John Devar woke up on the day he died feeling rather odd. His body felt different, unfamiliar.
He lay in a lightless cavern, staring at pitch darkness. Feeling was beginning to return to his body and his mind was getting clearer. Shaking his head as if to clear unwanted hallucinations away, he couldn't help but wonder why everything felt so disjointed, yet surreal.
Using his hands to prop himself up, he noticed something. The floor was wet and sticky. No wonder his back was wet. Curious he brought his hands close to his nose but recoiled at the smell. Blood. It smelled of blood. Even though he couldn't see well in the dark cavern, he could still recognise the iron stench of blood anywhere.
Smelling the blood seemed to unlock something in him, as a flood of foreign memories began to assault him. Memories of a large underground city, beautiful and terrible in equal measure. He witnessed his own death at the hands of a crab-like monstrosity that ripped his stomach apart, leaving him to bleed out on the cold cavern.
But that wasn't his own memories. He had died of cancer and not from a large monster. This weren't his memories. No. It must be the memories of another person.
With the memories came instinct and intuition. The cavern did not seem so dark anymore as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, almost as if it was switching to night vision. From what he could see, this was the same cavern he had died in. The same cavern the crab monster had mauled him and left him to bleed out.
"No! I am John from Los Angeles, not Darien from Amradur. All this is just a bad dream," he recited to himself, hoping to push the flood of memories that were nearly beginning to overwhelm him. It would be bad if he lost himself.
But his voice sounded different from what he was familiar with. From a booming baritone to silky tenor. Even his accent was different, like if American English wasn't his first language.
He brought his hands to his face to confirm his suspicions. It was true. The hands he was staring at were very different from the ones he could remember, long, slender with sharp unkempt nails.
It was obvious, he was still John but in a different body. The memory of the previous owner was fighting to assert itself but he pushed it aside to a corner of his mind.
Using his legs as leverage, he got to his feet and began surveying his surroundings. Taking a look around, he found it was dark, really dark. But somehow, his eyes seemed to adjust to the lack of light. He could make out shapes and outlines even though everything looked different, almost weird. It was like he was seeing in hues instead of normal vision.
This body really had supreme night vision, used to living in darkness underground.
As his eyes kept adjusting to the darkness, everything around him began to take on greater definition. It was strange because he knew it was not getting any brighter, it was his eyes that were adapting amazingly well to the darkness. The darkness was not a problem again.
If he could see his face right now, he would have observed that his eyes shone with a red glow.
Everything he looked at, had a certain hue to it, and his own body even shone like a beacon to his eyes. He realized the version of night vision he had seemed very good at detecting living things. Apart from himself, the only other living thing he could detect were some lichens growing on the walls.
Looking around the cavern again, he could see several stalagmite protrusions jutting out from the cavern floor and numerous stalactite formations dangling from the ceiling. Further investigation showed a tunnel leading away from the cavern. It was the only exit from the cavern he could see. The tunnel was very visible as from the walls of the tunnel grew some sort of fungi that were bioluminescent, emitting a dim throbbing light that placed the tunnel in sharp relief.
With the tunnel ahead as his only exit from the cavern, he decided to get close and investigate it. However, he could not help but wonder at the way this new body moved. His movement was graceful, almost catlike, his steps so light it made no sound. The agility and grace he now possessed made him wonder at the capabilities of this new body.
Ignoring the drying blood on the floor he stepped forwards, attempting to walk in the direction of the bright tunnel ahead. The new memories crammed in a corner of his mind were showing him that the drying blood on the cavern floor was his.
Even with the strange new memories he inherited, he still could not wrap his head around his transmigration.
Is this some kind of purgatory? Is this real or am I dreaming?
He would have suspected he was placed in a simulation of some kind if not for the fact that he had these strange memories tucked in a corner of his mind.
He was still deep in contemplation when his ears twitched, reacting to a strange clacking sound up ahead. The sound wasn't particularly loud, but in the eerily quiet cavern, the noise was amplified and could as well come from a sound system.
The sound made him alert in three ways. First from his fear of strange sounds in a strange cavern. Second because the sound was coming from the only exit tunnel in the cavern preventing his escape. But thirdly because that noise was familiar. Not to him as John but to the memories of the previous owner of this body he now possessed.
