David was stuck, unconscious beneath the corpse of the mother cave glower, having dragged him hundreds of yards down a dry rocky tunnel. The mother had died from the spores in her lungs burning their way through her organs. The water David had thrown down her throat had reactivated the spores killing her slowly. She had suffocated and her organs fail from chemical burns.
A small chime sounded, and notifications appeared in Davids's mind.
'You have killed a teenage mother cave glower, 5xp awarded, 1 summon available, skill unlocked: Creations Touch, 2 health points added.'
'New objective added, find a way to escape the cave system'
'Learn more about your new skill'
'You are severely injured please upgrade your health and apply bandages'
'Your stats have increased, please allocate your 1 new stat point'
David still lost in unconsciousness did not notice the notifications; he was lost in memories of his past.
David's mother sat on a rocking chair on the back porch of their childhood home. She had been widowed when David was just seven. She would go out on the rocking chair, no matter if it was rain or shine, at the same time every weekend and read a book. She would always say "I don't read them for the romance, the plot or even the story, just for the memories and nostalgia of your father."
Davids's father had died in a work accident at a construction site; a retaining wall had collapsed on him after the company cut corners to increase profit. When the police investigated and discovered what had happened the company went bankrupt, and the foreman sent to prison.
David's older brother and sisters were forced to grow up quick and help their mother. Davids' older brother Josh dropped out of high school and started working as a bus boy and waiter at the local diner. Over the years he would go on to become a truck driver and then a cop. Always sending money home to help.
His sisters Grace and Claire started working as babysitters and pet caretakers until they were old enough to get jobs at the local grocery store. Grace would become a nurse and Claire a chef.
Then there was David; he grew up surrounded by his family struggling every day to make ends meet. His mother would leave for work before he woke up and come home after dinner, always working at least two jobs. He would only see his brother on the weekends and if he stayed up extra late or woke up early. He learned how to take care of himself and got multiple jobs young. He wanted to help his family as much as he could but always seemed he wasn't enough.
By the end of high school all his siblings had moved out and started their careers or were finishing their schooling. David chose to join the military. He remembered the last day he saw all of his family smiling and happy. The day he left for overseas would be the last time he saw his mother.
The memories started to fade as David started to regain consciousness, in his head he heard the faint sounds of a bell chime. He could just barely make out the faint red glow in his vision.
'What happened? Didn't I die?'
Davids's vision was still blurry and fading in and out of black. When he closed his eyes, he saw what seemed to be notifications. The were in red outlined boxes with the words written in white.
He read them one by one, feeling as though he was definitely imagining things.
'I must have damaged my brain, I clearly seeing things'
Trying to rationalize in his head that he was still alive, David slowly dragged his way out from underneath the corpse of the mother cave glower. His shirt was torn in multiple places and covered in blood; his left arm was broken, torn apart and burned. His body was covered in chemical burns and cuts. Thankfully the chemical burns had cauterized the wounds or else he definitely would have bled to death. Closing his eyes again to try and reorganize himself, he saw the notifications again.
'Ok they appeared again, I either have brain damage, or I am in some sort of anime'
'Screw it, why not give it a try, in my current state I'm already dead as it is.'
Keeping his eyes closed, David imagined clicking on the first notification.
"You have killed a teenage mother cave glower, you will be awarded 5xp, 1 summon and 2 health points" a robotic voice said in his head.
Bewildered David quickly opened his eyes and looked around. Nothing had changed or so he thought. He could feel it, the pain seemed to diminish. He looked down at his body, his arm was still a ruin, but the small scrapes and cuts had disappeared. The burns and larger gashes still remained but at least he was somewhat better.
'Ok I'm either hallucinating or maybe these notifications are like some sort of system from an anime'
David quickly shut his eyes again and selected the next notification.
"New objective has been added. Find your way out of the granite cave system. Upon completion, the user will be given one travel ticket"
'What is a travel ticket? Maybe it means I can go home. Granite cave system? Is that where I am? But how did I even get here? Maybe this system will have some sort of codex or something to tell me what is going on.'
