The building Eli was atop was exposed to the day's elements.
The small drizzle pattered on his form, and despite the wind also beating at his face, both chills felt pleasant. He was initially concerned it would affect what he came up here to do, yet it never picked up. Despite the weather however, the sky was not overcast. The sun was still out there, looming in the distance. He took solace in the fact that the only thing surrounding him was this warm glow, the wind's whispering wails, as well as the gentle rhythmic taps of the sky's downfall, almost melodic if he listened at just the right times. He closed both eyes, enjoying the sense of nothingness all around him as he waited. At the corner of his mouth, he inhaled one last puff of smoke from his cigarette, before spitting it off to the side. The moisture was ruining it anyway. Breathing in through his nose, he let a state of calm soothe his entire being.
His eyes darted to the watch affixed to his sleeve. It was nearly time, he noted, looking through the clear lens of the top-of-the-line scope he had purchased in advance for this job. He played with the dial on the side, slowly zooming closer and closer amidst the sudden influx of blurry figures moving about. It was 200 meters, give or take. It wasn't his largest distance, not even close, but it was still certainly one that required his utmost concentration. His finger eased onto the metal with familiarity, and he held it there, steadying his breaths even further, the sway that affected the subtly red crosshair stopping on a singular form amidst many—the brown receding hairline of a man amicably shaking hands on a wide-open stage.
Smile, shake, look away. That repeated, and the amount of people around him began to lessen.
Unfortunately for his target, that dwindling number was also the countdown he had to live.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
On the final person, the smiling man looked elsewhere for a spell, performing a paltry wave. Overcome by his own curiosity, Eli looked as well, spotting two figures at the back of the stage, a woman and child. The younger bounced up and down excitedly, while the woman smiled back warmly. That made him... a little guilty for what he was about to do, but it wasn't nearly enough to change his mind.
"Sorry not sorry. It's 500K we're talking about..." His low mutter carried, just as the man reached to shake the final hand. Look. Smile. Shake. Drop. Walk away. The last remaining person vacated from the three-centimeter margin that was Eli's rule. Right as this happened, his body tensed, but in a complete state of control. He released the breath that would accompany the decisive pressure needed for the sniper bullet to be sent careening into an oblivious brain. At the same time, elation like never before rose in his chest, and he couldn't help but grin.
He loved this part.
"You're dead."
A loud sound wrenched through the air.
His shot went way off target, and the wooden scaffolding holding up the grand red curtains of the stage exploded, the velvet cloth falling onto thousands of startled people who were now screaming in a panic. The vigorous celebrations marking yet another year of the mayor in office were ruined completely. It was an act of terror, and yet no one died.
Eli, stared at it all, wide eyed.
There was no way his aim had been off, not when he had his target dead to rights, literally. Perhaps unconsciously, he tore his gaze from the scope, and when he did, he was met with a sight that truly and utterly confounded him. It left him floundering so much in fact, that he just stared at it dumbly, even to the point where he completely tuned out the still ever-present screams from below.
Along the length of his barrel, there was something firmly connected to it. No, there was something wrapped around the steel partition. It was thin, razor thin, to the point where Eli had to blink multiple times to make sure what he was seeing was actually there. It was a wire. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a tripwire, however he could just barely see a hooked edge at its end, where it had looped several times around the frame of his sniper. Wordlessly, his gaze left this abnormality to trail just where it had came from. Thoughts that his gun had somehow gotten snagged on some odd part of the building was as unrealistic as God himself interfering, but it was still the only plausible thing on his mind to have caused him to miss the way he did, no, to have caused his entire gun to jerk completely off angle, sending his shot spiraling out of the way. But when his eyes landed on the right side of the building, his thoughts slowed to a halt.
He... didn't know what he was looking at, and in a show of complete foolishness, he just stared without doing anything, his mind having come to a complete blank.
"Well, this is awkward."
That voice spoke, one sounding so close to being young, but also strangely mature. Perhaps that maturity came from the slight tinge of amusement he detected in it. No, not amusement. It was the tone of voice of someone who was unconcerned, not laced with any kind of tension. That was as far as Eli's questions went however before instincts jumpstarted, years of life-or-death situations spurring his body into movement. He rolled out from his prone position into a crouch, reaching behind his waist for a very familiar friend for express purposes like this. Once landing, he abruptly had to dive sideways, and was rewarded with the heavy THUNK of a clash of metal where he had just been. He took this opportune moment to enact his own counterattack, his arm already readying the small DB9 sidearm, pointing it towards the figure he was certain hadn't moved from their starting position at all.
Eli's sights lined up with a completely empty rooftop.
His breath hitched with utmost surprise.
"Someone wasn't paying attention~!"
