Kroft awoke with a snap. He raised his upper body and surveyed his surroundings or at least he tried to. His sense they weren't there, he couldn't see, couldn't hear, feel or anything. He was utterly bamboozled. He didn't even remember falling unconscious but before he could try to recall his last memory his vision came in a daze. In front of him there was just darkness and in the center of his vision there were numbers counting down.
10
9
8
7
6
It was counting the seconds until something happened.
5
4
What's going to happen? Kroft managed to think to himself before the last three numbers were displayed.
3
2
1
When the number should have hit zero Kroft lost his sense of sight again and as soon as it was gone it was back. He wasn't in darkness anymore though, no in fact it was quite the opposite around him was a world tinted red. The sky, the land, and the atmosphere itself seemed to be glowing red. It was Kroft's perfect rendition of a biblical hell. All that was missing was a few horned devils and some eternal blazing fires. Kroft wasn't alone though, quite the contrary, he was surrounded by people for as far as the eyes can see, no not just people, creatures that Kroft had only ever read about in books. They looked just as confused as him though and before Kroft could even finish his few comprehensible curious thoughts in this new place screams filled the air. Somewhere to his left a beast Kroft has never even seen before had impaled a woman. It didn't stop there though as there were wild animals everywhere, with no intelligence there confusion led to mayhem and in their fear they attacked. Krofts sense of smell, now returned, was filled with the scent of blood. Calamity arose around him and death was the prominent solution to the confusion to all of the beings around him. An unimaginable battlefield broke out and Kroft was just a tiny speck in the large field of struggle.
"What the fuck!" Kroft let out a yelp as he took off into a sprint. He thought that he was hardened from his life that he lived but this was a situation that he was utterly unprepared for. His insides felt queasy as it felt like he was breathing in the scent of blood more than he was air. He pushed through his sickness and kept running though as he observed that the people around him that kept still were being slaughtered by the second. Kroft couldn't think straight and his body seemed to run on instinct, the want for life told him that he needed to escape, but where could he escape to? He was surrounded by a sea of people, beasts, monsters, everything.
"Oof!" Kroft got knocked over by a goat. He stood up immediately, if he was a normal human he probably would have broken a couple ribs from getting rammed by a goat while sprinting, but his body was in peak condition and all it did to him was knock the breath out of him. He took a glance at the goat and continued his forward trajectory away.
"Why is there a fucking goat here!?" he yelled to himself as he slid behind a giant octopus that was devouring a four handed cyclops.
"And what the fuck is that?!"
Kroft thought that his knowledge gained from Doof Academy's library was immense and that he wouldn't be caught lacking when it came to identifying different species of creatures but the amount of unknowns in the situation that he was in now was way too much to his liking. He came to an understanding that he still knows much too little about the world around him still. He continued sprinting but his luck didn't last for long. A root tripped Kroft and before he could react he was pulled inside of a tree like creature's mouth. 46 seconds. That was how long Kroft had lasted for before he was brought down in this crazy world. Inside of the tree's mouth he didn't know what to do, he took to the only offense mover that he could deploy, Salvine. He tried to at least, but before he could focus his magic he was shoved down into the throat of the tree and while he was slipping into the throat he felt like he was on a roller coaster as his stomach churned.
"What the fuck is happening!?"
The tree that Kroft was in was just thrown. Kroft assumed that was what was happening as his shoulder smashed against the side of the tree's throat when it impacted in the ground. Just from that impact he could feel that something was right. His shoulder went numb and the pain that his chest was feeling was immense. He stifled a groan as he balled his working hand into a fist.
"What type of force was this log thrown with to destroy my shoulder just from the impact?" Kroft whispered to himself to keep his mind off the pain that was radiating towards his chest from this numb shoulder. The tree didn't move after that though and neither did Kroft. He heard roars, shrieks, blasts, booms, foreign languages, and much more. Throughout all of that though, the only thing that Kroft thought about was how to save his own life. He thought about it through tearful eyes and ca-
Wait, tearful eyes? Kroft wiped his face with his still working arm and noticed that he was crying.
