Book 1 Chapter 2 A Rock and a Hard Place 1
…
Han Rowan woke up to a headache that felt less like a hangover and more like an unauthorized electrical storm had been staged inside his skull. The back of his neck was damp with something cold and gritty. He blinked, the morning sun—or whatever time of day it was—blasting through the dense canopy overhead, painting the forest floor in shifting mosaics of blinding gold and heavy shadow. He was lying on dirt, pine needles, and the distinct, alarming presence of a world that was definitively not the alleyway behind the convenience store where he'd last been confronting a group of ill-advisedly aggressive neighborhood delinquents.
He was in a forest. A massive, overwhelming, and thoroughly unknown forest. The trees were unnervingly tall, their trunks wide enough to warrant their own postal codes, and they smelled of ancient wood, damp earth, and moss. This wasn't a state park; this was primeval. Rowan, an eighteen-year-old recently emancipated from high school and primed for a college career in pharmacy, had an internal crisis. His phlegmatic temperament, honed by years of studying for standardized tests and navigating the low-stakes chaos of suburban life, provided him with a singular, immediate directive: Assess the Situation.
Step 1: Location. Unknown. Flora: Gigantic, alien. Sky: High sun, which meant mid-morning or early afternoon. Conclusion: What the hell is going on? This is making my head hurt more than it already has.
Step 2: Condition. Intact. No broken bones. Slightly nauseous. Clothing: Same old garbage he had worn for years, which he calls his daily clothes. Check.
It was during the execution of Step 3: Sensory Input that the assessment took a catastrophic turn. A sharp, coppery scent—a smell universally understood across all known timelines and dimensions—sliced through the earthy aromas. The scent of blood. A lot of it.
Rowan swallowed, his throat suddenly tight and dry. He slowly pushed himself up on his elbows, bracing himself for a minor wound, perhaps a cut or a scratch. Instead, his eyes fell upon the figure lying less than a meter away.
It was him.
Or, rather, a dead version of him.
Rowan froze, his mind running a diagnostic. The face was identical: the same slightly sharp chin, the same perpetually skeptical eyebrows, the same handsome him, of course, that's only his own opinion. But where Rowan was wearing modern, but old and slightly sweat-stained cotton, this—this doppelgänger—was clad in what looked like the wardrobe department's idea of ancient Chinese warrior attire, all rich, dark cloth and embroidered collars. It was simultaneously his own face and the most profoundly foreign thing he had ever seen. The similarity was so absolute it skirted the edge of disturbing and plunged straight into existential horror.
This twin, however, was inarguably, definitively, and terribly… dead.
A nasty, deep slash ran across the center of his chest, and his eyes, glazed and open, stared unblinkingly at the canopy. The source of the metallic scent was now apparent, pooling darkly into the soil beneath the corpse.
Rowan's analytical mind, which had just moments ago been coolly calculating his condition, screeched to a halt. His body, less concerned with the physics of the matter, began to riot. He scrambled backward on his hands and feet, the panic finally overriding his academic detachment.
"Oh, no, no, no, no," he muttered, shaking his head rapidly. "That is not happening. I do not have time for a doppelgänger murder mystery right now. I have college applications to follow up on."
He finally stood, swaying slightly, and that's when the full scope of the disaster registered. The dead twin was just the beginning. The clearing—a miserable, shadowed circle beneath the massive trees—was scattered with bodies. Three more, all in similar archaic clothing, lay haphazardly among the roots, their forms twisted in postures that spoke of sudden, brutal violence. It was an ambush site, a slaughterhouse disguised as a patch of forest. The air felt heavy, not just with the smell of blood, but with the chilling finality of death.
The overwhelming reality of the violence, the volume of blood, and the bizarre fact that his immediate reaction was to analyze the fabric of his dead twin's tunic—it was all too much. Rowan's stomach clenched with the kind of immediate, full-system rejection of reality that could only be solved with expulsion. He lunged forward, gripping a nearby mossy tree trunk, and violently emptied his breakfast—and perhaps a good portion of his sanity—onto the forest floor.