A chill shot down his spine, and Eli could only define it as a feeling of death as he heard a voice from directly behind him. He had no time to question it further however, as his vision suddenly swam, something impacting the base of his skull at precisely the same moment. His entire body fell forward, and he didn't feel pain when his head slammed into the damp concrete tiles of the roof floor. Instead, it was just a very jarring numbing, similar to anesthesia or the like. His brain, ever rational, was able to tell him that the prior blow had dulled his pain receptors for a bit. His head just barely tilted up, and he was able to see the sidearm just a few inches from his frozen hands. He was already reaching for it. 'Kill', he thought. He needed to kill whoever was attacking him no matter what. Only then could he track down his contract and do the same. 'Gotta... kill...'
Black gloved hands picked up the firearm—one's that were not his own.
And then, a whistle.
Eli looked up at the stranger who was now appraising his small gun, holding it above him dramatically while bathed in the slight shower of the endless rain. And, he couldn't help but gasp. This was due to his first real and conscious look of just what this stranger looked like. It was a mix between both formal and informal. Crisp black pants with a similarly colored coat, the latter of which rested over a white dress shirt of sorts. The pants were held up by a very peculiar golden leather belt, and in the same manner, there were small golden chains, not hanging down per say, but affixed to the coat in various spots, resembling some kind of fashion statement.
"Hm? Something wrong?"
Eli was once again brought to the man's 'face', just as a loud clank of metal echoed, courtesy of the strangely dressed man sliding off the chamber of the gun, it falling onto the ground loudly. Far from focusing on the rather mocking display however, he instead focused on the strangest thing about the person, his face. No, calling it a face wasn't even accurate, considering the expression he was looking at wasn't even real. It was a white mask with animated eyes and mouth. The eyes were slightly narrowed and completely black, and the mouth could be considered even more disturbing. It was a smile; a wide chilling red smile that stretched across the entire bottom portion of the disguise.
'Wait...'
A feeling as cold as ice shot through him, and he realized it was recognition, simmering from the deepest corners of his mind. Eli had heard of someone terrorizing the underworld as of late; blowing up drug dens, stopping human trafficking groups, shutting down ongoing crimes with speed and efficiency that put the police to shame. He hadn't seen what such a person looked like himself, but there was a single collective fact everyone knew. He wore a cartoonish mask, and Eli doubted there were many who deranged enough to do the same. This had to be him. 'But', he thought, his lips curving into a smile, feeling life in his limbs again. 'This changes nothing...'
As he watched this masked freak thoughtlessly destroy the means of stopping a man in his tracks permanently, renewed confidence surged within him. His muscles tensed, and he leapt to his feet before his company could even think to stop him. He assumed a fighting stance; his gait low, fists held aloft.
A single glance was all this afforded him, dropping the rest of the gun's parts unceremoniously onto the floor. "We going for another round? Sure you'll be okay without your little pick-me-up?"
Eli bit back the explicative curse he had on his lips. He settled for a calm frown instead, answering with a measured tone. "I don't need anything but my hands to squeeze the life out of you."
Eli believed that too. The masked man may have caught him off guard before, but that was him being sufficiently distracted by both evading an attack and reaching for his gun. As long as he kept his eyes on him, he was sure he could best him. There was another factor that gave him confidence. It had him scoffing at his opponent. 'That slender build... if I just manage to get him into a grapple...' Eli was certain he had both years and weight on his enemy. The moment he caught him, the fight would be decided.
"..."
The masked man chose not to respond to the barb, but that only fueled Eli further as he grinned wildly. If he didn't want to talk that was fine by him. A silence stretched between the both of them as they stared at each other, neither of them starting the altercation, perhaps in fear of tipping the other off about their movements.
But then, Eli shot off towards him as fast as he could go. To accompany this, a feeling of elation like never before filled him as the masked stranger made a small noise of surprise, actually flinching backwards. 'Dumbass! You've just sealed your—'
"Hehe. Just kidding~."
That voice, completely at odds with the trace of unease before, echoed in his ears. If Eli felt any kind of danger in his attack, he was too late to retract it however, as he had already leapt at the person with the small frame the very instant he sensed his weakness. His aim had been to bring him down to the ground and strangle the life out of him, but... he had miscalculated.
Because along with that teasing, almost snarky voice, came a feeling like no other crashing into the bottom of his skull. He immediately went to scream in pain, but no sound came out, just as his vision darted in and out of consciousness. For the second time that day, he fell to the floor, water pelting his skin all the while. Huh? He was confused. He clutched the now numb part of his face, his lower jaw, his chin, cursing. But... "Ghhaaahhh?"
Nothing but unintelligible moans came out instead. He tried again, and again, but to no avail. He... He couldn't speak.
