The alley was a graveyard of forgotten things. Armen slumped against the cold, damp stone wall, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. He looked down at his hands. The deathly, translucent grey of the corpse he had inhabited was beginning to shift. It was a slow, unsettling transformation. The skin was losing that waxy, stagnant look of the morgue, replaced by a pale, sickly ivory. He was still horribly scrawny; his ribs poked against the thin fabric of his rugged tunic like the teeth of a saw, and his face felt hollowed out, but he no longer looked like a piece of meat ready for the butcher. He looked like a survivor.
He sat there for a long time, letting the adrenaline subside. The silence of the alley was punctuated only by the distant, muffled sounds of the town and the occasional scuttle of a rat through the filth.
"I'm actually here," he whispered, his voice sounding less like a rattle and more like a human tone now. "I died. I really died back there on the sidewalk."
He thought of the car, the sound of the metal crunching, and the weirdly calm realization that his life was over. But here he was, in a world that smelled of wet earth and ancient dust, sitting in a pile of garbage. A manic grin spread across his haggard face. He had spent his entire life reading about this, playing games about this, dreaming of a chance to be something more than a student destined for a cubicle.
Instinctively, as if the movement was etched into his very soul, Armen reached out and swiped the air in front of him.
The UI flared to life. It didn't cast a light on the stone walls; it seemed to exist only within his own retinas, a glowing, sharp interface that made his heart leap. He leaned forward, his eyes scanning the data with the intensity of a starving man at a banquet.
Host Name: Armen
Current Points: 0
Beast Inventory: 0 / 3 Slots
Equipped Beast: 0 / 1 Slots
Below the basic stats, a menu of possibilities scrolled by. He saw a tab for Evolution and Fusion tab as well, a feature that promised to combine the essence of different creatures into something new and terrifying, then a feature that said humanoid form, but the cost was even higher. It was a distant goal, a mountain peak he couldn't even see yet.
"Draw Beast: 50 points," Armen read aloud, his voice trembling with excitement. "Fifty... I don't even have one point. How am I supposed to—"
Suddenly, the screen flickered. A new notification pinged, the sound echoing only in his mind like a silver bell.
[New User Bonus Detected]
[Reward: 1 Free Starter Draw]
Armen nearly jumped out of his skin. He let out a choked, frantic laugh, clutching his stomach. "Yes! That's it! That's the trope! The starter pack!"
He stood up, his legs feeling a bit more solid now, though his stomach groaned with a hunger that felt like a physical hole. He looked around the alleyway again. To his left, a pile of discarded animal remains from a nearby butcher shop lay rotting in the heat. A cloud of fat, black flies buzzed over a heap of discarded intestines and a severed pig's head. The gore was thick and dark, attracting a few bold crows that tore at the greyish fat with sharp, clicking beaks.
Armen ignored the stench. He was focused on the screen. He needed to be sure he was alone. If someone saw him talking to thin air, they might think he was a lunatic madman that needed to be taken care of for safety.
He walked deeper into the shadows, stepping over a puddle of stagnant, red-tinted water. He checked the entrance of the alley. No one. Just the indifferent bustle of the town far behind him.
"Alright," he breathed, his finger hovering over the glowing 'Draw' button. "This is it. Give me something powerful. Please give me something that can help me survive this hellhole."
He pressed the button.
The interface transformed. The dark alley was suddenly filled with the visual of a swirling vortex. Within the UI, eggs began to appear. They weren't normal bird eggs; these were pulsing, organic orbs of various sizes and textures. Some were covered in jagged, obsidian spikes. Others were smooth and translucent, with visible, glowing cores that looked like beating hearts.
They began to roll across his field of vision in a blur of motion. A deep, resonant humming sound filled his ears, vibrating in his chest. The eggs flashed in a strobe of blinding colors: a toxic, emerald green; a deep, bruised purple; a fiery, violent crimson.
"Come on, come on," Armen hissed, his hands balled into fists at his sides. He was jumping in excitement, his rugged rags flapping against his scrawny frame. This was the moment that would define his new life. In his old life, he was a nobody who died because he wasn't looking at the road. In this life, he had the system, life could be more exciting but also dangerous.
The rotation began to slow. The eggs flickered by one by one now, their details becoming agonizingly clear. He saw an egg that looked like it was made of frozen lightning. He saw another that was dripping with a thick, black ichor that seemed to burn the floor of the UI.
The colors flashed faster for a final second: Gold! Blue! Red! White!
Then, with a sound like a heavy iron gate slamming shut, the wheel stopped.
The chosen egg drifted to the center of the screen. It was large, the surface etched with strange, pulsating veins that glowed with an eerie light. Cracks began to spiderweb across the shell, and a thick, pungent fluid began to leak out, sizzling as it hit the virtual floor. Armen held his breath, his eyes wide, his smile frozen on his face as the shell began to shatter from the inside.
Finally, it stopped.