Thunk.
Aaron still couldn't feel anything, but this was different. It was as if his body consisted solely of pins and needles. It was even worse than nothing at all. He moved his arms around, trying to slap away the pins and needles, but it hit him.
'I...I have arms!' Aaron thought excitedly, but what laid before him was a sight he never thought he'd see. 'I mean, my parents told me I was bad to the bone, but I didn't think I'd ever actually see them.'
His new body, that of a common skeleton, was almost unbelievable. All the pieces came together perfectly, albeit a bit closer than regular due to no muscles or intervertebral discs. He moved his body around, as if he was trying to stretch.but then he recalled that he had no muscles to stretch.
He put his hands together, realising that he couldn't feel himself. The pins and needles had gone away, but then again, he had no nerves to feel with. He looked around, and all he could see were grey walls with tinged of blue. Empty as far as his eyes could see.
Eyes?
Aaron put his fingers directly into his eye sockets, and nothing changed. He figured he'd have at least lost his sight, but nope. As he was busy figuring out how his new body worked, from how it handled jumping, to running, there were sounds of rumbling coming from above. Rocks dropped from the ceiling, tapping him on the skull, but he couldn't feel it. However, he could hear it, and he knew for a fact that it generally wasn't a good sign. The rumbling noises slowly moved downwards, and from the left, Aaron could hear the sounds of maybe hundreds of monsters coming his way.
'Nah, fuck that!' Aaron yelled to himself, sprinting out of that place as if the police had found him smoking a joint while driving. His coordination wasn't perfect since he wasn't used to his new body, but it was enough to keep him moving. The rumbling got louder, and louder, getting closer and closer, and Aaron wondered for a second if he'd be able to make it out of there. As the rumbling got almost too close to breathe, he found a crevice in the wall just barely big enough for him to fit in. He leapt at the opportunity of safety and hopped inside. He watched as a giant worm-like creature flew past him after not even ten seconds, followed soon buy a plethora of other monsters, from a giant spider to tiny goblins, golems made of rock to husks of rotting flesh. They stormed past, seeming to take almost twenty minutes for all of them to leave.
Aaron made a sighing notion with his body, and left the crevice in the wall, heading back out to the open dungeon. He followed the trail of monster footprints, some being heavy enough to leave marks in the rocky floor of the dungeon.
'Why were they chasing it? None of them looked strong enough to kill the thing.' Aaron tried to reason, but he knew for a fact that any of those could trun him to dust if he even so much as THOUGHT about fighting them. He kept walking, navigating this road quite travelled. As he ventured, he had time to think about how he wanted to live his life.
'Not too powerful, not too weak, I want to live a good life. If I'm too strong, people will keep trying to fight me, but if I'm too weak, I'll die. I need a balance.' Aaron thought to himself, trying to decide on his method of approach to this new world. His thoughts after that were soon interrupted by a huge room, foliage of all different kinds thrown around haphazardly. He saw huge plants like venus flytraps, all the way to some pitcher plant-esque creature that was currently eating a zombie, half an arm out of its mouth. Aaron just stood there in awe, taking in the scenery of what he had just stumbled on.
'So, this is where I'll be spending a lot of time, huh? At least I know I won't be stuck fighting the same enemies over and over.' Aaron admitted, staying close to the walls as he tried to find a little hole in the wall to hide in.
He went into one about his height, but was quickly hissed out of it by a spider around his size, and he wasn't gonna mess with that thing. Soon, however, he found a hole in the wall that would just barely fit his bony frame. It was like a box shape had just been cut out of the wall. He dropped down, military crawl style, and made his way in there. It definitely wasn't spacious, but he could deal with it since he had nothing on him.
'Well, I've got this makeshift base now. All that's left to do is figure out how to get stronger.' Aaron planned, various thoughts coming to his head. However, everything quickly came to a head when one of his skills popped up in his head.
[Limited Adaptation]
'Oh yeah, I like the look of this.' Aaron said, trying to smile, but nothing showed on his bony face. He wriggled his way out of his base, which was nothing more than a thin crawl space, and scoped out the area. In the distance, he saw a spider that was about half the size of him, and figured that they would be a good test of his current powers. He started walking over to them, but his path was interrupted by one of the largest bears he had ever seen.
Standing over four metres in height, compared to him being barely two, he knew for a fact that he was outclassed, and this bear had a glint in its eyes. It wasn't going to let him escape, and if he tried, Aaron was going to die hard, fast, and without a shred of hope.