"If you're wondering why you can't speak, I'm pretty sure it's because I broke your jaw. You know, because you viciously jammed it into my knee?"
Eli growled from the very base of his throat, already reaching at his pantleg, whipping it out with a flash. He should have heard the satisfying squelch of flesh being punctured, but instead there was nothing but steel hitting air.
"Oh no. A knife. My one weakness."
A monotone flittered from behind him, and he was already swinging in that direction.
But no matter how he made the small blade dance, he could not land it in the infuriatingly nimble man. True to his slender body, he was agile, darting away from each poised thrust and slash. The mask, with that eerie expression seemed to twist further in delight, despite the unchanging painted visage. Eli grew more frustrated by the second, throwing out more desperate strikes, until he finally overextended upon his rage reaching its peak.
"There it is."
The attack was swift.
A gloved fist flashed towards his throat, and a strangled gasp left him before he could stop himself. He clutched the fleshy part of his body with a biting pain, only to feel the back of his shirt grabbed by the lapel. He was promptly thrown into the roof's one entrance and exit. His mind, already addled by pain, slammed face first into the door, and he dizzyingly brought both hands to steady himself and dart away. His attacker didn't let him. A leg slid between his, his arms were bunched behind his back in a hold that had him gasping in discomfort. "Gah...!"
"Now," the masked man said, voice dripping with amusement that had always been present. "What was it that you said before?" The grip on his arms grew tighter and they were forced into a position that had Eli's muscles screaming in protest. "Ah yes," he said with a biting laugh—no, a nigh delighted chuckle. "You don't need anything but your hands to squeeze the life out of me? Hehe, shall we render that a moot point?"
Eli didn't even have time to consider what that meant.
A sickening crack echoed through the rooftop.
It was only the excruciating pain that followed that had him realize it came from his own body. He screamed. He screamed his debilitating jaw out, so loud and hoarse that it felt like it would snap off at any given moment. "Hghfgbhsdb?! My—giihhhh! My hgggddgdhghhjfhjfh!" His arm. Oh god, his arm. The fucking psychopath had broken his arm.
"Oh, but you're a badass assassin, right? You can probably still do plenty of damage with your other one, huh?"
Eli's eyes grew wide.
"W-Wait." His jaw started working again, or more like he forced the words out regardless.
It didn't save him.
This time, there was no sickening sound of bone being torn from fleshy ligaments, for at that very moment, thunder struck off in the distance, making everything soundless for a brief moment. Thus, without a single sound to mark its delivery, his entire right side burned as his other arm was bent at a completely wrong angle. He barely even felt the sensation of it falling uselessly to his side. He didn't hear his own scream so much as he felt the fire burning his throat as he did so. He didn't realize immediately that the man had let him go, but he was hardly in a state to move, not when he could not feel either his arms. In the same manner, he thought it was a miracle he could even feel his legs given the paralyzing fear that shot through them.
At that moment, he heard metal scratch against the concrete, and looking over was a mistake. A dirty pipe scraped towards him, held aloft by the masked, grinning, man. Eli's entire being chilled over. This person wasn't normal. He was insane, unhinged. No—a monster. He was a monster in human skin.
"You may have heard I don't kill people. You'd be right."
Eli watched as he flipped the pipe in his hand, bringing it above his head. It was quite the ominous image, lightning choosing just then to strike off in the distance. His features, the soulless black eyes and almost bloodthirsty smile flashed demonically for just a moment.
"I make them wish they were dead."
Eli screamed.
…
…
…
"Well, that was a copout," Alex muttered.
It was one thing to break both arms of the assassin, but for him to faint just before things got really messy? He would feel cheated if he was half the sadist he played as. It was for the best though, for everyone involved. He wasn't a monster, nor a dick. That said, he certainly wasn't about to make some poor janitor clean blood off a rooftop. As if he'd be so insensitive. Not to mention, he didn't want to be scrubbing stains out of his own outfit.
Oh, and he supposed it was always nice not to kill people and all that.
Not that it was very hard not to. After all, humans were incredibly fragile creatures. If you break them just a little bit, they have trouble moving, so it's not like it's necessary to end their lives. It was part of the reason he removed guns from the equation when he could. Too messy, and most of all, too unpredictable. When a bullet entered someone's body, you were inviting a whole list of internal problems. Blunt trauma was way easier to deal with and deal to others. Rapist looking to get handsy? Shatter the fingers. Boom. Problem solved.
It wasn't that Alex liked causing pain, it was just more efficient at times.
He dropped the pipe with a clatter, smacking his gloved hands of the dust. "Guess the police can take care of the rest," he said, sparing one more glance at the defeated, oddly pathetic form of a person who was supposed to hold such a terrifying profession. Alex would be laughing if the man was conscious enough to hear it. Regardless, he walked towards the perimeter of the building, right where the loser's prized possession was still lying prone overlooking the busy city streets.
