[System Re-calibrating...Player 001 inactive...loading...]
Hana tore into consciousness, a scream on the tip of her tongue. The only sound that left her throat was a thick rasp.
'Where? Where am I?'
Thoughts scrambled through her head, muddled and hazy, but one memory gleamed clear as day.
The weightlessness, the confusion, the voice.
She wanted to claw her way back up the elevator shaft and murder the kiosk lady. An eye for an eye, they say, and Hana was going to rip both of hers out of her forty-something year-old sockets.
She didn't understand how it happened, but the anger overwhelmed any desire to 'understand.' She was killed after all. That elevator fall was no accident.
Though, that did leave Hana with many questions.
How did the kiosk lady manipulate the elevator? What for? How did she know that the elevator was where Hana would be?
...And also, if she was murdered, how was she alive right now?
She grimaced.
The scent of rust and wet mold itched at her nose, and when she breathed deeper, the smell of blood twirled through the air. It was like the old basement in her house after a mouse found its way into a trap. Her eyes blinked open.
Hana was on her back, staring into a cobblestone ceiling. Spider webs tangled into each other and glistened overhead, and a spider the size of her fist crawled along the crevice between the ceiling and the wall.
The only light came from the torches arranged around the room, glowing a strange purple hue yet still giving off yellow light.
She squirmed around, but her abdomen was stiff and felt weirdly bloated. The jangle of a chain lowered her gaze.
Her body was mottled with blue and purple bruises along her limbs, streams of dried blood set in place with chunks of skin missing, and the moment she noticed the strangeness of it all, a corrosive scent of rot and death slammed her nose.
Rusted metal chains were clamped around her legs and her arm--
Her arm.
Her left arm was gone. The arm, the fingers, the black paint on her nails, it was all gone.
Hana whimpered, wiggling the stub of her shoulder as her brain tried to convince her that the arm was still there when her eyes saw differently.
She looked like a [Zombie].
A blue text box sprung to life before her eyes and Hana jolted back, eyes scanning over the plain text.
[You are a zombie. STR and CON are boosted by 10%. DEX and CHA are decreased by 10%. Immune to physical attacks. Immune to aging. Status effect: Undead.]
"I--" Hana coughed. The hoarse strain in her voice remained. "...undead?"
What even was that...pop-up box thing?
It reminded her of the stories she read about people manipulating video game mechanics in the real world. But that couldn't possibly be happening to her, right?
Maybe she really was dead, or in some sort of coma, and this was all in her head. Right, right. That makes sense.
There was no other explanation for the way her body looked, all rotted and bruised, even missing limbs! And that would explain the strange pop-up box, too. It was her mind trying to trick her.
Although, Hana didn't see herself imagining a scenario where she was chained up in a cobblestone dungeon unless it was a weird fantasy, but otherwise, her theory was sound.
Hana sighed, relaxing against the stone slab she was chained to. She could let this odd scenario play out and she'd be fine. It's not like anything would actually happen--
[Emergency Quest!!]
Hana startled into a sitting position, the chains clinking and groaning around her single wrist. Her face passed through the text for a second before she leaned back.
The text box looked like a mission of some sort--an apparent emergency. Hana snorted.
[Emergency Quest: Escape the Den of Cultists]
You've been captured by a nefarious cult! You need to escape before they come back to check on you.
Quest Difficulty: Deadly.
Rewards: 1875 XP, 100 gold coins.
The reward was pretty meager for a "deadly" quest, Hana thought, but she began pulling at the chains anyway. It wouldn't hurt to play along with this weird thing. It was her imagination, after all.
She tugged at the rusted metal chains, expecting them to crumble into pieces considering how old they looked, but they were fairly resilient. Pulling them obviously wasn't going to get them off.
Hana glared at the dusty looking chain, continuing to pull harder and harder, before brutally yanking it out of pure frustration.
She didn't notice the precarious state of her hand until the entire thing, from the wrist down, ripped from her arm and flew into a dark corner of the room. The metal cuff slid to the floor.
[Strength Check: 0/45. Failed.]
[Wisdom Check: 0/5. Failed.]
[Intelligence Check: 0/20. Failed.]
A torrent of messages popped into Hana's vision, each a reminder of her incompetence. Annoyed, she swiped them away with the nub of her wrist and growled, the sound vibrating deeply in her chest.
Ugh, why were her vocal chords all weird now? It must be the whole 'zombie' thing.
...Wait.
Hana blinked. She looked down at her wrist nub.
She's a zombie. Meaning missing limbs don't kill her. They don't even hurt. Can they be reattached?
She shook the chains around her ankles before pulling them hard, so hard that her feet detached from the ankle and flew off into opposite directions.
Hana breathed in before rolling her body over, off of the concrete slab and onto the wet, dirty floor. It was gross and smelled horrible, and quite a few unnamed bugs scurried along in front of her eyes.
'I'm never doing this again,' she vowed, while tumbling over to where her hand had been and fitting it back onto her wrist. The skin stitched together, thankfully.
She rolled over to her separated feet and wiggled her ankles into them, not before realizing that she put them on the wrong legs, then ripping them off and re-attaching them again.
She wobbled to a stand, pressing her hand against the cobblestone wall.
[The system has awarded you +1 Intelligence for your innovative problem-solving.]
"Oh, shut up." Hana griped, waving away the message.
The system was sassy, maybe even sarcastic, and it was seriously pissing her off.
Groaning, she stumbled over to the metal door at the front of the room and opened it slowly, eyes scanning over the dimly lit hallway.
This whole thing was strange, even if it was her imagination, but...
Excitement bubbled in her chest, a feeling that made her bloated flesh tingle, rare but not unfamiliar. Hana smiled and the rotting teeth in her mouth shined with saliva.
She would play this game and she would win.