As I marched on through an insidious and dense darkness, the shifting sands of the desert yielded beneath my feet.
I didn't want to think about how I got here.
A gentle wind blew from my right and cooled my blood. As well as the blood that was not mine.
I didn't want to think about what I left behind.
The moon shone so bright and yet the world was still shrouded in the dark. Or perhaps it was me. Was there something wrong with me? Me? Him?
I didn't want to think about this body that wasn't my own.
I didn't panic. And I didn't think too hard. I could do nothing but resume my tour of the sands and hope that something obvious would happen.
I knew what this was, but my situation was still baffling.
I didn't leave a nasty review. I wasn't an obsessive player of any game I could think of. I didn't clear a mystery achievement that no one else in the world had cleared before me. And I certainly didn't end up as the only reader of a web novel that spanned far too many chapters.
There were plenty of souls out there to grab and throw into another world. What was mine worth? Why was I chosen? Did I have a purpose? If I did, no one bothered to notify me.
'Still nothing...'
I glanced up to whatever horizon I could glean in the distance. Of course, nothing has changed from when I last looked an hour ago.
An hour?
It felt like I'd been walking for far longer, but that certainly was my mind playing tricks on me. Right? Well, I'd never be able to tell, I was too scared to look back and estimate how far I had moved. The hidden sword of time loomed drearily over my head. It threatened to drop and declare that I would never escape from this place. That I was doomed to die here.
I pushed my eyes down and kept going. I remember seeing somewhere that the most important part of survival was morale. Without the willpower to survive, even if you had a plethora of tools at your disposal, you wouldn't make it past a week. Hope was important. I knew that, but... the way I woke up was too much right?
I didn't even remember how I crossed over. No Truck-kun or character selection. I fell asleep in bed and woke up...
In that pit...
A pit of bodies, stripped down to their skin. Some of the corpses were rotted and others were rigid. The ones on the top were endlessly soft, their flesh sloughing off their bones. When I pushed my hands and feet off of them to climb up, I ended up sinking into their rot instead. The sounds and smells were overwhelmingly disgusting. I felt like a cold slime-like fluid coat my hands when I was trying to swim through the mass.
I naturally refused to inspect them and see what it was. I ran my hands through the sand to remove what I could. The rest was...
I was barely keeping myself together. When I wasn't reminiscing about the horror that carved its way through my body, I was pondering how the original me ended up there.
The clothes I was wearing... I could only describe them as cohesive. A fine white button up shirt or what remained of one. Thin black dress pants that sat upon a surprisingly durable, but disgustingly wet, pair of black dress shoes. Thin X-Back suspenders that threatened to tear if I moved wrongly. I felt as if I was missing something. Perhaps a jacket?
The outfit was the only real evidence I had as to where I was. And it's something I thought about often, as I marched ever deeper into the desert's maw.
While the clothing wasn't modern, it's better quality than what you'd expect from the medieval era. The stitching, from what I could glean through the sand coated gore and dim moonlight, was done by hand. It was uneven, but neat enough to sell in a shop. Though, this alone wasn't enough to determine where I had ended up. The style, the environment, even the sky could be plugged into numerous different franchises that I had consumed in my life.
I also could have ended up in somewhere completely foreign. Maybe something I had never interacted with. Or something that simply didn't exist.
The other clue I had-
'Don't think about it.'
The pit-
'Do NOT think about it'
Very well.
I was out of clues.
The desert was featureless. I assumed that I'd be navigating massive dunes of sand at some point in my misadventure, but the wastes were surprisingly flat.
In the distance, I thought that I could see the outline of a canyon, but it was still too far to know for certain and the moon wasn't cooperating with me at all. A few boulders lounging around here and there, but a severe lack of cacti and scorpions made the desert lack character.
Not that I was complaining.
---
'It's tough to walk.'
I recalled a colony builder game where you could chop down cacti, and it would turn into wood. I wasn't sure of how accurate that was, but I did understand that you could eat cacti and their fruit after the spines were scraped or burned off. At that moment I wasn't hungry, understandably so, but eventually I'd need food and water. If the sun came up or I exhausted myself trying to escape the desert then I-
'Please don't.'
...
Right.
---
Time continued to pass like that.
I kept my head down and refused to think about anything else. Scared of what it'd do to me. Scared of my modern soul becoming overwhelmed with despair.
I wasn't some hero.
I didn't train martial arts before I crossed over. I wasn't a genius with a perfect memory either. There was nothing that should strike the God of Isekai as special about me.
