The tail stabbed down, nailing me right in the nose about as hard as a heavyweight champion’s knockout punch. I staggered back a few steps, as blind with stars and drunk as a boxer on their last legs. I was dimly aware of blood streaming down my lips and chin. Moments later, the pain began to overwhelm the shock.
Achievement unlocked: broken nose! Yay.
Then, I did fall. Shaky and barely sensible, I went to my knees, blinking tears.
The scorpion must not have understood its clear advantage. It hesitated, then darted closer a couple of steps before stopping and jumping back. It must have thought I was trying to trick it. It did this twice before deciding I wasn’t faking, then came in all the way.
I lifted the spear up in front of me, but the scorpion’s left pincer locked around the shaft. It punched with its right.
In the martial art I’d studied back home, they’d shown us something neat. Almost all the force of a punch comes straight on. That’s why trying to block a punch hurts so much; you’re absorbing all that force. But when someone’s punching, it takes only a little pressure from the side to push their punching arm out of the way. If you’re fast enough to react in time. We practiced this all the time.
I did it on instinct, like I’d trained for. As the bowling-ball size pincer came at my face, the hand I already had up pushed it to the side. Not quite in time, though. I got hit right above one eye. Thankfully, it was a glancing blow. Without thinking, my hand already on the pincer, I slid it down and grabbed the thin arm behind the fat claw.
We wrestled, spear trapped in one pincer, the two of us struggling over the other. It went back and forth, but I could feel myself losing. The thing was stupidly strong, and it still had five good legs, getting way better traction than I was. Its nasty mouth kept chomping at my face. Scorpions are arachnids, and they are every bit as butt ugly up close.
I couldn’t let it continue. I dropped low and, with a roar, pushed with everything I had, like some skinny sumo wrestler, screaming and heaving.
The scorpion’s front lifted up, up, then it was twisting and falling onto its back, tailed pinned underneath.
I kept going, climbing up onto its belly. It flailed about with its pincers, trying to right itself, but I was too heavy. Its legs became frantic, sharp points coming at me like a half-dozen daggers, poking holes all over my body. But I couldn’t let up. Kneeling on the creature’s chest, I was terrified of dying, so I got pissed. Because that’s how guys react to so many unwanted emotions, especially fear. For some reason, it wouldn’t let go of my spear, but when it tried to snip my head off with the other, I wrestled it away with my left hand and wailed on the creature with my right.
Over and over again, I punched that ugly beast in the bottom of its head. Legs kept stabbing me, blood spattering everywhere. One got me in the gut, making me cry out as I felt the thing root around in my guts. I let go of the pincer, put both hands on the offending limb, pulled it out of me, and twisted and ripped until the thing tore off the body below. Then I stabbed the scorpion in the face with its own sharp foot.
I screamed at it, “How do you like that, asshole?” and then got slammed in the side of the head by the pincer I should have been holding onto. The claw snipped, and I nearly lost my ear; it left a long cut in my hair instead. But the vicious creature was weakening. I dropped the torn leg and punched and punched, wailing on its face.
And at some point, it stopped putting up a fight. Probably because its face was mush.
I tumbled off, and knelt in the sand, the golden grains turning rusty from all the blood I was shedding, and it was a lot. My nose was broken. My right hand was broken from punching too much. I had sun burns, electrical burns, and even sand burns. My stomach was a ravenous hole from hunger, and had an actual hole or two in it. I was sweating and thirsty beyond belief. Heart pounding and chest heaving lungfuls of air, it was all I could do to hold onto consciousness.
I’d done it. The momma scorpion was dying. I was, too, but she’d go first.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe I’d had it in me. I’d had no idea I was capable of something like that. I was no soldier, not even a cop. I was a nobody. The only fighting I’d ever done was light sparring at the dojo, and that had been pretty recreational, not serious. Who the hell was this kick-ass guy who looked like me, and where the hell had he been all my life?
The husky-sized arachnid twitched a few more times, then went still.
I breathed deep in relief. I’d won. Too bad I’d be dead soon too.
The system, for lack of a better term, kicked in.
Level 6
Level 7
Level 8
I could only laugh. Three levels. Given the state I was in, I guessed I was really, really lucky to be alive after that. I must have been punching outside of my weight class. The baby scorpions had been my level. I never should have faced this thing, probably never would have encountered it except for accidentally opening that cave. Rookie mistake. Because I’m an idiot who does stuff without thinking.
I felt a pulse of restorative energy surge through me three times.
