It turned out better than he expected. Sean was managing to climb up quite well. Each successful stab of the sharp rocks took him twenty centimeters or so higher, and it took some effort. Interestingly, he could hold himself up with one hand good enough. Perks of being somewhat light while packing some muscles. His father always had him work out in case he got into a fight. He couldn’t believe that it came in useful —certainly not something that would have been all that useful in the peaceful world he used to live in. Now that the System was here, Sean could almost predict what everyone would do. The world would turn into a straight-out Lord of the Flies scenario. Humans couldn’t be trusted with power.
But when he was around eight meters above ground, his hand slipped. He was oh-so-close too, and he fell back down, the weight of his backpack dragging his chest down and making him fall back-first rather than legs-first. It was all over. If he didn’t die, his computer was gone —he’d worked throughout the entire summer vacation to buy that! And he hadn’t bothered to back up his assignments, so that meant it was bye-bye to anything he had on his computer. Hopefully, the professors would understand that he lost his computer because he died in that mandatory combat stage.
The long-awaited fall came within seconds, but it definitely seemed longer to him. As expected, his back hit the ground first. It was painful. There was an audible crack from within his backpack, and the water bottle he had inside it rubbed against his back, inciting a groan the moment he felt it. And then, not even a moment after that, an even nastier sounding crack sounded out. Was that his back?
He grit his teeth and breathed hastily as if it was the last thing he would do. Then he tried to breathe harder, rather than faster. The gravel hadn’t budged from his fall and uncomfortably rubbed against his back as he laid on his back. There wasn’t all that much pain. If anyone saw him, they’d think of him as a man that had finished a marathon and had collapsed rather than someone who’d just fallen from up above.
Sean rolled over to his side and noticed that his body wasn’t obeying. Ceaselessly, he struggled to pull himself up, but that was when he winced. His spine. It hurt. If one could describe the pain, it was akin to waking up in the morning after sleeping on something hard; amplified by a hundred. That was it. Underwhelming, but still painful.
“Status,” said Sean and he looked at his HP. It was low, at the low fifties. Was one fall enough to make him tumble over and just about die? If he was fighting right now, then he would undoubtedly get killed off by some fodder. Hell, would he even be able to beat a fodder? Then he looked at the HP Regeneration rate. It was 10 per minute. Then it only stood to reason that he’d be up and running in ten minutes, right?
Probably, but he was far too weary. His father always told him that he should never sleep when freezing, for that would mean he would die. But this wasn’t freezing. It was uncomfortable, but far from that. And even if he would die, why did he care? It wasn’t like he’d die for real in the Calibration Stage. Soon after his eyes closed, his breath started to stabilize and his consciousness faded, now entering the world of dreams.
***
The warm blankets protected Sean from the cold and he embraced the thick blanket as if it was a long-lost love. He rolled around the bed and covered his head, now half-conscious. He’d trained himself to get up the moment he was at least half-conscious, as otherwise, he’d be late for his classes —waking up before 9 had become troublesome for him after he graduated high school. It was a habit to not even hear his alarm clock. He opened his eyes and stared up at the wooden ceiling. He knew everything was a dream. Oh well, he couldn’t enjoy it all that much. Then again, it wasn’t as if the situation was all that enjoyable. Not very great ‘dream’ material, if he could say so.
So he got up and walked up to his bookshelf to grab a jack-… Wait, this wasn’t his house. Hell, he lived in an apartment, so there was no business for there to be a wooden ceiling! Sean’s head turned and darted back to the bed. It was a humble one, with metal headboards he’d only seen in Russian serials and a thick blanket that seemed to be full of lint balls. How’d he even sleep in that?
The room wasn’t large by any means, around 5x5 in terms of meters, but the lack of furniture made it seem far more spacious than it was —only a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf filling the room. It was clearly a single room of a house. And then he noticed light coming from the window and looked out. He seemed to be in some sort of medieval village. The mountain range he’d seen in the picture before entering the Stage was evidently visible out in the distance, but how had he gotten here.
The architecture was exactly what he’d expect from a cold mountainous area, resembling a typical Viking village that was shown in movies with a roof that was just a tad bit too long, reaching down —most of the buildings were made of wood, but there were a few that had stone parts. There weren’t many fences between the buildings, and to someone who was used to the grid-esque pattern of the city, the cul-de-sac pattern was disorienting. None were painted, so everything was plain wood, some of the wood clearly rotting from the constant moisture. It looked real.
Sean then turned his head toward the bookshelf, wondering about who lived in this place. Looking at their books explained a lot about a person.
These books were definitely not in English. The letters were weird, as if they were a sort of Arabic but cluttered, then there were other languages as well. But when he focused, a screen popped out. Several of them, in fact, supposedly showing the names of the books. He looked through them, and found the contents to be quite interesting: Raishur’s Guide to Holy Scriptures, Magic 101, Soul Forgery Basics, How to Raise Your First Skeleton, and such. All of them seemed useful.
