AN: So here we are, months have gone by and I really dont have the best of excuses as to why I haven't updated this, mostly I have just been working on bettering my life, hitting the gym, trying to find a job, that sorta stuff. Anyways, here's chapter 2. Took me long enough lol. I decided to lower my 10k words per chapter down to 5k or more, since sitting down and writing that amount is easier for me.
And something I forgot to mention in chapter 1's author's notes is that I'm taking a few liberties with this version of destiny. As such it's not an exact copy of destiny, a few things will change, and a lot more stuff will be added/explained upon as well.
Also, This chapter really isn't action heavy and mostly focuses on John as a person, and a little more backstory on him. Chapter 3 is when stuff will really begin to start so stay tuned for that.
As always, like, follow and review. Seeing my review count climb makes me wanna keep going. If you have questions or criticism just PM me, I always respond or try to anyways.
Without further ado, enjoy.
Chapter 2: A Winter's Stillness
It took me just over half an hour to finish marking down each and every location on the map that caught my interest and fully committing them to memory. So far I had around six points of interest that I felt were imperative toexplore and a dozen others that didn't seem that interesting, but who knows? I could get lucky.
I snorted.
Yeah, right, with my whopping five luck stat.
Mentally shelving the problem of my luck stat to future me, I sat up from my crouch and headed back inside, once again relishing in the minor temperature increase as I began to look around the decrepit rooms to fulfill one of my goals on my checklist: that is, I needed to get my shelter up to standard, and that would require me to scrounge up some furniture to make the place a little more habitable.
I'd never felt so glad to be wearing a helmet since I could've gotten some form of lung disease from this...
"God, what has my life come to?" I whispered as I made my way down the stairs.
It took only a few minutes of walking before I reached the first fixture on my list: a somewhat sleek metallic coffee table that looked like it'd seen better days. The metal had rusted long ago, and the glass on the top of the table was, for lack of a better word, fractured to hell and back. It was a testament to the table's durability that it hadn't broken long before I came here.
I hummed as I appraised the table, tapping my fingers against my hip and thinking about what to do with the damaged fixture. "Now, how am I gonna move you all the way to my place?" I spoke aloud as I tapped my foot on the ground.
Walking around it, I took note of its dimensions, and realized that, despite its severe condition, it would probably be an utter bitch to move up the stairs without someone helping. I had no doubt that I could've carried it around the room, but moving it up the stairs would be a chore.
Bending down and gripping it with my hands, I heaved the coffee table up, bending my arms as I hefted it in my hands. I noted how delicate and lightweight the furniture felt, my mind drifting back to my status as a Gamer before I pushed it away and focused on my mental list of things to do.
Getting furniture up the stairs shouldn't be that hard with my strength, but that's only if I—
"Ugh!" I was halted mid-step by the doorframe, and as I suspected, there seemed to only be one way through, a path that required me to tilt the coffee table in at an angle that was just right.
"Too much effort…" I grumbled, seriously reconsidering the importance of having some furniture in my home before I decided that yes, I would like to have a place to sit back and relax after exploring the city I found myself dropped into. And so, with my mind made up, I began the painstaking effort of manhandling the piece of home decor into the door—a challenge that was MUCH harder with only a single person, newfound strength and endurance be damned.
Why can't everything just be simple… I could just shove this thing in my...
I paused and almost slapped myself.
"Ugh, I'm a fucking idiot, aren't I?" I groaned.
With nary a thought, the coffee table vanished into motes of emerald light and was transported into my inventory.
"God, I'm such a dumbass…" I groaned. To be fair, I've only had this system for a couple of hours, so it's not like shoving stuff into my inventory is a natural reflex...yet.
And with the reminder of my inventory existing, I started scouring the apartment complex for furniture. I found a sleek—if slightly torn—ottoman on the eighteenth floor, a rusted metal table on the seventeenth, and two old—but still sturdy-looking—folding chairs in a closet on the twentieth. And just like that, I'd finally finished grabbing all the furniture I needed.
"And this will be placed...here." I placed the coffee table down in front of the worn-out sofa and plopped myself down on the couch. "At least it doesn't look like I'm living in some bootleg Pripyat anymore." I sighed as I reclined back on the centuries-old couch.
Next on the agenda…exploration.
I'm so glad I binged all those urban exploration videos a few days back, I thought.
With a scowl, I looked down at my healed stab wound, seeing the flesh exposed to the cold of Ganymede. I pulled out one of the Fallen Cloth Scraps from my inventory, and in a flash of green, the white fabric materialized in my hand.
