[ Skill Unlocked: Stray Bullet ]
The message popped into my view.
A clean, white font, almost like the computer-generated ones on our technological displays.
I fell backwards.
"Gah!"
Seeing it had made me surprised.
I rubbed my eyes, maybe I was too tired and had begun to hallucinate.
Even behind my closed eyelids, the image was there.
When I opened my eyes again, it was still there.
The weird, traslucent gray rectangle with the bright white text over it.
I had definitely gone crazy.
My family disappears in a bloody incident.
I try to.. end it all.
But I'm stopped.
Gravity starts shifting around.
And now this!?
This situation was something I'd never heard of.
In my 24 years in this world, I'd never heard about anyone seeing random text rectangles.
Slowly, I reached out for the text box.
Before I could touch it, the borders closed in and the image faded away, like an exit animation of sorts.
I stood still for a moment, my brain taking a moment to catch up to what had just happened.
"What the-"
Can I catch a break?
Something weird was going on.
Let's see, what did I do before that message appeared...?
I began tracing the steps I had just done, backwards this time.
First, I touched the lamp, trying to see if anything would change.
Nope.
I just stood in the middle of the beach, touching my lamp, like an idiot.
Then, using the lamp as an anchor, I lifted my body up.
Those years of calisthenics sure came in handy.
I was doing a single handed handstand on my gas lamp in the middle of the beach at night.
Surely things couldn't get crazier.
But still, nothing happened.
I pushed myself up, but gravity came around and my face met the floor.
Rolling over onto my side I looked straight into the ocean.
"What am I doing?"
I whispered into it, like if someone out there would listen to my silent pleads.
For a moment, I thought of going back home, and just sleeping the weirdness off.
But then, I looked back at the soles of my boots.
Stained in a dark, almost black red.
My home's floor was still soaked in the pain of memories long gone.
"You're still out there, right?"
I kept staring into the ocean.
"Give me a sign."
My vision began to jitter and blur as tears formed in my eyes.
"Mother...?"
I sat myself on the sand, my legs below my torso as my knees pointed in front of me.
"Father...?"
I helped myself up, using my arms as support as I raised one knee.
"Misha...?"
Standing up, I almost scram into the sea, hoping my silent voice would be heard.
"Jiran...?"
In a blink of an eye I was already sprinting towards the sea, diving in, fully clothed, in the cold night.
Nothing mattered to me in that moment more than my family.
I began pushing the waves away as if they were trying to stop me from going in deeper.
My knees were already submerged in the sea, and my ankles had clumps of kelp wrapped around me.
But my step only got swifter as I continued splashing around.
I could feel my body turning stiff from the sheer cold of the water.
My legs turned numb, the ticklish sensation from the kelp wrapped around them long gone as I robotically kept moving them.
The corners of my vision began darkening, focusing on just the center and nothing else.
An endless, vast ocean.
Somewhere.
My family was somewhere around here.
They weren't dead.
Nothing pointed towards it.
That blood, it definitely wasn't from Hir-Soger.
A monster came for them.
I've seen them bleed before, their blood is dark like their existence.
Humans bleed a lighter color.
A monster entered my house.
My parents defended my siblings from it.
That's why their rooms were so messy, they had been rushed out.
My parents were safe.
And so were my siblings.
But where were they now?
Running out at night, this late, it's a death wish!
Not even the crazy old fishermen dare to do that.
And why wouldn't they wake me up?
Maybe in their rush they forgot about me?
No, they wouldn't do that.
Or maybe, just maybe, they believed I'd be safe in the basement.
Which I ended up being.
My mother is smart and so is my father, they'd know I'm not defenseless unlike my siblings.
But I've sworn to protect the four of them.
Why wouldn't they wake me up.
- Under pressure, we don't choose the best path, we choose the fastest one, and it's often the fastest way to forget what mattered. -
That's right.
My instructors always said that when someone rushed out of the camp.
In the moment, being attacked, being under pressure, and rushing.
They didn't have time for me.
But, that's fair.
Waking me up could've been their end.
I stood in the middle of the ocean, my chin already partially submerged in the water.
"What am I doing?"
I looked around me and stared up at the moon.
"Did you get what you wanted?"
She was laughing at me.
And I began laughing too.
One laugh after another, in the middle of the empty seat.
A lone man like me.
Laughing at the moon.
- - - - - - - - - -
Back at the coast I picked my lamp up, the flame had faded away, but it didn't matter, as long as I could get home.
My clothes were soggy, dripping water as a sort of trail.
They felt heavier too, especially my coat, it has absorbed so much liquid it felt as if a rock had been wrapped all around my body.
My boots gave a soft squish with every step I took.
I was the tiny hill that separated my house's front street from the beach.
Just as I was less than 3 steps away from stepping all the way up.
Bam.
I tripped and fell on the sand.
The lamp fell out of my hands and rolled it's way back downhill.
