"Ugghh...." a pained groan escaped the lips of a lone girl as she came to.
Slowly opening her eyes she winced as she was assaulted by an aching pain shooting through her body. Blinking a few times to clear her vision she looked around to see that she was sitting in a dark stone room. Straight ahead was a large wooden door reinforced with metal strips. She noticed a bucket in the corner of the room but other than that and a puddle a water the room was devoid of anything else.
Groaning she tried to brace herself by putting her hands on the ground but couldn't bring her hands below her head. She looked up and noticed she had metal cuffs around her wrists with chains attached through a metal ring on the wall. The metal cuffs themselves had softly glowing purple gems embedded into them which seemed to pulse, each pulse seemed to match the aching pain being sent through her body.
'Where am I?' she thought to herself.
Trying to think back she was suddenly assaulted with a shooting pain in her head. Wincing she realized she couldn't remember anything before waking up here.
Looking down she saw she was wearing a tattered white one piece dress that reached just below her knees and was barefoot. Her skin was as white as snow and seemed to have a frosty aura coming off of it.
She looked up as the sounds of heavy footsteps came from beyond the door. The sound of keys jangling could be heard as the door was unlocked.
"Time to get up monster." A gruff voice said as the door creaked open.
She winced as light streamed into the room behind the man, blinding her for a second due to the sudden change. Slowly adjusting to the light she opened her eyes and saw a large man in metal armor standing before her. He wore a metal cuirass with leather under armor on his torso, leather pants and metal greaves on his legs. He was bald with a grey beard and a scar over his left eye. He wore a rather creepy toothy grin as he looked down at her.
"The auction is about to start and we're gonna make a pretty penny selling you!" He said smirking. "It's not every day you see a Snow Girl after all."
She struggled as she tried to stand up, she had a bad feeling about this man. Finally getting on her feet she looked up at the man looking down on her. The man was twice her height, as he got closer her surroundings darkened as he cast his shadow down on her.
Reaching down he grabbed her by the chin and lifted her face up towards him. "You'd be a real looker in a few years, it's to bad you probably won't make make it till then. The nobles at this auction tend to send slaves as meat shields to the dungeons."
"Oh well, not my problem." He said as he let go of her chin and grabbed her wrist.
She winced as he gripped her hard, she felt like her wrist was going to break. Paying her no mind the man reached for his keys and unlocked the lock holding the ring in place. Lifting the chain over the end of the ring, he pulled on her wrist practically dragging her out of the cell.
Looking down at her he frowned in disgust. "Walk properly dammit." He said as he threw her in front of him.
As she fell on the ground, she winced in pain. 'I don't know what's going on, but I need to get out of here.' She thought, forcing herself to her feet she quickly glanced around. She was now in a hallway lined with doors similar to the one she just came out of, further ahead she saw some stairs leading up to another door.
"Get moving." the man said as he shoved her towards the stairs.
Looking towards the man she opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out.
Laughing the man grinned as he looked down at her, "What? Did you already forget we took away your ability to speak? You might be an intelligent monster so you can talk, but we can't have a slave talk back to their master now can we?"
Grabbing her wrist again the man opened the door and took her into a hallway leading towards some more stairs. Stumbling as she was pulled along she struggled to stay on her feet as the man took her further in. Reaching the top of the stairs she looked around to see she was in a large well lit room. There were guards dressed similar to the man pulling her standing around the room keeping their eyes on a line of other chained prisoners. Most of the prisoners were other types of monsters, although some of them were human.
The man pulled her to a table were a different man sat with piles of paper around him. He looked up at them, adjusting his glasses.
"Race?" The glasses man asked.
"Named Snow Girl." The man pulling her said.
"Named?" The man in glasses looked up with curiosity. "Snow Girls themselves are quite rare, let alone ones with names.. Hm... I see"
"Race, Snow Girl... Name, Shizuka... Level 4.." The glasses man muttered at he wrote down on a piece of paper. "She should bring in quite a bit of money. Put her in line and bring the next one."
"Haha, yes she should." The man said as he pulled her towards the line of prisoners.
The man let go of her wrist and pushed her to the back of the line. "Don't be to scared." He chuckled, "You might get lucky with who buys you, maybe they will keep you till later as 'relief' instead of throwing you to your death."
The man laughed as he walked away. Standing there she looked up at the creature in front of her. It looked about three times taller than her, it was covered from head to toe in thick black fur. It had long curved claws that looked like they could cut her in half. She suddenly heard a deep threatening growl as it turned it's head to look at her. Taking a step back she saw it's face was actually a wolf head, it's mouth opened to show a bunch of sharp looking teeth. It had a thick metal collar with the same purple gems embedded into it as she had on the cuffs on her wrists.
Her eyes widened a bit when suddenly a name popped up above it's head.
[Shadow Lycan - Level 61]
'What's that?' she thought as she looked at the name. Looking around she noticed that if she focused a little on each individual creature a similar name and level would appear above their head. The majority of them looked to be around level 10-20 with a few above level 30. She looked over at one of the guards out of curiosity.
[Bradley - Swordsman - Level 50]
Looking around at the rest of the guards she noticed that most of them were at or just below level 50.
'I wonder what level I am? Didn't that man with the glasses say level 4? Wait didn't he say my name was Shizuka? Why don't I remember anything?' Shizuka furrowed her brow trying to remember something, anything from before.
The same sharp pain happened from before when she tried to remember what happened. Suddenly a scene came to mind as she remembered something.
***********************
She was running through the snow towards a forest, occasionally glancing behind her.
"Grab her! She's almost to the forest! Don't let her get away!" Someone shouted behind her as she was running.
