Chapter 1 - Epicenter
Joe wakes up on a field of charred earth, smoke filling the air making it hard to see and irritating his eyes. He feels like he was hit by a bus. Which makes him think to himself, “Was I hit by a bus?” Finally getting his eyes to focus, Joe looks around to see hundreds of burnt piles of flesh. Then the smell hits him, the horrendous smell of burning flesh as well as other things rather left unsaid. Then, he looks down at himself and notices he is covered in burns. As he starts to panic he notices the burns on his body are quickly fading away as his skin pulls over the exposed flesh.
“What the hell is going on.” Joe thinks aloud. Not thinking much about his change in voice as he has other things on his mind. Panic hits him, taking in deep breaths he starts to choke on smoke and ash. He steadies himself and a rush of questions come to him. What was he doing before he blacked out? How did he end up here? How does he get out of here? Is this a dream? Then these are cut short as he looks at the back of his hand. Have you ever heard the saying ‘know like the back of my hand’? Yeah. “This is not my hand. Well, there are some similarities, but, the scars, the freckles, even the shade seams to be off .” The first thing he noticed was the lack of a scar next to his thumb that his old cat, Spade, had kindly given him. “Ha, that was one mean ass cat.” he chuckles to himself reminiscing. Then, he snaps back to the scene around him.
“Ok!” Joe huffs out as he tries to stand up, the last pieces of his body stitching together. His balance off, as well as being still shaken from the surrounding scene, he falls back down on his bottom. Then he realizes another issue with his current state, “I’m also naked.” Looking around Joe does not see any kind of life, just death and flat lands. Not going to get anywhere just sitting there, he decides to attempt getting up and moving again. This time a flood of broken memories throws him off. Memories that seem to have been pushed to the back of his mind are there but trying to be forgotten. “What the hell is going on?” he thinks clinching his head and stumbling once more. Just as he thinks he won’t bust his ass again, a translucent screen pops in front of his face startling him and causing him to once more land on his butt. Text, red as blood or a big fat error message wanting to get your attention, flashs on the screen.
[World Error: 42 - Unidentified Lifeform]
Another, less angry, message replaces the red error as he finishes reading it.
[New lifeform detected. Species Unknown. Recalculating Ascension Status.]
“This world is determined to keep me down on my bare ass.” Joe thinks as he finally manages to stand. He then tries to brush off his back side, only to smear soot across it.“This system seems to be provided by the world and I can manipulate the notifications with my thoughts, but how do I know that? Ah, my head is pounding and there seems to be memories that are not mine in my head.” Joe tries willing the recalculating notice to the corner of his vision. “Ha, seems I’m getting some use of this headache inducing info at least. Is this some kind of dream?” He looks around once more, his stomach churning from the surrounding carnage. “It looks like I’m near the epicenter of where some massive explosion took place. Best to move away from this and then figure out more of what's going on.” Picking a random direction he begins his journey.
As he walks, Joe sees several more mangled corpses. They are still too mangled to salvage their clothing, what little is left of it. He could now tell that they wore some kind of armor though, as the more reinforced parts of the garments were now visible. A little farther Joe finds a mangled group where four corpses surround one. The one in the center being slightly less mangled, but still very much dead. While his clothing was still destroyed, he seemed to be carrying a backpack that is mostly intact. Joe, desperate, pulls the backpack off the mangled body but finds himself feeling sick again from the carnage. “Gotta keep it together Joe.” He tells himself aloud, and swallows deeply.
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Digging through the belongings, he finds some coarse cloth clothes, a short rope, a filled water skin, and some dry bread that somehow managed to survive wrapped in a thin cloth. The clothes, loose, cover him and he uses the short rope to cinch them to his body. The backpack is in no condition for him to use or want to use, as some flesh bits are still attached. Instead he ties the water skin to his rope belt and just carries the wrapped bread with him.
Walking a little farther, Joe finds a loose dagger not covered in remains, assuming it must have fallen from someone’s waist before they got caught in this death trap. He picks it up quickly wanting to get far away from here. He didn’t bother picking up the other weapons he had passed as he was not familiar with the sword and he didn’t know if his stomach could take much more of the scene. He was only able to grab the backpack out of desperation.
Once again Joe starts on his path, a little more prepared and not naked. After a while of walking, he hadn’t seen any more corpses but the destruction of the area was still visible, though lessening. The scene being a little less morbid, allowed his mind to work again and start questioning his situation. “I have not seen a living person or animal yet. I guess the explosion scared them away? What would make me think up such a horrible scene? Is this really a dream? It seems too real.” At this point Joe knew this was no dream, his emotions were just not ready for that realization yet.
Just as Joe was coming to the end of the destroyed area a new notification had appeared. Before he was able to focus on it though, he felt dizzy. Once again the memories in the back of his mind stirred. Images flashed in his mind of strange creatures being confronted by armored men. Then images of people throwing odd balls of light and fire. Joe sways a bit and blinks trying to refocus his vision, a sharp pain presses down on Joe’s head. Seeming to start at his temples, the pain pierces through to the back of his skull and down throughout his body. A scream leaves his throat. Then, he falls to the ground. With screams of agony, darkness overtakes him. Joe falls face down into the dirt, unconscious.
Joe wakes up, unsure of how long he was out. He pushes himself up to see the sky has started to darken as the light of the sun is barely glowing from behind a distant mountain range. Several new flashes indicating notifications rest at the corner of his vision and pull Joe’s attention. He focuses on the first and starts to read through them.
[Lifeform categorized as HUMANOID. Species is undefined, similarities with: Human(Tor), Human(Otherworlder), Construct(Magic). Calculating Species.]
[Species designated as World Seed. Lifeform identified as UNIQUE.]
As Joe was reading the notification he stopped for a moment pondering what “World Seed” meant, and a new line of text appeared in a box next to the name.
[World Seed: Due to the intervention of magic and overlapping species blueprints a new and unique lifeform was created. As there is no claim to this new life, World has claimed the creation and given it a name.]
Joe continues to read the rest of the notifications with his heart racing. He wondered what he had gotten himself into and how he was going to get out of it. Then reassured himself it has to just be a dream and he should just play along until he wakes up. “Yeah that’s what I’ll do, just play along till I wake up…” Joe thinks to himself and continues.
[Ascension Status incomplete.
Mind and Body blueprints unstable.
Calculating.]
[Dumping incomplete data cache.
Dump successful.]
[Configuring new Blueprint.
Errors found in the structure of mana pathways.
Rewriting blueprint, World approval requested.]
[Revised Blueprint received from World.
Blueprint Compatibility check: Passed
Activating Blueprint Implementation.]
[Blueprint Successful.
World Seed base brueprint updated.]
[Calculating Ascension Status...]
As Joe finished reading the notifications, he noticed the fading thoughts and headache seem to have passed. This only let his own thoughts continue to run through questions though. “What the hell is this “World”? Or this world even? How did I get here? Why? There is so much I just don’t understand, and I’m beginning to think that the worst may be true. This might not be a dream.” Joe sighs and then tells himself “Alright Joe, lets pull it together now! Questions can wait until I get somewhere safe. Hopefully safe exists. Ok, let’s get up. And, march on in this video game hellscape.”