Weird, it wasn't steep enough to trip, or at least I'd never tripped when climbing my way up.
I rubbed my eyes and yawned, my body felt slightly lethargic, but not to the point where I'd trip over usual terrain.
But accidents do happen, right?
I slid my way back down the hill, once again, tripping and falling face first onto the sand.
This time it was weirder.
The sand was so fine, the naked eye could instantly spot any sort of rock or boulder.
But there was nothing where I had just tripped.
And it was a downhill slide, so I had full control over my body.
Or maybe I didn't?
I walked to the spot where I had just tripped and began looking for anything in the sand.
Pushing my way through, scooping fistfuls of sand, I felt like a dog digging a hole in the dirt.
I couldn't find anything other than more and more sand.
Stepping back, I turned right and walked towards my lamp that had rolled away.
I couldn't just leave it there, a lamp is like 20 Skirlias.
I leaned down and grabbed the lamp by it's handle and stood back up.
The moment I turned around.
Bam.
Something was definitely going on.
"Ugh- what the hell?"
I looked down at where I had just tripped.
Nothing.
Once again, I scooped handfuls of sand trying to find the cause of my constant falling.
But I found nothing.
I turned towards my boot and began examining it.
Maybe it had gotten damaged or deformed from the water or something in the water...?
Nope.
The shape seemed to be the same, the fabric was good as new, well as new as they could be, given that I use them every day.
But why do I keep tripping over seemingly nothing?
I lifted my foot and brought it down slowly this time.
The sand moved, sort of like a whirpool.
My ankle sank an inch deeper, and something cold and slick brushed against my skin.
I yanked my leg back as my breath caught.
The sand smoothed itself back.
Something was below it.
I took another step, carefully this time.
Then another.
My foot was pulled.
"-!"
I crashed forward, my face barely missing the ground as I threw my arms out in front of me.
The lamp skidded away, its metal clattering softly.
If it wouldn't show itself, and it wouldn't fight, then I'll have to force it to.
I tried stepping back and the ground tugged again.
Stepping sideways led to the same result.
But it always hid again.
If I fell fully, it would drag me down.
But I'm not someone's prey, I'm a hunter.
I reached out for my gun, docked beside my thigh.
"Come on," I murmured, pointing at the ground.
"Don't you want me?"
I fired.
The shot tore into the sand.
A dark liquid splattered from below the sand, reaching up to my eye height.
Dark...
A monster.
I hadn't been paying attention to keeping my lamp lit, as soon as it turned off, I became an easy target for any monster.
A shrill sound echoed from beneath the surface.
"So you can feel pain..."
I stepped back on purpose, my foot was seized instantly.
The force nearly pulled me off balance, but I braced, twisting my body and driving the muzzle down.
"There you are."
Another short.
The sand finally split.
A mass surged upward, shapeless, pulsing in blueish colors.
The monster dragged itself into shape, it had no eyes or a mouth but I could feel the rage in it.
[ Shapeless Clump ]
The text box was back again. This time levitating above the monster before me.
Given the context, I could only assume that it was his name.
A Shapeless Clump huh...
It slowly began moving towards me as I aimed my gun at it.
[ HP: 10 ]
I stared at the thing, my hand trembled for a moment.
Normally, I'd be fleeing.
Before I could react the Clump pounced at me, I managed to just barely dodge it, but some of it latched onto my arm.
Part of its flesh was almost stuck to my sleeve...
But, it should be melting it away, shouldn't it?
Blobs, as they're commonly referred to, have bodies made out of dark matter, a single gram of their flesh can tear apart your flesh as if it were butter under a hot knife.
But nothing was happening.
It wasn't even going through my coat.
"What the...?"
I reached out towards the flesh stuck on my coat and slapped it off the fabric.
Nothing.
My hand didn't react to it in any way.
I should've fallen off by now.
But, nothing?
The Clump began approaching me again, but I shot it without thinking.
Flicking my view towards it, I noticed.
[ HP: 1 ]
A single bullet had reduced his HP by 9 points.
But, only 1 HP remaining?
That doesn't make sense, although I hadn't seen his original HP value.
Maybe it did make sense and I just wasn't as strong as I had originally thought.
The Clump's shape began morphing around, something about its movements screamed in pain.
It moved around like a sticky substance children would play around with as if it were a toy.
Without thinking.
Just acting.
I gave another shot at it.
But the bullet missed.
Although I had been aiming straight at the Clump.
The bullet impacted on the sand, spraying the fine particles across its sticky flesh.
Coated like a ball of dough with flour.
The Clump stopped moving and I approached it.
It gave a defeated sound as I was just one step before it.
[ HP: 1 ]
Given up already?
I'd never seen a monster do that before.
Giving up was almost foreign to their species.
I decided to end the match with my boot.
Raising my leg I looked down at the Clump one last time...
Before quickly stepping on it.
Its flesh spread in a ring shape before fading away into the sand below me.
[ +10 Experience Points ]