He picked the sniper rifle up, admiring its make under the sunlit but rainy day. 'Military grade, huh?' He guessed that meant there were new suppliers in town. There was never a dull moment, not in this city. He supposed he would be quite busy in the next few weeks. His lips curved upward before he could stop himself. He should go pay them a visit. It just wouldn't do for them to think they were being ignored. That would just be bad manners. Alex was a kind person—he shared his attention with all the criminals, smalltime or big time, young or old, male or female.
Sirens started to clamor in the distance, and he ignored them even as they got louder and louder—closer. Time of the essence, he started to wrap things up himself. With the weapon still in his hands, he reached along the bulky stalk for the metal pin along its side, flipping it counter clockwise. The gears no longer holding the butt of the rifle together, he made to remove it in its entirety, starting the dismantling process, however, something had him looking up.
The rain had suddenly undergone a change.
It was now pouring, no—hailing.
Even more peculiar, the sun was now nowhere to be seen, obscured by the deep greys of clouds that now existed in every direction. In no time at all, the world had darkened considerably. 'That's... odd...'
The moment he thought that, without warning, a sound cracked through the air with such extreme intensity that he felt his ears splitting, nearly tearing him from consciousness right then and there. Accompanying this disorienting assault on his auditory senses was something perhaps more threatening, though it only lasted for a second. His vision was submerged in a blinding light before he even considered the option of reacting. But this confusion quickly turned to pain as a searing sensation lit his entire body, as if every single nerve of his was on fire. The influx of his pain receptors being fried was so unbelievably disassociating that he fell to his knees in a slump. "What the—?!"
And then, everything went dark, his consciousness abruptly waning.
He didn't see the impossible phenomena that seemed to appear in thin air not a second later.
///
[ HERO ] located.
Transporting...
///
"...?!"
When Alex next opened his eyes, he was unable to suppress the curse that escaped from the very back of his throat. His right arm shot to his opposite shoulder, which felt like it was flaying at the skin because of how painful it was. He surprised himself by not screaming. He dipped his chin downward to get a better look at where the pain was coming from, and frantically tore off his mask when he grew irritated by the eye holes of the visor. It wasn't just his shoulder that was in pain, not when he saw the back soot marks coating his clothes. And as if some phantom sense suddenly triggered, he convulsed numerous times, nearly falling backwards into the grass behind him.
'Grass...?'
His hazy mind recognized the texture, and then the sea of green around him. And upon further examination, it wasn't just grass. He was surrounded by trees—a forest. A dense fog ridden forest with tree trunks and branches incredibly gnarled. It looked eerie, especially since it did not ring any bells. 'I'm... not in the city...'
It was a fairly quick deduction to make, and he knew it to be true because of the distinctive lack of nature spots in the concrete jungle he lived in—and this sure as hell wasn't a park. He might have been dreaming, but that was doubtful because that searing feeling stinging his nerve endings was painful enough to almost leave him breathless.
He looked around—a proper look. No matter which direction, he just saw more trees and the fog certainly didn't help things. In fact, had he ever seen fog so thick, so dense that it felt like it was the artificial construct of some horror movie? It was just so... gloomy. The lack of light added to that feeling. Looking up didn't reward him with the sight of the sun or the moon, not when the treetops clearly eclipsed any view of the sky.
"Where the hell am I?"
Alex thought back to the last thing he was doing, and with some difficulty, he began to sift through the hazy pieces. 'I was... having some one-on-one time with that contract killer and made him squeal for a bit, and then, a bright light. Bright light and pai—'
His body suddenly seized as an unbearable amount of pain surged through him once again; from his feet to his chest, and even his head. He remembered—God damn fucking right he remembered. It was kind of hard not to when he had the electrical equivalent of a few thousand stun guns discharged into his system, which, he could say with full confidence wasn't any less painful individually. But was this a joke? 'Was I really just struck by lightning? How the hell am I not dead?'
A lightning bolt was around 300 million volts. That's not the kind of thing a human can walk away from, no matter what kind of physical conditioning he did in his spare time. Knives, bullets, tazers, and shrapnel from a grenade even—that was the limit of Alex's interaction with lethal weapons. He might be skilled in a fight, yes, but no amount of skill mattered if a bomb was dropped on his head. Lightning was the same. 'I feel the pain, it hurts, and fucking burns even... but that's all...'