He then proceeded to click on the learn more tab. The notifications vanished and a new tab appeared. As he scrolled through the tab, he learned he was no longer on earth and had been transported to some far away planet named Charerus. Charerus was roughly 6 times the size of earth but somehow had the same gravity. It told of how the planet was covered in storms and massive monsters and creature that hunted each other in an endless battle for control and to sit at the top of the food chain. As he read a sentence caught his eye "The planet Charerus and its solar system have been surrounded by a warp storm for over 8,000 years."
'What does this mean? I'm stuck on some random planet in the Warhammer universe? Doesn't this mean I am going to die horrifically and have my soul ripped apart by demons? I NEED TO GET OUT AND GO HOME!!'
This information scared David to his core, he was a diehard Warhammer fan. He had bought every codex and book. He knew the lore like the back of his hand and knew with certainty that if this planet had been stuck in a warp storm for this long, every living thing on it was deadly, if not downright a being straight out of hell.
Taking a few deep breaths David continued reading. The granite cave system was massive; encompassing and entire mountain and dozens of miles surrounding it. The codex spoke of how it was home to numerous predatory creatures hundreds of types of insects and plants. The biggest threat in the granite caves was the cave glower colony. If the system was to be believed, then the one that had nearly killed him was nothing more than a teenager. Now he had to navigate through an entire of colony of them and not die or his soul would be ripped apart by demons in the "Immaterium"; "the sea of souls"; "the warp".
Having finished reading the tab, David imagined pressing the back arrow like on his phone and he returned to the notifications. The next notification stated he had a new skill, unsure what this meant he clicked on it and waited for the robotic voice.
"You have unlocked your unique skill, Creations Touch. Please select the 'more information tab' to learn more about your unique skill"
David pressed the learn more tab, eager to learn what this skill was, he quickly thought to himself 'Creations Touch? Does that mean I can create whatever I can think of, if so, that is so overpowered. I could definitely survive here. I'll just summon an army, and they can kill all of the creatures in this cave system and help me escape.'
Davids hopes of an easy escape quickly evaporated as the "learn more" tab opened. The skill, Creations Touch, meant that he could summon and build anything he had previously designed or built from his original world but would require XP to use and upgrade. Underneath this short description it showed his current stats with a small caption about how, when he chose to summon something, the cost to summon it was based on the size and usefulness of the object.
His stats showed he had one available summon and 5XP points. At the bottom of the tab a short tutorial video played. It showed how, if he wanted to summon something, he needed to first allocate the needed number of XP and summoning slots. In the video it gave an example of an imperial guardsman. The guardsman cost 45XP and 5 summoning slots and the skill had to be at least level 2.
'Well looks like I'm either super lucky or super screwed. Please don't tell me I need to kill twelve more of those monsters if I even want to use this stupid skill'
Racking his brain on what he could possibly summon with only 5XP and a single summon slot he completely forgot about the remaining notifications. After a few minutes he had a "shining lightbulb moment". 'Why not try summoning a "Solar Auxilia infantry survival kit"?'
As he went through the process of using the skill in his head, he pictured the small survival kit he had glued onto one of his custom Solar Auxilia minifigures. He remembered reading in the codex how the survival kit contained 4 days' worth of rations, a fire starter, a small sleep system, a canteen filled with water, an emergency medical kit, and most importantly: a small auto pistol.
After what felt like hours and the feeling of all his energy draining, he opened his eyes and in front of him lay the survival kit. The faded brown and black, the mud stains and tiny tear in the canvas. These were the same small details David had put into the survival kit when he was painting the Solar Auxilia soldier. Even the small tear into the void rated canvas was the same.
David quickly moved to grab the backpack, hoping that when he opened it up inside, he would find all the gear the Solar Auxilia codex said would be inside. He started looking through the bag, removing the rations, canteen and sleep system. He carefully removed the med kit next to him as he pulled out the auto pistol. It was bigger than the pistols he was used to using in the military. The closest description he could come to, was a submachinegun pistol. Fully automatic with a large magazine capacity and high rate of fire. The pistol was made for member of the Solar Auxilia, so in David's hand it would be the equivalent of shooting a fully automatic 357 Magnum pistol. He carefully looked over the pistol, making sure everything was working and familiarizing himself with the weapon. Removing the magazine, he counted the rounds before reloading the auto pistol.