I looked down at myself. My wounds were barely bleeding now. “Whoa. Three levels, and you couldn’t even heal me all the way?” I complained, but I checked one of the holes in my guts and was pleased to find it largely healed. All the healing from three level-ups must have gone toward keeping me from immediately bleeding out.
I checked out my stats. They’d grown. Originally, they’d been:
Level 1
- Strength 12
- Speed 14
- Health 15
- Mana 8
- Intelligence 13
Now they were:
Level 8
- Strength 17
- Speed 17
- Health 28
- Mana 8
- Intelligence 13
Again, I refused to acknowledge Penis Size. Maybe later, if it ever got bigger.
Having vaguely paid attention to the first couple of level-ups, it looked like I was gaining about three stat points per level. Assuming levels get harder as you go, you’d earn less and less new points over time. I wondered how far people levelled up. Was it like DnD, and 20 was your max, or more like WoW, and you capped at 70 or 120 or 50 or whatever it was at now? Considering I’d gone up to Level 8 fairly “easily”, I had to think the cap was much higher than 20 or even 50. After all, while that huge scorpion had been a brutal battle for me, people living in this world must be collecting far more experience over time. I’d only been here a month. Some guy killing these things for decades must be at a really high level, right?
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I hadn’t been given the option to assign points; they’d changed on their own. But it didn’t seem random. Mana and Intelligence hadn’t changed at all. But Health had shot up, along with gains to Strength and Speed. I’d been very sick a lot and injured a lot. Maybe the system figured I needed more health to stay alive. I’d been fighting a bunch, so the two stats that reflected that had also grown, though not as much. I bet that if I’d been a better fighter and had kicked ass without getting sick and hurt as much, my Strength and Speed stats would have been much higher.
I assumed Mana had something to do with magic, which I didn’t have a clue about and wasn’t using, so it had stayed the same. From the mediocre Intelligence stat that hadn’t changed, it seemed I hadn’t been using my brain much either.
Great. Stereotypical guy. All brawn and no brains.
Actually...that was still an improvement over what I’d been back on Earth: mediocre in all ways. I was starting to see why this kind of thing enticed people so much, why they fantasized about it and wrote books about it.
Two large icons appeared in front of me. It took me a bit of effort to focus on them. One icon showed a glowing red heart while the other was a mysterious question mark appearing and disappearing behind some dark clouds. Below each was some helpful text. Pictures and words were smoky, the edges indistinct. It seemed that the system was offering me two options.
HEAL TO FULL HEALTH and GAIN [Lesser Regeneration] or
REVEAL A SECRET
I shook my head at the idiocy and automatically reached out for the first option. I might have partially healed from levelling, but that was no guarantee I wouldn’t die from these wounds or infection, even with the resistance skill. Restoring myself to full health was the most practical thing to do. Even better, I’d get a new skill, one that would definitely be vital in helping me survive. If the first few weeks in this world were any indication, I was going to get hurt a lot. Regeneration was a broken skill.
And the second option was a secret? What kind of moron would pick that?
I hesitated. Was I that moron?
Why would it offer a secret? No explanation. Would I learn a secret, or would one of mine be revealed? Did I even have any secrets? I couldn’t think of anything. I’d stolen some vintage Playboy mags when I was in high school and used them to jerk off. Wow. Huge and embarrassing secret. Like people didn’t do that kind of thing all the time. Maybe not the stealing bit. Reminiscing, I was surprised to find that I still felt guilty for that, and it had happened many years earlier.
The system wasn’t providing any hints about the secret option. It could be meant to completely screw you over. Like maybe you learn that little Johnny wet the bed three towns over and hid it from his mom. Completely meaningless. But was this option a true gamble, or was the system giving me the chance to learn a really good secret, something that might benefit me?
What if the options were equal? What if whatever secret it was, it was as beneficial as restoring my health and gaining a very sweet skill? But the more I thought about it, that didn’t seem right. If the options were balanced, hiding one seemed too much of a gamble. Therefore, to make it truly tempting, shouldn’t the secret option be potentially more valuable than the shown option?
So it was probably either a total crap secret, or an awesome secret. But I had no way at all to know or even to guess because I wasn’t from this world. I didn’t know how the system worked. Maybe I had a 50-50 chance, or maybe a 1-99 chance. The way my luck usually went, the odds were probably about the same as in a mobile gacha game.
Don’t ever play those. Stupid pay-to-win, manipulative ripoffs, all of them.