Crouching in fear and rapidly scanning his surroundings, John ducked to the right, hiding behind a stalagmite protrusion. He wanted to hide from the creature and if possible escape.
From the tunnels emerged a large and lumbering creature. It stood twice as tall as John with a crab lower body and humanoid upper body. The humanoid portion of the crab made it look like a centaur, if a centaur had a crab lower body. However, unlike a centaur, its appearance was so eerie, it could as well be an eldritch monstrosity. It was a foul amalgamation of crab and humanoid features, protected by a thick carapace with protruding spikes decorating its head and spine.
Peering closer, he couldn't help but shudder at the appearance of the monster. The overly large lobster claws instead of hands, the small beady black eyes, and its protruding shark-like teeth made the upper humanoid portion of the crab monster look less humanoid and more like an aberration from his worst nightmares. To top it all off, the creature had thick carapace that encased it all around. Even its joints seemed well covered by the carapace.
The creature had not yet noticed him but was roughly trudging in his direction with its six crab-like legs.
Seeing the eldritch monstrosity seemed to put him in a serious case of fight or flight. This went beyond the normal scare of seeing a strange being. It was as if this body knew the creature and was reacting to it irrespective of his opinions on the matter.
Forcing his body to calm down, he paused to think, realizing the creature was familiar to the previous owner of his body. From the inherited memories, he could see the last thing the previous owner of this body saw before its death was the crab monster eviscerating him and leaving him to bleed his guts out. The owner of his new memories had put up a worthy fight, but his spells had bounced off the monster's magic-resistant carapace.
Even if John did not have these strange new memories in his head to guide him, he could tell by sight that the creature's exoskeleton was tough and glinted with an unfamiliar aura.
Magic was new to John but the memories he inherited contained knowledge of the arcane and a plethora of spells if he dared to search deep enough. Before waking up in this strange cavern, his only experience of magic was illusions and sleight of hand from entertainers who called themselves magicians. On earth, magic only existed in movies and books. However, the inherited memories seemed to suggest that magic was a daily occurrence in this new world he found himself in.
While he knew these new memories were not his, he couldn't help but shudder in terror at the nature of this new world.
'If the previous owner of this body was a mage, then I should be capable of magic, after all, did I not transmigrate into the body of a mage?' he thought, in an attempt at self-motivation.
He should find a way around the problem even if the creature is magic-resistant. Thinking about the challenge made him remember that his inherited memories indicated that the creature's carapace had magic-resistant properties, not the flesh underneath. But how does he get through all that carapace armor the creature seemed to possess in abundance?
Contemplating the problem seemed to cause another flood of memories to assault his mind.
'No, I shouldn't let the vast flood of memories overwhelm me.' he thought.
However, even though the flood of memories was much, he was still fascinated by the prospect of casting magic and began searching the inherited memories for clues and spells. He began searching with more intent this time, attempting to block off what he felt was useless.
It wasn't as hard as before as even the act of thinking about magic brought the image of certain spells and their components to mind. He began to filter for spells that required no components or elaborate preparation, searching desperately for something that could deal with a magic-resistant shell.
He was in luck, as the previous owner of the body he now possessed knew of one such spell that could help him. However, there was a problem. The previous owner of his body had never casted the spell before as it was a magic-intensive spell that required a powerful mage to cast, especially as there weren't any spell components to aid the casting. John did not give up hope. How could he know it wasn't possible if he did not try it out himself?
The crab monster had been moving to a corner of the cave but suddenly paused as if noticing the presence of another being in the cavern. Its head began to pivot ominously as it searched in the direction John was hiding.
Seeing the monster turning in his direction injected some sense of urgency back into John. How would he know if the spell worked without even trying? Facing the creature, he began casting the spell. Knowledge of the spell seemed to flow to him from his inherited memories, directing his movements, the incantation vivid in his mind. The spell seemed to take all his concentration, but he did not mind. It was either all or nothing.