Why, why am I crying? Kroft thought to himself. When did I start crying? What's happening? Why would I cry, I'm fine.
"I'm fine," Kroft reassured himself. But he wasn't. Kroft had always put on a tough act, he killed like it was nothing, calculated ruthlessly but now that he was in the midst of a dreadfully horrible battle which almost guaranteed his death he was crying. Kroft did whatever he needed to to get what he wanted and now that he thought everything was going to be for nothing his despair started to leak through.
"Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop." Kroft told himself this over and over again. Eventually his breathing slowed and he tried to think to himself.
"There's no cracks in this log's throat. Even after such a disruptive impact it's not destroyed. Its resilience is amazing. This is probably the best place for me to be right now." Kroft confirmed this with himself and layed there for a minute. 1 minute led to 2 and 2 led to 3 and before he knew it he had fallen asleep in order to escape the pain which reality brought to him.
Kroft awoke from his slumber some time later. There was no way that he could have fallen asleep so he concluded that he must have passed out. The noises outside were just as loud as when he had fallen asleep. He checked how long he was asleep by using his gift. He inspected the tree's corpse and found that it died 10 hours and 43 minutes ago.
How many things are there for it to be just as lively as when we got here 11 hours ago? Kroft questioned inwardly. God when will this hell end?
Kroft sat there for another 10 minutes and then the tree started shaking around him. Rumbling was normal at this point. Kroft assumed that it was a ginormous beast or a large scale attack but this time the rumbling seemed to be much more intense then anything he felt before. Kroft had a bad feeling about this.
"This feels like a plot event" he whispered to himself sarcastically. He was glad that he still had his stupid sesne of humor. The rumbling grew as Kroft slowly crawled his way through the tree. Only when he made it back up to the tree mouth did he notice that he didn't have a way to open it up. Then he noticed a sliver of light peeking through the front of the tree's mouth, the area around it was burned, no, charred and smashed to pieces.
It seems like this log really must have taken a beating, Kroft thought to himself as he tried to widen the opening. With only one arm it was definitely difficult, but with the destruction from the outside Kroft managed to slip through out of the tree. He regretted it instantly. When he was out his nostrils were filled with a million different types of blood all at once. The once open hellscape was out of Krofts vision and he was buried under a pile of bodies. He was barely able to wiggle out of the tree's mouth. The rumbling increased drastically and he felt the bodies move around him as impacts rang against their distant relatives.
BOOM*
CROOM*
Explosions of different calibers ran out and finally he could see one hand shoved in the far distance of his sight as it exploded, setting off a chain reaction from the other corpses to explode.
"OH FRI-" Kroft didn't get to finish his substitute to a curse as the chain reaction of corpses was instantaneous. The corpses surrounding him blew up and the one closest to him, the tree, gave him one final shelter of protection before it blew up and impaled him.
Congratulations! You have made it into Vex!
Krofts eyes widened.
"I'm alive!" Kroft shouted "Wholly shit! I'm alive! How am I alive?!"
As if to answer Krofts question, the words in front of him updated and stated.
{All injuries have been healed. Your condition has been reset to optimal}
"What is this?" Kroft asked out loud hoping for an answer. The words that popped out in front of him were not from his gift. No, these words were digital like a message from a computer. Kroft looked around and noticed that he was in a room by himself, the room was small with a stone floor and a wooden table and chair in the middle. The walls were made out of stone too which made Kroft feel like he was in a cave, but his surroundings were too smooth to be considered a cave. Kroft looked down at his body, his clothes were in tatters with barely a loincloth covering his privates, but there wasn't a scratch on him. His shoulder was perfectly fine and he could move both of his arms like nothing happened.
"This is amazing…" he muttered to himself in awe.