Not only did he survive, but the pain he was receiving was severely less than what he should be feeling. And don't even get him started on any possible brain damage. One world-shattering event at a time, thanks. Speaking of world-shattering, he supposed a few more things could qualify, like how he was on the top of a skyscraper just a few minutes ago, to whereas now, he was surrounded by spooky ass trees straight out of a video-game's depiction of the 'badlands', or some evil guy's territory—shit like that. Well, the only thing missing was the demonic enemies and--
At that moment, Alex wasted no time launching to his feet and swinging up a nearby tree, within seconds perching on one of the branches, a hastily drawn knife appearing in one hand. In his other, he had dawned his mask. He remained completely still as he did nothing but wait, straining his ears. Then. Rustling. There was a faint rustling to his right, still a bit aways. Not once looking away from the source of the noise, he flipped the knife around with one hand. Alex was able to hear the footsteps more clearly now, and it made him pause.
'That's... not how a human walks...'
He heard four feet stepping on the grass and shrubbery, and they sounded heavy, like a bulky animal's. He shifted on the branch, ready to drop at a moment's notice. It might pass him, but if a glance was chanced upward, or even if he was sensed, he would have no choice but to take it down quickly. While he might not have experience hunting, that still did not change the fact that animals had a method to their rage. They could be predicted and countered—a hell of a lot easier than humans anyway.
He tensed when he saw a form start to come out of shrubbery, and he quickly took note of the bulky frame, reddish hide... and the parts of its spine that jetted outwards? Alex tried and failed to ascertain what he was staring at. Luckily however, whatever it was didn't notice him at all as it continued to walk a slow pace underneath the branch he was atop. He didn't relax however, not when for all intents and purposes, it was an unknown creature to him. The eyes were the most glaring. They were such a deep red they looked like they were glowing, even though it must have been a trick of the light reflecting from his mask. He continued to watch it while staying unnaturally still, right up until it disappeared further into the trees.
"Okay," he muttered, conveying a clear lack of understanding with what he just witnessed. 'Some kind of mutated bear maybe? I would call bullshit if I didn't get fucking houdini'd here with zero explanation.'
His circumstances were starting to make less and less sense. There was the option that he was kidnapped, but then there was the glaring inconsistency of leaving him to wake up in a forest alive with his mask untouched. It would have definitely been an interesting prank to say the least.
But that's when he took notice of something metallic glinting on the ground, and when he did, he nearly felt the urge to face palm, despite how disorienting it would be to do so with his mask on. Just short of being obscured by the large undergrowth of the sea of green all around him, he noticed the all too stalky form of the sniper rifle he had just been about to take apart on that rooftop. It looked a little worse for wear as it too had taken some damage from some very intense heat, but it wasn't so bad that it looked inoperable. But that wasn't nearly as pressing on his mind as what it was doing here in the first place.
It had somehow... come with him.
The probability of him getting struck by lightning and then kidnapped while he was passed out was looking more and more unlikely.
Instead, something else came to mind, even if it defied all reason and logic. Still though, he couldn't think of anything else. If he had all his belongings, even the items he had been holding, and if he had been struck by lightning to a degree that should have killed him—this could only mean one thing.
'Either I just figured out the secrets to quantum physics and teleported'—He lifted his head at the expanse of forest—'Somewhere? Or, also just as likely given my track record, I'm dead, and this is some kind of hell...'
Honestly? That last one was a bit unrealistic.
When he was to finally kick the bucket, he was fairly certain his surroundings would be a lot more... unwelcoming. After all, he was no saint. Not that he believed in places such as heaven and hell, but shouldn't he be getting punished in some way? With all the sin he had managed to rack up, he assumed he was at least due for some strenuous torture or something like it.
Spinning in his hand briefly, his knife soon disappeared within his coat. If... whatever that thing was... came back, then he doubted such a small blade would do any lasting damage. Its skin looked tough, kind of like a rhinoceros, or even a dinosaur. If that's the type of armor it was rocking, then the only option was that, wasn't it? His eyes trailed to the rifle on the ground. His weight shifted, about to drop back down to the grass, however, he stopped himself abruptly, and it nearly resulted in him falling off the branch.
A fact that would have likely ended up killing him.
In that next moment, an inhuman wailing assaulted the air from seemingly all directions. His body went rigid, and it took everything in him to stop himself from falling off his elevated position. That was extraordinarily difficult however because the ground chose that moment to shake with incredible force. An earthquake, at least, he thought so. Alex would have been convinced of this conclusion if he didn't suddenly hear a cacophony of noises, this time however, distinct and very much close by. They were coming straight towards him.
Abruptly, a tree exploded to his left, and he looked just in time to see a mammoth of a creature tear its roots from the ground as it smashed into it, before ignoring it completely and crashing into everything else in its wake with an urgency that implied a fierce desperation, maybe even fear. But before Alex could even question what was going on, it happened again, except the trees exploding did not just number at one or two.