"Fuck! No MP left! Curse these low stats!" Shizuka cursed as she kept running towards the forest. 'Once I get into the forest I should be able to lose them, once I regen some MP I'll come back and finish these fucking slavers off once and for all!'
Sensing danger she dodged to the side as an arrow flew past where she was just standing.
"You idiot don't shoot her, boss said to capture not kill her! She's worth a lot of money if we can get her." One of the men shouted.
"Damn it! But she killed Jarod and Frank!" one of the other men exclaimed.
"If we catch her the boss will give us a years worth of living expenses! Do you not know how rare Snow Girls are?!" the man that seemed to be the leader shouted back.
Hearing this Shizuka smiled, finally reaching the edge of the forest. She continued to run, dashing between the trees to lose the pursuing group of people. Looking ahead she spotted a large Yeti covered in white fur crouched on the ground.
A grin spread across her face as she slowed down so the group could catch up, keeping the Yeti just out of sight.
"There she is!" One of the men shouted.
Shizuka turned around the tree bringing the Yeti into the line of fire just as they let loose with their bolas. Seeing this Shizuka jumped up and grabbed one of the branches hanging from the tree, pulling hard and flipping herself onto the branch as the bolas whizzed past where she just was smacking into the Yeti's back.
"Unng?" The Yeti grunted as it stood up and turned towards the group.
"Shit! Yeti!" One of them shouted as it shot an arrow towards it.
"You idiot!" the leader exclaimed seeing the arrow fly towards the Yeti.
The arrow hit the Yeti in the shoulder as it stumbled back from the impact.
"RAAAAWWRRR!!!!" The Yeti roared as a red glow enveloped it and it's muscles bulged.
Jumping to the next branch Shizuka looked down at the Yeti and chuckled 'Yeti's get enraged easy when you aggro them. Especially when they are minding their own business. But that's perfect for me, time to get some distance.'
With the Yeti charging towards the group Shizuka leapt from branch to branch, gaining distance between her and the slavers.
After a few minutes of putting distance between them Shizuka stopped. 'That should be good for now. I need to check my system, I should have got a decent amount of EXP after killing 3 of those slavers.'
"System."
A screen suddenly showed up in front of her showing her a few notifications.
[ You have killed a human and started the journey to becoming a monster. You have acquired the Monster title, level up your monster title to become truly feared.]
[Monster Title: Beginner Monster (Humans killed 3/10) A permanent increase in all stats by 10%]
'Hm so that's why monsters always have higher stats than humans at the same level... But seriously, to think that I was reincarnated as a monster, what the hell? And then to top it off a few hours after I reincarnate I get chased by a bunch of slavers! Unfair! Why me world?! What did I ever do to you?!' she ranted in her head as she brought up her status menu.
"Status."
[ Name: Shizuka
Race: Snow Girl
Titles: Beginner Monster (3/10 Humans killed, +10% all Stats)
Level: 4
Class: Snow Girl
HP: 257/400
MP: 10/825
VIT: 15 (16)
STR: 10 (11)
INT: 30 (33)
DEX: 15 (16)
AGI: 20 (22)
MDEF: 200
PDEF: 100
Unassigned Points: 30
(): Finalized stats after factoring in equipment, titles and buffs (Rounded down).
Skills:
Ice Creation Magic: As a Snow Girl you can freely use and create ice to make anything you can imagine. Increased scale of creation increases mana cost.
Cost: Depends on Creation
Cooldown: N/A
Frosty Aura (Passive) - As a Snow girl your skin is always cold, depending on your anger the aura can expand, covering your surroundings in a layer of ice and snow.
Cost: N/A
Cooldown: N/A ]
Shizuka sighed looking at her stats, 'Even with the monster title buff I am a lot weaker than I was before I died. It's going to be a long road back to my past stats, not to mention now I'm a monster, I can't just walk through town or people will attack me. I will have to look for something to change my tag so it doesn't show people I'm a monster.'
Just as she closed her status menu she felt danger approach from her right. She jumped to the left to dodge it but was to slow, something smacked into her shoulder and sent her flying into a tree.
Wincing from the pain she saw her HP drop down to 39/400. Being below 10% HP her vision started to blur as she began to pass out.
'No, I can't pass out here!' she thought as she tried to stand back up. Lacking the strength she stumbled and fell over, fighting to keep her eyes open.
"That was a nice touch with the Yeti, completely destroyed those amateurs. However our employer has requested that we capture you, no hard feelings, it's just business." a voice said as a pair of boots entered her vision.
The world started to blacken as her consciousness slipped away from her.
***********************
After the scene flashed through Shizuka's mind the pain stopped. She blinked a few times to process what she just saw. 'I guess that's how I ended up here..' she thought.
"Move up the line! Next item up for bid!" someone shouted at the front of the line of prisoners.
After a few minutes the Shadow Lycan in front of Shizuka was next in line.
"Careful with this one, he's a feisty one. One hit and that could be it, keep your distance." One of the guards said coming up to the Lycan with three others. They each held a large metal spear with electricity dancing at the tip of it.
*ZZZZZZTTTT*
One of the guards poked the Lycan with the tip of the spear to force him along. The Lycan whimpered and growled as he tried to resist but they kept poking and prodding with the spear tip forcing him out the door at the front of the line.
"And next up for bid we have a... Wow! A level 61 Shadow Lycan ladies and gentleman! This guys would be a great guard for going into the dungeons! Just imagine sending him out to rip up the oncoming monsters! Let's start the bidding at 100 silvers!" someone shouted from beyond the door.
"120 silvers!"
"130 silvers!"
Shizuka listened as the door that the Lycan went through closed. She looked down at the cuffs around her wrists.
She was next.