'Ugh!' Abel sat up, feeling the scabbing of peeled skin on his back begin to burn again.
He looked around the room, and began to touch his body, checking if he was well and alive, which he was as he sighed.
'For whatever reason he didn't eat me, I don't know the reason but I have got to get the fuck out of here.' He stood up, wincing as his clothes brushed against his wounds.
As he scanned the room, he recognized it as the manager's office in the real world but now it was decorated like a throne garbage room where all kinds of odd and dirty items were scattered around the place.
there were no windows, only one thick wooden door was the only entrance to the room.
He instantly ran for it once he made sure he was the only one in the room, yet as he tried to open the door, it was bolted in place, refusing to budge a single itch.
He kicked and pushed against it, but it was useless, his scrawny body and limited strength were useless against it.
'Fuck, there has to be a way to leave this room.' Abel focused on the garbage items scattered around the room.
Seeing the different odd human items scattered around, some toys, some random broken parts of some machines, while the majority were trinket-like items like little toys, cups, and some clothes, he eventually saw a less-rusted crowbar.
Rushing to the crowbar, he took it into his right hand, yet something unexpected happened.
[You have acquired an Inferior Crowbar of Parasitic Slime.]
Abel instantly dropped it, taking a step back from the crowbar that looked completely normal.
'What was that?' He tried to access the message that appeared in front of him when he held the crowbar, but he didn't find anything on his Record panel.
"Why is this Record thing so useless?" sighing, once he made sure there was nothing wrong with his right hand, he carefully picked it up again, and the golden holographic notification reappeared.
[You have acquired an Inferior Crowbar of Parasitic Slime.]
The message had this highlight shine to it, so he raised his left hand and tried to touch it but his left hand just went through the area, while the notification reacted to his thoughts and expanded into a panel.
[Inferior Crowbar of Parasitic Slime.]
[Record: Being in constant contact with a parasitic slime for a few years, some of the parasitic slime's essence fused with the crowbar, giving it a minor elevation from its nature as just a crowbar.
Durability: F
Quality: Poor.
Essence: Low.
Essence power: Minor acid generation.]
'Wow, this is a magical item!?' Abel swung the crowbar, feeling that it was completely normal.
'If weren't for the Record thing, it wouldn't look different from any random crowbar on the street, but what's is this essence power thing?' Abel asked with a pondering look.
He could tell what the other 3 stats of this crowbar meant but the last one not so much.
'judging by the information provided, it seems the Essence Power stat relates to the Parasitic slime things since it said it was fused with the trace amount of essence of them.' As Abel wondered deep in thought, completely having forgotten his dire situation, Loud screeches began to haunt the place, screeches of the Ratmen.
Holding the magical crowbar close to him, he listened as the screeches began to get louder and more intense, hearing other confusing sounds like the swishing of air and the clangs of metal on other metals.
As the sounds drew closer to the room he was in, and right in front of the door, the Screeches were getting more intense yet fewer, as if whoever made them were dying.
As he began to sweat, the screech sounds died down, and instead he heard the quiet shuffling of feet as they run away to another place.
'Those Ratmen must be the ones who were massacred...' From the screeches, he understood that the geared Ratmen were in some kinda a war and now their enemy must have breached their defenses.
'I have to get out of here before they discover me!' Feeling the grip of death enclose him once again, he run to the door and jammed the crowbar into the side of the lock area, before pushing the crowbar to the front.
Even though the door looked thick, it also showed signs of dryness and brittleness in some areas, and sure enough, the part that held the lock was beginning to fall apart after some force.
It took him 10 minutes to destroy all the wood surrounding the lock and was completely exhausted soon after, yet he proceeded to push forward and leave the room hurriedly, pushing the heavy door with some difficulty.
"Ughhh!" Abel gagged as he saw a scene of carnage just outside the door, where dismembered bodies of Ratmen littered the hallway he was in from beginning to end.
He stepped back into the room, taking a deep breath of the still-fresh air inside instead of the one filled with blood outside.
'My chances of leaving this place went from being hard to outright nightmare.' As he calmed himself down, he began to wonder if he was in a game, from the holographic panel and notifications to the rat monster to flying figures to cracks in space with new worlds behind them, every absurd thing could be said to be built like a game setting.
'No, this is not a game, this is something else entirely, and I'll be damned if I let myself die like some Mob or NPC!!' the death he felt at the hands of his former manager is still fresh on his mind.