It sounded like numerous bombs had gone off, and the ground, on his left flank, was suddenly assaulted by rushing creatures of various shapes, colors, and sizes. They dashed through the forest below, unconcerned with everything in their wake. That included the tree Alex was atop. It was a miracle it was ignored for so long but that changed when a creature that looked frighteningly close to a gorilla lumbered through the woods, meaty fists catching the base of the tree.
If Alex's reflexes had been any slower, he would have missed the timing needed to do what he did next. Something on his belt, accompanied by a flash of his hands, blurred towards another tree, and no sooner, his body launched from the now wrecked landform. Flying through the air at lightning speeds, his hand shot out just in time to catch a stray branch, and he performed several spins before he landed deftly on the wooden limb. Only then did he take a breath, surveying where he had just whisked away from.
The tree was gone. It had been instantly uprooted and decimated by the random flailing of a creature that he was all but certain couldn't have resided in his world. If anything, it was nothing short of a monster, especially with those—once again—crimson glows that made up its eyes.
But that gorilla-esque thing wasn't the only danger to him with its massive gait. Smaller creatures ran at full speeds below him, and the number was so great that it eventually crowded to be a full-on stampede of creatures he had never seen before. And they all had those red eyes. Now, if Alex would have fallen, he might have been able to avoid the trampling of one or two, but not the dozens upon dozens sprinting in one direction as if they were all mad. What the hell was going on? It was like they were running from—
Suddenly, the wailing from before, the wretched sound that kicked off all of this, ceased in its entirety.
The only thing he heard was the almost endless footsteps of unknown creatures as they continued to rush underneath him. Confused and more than a little disturbed, Alex tried to maintain his calm, however, what happened next made that impossible.
Light flashed.
///
| VIEW QUEST |
[YES] [NO]
///
What?
Words appeared amidst an orange floating holographic screen mere millimeters from his face.
He took a step back, before realizing he was on a tree branch. He lost his balance completely and was sent falling backwards. Luckily for him, the creatures had long past his neck of the woods, so his quick reaction of linking the undersides of his knees around the branch might have been unwarranted.
Nonetheless, he now hung upside down, the strangest thing meeting his sight. It was the screen. Surprisingly, it had changed its orientation to follow him. Feeling a bit annoyed, his grip on the branch loosened and he fell only to land in a roll, facing the complete opposite direction now. "Ugh..." And of course, that orange screen was still staring back at him. He let out a breathy sigh, crossing his arms.
'View Quest?'
Was this some kind of joke? Did he lose so many brain cells from getting struck by lightning that he was hallucinating some kind of video game interface? On a whim, he tried waving his hand through it. 'Annnnnnd it just goes straight through. Figures...' Alex didn't really have the time to be fooling around like this, not with how concerned he was with how quiet it had gotten. But... since his surroundings didn't show him to be in any immediate danger, he relented.
"Ah, what the hell."
Without any more deliberation, he cut his losses and clicked [YES] on the floating prompt, and no sooner after he did, a very automated PING sound effect was heard and–
///
| On the 30th floor of the Dungeon, young women of the Astraea Familia are doing battle with a rival group, the Rudra Familia, who engineered a trap, setting off numerous explosives. This attack failed to kill Astraea Family, but it did set something else in motion. The Dungeon responded to the damage dealt to its surroundings by sending a Level 7 Monster Rex to deal with the intruders harming it—this creature is known as the Juggernaut. If nothing is done, the Astraea Familia will likely be wiped out. |
OBJECTIVE(S):
| Protect the Astraea Familia until they safely make it back to the surface. |
***Warning***
Failing a quest might cause severe penalties to be enacted on self.
///
Alex didn't say a word.
He just continued to read the long string of text that appeared in front of him. At one point he had to flick a gloved finger just to scroll down. He even clicked on some of the words, that for whatever reason, were highlighted. These held definitions, and as some were not easily definable, they gave him clarity through an abundant amount of context.
He perhaps spent around half a minute looking through all this information with who knows what expression on his face. When he finished, however, he let his arms fall to his sides, looking up. He looked at the creepy grove of treetops where he was sure something of a ceiling should reside, and then perhaps another, and another, and another. Multiple ceilings that would grow lesser as he ascended, all the way to the surface, because apparently, that's where he WASN'T.
He was in a dungeon.
A bona fide, mythical ass, monster filled dungeon in a labyrinth city called Orario.
There was only one way to react to something of this magnitude.
He promptly burst out laughing.
His whole body shook, and what started out as silent chuckles turned into barrels of falsettos echoing throughout the chaotically oriented woods. As his body was wracked by this untethered amusement, he brought a gloved hand to his masked but widely grinning face. It wasn't that he had lost his mind, no—far from it. It was just hilarious, genuinely hilarious.
