if the world had been ‘modified’ by the existence of MANA and magic, he wasn’t going to risk disrespecting the first magical thing he interacted with.
Now, without any more distractions left for him in his apartment building, Max made his way over to the front door of the building, squeezed through the gap between the roots and the door frame, and landed with a thud outside the building.
As he coughed, feeling a bit winded after landing on his back, he stared at the sky. It was bright, and it was blue, with only the occasional cloud interrupting it. Honestly, he was a little underwhelmed by how little the sky had changed, but it was when he pushed himself into a sitting position that his mind was truly blown.
“Holy shit.”
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Just yesterday, the landscape had been urban with a bushland coating, the standard fare for his inner-city Canberra apartments.
The SYSTEM seemed to think that wasn’t cool enough for the new world or something like that because almost everything around his building had changed. Gone were tall buildings, 4-lane roads, and inconvenient sets of traffic lights.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Instead what greeted him seemed right out of a comic. Seemingly endless bushland was interrupted by plants of almost every colour he could think of, and the blue mountains, which had usually just peeked over the top of the horizon, had somehow shot upwards, disappearing into the clouds, their surfaces becoming like their namesake, a deep royal blue.
But closer to where he was standing… all he could really call them were ruins. Hundreds of meters surrounding his building were filled with broken-down ruins of the city block he had lived on.
Everything from about… the third floor and up seemed to have shattered or broken, somehow, with concrete blocks, broken pipes, and still-sparking wires, what he assumed to be the remains of those upper floors, covering what used to be the road through the city.
And then there was the fact that the area he lived in was not somehow on a higher part of the landscape than before. Had… had the SYSTEM fucked with the actual layout of the world itself?
He was definitely still in ‘Canberra’, judging off the fact that he could see the blue mountains, but that just meant that his building’s location within Canberra had been shifted, while still keeping the surrounding landscape looking seamless…
‘Holy shit, the SYSTEM is working on a level beyond anything I’ve ever even heard of before…’
He stayed there for a few moments, just allowing the reality of his situation to sink in for a moment, his mind feeling as if it was on fire trying to process all of this. But before he could spiral, he was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of padding footsteps.
Multiple sets of them.
He felt himself instinctively tense up as he gripped his Cricket bat, holding it out in front of himself like a sword, as the padding footsteps got closer and closer. And then, jumping on top of the nearby rubble, arrived the first animal he had seen since waking up.
He felt himself suck in a panicked breath as a pair of things that looked vaguely like dogs appeared. Their bodies were pitch black, their eyes glowing a menacing green glow, and it looked like their front legs had gained another section to them, standing them up a little more upright, and making them look lanky and just plain wrong.
Max shot to his feet, taking a couple of steps away from them. Could he get away before they noticed him? They seemed to be only interested in a broken drain pipe nearby that was leaking water, their bodies emitting a strange noise as they lapped at the stream. It was as if someone had both sped up and deepened the usual growl of a dog, and it grated on his ears.
He crouched and moved slowly away from the pair of dog-like monsters… because that was all he could think to call them, and he had almost gotten them out of his line of sight when his foot slipped on a loose bit of rubble, sending it crashing down in front of him.
He was able to stabilise himself, stopping himself from falling down the hill of concrete and pipes, but he still winced at the sheer level of noise that the tumbling rubble made on its way down.
‘Oh, C'mon! I’ve seen this happening in shows, but seriously?!’
His hands gripped his Cricket bat even tighter as he heard a sharp, whining noise escape the two monsters, and he turned to peek over the edge of the rubble to see them slowly moving towards him.
‘Fuck!’
With stealth no longer an option, Max took a deep breath and started running. He was close to the bottom of the hill made out of the rubble, so he pushed himself to jump down the last of the hill, his knees bending to absorb the impact, before he started sprinting.
He’d always been fast, and even with himself as laden down with gear as he was, he was still fast. But even his above-average speed didn’t seem to be enough, as one of the dog monsters howled, sounding as if it was even closer than before.
‘Alright, Max. It looks like you’re not going to be able to run from these. You’re just going to have to fight them.’
His breathing was steady and his legs weren’t sore yet, his years of playing high-level Cricket making him rather fit, so he was pretty confident that he could keep running if it was going to work, but with the speed, these dog monsters were showing it would be better for him to turn and face them.
Especially since he didn’t know what he was running towards, the new, magical bushland surrounding his building was likely even worse than the already dangerous bushland of before.
The dog monsters were still on his tail, and he had been worried that trying to turn to them normally would allow them to catch up to him before he was ready, but spotting a still-intact signpost coming up ahead of him gave him the opportunity he was looking for.
Holding his Cricket Bat in his left hand for a moment, Max reached out with his right as he sprinted by, grabbing onto the pole, and allowing himself to swing around it, his feet leaving the ground for a second due to the speed of his rotation.
He spotted the two black silhouettes of the dog monsters shoot past where he had been as he spun, and if he had time, he would have likely realised that he had been moments from being pounced on, but he didn’t have time to think.
He let go of the pole once he had done a 180, and tumbled to the ground, rolling as best he could to protect himself, and rolled to his feet. The dog monsters had luckily been going fast enough that they couldn’t turn easily, and he even saw one slam into a tree as it tried to stop, letting out an unholy screech as one of its elongated front legs snapped in half, hanging limping by the skin.
