Everything was dark. No light to be seen in an unknown location. Ryo slowly wakes up from his slumber opening his eyes to the darkness. When he opens his eyes, he sees nothing but feels a sharp excruciating pain emanating from his lower abdominal region, his back, and his sides. His memory was a bit foggy but he didn't fully express his pain. Ryo looks around trying to discover where he is and what happened to him.
In the darkness, he keeps moving his hands to see if he can find his bag and luckily he does.
He unzips the bag and using only his sense of touch finds a glow stick, holds the glow stick from the top and bottom and bends them at similar angles causing it to fracture.
"Crack."
A sound comes from the glow stick as the glass breaks and the chemicals in it mix creating light.
He then uses the light to check his waist to see what is happening to him.
As the light reaches his waist, he sees a red viscous liquid flowing from him.
"Blood, is this blood?" Ryo says without being able to discern if it was blood or tomato juice but soon after realized the true nature of the liquid; which is blood.
Soon after, all the memories of what had happened were flooding into his mind. like a pressured pipe full of water, the information flooded into his brain. He remembered everything except what happened after the monster had taking a bite out of his body.
Ryo was dumbfounded. He was sure that at the moment the monster ate him, he was dead. But for some unknown reason, he was now alive; which should not be possible at this moment.
While thinking, the image of the monster that bit him came to mind and he began to make sense of what happened to his shelter.
He remembers that the cockroach-like creature that bit him was about five meters tall, had what seemed to be an exoskeleton with flaming wings on its back and a set of antennae, its skin color was obsidian, and had two sets of blackish-blue flames coming out of its shoulders, these flames seemed to go all around its body in the form of blues-black tattoos with an amazing glow. It had a more female figure compared to a male and its face was actually very beautiful, well that is before it opened its mouth to bite Ryo but before he didn't notice this previously due to how fast it took it to bite him and he blacked out.
After thinking about it a lot, he then remembered how the trees and other plants in the forest he was at burned with the exact same color of flame and it finally hit him that it was that cockroach zombie thing that breached the wall to begin with.
His mind was laced with confusion and sorrow as he remembered that all his family and probably all the people at his shelter had died.
With much grief on his mind, he couldn't help but shed tears remembering that he had killed his one and only sister. Lamenting and wishing it was him that died instead but here he is at death's door and still not dead. He cries, but as memories of their conversation before he killed her come back to him, he cleans his tears and decides while saying.
"It was just by chance that I made it out alive. My family and all the people I know are now dead. But I promised Ray that I would live, and no matter what this world throws at me I will survive even if it kills me"
He says while passion and courage shine from his face showing his resolve to live.
But his face turns dark again as he says
"And I'll kill each and every last one of those bastard monsters until I find that cockroach bastard. I don't care what I have to do or what I have to kill to get to you. But I will find you and I will kill you"
He says while using both hands to scratch his neck until he bleeds profusely while his face could only be described as a force of pure madness.
Soon he calms down and starts to examine his environment to find out where he is and discovers a light shining out of the cave. He decides it may be his only way out and summons all the strength he has left, gets up, and walks towards the light. The distance was short but the pain from his injury made it feel like it was taking hours to get there. Finally, he reached the entrance of the cave and stepped out.
As he stepped out of the cave he couldn't help but smile as his eyes glowed like gems out of amazement of the image he saw. It was the sky covered with a once-in-a-lifetime aurora, a truly beautiful sky and a breathtaking one to be honest.
The bluish color of the sand made the display even more hypnotizing. Soon he calmed down and observed that he was in a desert which confused him. The shelter he came from was known as Green Dew Shelter for its large amount of vegetation was at least three thousand kilometers from the desert. How was it possible that he was now in a desert, it didn't make any sense.
He sat down outside and once again thought about what happened and how he got there and couldn't think of anything so he got up and started to walk around but couldn't get far due to his injuries and therefore collapsed.
After about five minutes of lying down, he noticed that his wound didn't hurt as much as it did when he woke up and decided to check the state of his injury once again, to his surprise, the wound that was once gushing out blood had stopped bleeding. Although it wasn't bleeding anymore, it had not finished healing yet and was still very painful.
At this point, Ryo was very confused. Normally speaking, any human that received such an injury should have died even before the time he woke up and yet not only was he alive but he was healing at an abnormal rate.
"Growl"
His tummy rumbled.
He didn't give much thought to the fact that he should be dead right now and instead was fixated on finding something to eat. So once again he got up and started to roam the desert in search of food. At least this time he wasn't in as much pain as he was when he started.
After about three hours of searching for food and water, he was about to give up as his face looked as pale as a ghost. This was the first time he felt this hungry in his life.
Finally, after another thirty minutes of searching, he saw a land mass that seemed to be an oasis in the far distance, and both his facial and body expressions improved as he ran over to the oasis.
Finally, he got there and with much joy jumped into the water and slowly surfaced again with a gasp for air. He then got out of the water, took off his clothes, and went back in to wash himself. As he got into the water for the second time he looked at his reflection through the clear water and noticed that something was off and struggled to realize what. And then it hit him. Firstly his hair which was formerly a darker shade of golden brown was now golden color itself which was shocking, he had now become a blond and that wasn't all. His eyes which were formerly golden brown had now completely become gold. While looking at himself through the reflection of the water he was simply astonished by how much his appearance had changed.
From what he could see, even his height which was five foot five had now increased to five foot nine and his skin color had slightly become lighter from dark brown to a kind of light brown color. Although he looked better in general, he didn't really like it because gold was his least favorite color due to it reminding him of the rich that bullied the poor in his shelter because they would always be seen with gold on them but it wasn't like he could change his body himself so he stopped thinking about it.
After washing himself, he got out of the water and started putting on his clothes and while he was doing that, he noticed yet another anomaly on his body which was a tattoo in the shape of a kind of long-looking cockroach on his right shoulder with all sorts of lines and designs around it and its color was bluish-black. Even if it was a cockroach, it had an absolutely cool and fascinating appearance. Ryo ignored this tattoo and wasn't surprised because of all that had already happened to him and continued to put on his clothes.
When he finished, he decided to go deeper into the oasis to find something to eat.
"Crack, Boom".
The sound suddenly came out of the ground as a decayed-looking hand followed, Ryo found himself filled with fear as an undead reached out and grabbed his leg. The monster slowly went up his leg and was trying to bite him but kept on missing. The zombie was now completely on top of Ryo and its head moved at incredible speed in the direction of his neck and tried to bite him.
Out of Instinct, Ryo used his hand to block the bite but closed his eyes out of fear. While his eyes were closed, he wondered why he didn't feel any pain from the bite and slowly opened his eyes and looked at his hand.
When he opened his eyes and looked at his hand, he was met with a feeling of both fear and relief to see that even as the zombie bit him, he didn't bleed at all. He then took a closer look and noticed that his hand was covered in a crystal-like exoskeleton and realized that was what saved him. The zombie took another bite but multiple of its teeth fell off at once while Ryo laid there confused by what had happened to his body.