"mhm"
A young man grumbles as he tries to find a comfortable position to sleep in his bed. However much he tries, he just feels more uncomfortable. The young man looks like he is in his 20s. He has an olive skin tone, an average build, and messy hair.
"what the.."
He said as he noticed something when he tried to get up from bed. The bed wasn't a bed, it was... sand. As he adjusted his eyes and looked around he saw mounds of white alabaster sand. That didn't seem to end as far as the eye could see.
"Where am I !" he rubbed his eyes.
"Huh," he let out a confused sound as his mind started to race.
What was this place?
How did he end up here?
What happened to him?
These thoughts surged through his mind as he looked around frantically.
"Okay…. Have I finally lost it?"
He said as he jolted up from sitting position. He started pacing around on the sand trying to figure out what happened. Then he said in a not-so-sure voice.
"I was in my bed a moment ago... wasn't I."
"Sure I was drunk but I clearly remember getting in my house after Mike dropped me off," he said as he looked at himself and saw the clothes he was wearing when he entered the Bar he must have slept without changing it.
After a while of frantically pacing around he stopped as a thought struck his mind.
"ohhh..... I.. get it, this is... this is.. a prank. Ya, that must be it" he said grinning weirdly. He tried to rationalize his condition.
"Hey guys get out, you aren't as slick as you thought!!!"
He shouted, but the shout fell on deaf ears.
"HEY!!! This isn't funny Mike...Zu ....Eli... am not joking! Or maybe it's a VR" he said as he tried to grab the VR gear of his face to no avail.
He kept shouting once again nobody heard him. He continued to scream his lungs out until he heard a shuffling near the mound where he was standing. He was startled at first but he let his guard down after a little time.
"You guys really got me"
He said as he approached the mound.
A few seconds later the sand shifted and something shot out lunging at him, he was only able to react by falling back. As he adjusted to see what lunged at him, he saw... a scorpion, but not like he had seen before (on TV at least) the thing was huge the size of his torso, covered in what seemed like metal armor that he only knew in video games.
"What the fu..."
He didn't get to finish his curse when the thing attacked him, scurrying to his feet he backed up from the abomination. The thing persisted in its attack.
"AAAAHHHH!!"
He screamed as the scorpion got one of his legs with one of its pincers. His leg started to bleed.
He quickly kicked the scorpion and turned back and started to run. That didn't stop the thing from following with a clear intention of murder. He continued running as fast as he could. Terrified of the scorpion thing.
After running for a while He looked back while still going forward and he saw two scorpions not that far from him.
"What, there are two now, shit, What the fuck is happening, " He said as he continued running away, after a while he grew more tired but the scorpions were still following him, his breath was getting laboured his legs were moving in a sloppy way.
"I cant" he said, breathing heavily with his speed decreasing, Then suddenly he fell forward, he had stumbled on something, he rolled down a big mound of sand speeding down as he approached the foot of the mound.
"AH" he said as he stopped he suddenly stopped after hitting a protruding boulder, then he felt sick in his stomach, he turned around and puked all the drinks he had a few hours ago. Then he lied down on his back away from his puke and looked up at the sky
"Oh god, it hurts, " he said, looking at the stars and holding his left arm. He was tired, half drunk, and the collision with the stone wrecked his left arm.
"I have to get up quick or they might catch me" he said as he tried to get up using the stone he collided with as a crutch, but then he noticed something on the stone there was a drawing or rather a carving of a circle with 12 lines coming from its centre outwards with symbols carved in the gaps between the lines. When he focused on it he felt something. He heard a whisper coming from his left side, he jumped up in terror and turned around to find no one near him. He turned back to the symbol and he heard more whispers, he turned around still not finding any one.
"What is this thing" he mumbled as his hand approached the symbol to touch it, then he felt like everything around him turning darker, everything but the boulder, he couldn't hear or feel the wind around him, the ground he was kneeling on felt like nothing and his hand was slowly being pulled toward the mysterious symbol. Everything started to slow down, he tried fighting the pull of the symbol but his hand just kept going.
'Get a hold of yourself Paul' he said to himself commandingly. He struggled for what seemed like eternity, all his struggle seemed futile and when he was about to give up his leg that was pierced before starting to tingle, it didn't help at first but after a while the pain became more noticeable to the point that the trance he was in was breaking.
'I…..Need…t….to…..escape' his thoughts became sluggish as he pulled his arm away , at first his hand stopped then it started moving away from the symbol, slowly but surely he broke out of his trance. With a last bit of his strength he pulled his hand away from the mysterious pull.
"Ah" a short stifled scream escaped from Paul as he fell backwards then he looked at his hand and smiled happily, he tried to get up it took a lot of effort but he succeeded. He looked at the boulder weirdly and walked away slowly, he didn't want to be anywhere near this thing again.
As he was walking away he heard sand shuffling from behind then he saw the scorpions coming towards him.
"Persistent bastards, " he remarked as he turned around and started to jog.
At some point, he saw the environment getting lighter and lighter, it was the morning.
"whoo..."
He breezed out as he bent down to catch his breath.
He looked back to see his chasers; they were far but still coming towards him.
"My heart almost gave out, good thing they're slow," he said as he looked up guarding his eyes from the blinding light, after some clouds covered the light he looked up, up there in the sky he saw something that shocked him there wasn't only one sun there were two, one a lot smaller than the other and they were very close to each other.
"whoa," he said with amazement.
He forced himself to turn around from the beautiful scenery to see his chasers, he was sure he had to start running but what he saw shocked him. The scorpion things stopped chasing him and they started digging down the alabaster sand and hid themselves. He wasn't sure if he should be happy or worried because, on the one hand, the scorpions stopped chasing him. On the other hand,
Why did they give up?
"Thank the heavens if I had to run for another hour they might have caught up. " Paul shuddered at the thought of getting poisoned, torn apart, and eaten by those things. As he walked near a big mound and looked at the horizon to see new things that were revealed in the light of the day.
At first, he didn't notice anything but as he focused his eyes he saw massive pillars that shot out from the bottom to the havens on both the right and left very far from the horizon which made them barely visible he also noticed a very far object, at first he dismissed it as being one of the pillars but the more he compared it with the other pillars he was sure it was something else far away beyond the horizon In Front of him there was... a tree, how can a tree be this massive he wondered to himself, the tree easily dwarfed any cityscape he knows back home.
"So I got isekaied..... well, I don't remember dying though," he said as if the things around him were not an obvious sign already .
'It would have been great if there was a system to explain this like in those VR games, or if a goddess greeted me telling me what to do to defeat the demon king and return to my world .'
He thought, disappointed, then he shook his head and said "Return! Why the hell would I do that? This is what I wished for since I was a kid, a new adventure. "
'Well that seems like where I should go' he realized, looking at the huge tree in the distance.
He started walking towards his destination, luckily for him no abomination attacked him but he understood why, quickly, the heat of the environment was rising every second, with the two suns from above and the alabaster sand from below reflecting the heat.
"This place is going to cook me alive!" he said as he breathed heavily. It wasn't even the middle of the day but it was so hot already and it didn't look like he even made a fraction of the way to his destination yet, it's going to be a long way he remarked.