He ran his hands across the book labeled ‘Magic 101’ and felt the leather cover. The texture felt nice to the touch, soft and somewhat smooth with some grainy exterior; and most importantly, uneven —natural. It was nice to touch it. He pulled the book out and caught a deep whiff of it. It smelled sweet and almost like wood. He whiffed it once, then again, and then again. There was something so utterly relaxing about the smell of old books. After filling his lungs, Sean stared at the cover.
It was plain and simple, just the way he liked it. The name was written in bold near the center and the author’s name somewhat near the bottom, both of them perfectly centered. You came to appreciate the little things in formatting when you tried to write your name straight on a paper with no lines on it and failed. A whole book? That was paramount to impossible.
The door snapped open and an old man that seemed to be in his early sixties opened the door. He looked every part the fantasy farmer that Sean expected him to be —wearing a plain, yellowish-white tunic that seemed to be made of rough material and loose pants. The set was complete with a straw that stuck out from in-between his lips and a ragged straw hat on top of his head.
“Awake, eh?” asked the old man as he looked at Sean, and put a big grin on his face. At first glance, Sean could tell that the old man was one of those cool grandpas in the village that got along with kids, “You shouldn’t fall asleep in the middle of nowhere, yenno. Especially out in the mountains. There are giants up there. I’d bet a dozen gold coins that you’d be their food by now if I hadn’t dragged you with me on my way down.”
“So that’s why I’m here,” said Sean as he looked at the old man, and then back at the book in his hands. The old man didn’t seem like the type to have these books lying around, so it clearly belonged to someone else. He didn’t care who, but he did wonder about how the System was doing these things. It had first managed to fully show his statistics via the attributes, and now it had seemingly created an all-new world for some sort of challenge exclusive to him.
“Not even a thank you? Well, I’ll be damned. That’s what I get for risking the wrath of the giants,” said the old man with a wry grin and stared at the book in Sean’s hand. For a moment, he froze and the glimmer in his eyes disappeared. The expression disappeared as fast as it appeared and the light came back to his eyes, “Magic, eh? You understand that gibberish? Keep it if you want. No one bothers with them nowadays.”
“What is this place?” asked Sean as he put the thick book on the desk. It had a quill lying near an empty bottle, undoubtedly once used for ink. The thick layer of dust told him that the room hadn’t been inhabited for a good while. But alas, the information came first. He had to figure out what this place was, and why he was here. And more importantly, he had to know whether or not this was a mandatory stage or a sub-stage that he’d stumbled upon due to sheer luck, “And what’s that about the giants?”
“You surely know more about it than me, Outlander. No one around these parts would be wearing clothes like that. He’s called Helthur, a giant even among giants. Brought his merry gang here to the reaches and is ruling the villages. When I was a young’un, some fellers tried to take him down —failed. And that’s why the System’s sent you, no? To save us, ha,” said the old man, and after finishing his speech, he nodded understandingly, “Name’s Fillmore, the transport ‘round these parts. I’m tasked with delivering the tithes to the big boy. Found you on my way down.”
“Sean. Sean Morris,” he said and extended his hand. From the awkward silence and the questioning stare with a raised eyebrow, Sean surmised that handshakes weren’t something normal here. Right, another world, “That was a greeting. Now then, how… big are we talking?”
“Dozen at least, if you’re talking about big boy. His goons are bout as tall as those small houses out there. Their skin is too thick for swords to cut and arrows to pierce. Don’t think a scrawny kid like you is gonna take care of ‘em when the ones before you didn’t. Might as well make it easy for yourself, eh,” asked Fillmore and pulled out a dagger from seemingly out of nowhere, and put it on the desk, “Take it or leave it, your choice.”
“How many Outlanders come here?” asked Sean as he looked at the dagger. It had a brown handle with a small silver pommel and glimmered viciously in the sunlight. Both sides had been sharpened quite a bit, and Sean brought it near one of his fingertips and touched it. Unexpectedly, it cut clean through. No matter how much he sharpened a kitchen knife, the strength with which he tapped on it wouldn’t have cut into his flesh. Perhaps being made for combat really did matter. It did feel a bit awkward to hold it, as he was used to kitchen knives and their convenient designs for cutting things on a board than up in the air.
“Once every five years, I’d say. Some die early, some die later, but they end up dying nonetheless. Some of them I run into after they’ve died. Climbing up there every day lets you keep track of things, often things that you could go without,” said Fillmore and pat Sean on the shoulder, “Well, good luck. You got fight in your eyes, kid. At least take care of one of his goons, will ya? One less menace to torture us.”
Side Quest: Prove Yourself
Fillmore sees something in you and has passed on to you his worn dagger. Will you prove yourself and bring to him the head of a giant, or will you end your life and take the easy way out? Become the first Outlander to defeat a giant.
Current Progress: 0 / 1 Giants Slain
Rewards: Giant Slayer (Title), Mentorship