I've read those opening chapters enough times to know that's what they all say. Suddenly, 10 chapters in, you learn of their uncanny talent in selling cars. A talent that somehow translated to their ability to sell water for gold.
Or their 20 years of success in the military and so it made sense that they could keep perfect calm in any situation. They could even handle weapons that no country deployed their citizens with anymore. Like European broadswords.
They pulled these talents out of their asses and fearlessly challenged god, meanwhile I-
'Hm? What's that?'
I heard the sands shifting somewhere to my left and glanced.
A short, stubby figure that was only as tall as my chest stood somewhat still, barely illuminated by the moonlight. The figure didn't seem to be looking my way, but that was difficult to determine. Not only because of the darkness, but also because its form was... strange. I couldn't understand what I was looking at.
Arms that looked longer than its body. Stubby legs that look challenging to walk with.
'The fire and brimstone-'
Its "head" was just a strange cucumber looking shape.
'A sadistic empire that wanted to swallow the world.'
The ends of its arms were as comically round as its head.
'The mother crystal's fight with her dark mirror.'
Even though the figure was becoming familiar to me-
'The Ascians, Bringers of Calamity. Heralds of the Seventh Umbral Era-'
This form was specific to one game and one game only. It wasn't posed in that bizarre running stance. It stood-
'The Echo, The Twelve, The Warriors of Darkness, The Scions-'
No. It felt like it was looking at me. It could... what was it? 1000 Needles...? That was the move right? Its signature ability. If I got hit with that, I was dead.
'Bahamut, the Elder Primal sealed within Dalamud-'
I broke into a sprint.
I didn't know how much of this mimicked what I had played. 1000 Needles had an absolute range that was constrained to a red circle in-game. Was I in a game? Was there a system? Did this place have rules? Each needle was as fast as a bullet. Without the constraints of XIV, they could probably travel just as far too.
'The Warrior's of Light, Crystal Bearers, Hydaelyn's Chosen-'
I could hear it tottering after me. Its legs were stubby, but every step was more like a leap. In short, it was faster than its anatomy should allow for. One of my suspenders snapped, but I couldn't afford to care. There was no civilization in my sights.
I could not get hit.
1000 Needles dealt 1000 points of damage, regardless of your defenses. That's what made Cactuar so frightening.
The sand was baring its malice, slipping away from me as I pushed to run, every step sunk my gore soaked shoes deeper the harder I tried to kick. If I was to escape, then I needed to pace myself carefully, but I simply couldn't. I couldn't calm down, my panicked form and the jolly reaper that chased after me cut sorry silhouettes in the shadows of the moonlight.
She never spoke to me. I never heard her voice. If I was chosen, surely she'd say something. Especially by now, after all I've been through.
But nothing.
No vision.
No blade of light.
No warmth.
And no Echo.
It wasn't fair. The story wasn't supposed to go like this at all. That thing had the stamina to bounce after me for as long as it pleased.
Every desperate breath of air that my lungs grasped was colored with sand and tinged with dust. The constant wind that was a gentle breeze before, now worked as a screen of harsh and cutting blades. The microscopic shards of sand cut across my eyes and dug into my skin. I involuntarily cried as I ran, a desperate bid to keep my eyes from drying out and perhaps a response to the fear that hung on my body like a cloak.
Tap - Tap - Tap - Tap
The sounds weren't getting closer, but they weren't getting any further either. It was keeping pace with me. Mocking me, exhausting me. My running form grew sloppy and even more pathetic. I was not suited to running on sand. Every step felt wrong. My body could not find its balance. It was less like a sprint and more like a series of continuous falls.
'Do I fight it?'
I can't.
'But what if I level up and heal?'
But what if I don't?
'Did it even have 1000 Needles?'
I couldn't bear to turn around and find out.
"SYSTEM! STATUS! HELP!"
I tried everything. My calls did nothing to grant light to my situation nor make the Cactuar slow its steps. It just satisfied the sadistic urging within my soon-to-be murderer's eyes.
To put me in this place with no system, it wasn't right. This was the most systems heavy Final Fantasy, and yet I didn't receive one upon arriving here. It was a fucking joke. A sick fucking joke.
Don't let the bright fantasy aesthetic fool you. Eorzea was a comically dangerous star. There's literally nowhere safe in the setting. Whether the threat is physical or existential, there's always some amount of mortal peril to contend with.
Final Fantasy was always talked about as if it were a lightweight franchise. A combination of sloppy localization, trademarked memes such as Chocobo, and too much text set the stage for this misunderstanding.