Unfortunately, the other dog monster was more than ready to attack him, and attack him it did. It charged him again, letting out a similarly angry roar from its mouth, and Max was forced to duck a swing from its paw, its long front legs allowing it to swipe at him slightly earlier than he had expected.
The claws of the dog monster scraped against the top of his Cricket helmet, but luckily the helmet was actually good quality and held up under its attack. Unfortunately, the graze threw him off slightly, causing him to stumble away from the dog monster as it recovered from its swipe, turning and facing him again.
“Hey there, Fido. Surely you could just… go help your buddy, right? Leave me alone and go help your friend?”
Max didn’t know what he was doing, trying to talk to the dog monster, but he was running on pure instinct at the moment, and his mouth was moving on its own. He could still hear the second dog monster behind him whining and scraping around the ground, immobilised by its broken front leg, but he couldn’t count on it to stay down forever.
The dog monster wound its head back again, and Max darted to his right, the teeth along the bottom jaw of the surprisingly quick monster grazing his jacket, small sparks being released as it was repelled by his makeshift ‘armour’.
The dog monster kept moving slightly past him, its momentum carrying it forward. He had braced himself for its attack this time however, staying upright enough to follow up his dodge with a swing of his cricket bat, aiming for the slight dip at the base of the dog monster’s neck.
He’d never actually fought anything like this before, so he was basically just guessing at what would do the most damage, but what creature had a neck that wasn’t a weak spot?
There was a sickening crunch as hit cricket bat made contact with the dog monster, and it roared at him, causing him to take a couple of steps backwards in fear as it writhed around for a moment, having fallen over, its front legs splayed out in front of it.
Max’s breathing was shallow and quick as he quickly glanced up at his cricket bat, which was now covered in what he could only assume to be a type of slightly glowing blue blood, which he quickly shook off the bat. The fact that the dog monster was wriggling and screaming at him was also a pretty clear sign that he hadn’t killed it with his attack, but…
It also wasn’t moving its back legs anymore, and it didn’t seem to be able to push itself upright with its overly-long front legs. Had he damaged its neck, or its spine, or something enough to immobilise it?
Glancing behind him quickly, he saw that the second dog monster was still lying on the ground as well, facing the same issue, being unable to push itself up with only the one front leg.
“Phew… I guess you guys are just quick, with no [Endurance]? That makes sense, right?”
Again, he wasn’t expecting to get a response from the pair of disabled dog monsters, and he didn’t receive one either. With both of them unable to move, and therefore unable to really do anything to him, a large part of him wanted to just… bolt.
Run away, be done with these guys, and go find a TEST FRACTURE to complete. That would be the logical option, and the one that came with the least amount of risk, because attacking them again meant getting closer, which would put him back in their biting range, probably…
Unfortunately, Max really liked dogs.
He had since his parents had gotten him his first corgi almost 17 years ago. Man, Cheddar had been such a good dog… Shaking his head, Max removed the thoughts of his beloved corgi out of his head, his mind refocusing. His breathing was still pretty quick, and the pitiful whining noises the dog monsters were releasing grated on his ears.
Yes, these dog monster things had just tried to kill him. Yes, they would try to do so again when he got closer. But… he really couldn’t stand seeing the pair of them suffering so badly, especially since he had directly injured one himself.
“Fuck. Damnit! You two better be damn grateful… god, this is stupid.”
Before he knew it, he had made up his mind, the first step towards the nearest dog monster having already been taken, his cricket bat gripped tightly in his hands. This first one would be the easier of the two, being unable to lunge at him due to its useless back legs, but it was still terrifying.
He did his best to drown out the noises it was making as he approached it from behind, avoiding the frantic swipes from its front legs. He took a deep breath, grabbed his cricket bat with both hands, and swung one more time.
And at least one set of whines stopped completely.
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His hands were shaky as he walked, so he had stuffed his cricket bat in between his backpack and his makeshift ‘armour’.
He wasn’t armed, but he still had the taste of bile in the back of his throat from what he had done, even if it was necessary, so he kinda didn’t want to be at the moment. He had been walking for about 2 hours after he’d ‘defeated’ the dog monsters and moved on, and he was only just finally starting to feel the shock wearing off.
It didn’t help that everywhere he looked, he could see the signs of magic having fucked with reality.
He’d reached a river about ten minutes back, and had been shocked to see that the ‘water’ was bright purple, and seemed to dissolve anything that went into it. Unable to cross it, he was forced to travel along its edge and look for a way past.
He had been half expecting to get a level-up for ‘defeating’ the dog monsters or something, but there was nothing. They hadn’t vanished or anything either, like the Silver Spirit Fruit had.
“I guess I really do have to get a [Class] or something before I can use the SYSTEM fully…”
He was slightly worried about his sudden new habit to talk to himself, but he was currently in the middle of the bush, which could be dangerous even without it being magically altered, and he was under just a smidgen of stress.
But before he could really think about it, however, his gaze was drawn upwards by a bright flash of purple light. His cricket helmet had a bit of a brim on it, luckily, which stopped the light from hurting his eyes too much, and allowed him to see the purple flash turn into a beam of light heading straight down.
TEST FRACTURE Located!
Current Distance to TEST FRACTURE: 250 metres.
Max sucked in a deep breath as the message flared in his vision.
This was it.