He stumbled away from the scene, blind with nausea and terror, his only instinct to put as much distance as possible between himself and the staring, dead eyes of his twin. He ran, wheezing, crashing through the underbrush, the retching continuing spasmodically even after his stomach was empty.
It wasn't until he tripped over a root, barely catching himself, that he noticed a peculiar sensation. His left hand was clutching something thick and rough. He glanced down. It was a crude, tightly bundled sackcloth bag, tied at the mouth with a piece of twine. He had no memory of picking it up. It looked exactly like the kind of sack a medieval peasant would use to carry root vegetables. He instinctively brought it close to his chest.
And then, his world fractured again.
A semi-transparent blue screen, segmented into a grid of shimmering squares, materialized directly in front of his eyes. It floated about a foot away, utterly unaffected by the breeze, his blinking, or the wild, erratic rhythm of his chest. It was like an augmented reality display overlaid onto the forest, but one only he could see.
Rowan, still panting and mildly coated in his own vomit, stopped dead. He stared, completely mesmerized. The screen was rectangular, divided into a 9x9 grid of small, empty squares, like a massive, pixelated, ethereal chessboard.
The bag in his hand was highlighted on the display. It occupied a 3x2 square grid region near the bottom left, shaded slightly darker than the empty slots. Above it, centered in the display, was a block of glowing text:
*Sackcloth Bag (Bound)Size: 3x2 (6/81 slots occupied)Effect: Enables System Interface. Provides basic inventory storage. Allows display of combat statistics.Durability: Indestructible
Rowan forgot his terror. He forgot the corpses. He forgot the genre shift. This was a HUD. This was a system. This was data.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," he whispered, a strange, half-hysterical laugh bubbling up. His brain, which had been screaming 'RUN, IDIOT!' moments ago, was now focused on 'Interface Design Analysis.' The phlegmatic temperament, useless in a knife fight, was a godsend in a high-stakes, unknown system interaction.
He tried to wave the screen away. It remained. He poked at it. His finger passed straight through, but the grid squares he touched flashed briefly. It was a mental interface.
As he focused on the strange grid, a button appeared at the top edge of the display: [STORE]. He mentally selected it, and the inventory grid instantly dissolved, replaced by a clean, minimalistic vendor screen.
Strange Bag: Refreshes after every battle.
Current Coin Balance: 1.00
ITEMS FOR SALE: # - Item Name - Type - Price - Size - Stats/Effect
1 - Rock - Basic Weapon - 1.00 - 1x1 - Dmg: 2, Cooldown: 6s, Range: 6m. (Disappears after 12s of use)
2 - Stone Knife - Basic Weapon - 4.00 - 1x2 - Dmg: 2-4, Qi: 1.2, Cooldown: 2.1s, Range: 3m. (Disappears after 12s of use)
3 - Red Fruit - Food - 4.00 - 1x1 - Heal 3HP & recover 0.5 Qi every 4s.
4 - Thorns - Accessory - 2.00 - 1x1 - +1 damage to attackers when attacked.
5 - Cloth Vest - Basic Armor - 4.00 - 2x2 - Def: 2. Resist freezing for 10s (Cool down: 15s).
Refresh Store (1.00 Coins)
Rowan stared at the list. His brow furrowed, a classic posture of deep, academic contemplation.
"Okay. One coin," he narrated to the silent forest, his voice scratchy. "I have one coin. Everything costs four coins, except the Thorns, which are still too expensive, and the Rock."
He focused on the Rock's price. 1.00 Coin.
"Wait, is this a limited-time offer? The basic weapon stats list a rock at two coins, but here it is for one. Must be a starter kit discount, or perhaps the system is slightly buggy. Regardless, it's the only viable option," he concluded, sounding like a venture capitalist assessing a nascent startup.