'Man...! Only something like this could happen to me~!'
It's not like he wasn't sad, or even angry. In fact, he was pretty fucking livid that this had happened to him without him having any say in the matter, but—his laughs lowered in volume, shaky, and with less impact now.
Complaining wouldn't change a damn thing, would it? He could scream to his heart's content about how fucked up this situation was, but doing so wouldn't bring him back to where he was. He had been sent here with purposeful intent. That was an important distinction he could not gloss over. Someone or something had willingly made the decision that he was needed, and waived all his human rights away the moment that they did.
They had struck him with lightning from nowhere and sent him in the middle of nowhere.
His anger wouldn't move anyone, least of all the beings capable of all of this shit.
"So I'm stuck, is it?" he sighed out. Exasperation? Amusement? He wondered which was more prevalent for him right now? Or maybe, he was just so stricken by the fact that he was no longer within the tethers of modern reality, that it could very well be both and neither.
Those creatures from before? Those had been honest to goodness monsters. He had no idea if they were creatures that a regular human like him could take out, even with a knife and a sniper rifle. For all he knew, he could die instantly.
Yes, he might be skilled enough to play around with thugs and gangsters, but he would surely regret it if he thought even for a moment that ability mattered here at all. And don't even get him started on that inhuman screech, the one that had surrounded all aspects of his hearing, almost drowning out his own thoughts. That had been the dungeon itself. It was sentient. Fucking. Sentient. It possessed the cognitive awareness to feel things such as sadness, and more importantly, rage.
He looked back at the quest, the words—no, the directive contained therein.
'And I have to save some girls from a monster, and not just any one, but one that's Level 7?'
Alex had no idea what that leveling meant exactly, but Level 7 couldn't be anything good. Of course, there was the fact that clicking on the word Juggernaut gave him a picture, which was something he immediately regretted. Honestly, that thing looked terrifying, something out of his nightmares. It could even pass off as a dinosaur on steroids. Would he really be capable of safeguarding people from that thing, much less killing it?
He didn't know much about this Astraea Familia, only that they were a group of Level 4 girls that served as a policing agent in their world. And the quest screen had told him in no uncertain terms that they would likely be wiped out. A group of Level 4's would be wiped out when facing a Level 7 monster. What the hell did that say about him? He was from a normal world, without monsters, without any sort of supernatural ability that this world apparently gave off in spades.
What did that make him? A Level 1? No... he was less than that. He was a zero.
Honestly, Alex was better off running. He would be leaving those girls to die, but did that really matter? He didn't know them, and he certainly didn't owe them anything. He wouldn't be bothered by the deaths of people he couldn't even see. What he did, why he donned his mask, it wasn't because he believed in dealing out justice, or because he wanted to save people.
It was for fun.
It was for a thrill.
Compared to the cesspool of boredom that was school and daily life, cracking the skulls of scumbags was fucking therapeutic.
He wasn't a good person, and he was certain he was going to hell when he died, if such a place even existed. If running away here meant he could live to fight another day, then that sounded a hell of a lot better than killing himself with some fool's errand of heroics. In fact, he moved to do just that—
///
Failing a quest might cause severe penalties to be enacted on self.
///
"..."
His movements stopped, and he bit back a growl of irritation, eyes dipping to that warning, that painfully ominous and vague warning. It could mean anything, literally anything at all. A penalty was like a consequence, simply an effect or result of an action—that's what Alex knew of the word anyway. But that could be something as simple as being pinched on the arm, or as extreme as losing one's life. What could it be in this case? There was no way to know.
...That was a lie.
Alex already had a pretty good idea. If whoever sent him here had the power to displace him between worlds, then they certainly wouldn't be giving him a slap on the wrist for failing their imposed objective. They had struck him with lightning. Loud, bright and searing in pain lightning that was almost harmful enough to kill him. Penalty his ass, he knew exactly what would happen to him should he fail this quest.
"So... a hero with a gun to my head, huh?"
Maybe this was karma in a way.
He took on the mantle of stopping scumbags, but his motives were anything but altruistic. If this was his punishment for thinking that way, then he thought it fit quite nicely. Whoever did this to him sure had a warped sense of humor.
He sighed.
"Fine then. You want me to save them? I'll fucking save them."
Or, that's what he'd like to say, if he had any clue where they were supposed to be. From what little he had read about the dungeon in the past few minutes, the floors were not by any means small. He certainly didn't know how to get himself un-lost in this massive ass forest. Sure, he could hazard a guess on which direction to go with those monsters running away like they were, but he was fairly certain he would need a little bit more to go on if he was being expected of playing the knight in shining armor to a bunch of damsels in—
The quest screen suddenly disappeared, and in its place, appeared a very intricately created interface that held some very familiar topography. He stared at it for a time with nary a change of expression behind his mask, then looked upward, where the sky should be... somewhere.