It was a raggedy thing, with small ruptures across the cotton-like fabric, and some of the tears were akin to holes in size and shape. But it was really the only way I could patch up my armor without having to hold my hand over it, so without further complaint, I tied the long fabric around my waist and covered up the hole, knotting it to make sure it was secure.
Now I won't have to worry so much about the cold...
I was still on the city outskirts, only a block or so from the edge itself, which I was glad for since I'd much rather not deal with the Fallen that are almost certainly hunkering down closer to the city center. In a flash of green, my AK appeared in my hands as I studied it.
A gun is loud, I began to mentally reason with myself. If I fire it I'd certainly draw unwanted attention, so I'll have to be as quiet as possible if I don't want to get killed. Which rules out using the AK for subterfuge…
"God, what I wouldn't do for a silencer…" I mumbled to myself before shaking my head and hoisting the AK onto my shoulder. The only attachment that came with the gun was a strap I could use to holster the weapon over my shoulder.
I didn't harbor much hope for most of the locations I was about to hit, but at the very least, I may find something moderately useful to me. Only time would tell.
The first building I had mentally flagged as "Apartment Complex 2." It was only a street away from my base, and it was about the same size as the building I was squatting in, only this one was in far worse condition. There was a collapsed roof with snow piling meters high into the complex, and the printed letters and paint on the exterior walls were even more faded than the apartment block I was in. There was also a massive cavity in the side of the building that exposed several floors to the cold. In short, it was everything my apartment was but worse.
There was fighting here… I looked around at the several holes in the building. I was a hundred percent certain that it came from a normal gun. The crater though...
"It looks like someone hit it with a missile..." I spoke aloud, the condensation from the cold letting me see my breath escape my body.
Even if there were no black scorch marks, or anything identifying it as damage from a rocket launcher, it was still a three-meter tall hole in a wall… what else could have done that much damage?
With a shrug, I shelved the mystery back in my head. At the very least it showed that this city wasn't as unchanging as I thought it would be. Looking around, I trodded across the snow, leaving as light of a footprint as I physically could, and thanking every god above me that my dad had taught me how to disperse my weight and walk silently—a necessity for hunting.
As I entered the old building I couldn't help but feel a wave of excitement wash over me.
You have discovered a new location: Human XP Gained!
What?
Oh, looks like it finally fixed itself…and I didn't even need to do it myself...seems I did something right at one point.
Oh, ever so helpful mental voice of mine, can you please enlighten me as to what the hell that means?
Easy. Whenever you first pulled up your stats did you notice that number next to your race?
Well, whenever you do something your race is proficient with, you'll gain racial XP. After a certain threshold is crossed you'll gain a single Racial Level and get to pick a single option out of three.
Only one? Why not all of them?
Because if I didn't limit your options…oh wait, you haven't taken a single class of higher-dimensional reality spool physics, have you? Then you wouldn't have understood anything I said anyway.
"Oh yeah?" I raised my eyebrow underneath my helmet. "Test me."
Oh, the tough guy act…alright, I can play that game.
So John, what's the ⏁⍜⍀⍀⍜⎅⟟⏃⌰ ⊑⊬⌿⟒⍀⏚⍜⌰⟟ ⌿⌰⏃⋏⟒ ⍜⎎ ⏁⍀⏃⟊⟒ ⏁⍜⍀⊬ ⍜⋏ ⏁⊑⟒ ⌖⎐ ⏃⌖⟟⌇ ⎅⟟⎐⟟⎅⟒⎅ ⏚⊬ ⏁⊑⟒ ⎅⍜⎅⟒ ⟟ ⍀⍜⍜⏁ ⍜⎎ ⏁⊑⟒ ⍾⎍⏃⋏⏁⎍⋔ ⎎⍜⏃⋔ ⊑⊬⌿⟒⍀ ⟟⍀ ⎍⋔⎎⟒⍀⟒⋏ ⟒?
I had to stop my walk to grip the wall next to me for support. As what sounded like multiple bursts of painful static blasted throughout my entire brain—a blaring noise which was not helped by the fact that I had a splitting headache that hit me like a tsunami—my vision went blurry, and for a split second, I thought I could see sound before the feeling of cosmic indifference subsided.
And that's why most versions of humanity take around eighteen thousand years of scientific development and mental evolution before they even attempt to broach the topic of reality spool physics. Your little caveman brain is trying to interpret higher plane mathematics. That would be like…a fucking Australopithecus trying to comprehend twenty-first-century quantum mechanics and theories. It's not going to happen.