Maybe it was because I was so beat up and tired, but the decision just seemed really difficult. Maybe it would have been easier if I were smarter. I didn’t know. I looked at the FULL HEALTH option. It seemed the best thing to do. So obvious. And regen? Oh, man, it would have been nice not to be in constant hellish pain.
I sighed. I was weak to mysteries. I had to know what the stupid secret was. I was that moron, after all. I reached out and hit it with my hand like I was in some VR game. Probably didn’t need to do that. The whole thing was happening in my head, so I could have just thought the one I wanted. Whatever.
The options vanished. I still hurt everywhere, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. I looked around, my breathing finally getting back to normal. Nothing seemed different. No new messages popped up. Nothing fell from the sky. No beat-the-boss chest appeared.
That was actually pretty disappointing. The moment I thought it, I was heartbroken it wasn’t happening, because as silly as a video-game world was, everyone who’s played a fantasy game loves large chests. Treasure too.
But nothing happened. Where was my secret? Apparently, the system really did have an option to screw you over.
I groaned, “This sucks.”
But wait, the situation got even better.
I spent the afternoon resting, filtering water and drinking it, and eating fried vulture that tasted like sour turkey, and I didn’t care because at that moment, it was the best thing ever and ten times better than fried scorpion. I cleaned out my wounds and washed my face, though I didn’t have a clue about what to do with a broken nose except try to straighten it, which hurt like being stabbed in the face. All of this I did with a broken hand. Three level-ups and the system hadn’t fixed it. I thought maybe it had put any shattered bones back together so that I just had a bunch of fractures. But I couldn’t open or close it, and the slightest touch, like bumping something, hurt so bad it brought tears. I’d never had physical injuries like that before.
I muttered while I cleaned fresh blood out of my reset nose, “Thanks, system god or whoever it was that brought me here. You’re just layering on the new experiences. Really appreciate that. Not like I could have gone through life without knowing what broken bones feel like. How about you come down here and give me five minutes alone with you and a hammer?”
After, I sat in the wet sand of the oasis shore with a palm frond umbrella keeping a bit of the sun off. The sun was setting, and, fair enough, the sunsets in the desert were pretty gorgeous, if you like that sort of thing and aren’t in so much pain that you barely notice. The sun was glowing pink on the horizon, barely a sliver left, and the sky was dark blue and turning black. It was dark, with shadows everywhere. I was barely functional and had been zoned out from exhaustion for a while.
That’s when movement out in the desert caught my eye.
The first stars were coming out opposite the sun. There was just enough light to see the telltale shape of a scorpion out there, coming from the cave’s direction. Another one. Because that was my life. One kick in the nuts after another.
It wasn’t moving fast. It was inching forward a couple of steps at a time, pausing, turning this way and that, then pausing again. Apparently, scorpions generally see by feel. They chase vibrations. So the dark doesn’t bother them. It’s why they’re nocturnal. The creature was slowly but steadily making its way toward the oasis, where I was sitting. I dimly realized that it was following the trail I’d left.
It took a good minute or two for my sluggish brain to start putting the pieces together. I frown. Like, that thing was a good way off, but I could see it clearly. That meant it wasn’t a baby, which I’d first assumed it was. In fact, the closer it got, the easier it was to compare it to the plantlife, and I realized it wasn’t even momma-sized.
I couldn’t help but exclaim aloud, “There’s a papa scorpion? Are you kidding me?” I sagged back against the sand chair I’d made myself, almost too exhausted to be more than terrified.
Oops. Whether it heard me or felt me move, the scorpion spun in my direction and stopped.
We stared at each other. I started to really realize just how big it is. It was the size of a car.
An American car.
I should have been afraid. I was. But that old, familiar anger I’d been carrying for so long decided it had had enough simmering. The afternoon had been enough respite. My body may have been spent, but my anger still had kick left in it. It flickered back to life with a vengeance, directed at the system, at whatever entity brought me here to abuse me like this, and at the scorpion to end all scorpions because it was the only physical thing I could unleash all that rising anger on.
I slowly reached out to grab the spear that never left my side. Curled my fingers around the wooden shaft, now chipped and scarred from battle. I wiped some sweat off my broken nose with the wrist attached to my broken hand, pain flaring on contact. Darkly laughing at the absurdity of it all, I stared down that crazy big creature and growled, “Fine. So there’s a papa scorpion. All right, I’ll kill you too. But I swear, if you die and a grandaddy scorpion the size of a bus shows up, I’m gonna burn this whole fuckin’ world to the ground. You have my word.”
The monster came for me.