"Really?"
As expected, he got no response.
Sighing again, he looked back to the mini-map, an actual mini-map, that appeared upon his request, where he noticed several very distinctive blinking red dots all converged on a single location. He would go out on a limb and say those were his damsels...
Shouldering a large firearm that likely did not belong in this world, he broke into a sprint, dashing through the trees and shrubbery of the ominous foggy wood, the map keeping up with his pace with not a single flinch. Although, in the back of his mind, he wondered why everything looked like a video game. He wanted to pretend that whatever higher power did this to him wasn't just copying his modern media as a frame of reference because they lacked originality.
He wouldn't complain about a free map though.
His pace grew quicker.
…
…
…
The sounds were Noin's first clue that something bad was about to happen.
The young member of Astraea Familia looked around the dungeon's spacious 30th floor warily, as the chilling howl continued to echo in her ears. It was so inhuman, so rich with malice and hate that it felt like she was drowning in it. It put her on edge, more so than she had ever been before in the dungeon. She did not need a sixth sense to figure out just how terrifying whatever was making that sound was, not when her entire body was screaming at her to run away.
The screeching shook the very ground itself—no, the ground shook WITH the screeches. As the dungeon did not lack sentience, she knew every bit of the surroundings around her was not only alive but thrumming with the same vicious hatred that bore down on her like a storm. The cavern walls, ceiling, the trees, undergrowth—the very dungeon itself—was all collectively screaming its outrage.
It was a cue, a forewarning of imminent danger, the only one adventurers like herself received before they were overwhelmed and forced to fight for their lives.
Noin's hands gripped the straps of her small shield tightly, so tight that her palm felt it was molded into it. Head on a swivel, she looked around the foggy barren land that made up the floor. The chilling sounds did not cease, and as each second passed by, the girl felt her shoulders grow more and more tense with unease.
Anticipation of an upcoming fight sent coils of dread springing without stop inside her body, and she simply wanted release.
Thus, when a shadow caught her eye, she didn't feel any urge to condemn the naked relief she felt. This meant she had something to focus on, an object that her ire could be aimed at.
Whatever that object was, it dropped from the ceiling with a distinct lack of presence that left Noin perplexed. It was curled into a ball not dissimilar to a Mad Beetle or the like, and it simply glided downwards effortlessly and without noise. It skidded along an adjacent wall, long spindly limbs stretching, flashing appendages that seemed to cut at the surrounding rock, causing a shower of sparks to erupt.
Noin released a breath, unsheathing her sword from her—
The object vanished.
'Huh?'
In the time it took to blink, that black shape had suddenly got a lot closer. It changed location instantly, and her brain struggled to adapt to the new sensory overload of information. Bigger. It became a lot bigger. With its piercing red eyes that seemed to glow a crimson light, and its long abyssal bony arms, it seemed to freeze in place as it stood before her.
No.
Noin felt her heart squeeze as she came to one singular conclusion. It hadn't frozen. It was just aiming a sharp claw held high above its skull head, the fearsomely sharp digits glinting amidst the scant light. And the teeth, the teeth shown like obsidian, razor sharp edges that made rows upon rows where its mouth formed. Noin noticed all these details, even as her mind completely blanked.
Then the talon flashed downward.
Her body didn't retreat in the slightest. She didn't draw her sword. There was no signal for her to move whatsoever. She just stood there dumbly, despite there being mere millimeters between her and a fatal attack. But it wasn't because she was frozen with fear. Nor did she even feel any kind of danger.
Yes; just like that.
Noin was promptly skewered through the heart, without even understanding the basic reason why.
She should have been.
She definitely should have been.
CRAAACK!
A sound she had never heard before exploded in her ears, along with a very violent orange flame that so abruptly lit up the left side of that black monster's face.
It was an attack in only name, however.
The orange flame, the sparks that which were created afterward, died not a second after, leaving nothing remaining of the attempt, not single scorch mark on its intended target.
It had done absolutely no harm to the creature. However, it had succeeded in stealing its attention. Time grew still as Noin watched that mangily head, mere moments away from ending her life, turn in the direction of the mystery attack. That was all it did. Before anything else could happen, the beast simply turned its head in that animalistic fashion, narrowing red beady eyes, likely to vent the rising curiosity of the phantom sensation it had just felt upon its hardened skin.
Noin hadn't turned hers.
If she had, she would have missed what happened next.
CRAAAAACK!
With that same sound as the cue, she witnessed it all.
Orange flame, an eye exploding, black blood spraying out like a geyser, and then, the ear-piercing scream that followed.