Alone in the glade, Roger spent a few minutes staring at the screen in front of him.
[System Initializing in Process]
[Current Objective: Survive.]
'Survive? What does it mean survive!?'
Roger hoped it would finish initializing sooner rather than later. The Administrator had mentioned gaining powers, and those sounded pretty interesting.
Trying to learn more about the System, he willed it to vanish, and it did. When he thought about it returning, it returned as if it had never left.
Confident it would continue to initialize while he was not focusing on it, Roger dismissed it and began to try and figure out his next move.
He took a step forward to begin to pace and noticed his leg felt lighter than usual. Glancing down, he knit his eyebrows in confusion.
'Where is my ankle monitor?'
A cold breeze caused his shirt to stick out, making him realize that it was... white?
For five years he had been wearing an orange jumpsuit, so having on something else was almost as unbelievable as magic being real!
It took him only a second to come up with a basic theory as to why he was missing both his ankle monitor, and his original clothes.
They had been lost in the transition between worlds.
'Which means the government already knows I am gone. I bet they have since the moment I was brought here.'
With his jumpsuit gone, Roger took a moment to inspect his new outfit. It was a basic white shirt and a matching pair of pants, neither of which felt very thick or comfortable. A couple of holes had been cut in various places, but they didn't seem to correlate to anything important.
He didn't know where the ratty garments came from, outside of just being another part of this new world's magic.
Not new world, Avar.
It was part of Avar's magic.
It would take a while to become accustomed to that word, or even the idea of another world existing at all, but Roger would figure it out and push through. It's how he had survived the prison labor quotas, and it was how he would survive in this strange new land.
Thinking of surviving, he remembered a conversation he had with an inmate.
Roger had been doing his assigned task, moving sheet metal between conveyors and making sure they were orientated in the proper direction, when a man had approached him.
His name was Terrance, and he had been on the same work detail as Roger. He was probably nearing his fifties or sixties, which made him one of the oldest prisoners there as most died before they reached forty.
He had been tasked with making sure Roger was working properly, the previous sheet mover having caused a backlog due to misplacing the metal.
During their jobs, Terrance began to talk with Roger about anything he could think of. It was a common enough occurrence to break the monotony of the labor.
Terrance had once been a curator at a museum and loved to study ancient civilizations, some dating back ten thousand years. He loved their ways of life, how societies began, and how humans naturally came together.
In his explanation, he mentioned that all societies needed three things in large amounts to sustain a population: Food, water, and shelter.
Without one of those three, society would die off, never being able to progress or grow.
Although Roger wasn't starting a civilization, he did need to make sure he could live long enough to have the System finish whatever task it was currently undertaking.
Looking around, he made a mental checklist.
'Okay, what will I need to survive? I can't just try and find a pre-existing civilization, the government would just throw me in prison again. I'm going to need food, water, and shelter, just like Terrance said.'
The shelter part seemed to be the easiest. There were plenty of trees at the edge of the glade, and some of their branches looked thick enough to work as protection from the cold.
Roger figured the next easiest thing to figure out would be water.
He didn't see any around his immediate area, but surely there would be some around here?
Choosing a random direction, Roger set off towards the tree line, avoiding the pile of vomit that was still in the field.
'Gross.'
Tall pillars of wood rose to greet him, their green canopies blocking the radiant sunlight from reaching the dirt floor. Roger paused at the foot of the first tree he found, looking up in amazement at the twisted oak.
'The amount of natural material in this one tree could buy you an entire house back home…'
He tentatively reached out and rested his hand on the bark, feeling the rough strength it held. He pushed against it and felt something sticky on his hand.
Yanking it back, he stared at the thick amber substance.
It didn't look like it was going to hurt him, so he brought it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled earthy.
Rubbing it off on his pants, he smiled at the strangeness of the tree's sticky sap.
The gesture was short-lived, quickly replaced by a flat expression, a habit built over years of punishment. Smiling was showing emotion, and emotion wasn't something you could have much of in prison.