In truth, from the very first game on the NES, Final Fantasy was a dark and stoic franchise with every mature theme that could be named under the sun buried within its data. Plague, War, Strife, Famine, Terrorism, Economics, Legacy, and Death. All prevalent themes that were easily glazed over by a casual player.
I was not one of those casual players. But I also wasn't a flawless know-it-all. So why? Why was I selected to die in the most painful way I could imagine at the moment? Impaled upon 1000 Needles.
I could feel my breath getting short. More dust was filling my mouth and choking my throat in-between gasps.
Most of the games featured world-ending plots that promised death and destruction to all that lived. In some games, those crazy bastards even succeeded.
Final Fantasy didn't just flirt with the idea of the Apocalypse. It gleefully took it to bed. If you weren't a hero, a crystal bearer, a champion, or some manner of royalty, you were doomed.
I wasn't in just any Final Fantasy, I was thrown into XIV. The game in which monsters loomed in every zone that wasn't a town or city. And even when within city limits, corruption infected the politics, rogues skulked the streets, and the empire conscripted citizens into their meat grinder of a war with the Eorzian Alliance. Isn't this easily one of the worst games one could get pulled into?
Tap - Tap - Tap - Tap
The Cactuar patiently trotted after my manic sprint. I expected my body to grow a bit weaker, but my legs kept moving. Maybe this was my cheat? Maybe my body was the kin of some legendary figure? I may not have an old man in a ring or a succubus attached to my soul, but this had to mean something right?
'Who am I kidding?'
I was still lying to myself. It felt like my bones were filled with lead.
'No, I can't think about it.'
Every step since I got out of that pit was hell. I spent most of my energy just trying to climb out.
'Thinking means death.'
Morale was the first and most important part of survival.
huff-huff-puff
I had to lie to myself just to make it this far.
puff-huff-huff
But XIV? I was in XIV?
"huff FUCK puff"
The more the number swirled in my head, the colder my blood ran.
I could feel myself slowing down. Every time I pushed off the sand to sprint further, it drained my stamina. I was almost tapped out. If I couldn't figure this out right away, that sword above my head would drop. I would die. A painful explosion of thin needles would assault my defense-less body, then I would be left to bleed out slowly on the sand. Needles would be firmly lodged into my eyes, nose, ears, tongue, throat-
'Get your SHIT TOGETHER. COME ON! THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING!'
My mind flashed and flickered with the knowledge I'd gathered over the years. I hadn't played any Final Fantasy game to completion other than X, XIII, XIV, and XV. But you wouldn't need to complete any of the games to understand Cactuars. They appear pretty early after all and-
'Ah.'
Weren't these guys...cowards? Or at least neutral. In other Final Fantasy games, they are characterized not just with 1000 Needles, but also in their speed and evasion. They had a habit of fleeing from battle. In XIV, they don't flee from combat, but-
Tap - Tap - Tap - Tap
'No enemy does. The system didn't allow for it.'
How would this work? Was I in a game? Or actually in Eorzea? If it's the latter then what's with its strange behavior? Why was it chasing me? This joke of a monster really wanted my life?
Damn it! I still couldn't answer that question! Without the answer, I simply couldn't risk any action. I'd die sooner and with certainty. But if I didn't take action-
huff ----- huff ----- huff
I kept pushing my failing body forward. It throbbed and moaned with exhaustion. What could drive a coward of a monster like this? It couldn't eat me, as it lacked a mouth. I also wasn't carrying anything on me. No Crystal nor Magical Smartphone.
It wasn't working. Even though I forced the courage in me to bubble up, it raised more questions than answers. Answers that didn't at all help me escape this.
huff ---------- huff ----------- huff
I didn't want to die. At least not in such a pathetic manner.
Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap
I could hear the footsteps double in speed. It was done playing with me.
Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap
Perhaps this was a blessing. Obviously, I was not Isekai material.
Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap
The pattering steps of my end drew near and then...
ZOOOOOM!
Promptly ran past me. The Cactuar sprinted with reckless abandon off into the distance, leaving me in its dust.
I couldn't move at all, my mouth stuck slightly ajar, all I could do was stare at the shrinking cloud of sand that seemed to mock me. I quickly looked behind myself. Was it running from something?
The cold and stoic face of the desert greeted my eyes. Nothing. Nothing at all.
There was only one answer that kept stinging the tip of my tongue.
But I almost didn't want to believe it.
That was a race.
It was racing me.