The crab monster itself was stunned to see the person it had mauled a while back still moving and talking. John could not read the creature's expression. It may have been because his mind was now immensely focused on the magic he was weaving or it may be due to the creature's carapaced rigid face. However, John could still notice the creature's surprise and used the precious seconds to cast his spell, weaving his inner magic and the ambient magic together to complete the spell.
｢ Darien have casted [Clouds of Attrition] ｣
Before the creature could regain its wit, the spell came into existence as a noxious green cloud. The green cloud seemed to materialize from nothing, appearing over the creature's head. After materializing, the clouds grew bigger and bigger until it transcended from a little puff to a sizable cloud capable of placing the large monster in its shadow. The spell's purpose was to create an acid cloud over a single target, and that was exactly what it did with the crab-like monstrosity being its target.
The crab monster had to shift its attention from John to the deadly cloud of acid that just miraculously appeared over its head. But it was too late for the creature to do anything as the cloud began spewing its load of corrosive liquid over the creature. As the acid made contact with the monster's carapace, it began thrashing in pain. The reason for that pain was visible to John. Its carapace was melting under the effect of the corrosive acid, the reaction of acid and carapace producing nasty fumes that made the whole effect more dreadful.
John did not know which one sickened him more, the nasty fumes or the sizzling sound of the creature's shell melting. The sizzling sound the melting carapace produced was just as nauseating as the noxious fumes it generated. All his three senses of sight, sound and smell, bearing witness to the horrifying destruction he had wrought.
He held back the vomit threatening to explode from his throat. He needed to see this to the end. Fortunately, he still kept his wits about him as the acid cloud spell only lasted for about six long heartbeats, giving him enough time to think about his next move.
He thought about making a run for it before the monster came to its senses from the pain and suffering he had subjected it to. The problem with running was that the monster was in the path of the only exit from the cavern. As his mind raced searching for solutions or alternative escape routes, the memories in his head supplied him with another spell, an arcane bolt popular among established mages but the creature looked too tough to be taken down by a spell that mundane. He intuitively knew that the arcane bolt would not be sufficient to finish off the large creature in front of him, even without its magic-resistant carapace. He needed something powerful.
He searched his new memories for a more powerful spell, something with more punch, something like a fireball. Surprisingly, his inherited memories came up blank. It was almost as if the previous owner of this body did not know what a fireball was. However, his memory still came up with another spell for him to use. Like last time, his new memories seemed to think he was too weak to cast it. Producing lightning without any aid was the purview of powerful mages as the memory indicated. He did not let that deter him. Well, he had tried the previous spell and it worked, why shouldn't he try another one? The memories had already been proven to be wrong in Judging his capacity.
With nothing to lose, John recited the incantation for the lightning spell as it flowed to his lips. Like before, his inherited memories seemed to direct his actions. He subconsciously spread his legs wide into a balanced stance, pointing his hands toward the general direction of the thrashing creature.
｢ Darien have casted [Darlan's Fury] ｣
At the end of his incantation, powerful purple lightning was discharged from his hands with such force that he was thrown backward from the recoil force alone. The power from the magical lightning raised the hairs on his head and the whole cavern smelled of energy as if a storm was brewing. The purple lightning struck the thrashing creature in the chest, the energy of the spell flinging the creature backward, into a hanging stalactite.
Surprisingly, the stalactite held against the force, even as the monstrosity fell back down to the cavern floor, twitching and sizzling all the way. John attempted to cast the spell again but stumbled as his second attempt made him suddenly dizzy. Luckily, he arrested his movement, preventing his collapse. Noticing the backlash from repeating the spell in quick succession, he instead attempted to cast [arcane bolt] on the creature, which was now a twitching mess on the floor, its melted shell in shambles and blackened flesh sizzling as remnant arcs of magical purple lightning still ran through it. The [arcane bolt] didn't make him dizzy so he fired one bolt after another until the monstrous creature stopped moving.
It wasn't until the creature stopped twitching that John could relax, leaning on a sturdy stalagmite outcropping. Catching his breath from his efforts, he could not but feel sleepy from all the magical exertion. As he made to curl in a fetal position and sleep on the cavern floor, the strange memories he inherited alerted him to the dangers of resting in an unfamiliar cavern. Suterra was not a kind place.