"Master," said the tiger.
A distant murmur.
"Master?"
Nearest.
"Wake up, master!"
Little by little I opened my eyes with the feeling of having ascended from hell. The beast, several times larger than me in size, looked at me with its fiery eyes. I thought I was dreaming, until the memories slowly blossomed in my memory.
"What?" I felt dull.
I looked him up and down without believing what was happening. The tiger shook a little.
"It seems that he has not died, master. I'm glad."
"Where am I?"
Darkness reigned.
"We're in the next zone. Luckily, the fragments have worked."
The sensation of pain came over me.
"My legs!"
I shook and looked under the torso. Miraculously, and for a reason I couldn't explain, the legs had grown back. There were no marks or wounds to hint at a battle that had nearly cost me my life.
I opened my mouth and stammered:
"My legs... They're back."
The tiger growled.
"That's right," he said, licking his side.
"But you saw them. They were torn from me by that damn spider."
"Without a doubt. He has explained it clearly, master. That's what happened."
I finally got it.
"You healed me," I said. More a sentence than a question.
The tiger spoke as if that were the most common thing, as if I had suffered a blow to the head.
"Of course, master. It is my duty."
I was amazed at the calmness with which he said it. In fact, I was amazed at everything that animal did. Was it even? As far as I knew, tigers did not speak human language or emanate flames from their eyes.
The tiger noticed my confusion and exhaled deeply. His thick nose snorted like a viper's, and his lungs contracted like the gills of a great white shark. Its majesty was blinding.
"I'm the Eighth Amendment," he explained. "I have a duty to protect him with my life for two days and two nights."
"Is that true?" I asked, ruminating on what I had just heard.
"It's the truth. I am a special invocation that Users resort to in situations of crisis and extreme danger. My only mission is to protect the User's life."
"I see, and it's not the only thing... Apparently, you can also cure diseases."
"Yes and no. When I cured him, my vitale reserve was around 98%, so I had no problem at all. If you had been at 30% or 20%, you would have died. Jum. No doubt."
He spoke strangely, slurring the consonants with his large purplish tongue.
"Let's see if I understand," I scratched my head. "I had to flee from the Spider, from the Owner of the nest, or whatever it was called. That would give me a hundred fragments (who knows what the hell they are for). Anyway, you appeared in the middle of the maelstrom because I invoked that Eighth Amendment. Somehow, you were able to defeat the spider like a mosquito, and you also regenerated my legs. Is that so?"
"It's just as you describe it, master. Excellent!"
The tiger stood up on two legs and clapped my hands with his foreheads.
"Are you stupid?"
"I'm sorry," he said.
It was the most bizarre thing I had ever seen in my life. I began to reflect while the tiger flapped its tail like a dog. What was such a childish attitude? Wasn't a tiger a hairy, ferocious, virile, and serious male?
"What's going on?" I thought. I set the vision on a fixed point. It didn't matter where I looked, because the environment looked dark.
"What is this world, tiger?" I asked, surprised, with the feeling that I was going crazy from talking to an animal.
"It's the Earth, master," replied the tiger, again in that smug tone, as if I were a child to whom things had to be repeated until he learned them.
"Don't be... I am referring to what is happening."
"What?" He looked at me stunned.
"Well. Yesterday everything was calm. Why are we involved in this nightmare?"
"What are you talking about? This is the world as always, master."
"Don't come at me with nonsense. Yesterday tigers did not speak and could not open a hole in a building without skinning themselves. Yesterday my bed didn't look like a damn pool and I wasn't attacked by spiders the size of a garbage truck."
"You've hit your head, for this world has been like this for as long as I've known it."
I gave up. I wasn't going to get any information from him.
"Why am I so small?" I continued in another way.
"Ah! That's because he's entered ERGO."
"ERGO! The residential building?"
The tiger furrowed his whiskers."I don't know what you're talking about, but in any case, this map is called ERGO."
Could it be possible that this tiger came from another world? Otherwise, it didn't make sense that I didn't know what a residential complex was. Or rather, it didn't make sense for it to exist. I analyzed it from top to bottom.
"Tell me who your master is? Why do you serve the system?"
"What does it say? It is ok?"
As if he were going to bug like in video games!
"Excuse me. I thought you would be forbidden to talk about the system."
"No. But I don't know what the system is. Why should I ask myself something like that if I came into this world through birth? Do you wonder if you live in a simulation when you wake up in the morning?"
What he said made sense. In life, one did not go around wondering if one lived within a system of magic. I tried to turn the conversation around.
"What are the Fragments?"
The tiger had already come to terms with the fact that he had hit my head and I lost my memory.
"Shards are runes that are used to empower abilities," he explained slowly. "We are all born with them. I'm a skinwalker, for example. My skill lies in extracting the powers of the Tiger God Kui. He blessed me before I was born. Most of my clan are skinwalkers, but there are cases where you are born with very different abilities than your siblings. For example, my younger sister is not a skinwalker. She is Visionarius."
"And you want me to know what a damn Visionarius is?" I thought silently.
"A Visionarius is one who can steal abilities," he said, reading my mind. Then he continued: "There are many skills for each User, so many that it is almost impossible to collect them all, even if you fill a library with them; some are common, others are rare, but there is a very small category reserved for extremely special cases. One User in billions. Mutations of nature and ruptures that often bring calamities to the world," he stood up and announced in a somber voice: "These calamities are called The Awakening of the Fragments, though they are better known as Experges."
The words of the skinwalker floated in the atmosphere.
"Open your menu," he invited me. "There you will see what ability you have, and you can use your Fragments while you're at it."
I blushed.
"How do I do it?"
The tiger held back the urge to make fun of me. I had to be for him that person who asks you how to use an elevator.
"Just say 'menu'."
"Menu."
A sign like the others I had seen appeared in front of me, although this one was much more detailed. There were numbers and letters everywhere, many of which I didn't understand. However, you didn't have to be an expert to notice the most important thing.
At the bottom, I found the ability. Unlike the others, this section was amber in color, like an orange.
[ONLINE USER] [FRAGMENTS: 300] [UNIQUE ABILITY: FALSARIUS]
[IN THE PERIODIC TABLE: UNKNOWN ELEMENT]