"Okay, okay!" I took in deep greedy gulps of air. "Christ almighty, I get it! 'Ooga-Booga, my brain hurt, am primitive monkey,' just tell me more about racial levels or whatever." I slurred out as my mind recovered.
Okay, when you gain a Racial Level and select one of the three options, it gives you an ability that corresponds to that race, For instance, a Dragon would either have to choose between fire breath, shapeshifting, or flight for their first racial level. Humans are clearly different from dragons, but you get the gist of it.
"Hm, yeah, I do…so let me guess, one of the ways to get human XP is to explore?" I continued my walk through the abandoned building and grimaced slightly as the cold seeped through the scraps tied around my waist.
Gonna have to make a tighter fix later…
Yup, now the rest of the ways are for you to discover. If I held your hand through everything it would do more bad than good.
I sighed. "Understandable, I would've wanted a little more help with this, but oh well."
I'd likely stagnate if I got everything handed down to me without attempting to figure stuff out on my own, which, needless to say, was something I didn't want.
To that end though, I had to try my hand at crafting, or just attempting to make something that would help me get stronger. If I get human XP from exploration, then the next obvious choice would be to learn crafting. Humans were natural utilitarians, so it made sense that crafting something that most would consider a "tool" would net me some human XP, right?
Shrugging, I continued exploring, finding out that the apartment complex was in terrible shape, which wasn't exactly a surprise going by the view from outside. This, unfortunately, meant that my chance of finding things in this complex was just about zilch. But I continued, partially driven by the ever-present sensation of hunger, and partially by curiosity. Clearing out rooms one at a time, my AK brandished and fully prepared to fire, my finger itching to press the trigger at a moment's notice if some Fallen Dreg decided to stab me…again.
I let my mind wander as I explored the ruined city.
I wonder how my fish are doing…I idly thought back to the fish I had bought a few months back on the insistence of my sister practically screaming at me, "John, you can't live in a dump like this!" before trying to get me to decorate my apartment once more.
Waste of money, in my opinion, since you only really need the essentials and a meager amount of creature comforts for a comfy life. At least she gave up pestering me when I bought the fish.
Hope they're getting fed or something…
And with that in mind, my thoughts wandered back home, the only thing left on my mind being my past life—I can't believe I used that term in that context—as I continued my steady pace of exploration.
For the most part, I was over it. Sure, not being able to say goodbye to my sister sucked, even more so since we parted on bad terms…but what use was there in crying over spilled milk?
Of course, I'm probably living the dreams of millions of weebs right now. Sure I wasn't isekai'd to some fantasy anime world or something, and sure, my situation could be far better…but I'll take what I can get.
All that said though, I do wish I was isekai'd to some standard fantasy anime world. At least then I wouldn't have to deal with fucking aliens, undead space gods, temporal robots, and trigger-happy scrappers.
Well, depending on what fantasy world I could've been transported to, I might have been facing down worse foes, so…can't complain much.
Still, I haven't forgotten the fact I'm in Destiny without a Ghost. Which, if I recall correctly, could only be killed with some weird magical ammo or something. If that was the case, then why is my Ghost as dead as a doornail?
...unless this wasn't an exact version of Destiny…it better not be, because if something was altered, then I'm fucked, aren't I?
One problem at a time, John.
As I ascended the stairs to the sixth floor, I stopped immediately at the crest of the stairs as my blood ran cold. Faster than I could process, my rifle snapped up to aim at the slumped-over figure sitting underneath a cratered wall. The pool of lavender blood on the floor it was perched upon calmed me down somewhat. It wasn't enough to stop me from aiming my gun at it though.
Slowly, I made my way over to it—a Fallen Captain, I noted—and examined its body. It was slumped over onto the floor, keeling down as its four arms hung listlessly from its body, and it had a gaping hole in its chest that was colored lavender. Now that I was but a meter away from it though, I could safely say that it was dead, allowing me to breathe a shaky sigh of relief.
I craned my head to the left, and sure enough, I was at the epicenter of the crater that I saw from the outside. Now that I was closer to it though, I could see how entire rooms seemed to have been…utterly destroyed near the entrance of the thing.
Turning my attention to the captain—and damn, it was fucking huge. It must've been at least three meters tall and bulky enough to suplex watermelons with its forearms—I crouched down and decided that it was safe enough for me to do a more thorough investigation of the situation.
Hmmm...I eyed the crater on the outside of the building and the trail of destruction that was wreaked to my left. Okay, it seems like this guy was launched through the complex…somehow. And came to rest here, that's obvious…but the question is why?