DING
A ring rang out through the silent room and immediately a screen made of light appeared before Kroft. The screen though was just purple with shapes that Kroft couldn't even put into words moving, not staying still, he didn't know what he was looking at. It was impossible for him to know. A sound which Kroft didn't understand came out of the screen and then a comprehensible sentence came out.
"Don't you love a good game?" A charismatic announcer spoke in a deep game show-like voice. "Well look no further than to Vex! Congratulations you've gained the privilege to participate in a game to die for! Don't worry only the most qualified of your world is allowed to play so that means you're the cream of the crop because the other 90% of your world's life didn't survive the initiation!"
"What in th-" Kroft was cut off
"Now don't forget, games are all about fun so go out there and be yourself! Aleo bless you!" The announcer finished his monologue and Kroft was left there stunned as the cheery voice was silenced and the screen disappeared.
"A-a game? You call wiping out 90% of the world's population a game?" Kroft was left speechless and yet this game system wasn't.
BEEP
{Try saying "Status Menu"}
Kroft stood there for a couple seconds staring down the words floating in front of him.
"Isn't that pretty cliche?"
{Try saying "Status Menu"}
The message just repeated itself, not seeming to care much for Krofts opinion.
"Status Menu"
A screen appeared in front of Kroft displaying his information.
Name: Kroft Aldrich
Race: Human
Title: None
Class: None
Health: 15/15
Mana: 25/25
Stats
Intelligence: 10
Charm: 1
Strength: 5
Agility: 7
Constitution: 5
Luck: 10
"Damn, am I really that ugly?"
Other than his shock formed from learning that he only had one charm, Kroft was also not predicting that his luck would be as high as his intelligence. He wasn't surprised by his intelligence stat, he was studying to be a magician after all. A revelation came over him when he thought about it.
"Is that why I survived that hell? Because I was lucky?" Kroft said to himself.
It made sense when he thought about it. He was lucky that right when he was going to be swallowed by the tree it was killed and he was super lucky that the initiation ended when a massive corpse exploding attack happened. He was pretty relieved in all honesty, now that he knew that he had a good amount of luck he could use that to his advantage, but he also understood that luck wasn't something to be relied upon.
BEEP
{Try saying "Stats Menu" again}
Kroft followed the message's instructions and repeated the phrase. When he did so the interface in front of him closed.
"So what is this? Like a Virtual Reality game?" Kroft asked the open space in front of him. Of course nothing answered his questioning, instead he got another instruction.
{Try saying "Inventory"}
"Ok I get it. Inventory"
And just like in a game a menu appeared in front of Kroft with 5 boxes in a horizontal line. Two of those boxes weren't empty though as in one of them was an outfit and in the other was a branch. Kroft poked the outfit box with his finger and immediately a pure white pants and shirt appeared in his hands. He put them on as he was pretty much naked with the rags of clothing he had with him right now. He then turned his attention to the branch, well at least it looked like a branch, but when he clicked on that a stick as tall as he was appeared in his hands.
"I get the clothes but why the… no way." Realization dawned on Kroft. "This was the branch from the tree that impaled me"
He thought it over and it kind of made sense. The clothing he had with him or at least the tiny bit he did have came with him so why would a huge ass stick that was literally inside of him not also come with him. Kroft, not knowing what to do with the branch, shoved it back into the box that it came from and it disappeared back into the menu.
"So this is like an RPG then? It's got classes, inventories, titles, etc? Wait no, it's with other people so that would make it an MMO?" Kroft speculated on what the game would be like that this Vex was. He would find out that the answer was going to be shown shortly as another message appeared in front of him.
BEEP
{Say "Start" to leave the tutorial}
"This was the tutorial? What? You just showed me how to open up the menus, I don't even know what the game is about?" Kroft said angrily as the message repeated itself.
{Say "Start" to leave the tutorial}
"Nothing ever goes my way…. Start."