With a burning resolve, he moved to the door, crowbar held to guard his chest and head as best as he could, this time he was ready for whatever might come at him.
As he opened the door, he carefully looked to his left as the door opened outward to the right. Finding nothing but dead bodies in there, he felt relieved.
But once he took another step to see what was behind the door to his right, he was stunned in place as he saw an abomination just standing there staring at him.
'...oh Fuck!' Abel instantly closed the door as he saw the abomination of Ratmen with squirming tumor growths covering half of its body sprint like a cheetah on all four.
BANG!!
With more force than he should, he closed the door or he tried to as the abomination began to destroy the door with its incredibly sharp claws and teeth right where he first destroyed to open the door.
'SHIT!!' the abomination was better at destroying as its feral nature used everything it had to get inside the room.
With quick thinking, Abel raised the crowbar and began to stab into the area the abomination was destroying, getting a few lucky hits right into the head of the abomination but it just kept on coming back with more aggression.
No sound was coming out of its mouth as it struggled to breach the door, even putting one of its misaligned clawed hands inside, which Abel viciously beat and stabbed until it retreated.
Abel was sweating trying his best to stay focused and deal with the feral abomination, yet he barely did any damage.
"COME ON!! why won't you die!!?" He kept stabbing into the increasingly feral abomination, even if it stabbed into the skin, the crowbar didn't get far into the abomination's body, stuck on some thick gel-like thing.
Feeling desperate, and seeing the hole in the door big enough for the abomination's head to fit through, his body full of adrenaline instinctively activated the Essence power of the crowbar, and instantly Abel gained the knowledge on how to use and control the Essence Power mysteriously.
The crowbar began to dimly glow with grey-like liquid light at the tip and without pause began to stab the pointy end of the crowbar at the feral abomination; this time he felt it go deeper than ever before, while it also elicited a reproachful response from the abomination.
Yet the abomination didn't stop its feral attacks, instead, it got worse, throwing its body at the door, trying to break it with all its might.
Abel, without relenting kept stabbing at it at every opportunity, feeling the abomination give the most response when he stabbed near its heart.
'That must be its weakness!' Feeling hopeful, he began to line a shot directly into the heart and began waiting for a perfect opportunity; it came in the form of the monster completely breaking through the door.
Abel sidestepped while the monster fell along with the door, before it could get up, Abel now feeling nothing and completely going on instincts, got on top of the abomination and began stabbing toward the heart area again and again and again.
"DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIEEE!!!!" He kept stabbing so much, the whole back area of the torso just turned into a swish cheese, the abomination was unresponsive at the third stabbing.
Completely exhausted, trembling, and soaked in mucky grey-red blood, he crawled away from the corpse and began to take deep breaths.
Before he could settle down, several notifications appeared.
[Congratulations to the Recorded Human: Abel Lucian for slaying his first Monster.]
[You are now permitted to involuntary leave the Underlayer as you have proven yourself capable of surviving the Monsters residing in them.]
[Continue your journey of protecting this world young Recorded.]
....
Abel who had no energy for whatever machination the Recorder thing executed completely ignored it, lowering his head and just staying silent for a few seconds.
Having calmed down, he stood up, trying to retrieve the crowbar still stuck on the corpse.
As he removed it, he saw a soft grey glow inside the corpse, which traveled and condensed on the heart area of the corpse in a second.
To his surprise, the glow began to be absorbed into the center of its accumulation, and just as he was getting ready to stab into it just in case another monster came out of it, it completed whatever it was doing instantly after he had the thought to stab it.
In the heart area, he could see a pebble-sized blue crystal dropping into the unrecognizable meat after its creation.
Interested in this phenomenon he was somewhat familiar with, he reached for the crystal, taking it in his right hand, and a notification emerged.
[You have acquired a low Monster Essence Crystal.]
Seeing it was something related to this whole thing, he pocketed it, and as he turned around and began to leave, he heard the shuffling of feet coming in vast numbers.
'Shit! those must be other abominations!!' Abel looked for a way to escape before the messages he saw before appeared in his mind.
'I wanna leave this place!' He said internally, and sure enough, a space crack formed in front of him, right into the office he was currently in.
Not giving it any thought, he jumped right into it, seeing at the last minute hundreds of abominations enter the room like a wave as they clawed and ripped each other to reach him.
The moment he entered, the space crack closed, and he found himself in the real world again.
[You have exited the protected Underlayer.]