If you preferred to go unnoticed, that is.
Continuing further into the forest, he climbed over roots and under long branches, each sight more wondrous and inspiring than the last. He even saw a few animals chittering as they ran along the branches, carrying strange wooden eggs.
After an hour of wandering, he heard the rush of water in the distance. It reminded him of the sounds of the pipes late at night. He used to listen to them when he couldn't sleep, wondering what it would be like to ride that wave of water to freedom.
He had not listened to the pipes in years, but he felt that forlorn hope surge inside him again.
Turning his walk into a run, he darted through the thick foliage, enjoying the smell of the clean air. Such air back home would have cost a premium.
The closer he was, the louder the sound of the river, soon turning into a cacophony of roaring waves. Breaking through the shrubbery, Roger found himself on the edge of a river many meters wide.
Rocks lined the side, being slowly cut away by the current.
The crystal clear quality let him see straight through to the bottom where slick stones reflected the sunlight. A few fish meandered their way through the liquid, their scales glittering.
Roger had to take a moment to steady his racing heart and enjoy the view.
It was the kind of view wars could be fought for.
He lowered himself to sit on the rocks, gently dipping his legs into the rippling water. The cold of it was sharp at first but grew gentler with time.
For the first time in years, Roger felt genuinely happy, kicking his legs in the river like a little boy.
He saw a particularly bright reflection in the sunlight and turned to look at it before it darted towards his feet.
Without warning, a sharp pain stabbed into his right leg, causing Roger to scream out and wrench his limbs from the water. Falling back, a wriggling eel a meter long was attached to his lower extremity, blood dripping around its mouth.
It was long and made of bright blue shimmering scales, with a tail that whipped in the air. Its teeth were white, but every time it jerked more and more were painted red with blood. Two large black eyes stared at Roger, one on each side of its head.
Panic set in, and he shook his leg violently, hoping to dislodge the creature to no avail.
It held on tightly, even grating its jaws to cause more damage. The blue creature's tail whipped through the air in a taunt as the fangs struck bone, sending fresh shockwaves of pain through Rogers's body.
His adrenaline surged, and anger fueled Roger as he slammed his leg down and grabbed around on the shore. Instinct took control, beating back years of ingrained obedience.
Finding a rock, he leaned forward and began to aggressively smash the weapon down on the creature's body, each strike followed by a wet slap. The eel writhed in agony and let its prey go as it tried to escape the onslaught.
Not so willing to forgive, Roger swept his wounded appendage away as he continued his ruthless assault, swinging the rock again and again until the eel's head was a flat paste.
Breathing heavily, Roger screamed out into the air, his pain and anger mixing to cause a bestial cry.
As the adrenaline dimmed, he began to inhale large gulps of air, his lungs burning in his exertion. His wounded leg was bleeding profusely, smearing the vital fluid on the stones beneath them.
Unsure of what else to do, Roger yanked on the edge of his shirt, ripping off a long strip of cloth.
Gingerly, he placed it around the cuts, wrapping it tightly with a sob.
His body in pain and his energy gone, Roger curled into a ball on the edge of the water and stared at the broken body of the eel.
Without knowing why, he crawled towards it and began to bash the corpse with his fists, growing in intensity with each blow.
Some of them missed, striking the stone underneath it instead, but Roger couldn't feel any of it through the rage and pain he was already experiencing.
Years worth of suppressed emotion bubbled to the surface, the dam he had built up finally coming undone.
The feeling of loneliness in prison, the perceived betrayal and abandonment of his parents, and his fury at the government that had imprisoned him before he ever did anything wrong drove him to a madness that he released on the opportunistic creature.
With every punch, he made a vow.
A vow to make sure he was never a prisoner again.
A vow to make sure he was never abandoned again.
A vow to grow so powerful that the government would regret throwing him in that concrete box.
By the time he stopped swinging, the body of the eel was little more than pulp.
His fists were no better.