The transition from unconsciousness to reality was not a gentle one. It began with the rhythmic thrumming of a headache that beat in time with Javier's pulse, a dull roar that made his skull feel three sizes too small.
When he finally pried his eyes open, the world was no longer bathed in the blinding gold of the midday sun. It was draped in a heavy, velvet indigo. The sky above the rim of his crater was a chaotic tapestry of stars—thick, swirling nebulae of violet and silver that he didn't recognize from any Earthly constellation.
He groaned, the sound gravelly and dry in his throat. His body felt like it had been put through a professional tenderizer. Every muscle protested as he shifted, his fingers digging into the loose, cool soil of the impact zone.
"Twelve hours..." he croaked, glancing at a shimmering peripheral clock that had appeared in his UI. It had been nearly half a day since his atmospheric re-entry.
He lay there for a moment, waiting for the system to tell him he was dead or that his HP was critical. But as he focused on his status bar, he saw something absurd. His health bar was nearly full, ticking upward with a regeneration speed that was visibly fast.
"Infinite mana," he muttered, realization dawning. "In AeonQuest, mana regen and health regen were separate stats... but here, it's like the mana is overflow-coding into my vitality."
He was a battery that was constantly overcharging. His body was being repaired by the sheer pressure of the magic coursing through his veins.
With a grunt of pure effort, Javier pushed himself upright. Dirt cascaded off his linen robes, which were miraculously still intact despite the charred edges. He climbed out of the pit, his boots slipping on the loose earth until he hauled himself onto the flat forest floor.
The silence of the night was different than the day. It was alive with the hum of luminescent insects and the distant, haunting howl of things that sounded far too large to be wolves. He didn't have a map, but the image of the town from the stratosphere was burned into his memory.
East. He began to walk. He moved with a slight limp at first, but with every hundred yards, the "aching" feeling faded as his mana-rich blood mended his bruised fibers. He kept his eyes peeled, his hands hovering near his waist. He was no longer playing a game where a death meant a ten-minute respawn timer and a loss of gold. This was a world of physical consequence.
The forest grew denser, the shadows stretching like long, skeletal fingers across his path. He resisted the urge to use Ignite to create a torch; in a wasteland this dark, he didn't want to be a beacon for every predator within ten miles.
He had been walking for nearly four hours when the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
It wasn't a sound that alerted him, but a smell—the pungent, metallic scent of wet fur and old blood. Javier stopped dead in his tracks. He didn't turn his head, but his eyes darted to the periphery.
To his left, a shadow detached itself from the trunk of a massive tree.
It was a beast that looked like a cross between a hyena and a starved bear, its skin hairless and mottled with sickly grey sores. It stood nearly five feet tall at the shoulder, with two elongated, sabre-like fangs protruding from its lower jaw. Its eyes weren't eyes at all, but glowing pits of yellowish light.
A [Stray Shadow-Crawler].
The name popped into his mind instinctively—not because the game told him, but because the creature felt familiar. It was a low-level mob, the kind of thing a Level 10 party would hunt for scrap leather.
The beast crouched, its muscles coiling. It didn't growl; it let out a wet, clicking sound from the back of its throat. It saw a lone man in rags—an easy meal.
It lunged.
Javier didn't think. His gamer instincts, honed through thousands of hours of high-stakes PvP, took over. 'In the arena, when an assassin jumped you, you didn't cast a grand ritual. You used an interrupt.'
Cast: Mana Bolt.
He didn't aim for a killing blow. He just wanted it away from him. He flicked his wrist with the casual indifference of someone swatting a fly.
The "Bolt" that left his hand was not a bolt. It was a horizontal pillar of pure, shrieking light.
The projectile caught the Shadow-Crawler mid-air, square in the chest. There was no sound of impact—only the sound of displaced air, a thunderous WHOOMPH that shook the leaves off the surrounding trees.
The beast didn't just fall back. It was erased from the immediate vicinity. It became a blur of grey fur and yellow light, propelled backward with such violent force that it shattered three saplings before disappearing into the darkness of the woods. A second later, a distant thud and the sound of a heavy body crashing through distant brush echoed back to the clearing.
Javier stood with his arm still outstretched, his palm glowing with residual blue sparks.
"Right," he whispered, his voice shaking slightly. "Basic spells. Infinite power. I really need to work on my trigger discipline."
He checked his mana bar. It hadn't moved. Not even a pixel's width.
He didn't stay to see if the beast survived. He knew it hadn't. Nothing of that level could survive being hit by a kinetic force equivalent to a high-speed rail collision.
The encounter had a strange effect on him. The fear that had been simmering in his gut since he woke up in the crater began to cool into a cold, hard confidence. He was in a strange world, yes. He was alone, yes. But he wasn't defenseless. He was the most dangerous "basic" mage in existence.
He adjusted his tattered robes and picked up his pace. The trees were beginning to thin, and the smell of woodsmoke—real, domestic woodsmoke—was growing stronger.
As he crested a final, low-rising hill, the forest gave way to a wide, sloping valley. There, bathed in the silver light of the twin moons, lay the town. It was surrounded by a modest wooden palisade, with a few stone watchtowers standing guard at the gates. Lanterns flickered along the main street, casting a warm, inviting glow against the dark stone of the buildings.
It looked peaceful. It looked normal.
Javier Gantz took a deep breath, his heart thumping against his ribs. He wasn't sure what kind of "Mission" the notification had mentioned, or who the "Demon God" was, but he knew one thing.
He was tired of being a wanderer in a wasteland. It was time to find some answers.
He started down the hill, heading toward the gate.