'27 rounds per mag, two full mags, according to the codex I read, a pull of the trigger fires 3 rounds. If I set it to burst, meaning that I have a total of 18 trigger pulls, to try and kill a teenage cave glower or I'm screwed'
Having finished with the auto pistol David turned his attention to the medical kit. Inside he found dressings and gauze for his burns, a splint system he could configure to his broken arm, and antibacterial gels and patches. He started configuring the splint knowing the most damage to his body was located in his broken arm and calf. He carefully set up the splint making sure that the two metal rods sat in the proper positions on either side of his arm and applied the antibacterial gel to the burns covering the broken section of his arm. Once done he proceeded to wrap a bandage over the wound and the rods, securing them in place while also covering the antibacterial gel and the burns. From there he proceeded to start applying gel to other large wounds, such as the back of his right calf that had been slashed open. Once done applying the gel to the major wound he wrapped bandages over those as well. From there, he moved to the chemical burns coving his body. There was not enough gel or bandages for all of the burns, so he selected the parts that were most damaged and burned. He made sure the bandages didn't apply too much pressure or else they would just make things worse. Once he was out of gel and gauze, he moved onto the small med patches. These he would place over the remaining cuts and scrapes as well as the burn blisters that the system hadn't healed. They would apply a sort of med gel that sped up the healing process while also disinfecting the area.
Once done performing as much first aid as he could, he stored the remains of the med kit back into the pack. He then quickly grabbed the canteen and started drinking the fresh water. To David, who had been surviving off of stalactite runoff and an aquifer, the fresh filtered water tasted amazing. He had to will himself not to chug the canteen as he knew if he did, he would probably just end up wasting it. Grabbing one of the rations, he looked at it in excitement.
'Finally, some real food, not some creepy insect that I had to close my eyes to eat. No crunch of an exoskeleton or squirt of blood as I bite into it'
The ration contained around 5000 calories, more than enough for a full day for a man who had been eating consistently and performing labor. That was not David, and he knew that. If he tried to eat the full ration, his body would reject it and he would suffer. His body had been surviving in a state of near starvation for weeks now. His body's digestive system had adapted, no longer accustomed to the 2000+ calories he used to eat every day.
Opening the ration he only took a single item from the tin. Six small crackers but somehow, they totaled 600 calories. They were high in carbs, fats, and proteins. The major things he had been lacking for the past few weeks. He heard the satisfying crunch as he bit into the first one, it was dry beyond belief, and he felt as is his mouth was turning into a desert. As he ate the cracker, he felt it was harder and harder to eat. His body was now used to eating little and his body didn't know how to react to the extreme increase in carbs and fats. Stopping after finishing the first cracker he set the rest back into the ration tin and took another sip from the canteen.
With a grunt he got up from the ground and started working on figuring out what to do with the corpse of the mother cave glower. He started, looking over its body, realizing that if he could remove the front four legs, he might be able to use them as a sort of spear barricade. Having eaten a few baby cave glowers before, he knew if he could remove their tough skin - beneath would be edible meat. It would not taste good, in fact the first time he ate one's meat he had vomited. He could remove the meat and use it to draw other creatures into an ambush; then kill them with either his pistol, the spear like legs or if needed even his knife.
He set about removing the skin. If he could remove it carefully, he could turn the hide into a sort of makeshift tent using the other legs as supports. After a few hours it was done - a small barricade made from the cave crawlers torso bones and spear legs sat in the entrance of the tunnel. He had 8 more of the legs arranged in a sort of tent shape with four more being tide to them by the sinew from the mother. They acted as supports and held the pseudo tent together. Draped over the bones in an almost haphazard way was the hide. Inside the tent rested the survival kit and the sleeping system. David wanted to believe that he could safely sleep in the tent, but he couldn't be sure. He made sure that the meat of the mother cave crawler was at least 3000 feet down the tunnel from the barricade and his tent.
Feeling as if he had done all he could to ensure his safety David laid down on the sleep roll and pulled the cover over his body. Lying next to him under the cover, no more than a few inches away, was the auto pistol.
David had tied a piece of sinew from the pistol to his wrist so he wouldn't lose it. It was his lifeline and only hope. He knew with the injuries his body had sustained and the limited medical supplies he had that if he was attacked by another cave crawler, and he didn't have the pistol he would most likely die. As exhaustion was about to overtake him, he noticed a notification he must have missed when reading the others. Too fatigued, he promised himself he would read it after a short rest...