He had exactly enough money for the most literal, basic, useless thing in the history of weaponized objects: a rock. He considered the other items with a pang of regret. A Stone Knife looked excellent: better damage range, great cooldown. The Red Fruit offered regeneration. The Thorns accessory provided passive defense. All out of reach.
His eyes returned to the Rock.
Dmg: 2. Cooldown: 6s. Range: 1-6m.
"Two damage," Rowan sighed, running a hand through his damp hair. "Against whatever just sliced my twin in half. That's like bringing a very small spoonful of jam to a nuclear war. The cooldown is six seconds, which, in a fight, is essentially a five-minute coffee break."
He mentally pressed the [BUY] button next to the Rock. His 1.00 coin instantly vanished.
A small, gray-brown object—no different from the thousands of stones scattered on the forest floor—suddenly appeared in the 1x1 grid slot immediately inside the Sackcloth Bag. A tiny sound, like a faint, pleasant chime, accompanied the transaction.
Rowan found his hand instinctively reaching into the air, and a rock suddenly materialized in his hand. Grabbing the rock, it felt cold, smooth, and entirely unremarkable.
"Great," he muttered, flexing his fingers around it. "I have purchased a common piece of geological debris. My strategic position has improved by exactly zero. What a useless system this is…" he grumbled, feeling a bit annoyed.
He decided the rock was a liability—a useless physical object that would only impede his flight. He prepared to toss it into the bushes and focus on finding a river or, preferably, a high-speed inter-dimensional exit ramp.
He lifted his arm and flung the rock with a dismissive flick of his wrist.
"Goodbye, two damage," he said. "You were marginally less useful than a paperclip."
The rock sailed out, traveling perhaps four meters before it reached its maximum designated Range of six meters.
And then, physics decided to take a holiday.
Upon crossing the invisible six-meter boundary, the rock stopped, executed a ridiculously sharp, 180-degree turn with a distinct, almost cartoonish whoosh, and began accelerating rapidly back toward its source—Rowan.
Rowan, who had already turned his back, only registered the sound of the rapidly approaching object and the sharp, intuitive spike of terror. He instinctively ducked and threw his arms up.
The rock, moving with the velocity of something propelled by a very cross railgun, missed the top of his head by millimeters. It struck the trunk of the massive tree he had been leaning against earlier—the one with the moss and his recent, unpleasant deposit.
The sound was not the thunk of stone hitting wood. It was the sharp, explosive CRACK of stressed carbon fiber, followed by a heavy, grinding SHHHRRKKK.
The section of the tree trunk, at the point of impact, exploded outward in a shower of splintered bark and wood chips. A clean, two-inch-deep fissure, perfectly level, encircled the trunk.
Then, with a low, mournful groan that resonated through the forest, the entire upper half of the enormous tree slowly tilted, gathered momentum, and fell with a catastrophic, earth-shaking crash that flattened several smaller saplings nearby.
Silence followed, broken only by the frantic chirping of displaced birds.
Rowan stood frozen, his eyes wide, staring at the split-open trunk. The rock, its violent mission complete, was now hovering placidly a foot away from his chest, slowly rotating, waiting. It was within his range limit again, a silent, obedient, and terrifying stringless yo-yo of death.
He slowly reached out and tentatively took the rock. It felt exactly the same: smooth, cold, and profoundly inert.
"Damage: Two," Rowan whispered, his mind racing. He mentally accessed the database of his prior existence. "Two damage... that just demonstrated the kinetic energy of a close-range high-explosive. Or possibly a sabot round fired from a .50 caliber sniper rifle. That tree had a circumference of maybe ten feet. It's split. Two damage."
He began to sweat, but this time, it wasn't fear; it was the sheer, dizzying vertigo of systemic power mismatch.
"If two is that, what is four? What the hell is this thing? Am I a demigod or an insect? Why is my weapon a geological boomerang?" A strange smile slowly emerged on Rowan's face as his nose began to smell the rock, which suddenly disappeared.