The last thing I remembered was the screeching tires.
A truck. Red light. My motorcycle. The sickening crunch of metal folding like paper. Then, nothing but cold, absolute darkness.
Now?
Now I was choking on mud, my face pressed into something that smelled like a compost heap had a baby with a corpse. My lungs burned, screaming for air that wouldn't come. Panic surged through me—old, primal panic. I wasn't dead. But I sure as hell wasn't in Kansas anymore.
I pushed myself up, hands sinking into soft, loamy earth. The air hit me like a wet blanket—thick, humid, and carrying the coppery tang of blood mixed with something floral and utterly alien. My vision swam, then focused.
Forest. Not the nice, "take a hike on Sunday" kind. This was the "you're going to die here" kind. Trees twisted toward a sky that pulsed with two—two —moons, one silver, one sickly green. Their bark was black and seemed to... move , crawling with phosphorescent moss that cast eerie, shifting shadows. The undergrowth rustled. Not with wind. With things .
"Status," I gasped automatically, a gamer's reflex. I'd spent twenty-seven years on Earth grinding MMOs, min-maxing characters, chasing that perfect build. If this was some kind of afterlife—
[VITALITY INTERFACE INITIALIZING...]
Golden text erupted across my vision like a UI from the world's most immersive VR game. My heart, already racing, nearly punched through my ribs.
[WELCOME, SOUL #7,832,119,443. YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR REINCARNATION IN THE WORLD OF AETHEURON. YOUR EARTHLY DEATH HAS BEEN CATEGORIZED AS: "UNTIMELY AND UNJUST." COMPENSATION PACKAGE: UNIQUE SKILL - "ABSOLUTE CALCULATION." DO YOU ACCEPT?]
"Yes! Hell yes, I accept!" My voice came out as a croak, but the system seemed to understand.
[TRANSFER COMPLETE. CALIBRATING LOCAL PARAMETERS...]
[NAME: UNASSIGNED] [RACE: HUMAN (MUNDANE)] [LEVEL: 0] [HP: 10/10] [MP: 5/5] [STRENGTH: 4] [AGILITY: 5] [VITALITY: 3] [INTELLIGENCE: 8] [WISDOM: 6] [LUCK: 1] ⚠️ WARNING: CRITICALLY LOW [UNASSIGNED STAT POINTS: 0]
One Luck? One? That explained the truck. Great. The universe had a sense of humor.
A low growl rippled through the undergrowth behind me. I spun, my gamer instincts screaming aggro . Three creatures slunk from the shadows, and my new reality crystallized in an instant.
They looked like wolves—if wolves were designed by a meth-addicted demon. Twice the size of any Earth canine, their fur was matted with something that glowed faintly green. Their jaws were too wide, too full of needle-like teeth, and their eyes burned with orange hate. The air around them shimmered slightly.
[ANALYSIS: GLOOMVERMIN - LEVEL 2 BEAST] [THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME] [RECOMMENDATION: RUN, YOU IDIOT]
The system wasn't wrong. My pathetic 10 HP wouldn't survive a love tap from these things. But my legs felt like jelly, and the creatures were already spreading out, flanking me. Running was a death sentence. Fight, flight, or freeze—and I was fresh out of the first two.
The lead Gloomvermin lunged.
Time dilated. My vision—this Absolute Calculation skill—kicked in. Suddenly I wasn't seeing a blur of teeth and claws. I was seeing trajectories, highlighted in red. I was seeing timing windows, glowing green. I was seeing the exact millisecond the beast's leap would arc, and the precise angle its neck would present.
My body still sucked. But my brain? My brain was a goddamn supercomputer.
I dropped. Not fell—calculated drop . The wolf-thing sailed over me, its claws raking air where my throat had been. I rolled, grabbed a fallen branch. The system helpfully popped up its stats:
[ IMPROVISED WEAPON: DECAYED BRANCH ] [ DAMAGE: 0-1 (PATHETIC) ] [ DURABILITY: 3/10 ]
Perfect. My Excalibur was a rotten stick.
The second Gloomvermin charged. I saw its attack vector, saw the telegraph in its bunched muscles. This time I didn't dodge—I interrupted . I thrust the branch forward like a spear, not at its body, but at its open, slavering mouth.
The wood splintered. So did teeth. The creature yelped, twisting away. But the third one was already there, capitalizing on my vulnerability.
Claws raked down my back.
[ HP: 3/10 ] ⚠️ CRITICAL!
Pain exploded, white-hot and screaming. But the system was merciless. It didn't care about pain. It cared about data . And the data was telling me I had 2.3 seconds before the disoriented second wolf recovered, and 4.1 seconds before the first one circled back.
The third one, the one that hit me, was overconfident. It paused to savor its strike. Big mistake.
I spun, ignoring the agony shredding my nerves. My hand found a rock. The system flashed:
[ IMPROVISED WEAPON: SHARP FLINT ] [ DAMAGE: 1-3 (MARGINALLY LESS PATHETIC) ] [ SPECIAL: +5% BLEED CHANCE ]
I didn't aim for its head. Too bony. I aimed for its eye, the glowing orange orb that my overlay highlighted as a CRITICAL ZONE.
The flint connected. Popped like a grape.
[ CRITICAL HIT! ] [ GLOOMVERMIN #3: BLINDED, STUNNED ] [ DURATION: 3 SECONDS ]
It thrashed, howling