I leaned in closer to the Fallen Captain, examining the gear that it had no doubt been wearing for many days now. Its armor was damaged—there were perforations in the metallic breastplate that I immediately knew were the results of some high-caliber Fallen Captain was wrapped in a tattered white cloak that'd definitely seen better days, and judging by the faded purple blood that trailed down the crater—which was dry enough that it was matte—this corpse had been here a while. Several years at least…possibly longer. The cold had likely preserved the corpse for long enough that it didn't decompose.
I'm not a bloodstain pattern analyst so I'm not sure, and this is an alien, so for all I know, this could have happened a few months ago to several centuries back.
Well, it doesn't matter much anyway…wait.
I narrowed my eyes as I bent down to investigate its chest and...what?
Was that a fist imprint? In its fucking armor?!
Holy shit… it was!
"Jesus…" I whispered out in surprise, my eyes unconsciously trailing back to the massive hole in the side of the apartment and back to the captain's damaged chest plate, which on closer inspection had the metal practically folded and warped around its impact.
No way…it can't be, right? Stuff like this only happens in anime and shitty superhero movies. It can't be...I looked back at the hole, the dozens of rooms and walls that were utterly smashed through leaving a trail of utter devastation and exposing the room to Ganymede's frigid climate and the ghost city outside...right?
In the end, the Fallen Captain's corpse was one of the only interesting things I found.
After clearing "Apartment Complex 2," which unfortunately didn't have anything of use for me, I continued on down the street, hitting up two more apartment complexes that happened to have the exact same layout as my base and Apartment Complex 2.
The next building was in the worst shape of any building I'd ever seen so far. Just about everything of note inside it was gone and a large portion of it had collapsed internally, making it difficult and dangerous to explore the complex. More than once I had nearly tripped and fell half a dozen stories down.
The one after that was pretty much the same as Apartment Complex 2 and 3. It was devoid of anything useful, though I did find some signs of recent habitation, namely some discarded rations and a few spent ammunition cartridges.
It explored an area further down the outskirts as well, and it was my final destination for exploration today. It was small, and what I assumed to be an old convenience store of some kind, one large enough to fit snugly into a corner lot and still garner customers. The interior was utterly devoid of anything besides a dusty counter near the entrance and a door in the back.
The door to the back revealed practically nothing besides collapsed shelves and an empty closet, so I went back and checked the counter for supplies, and in a bout of good fortune, it had something interesting. Underneath the table, on the bottommost shelf, in some dark corner I couldn't quite see with my eyes, my hands managed to find something lurking there.
Now, while blindly searching every nook and cranny with my hands usually never revealed anything, I still did it for every location I scouted out, since rifling through the cabinets and cupboards could reveal something that might be useful later.
It seemed to have paid off now.
I remember how excited I was when I finally managed to find something, pulling it out of the dusty corner of the shelf it was in and brushing off a few centuries worth of dust from the package.
...it was a cigarette pack. A goddamn cigarette pack. One that was actually still wrapped up in some sort of plastic. I opened it out of curiosity to examine the cigarette package, but I didn't hold out much hope for them being smokable, since it had been almost a millennium since the Collapse.
Wrong!
Somehow, in some way, by whatever golden age sci-fi voodoo tech shit Earth once had, the cigarettes were FRESH!
So, here I was, staring in a mixture of awe, bemusement, and moderate annoyance at a freshly opened pack of smokes. The pack itself featured a stylized version of the gas giant Jupiter, Galilean Moons and other objects included. It also had an icon of a chocolate bar on it, alongside a bunch of Russian script on the front and back, the Cyrillic faded and unintelligible to me.
Really wish I could read Russian...
And so, like any rational and sane human being…I went and hit the pack with [Observe].
[Jove Brand Cigarettes](Uncommon)
Locally produced cigarettes made and manufactured on Ganymede. Used to be popular in the outer colonies. The main ingredient is lab-grown and genetically modified tobacco plants. This has the added benefit of removing the risk of cancer from smoking by 99% and including unnatural flavors such as this pack's Chocolate Jupiter Rise Flavor.
Upon Smoking: Gain +4 LCK and +2 CHA for 1 hour.
I almost did a double-take.
This…this practically solves my luck problems! I thought, excitement bubbling in me.
Luck, from what Lilith told me, was described as having the power to tip things in my favor, by affecting the "Weight of Fate" or something like that. So then, the question becomes, what happens when I increase my luck by four whole points…?
Sure, this was obviously a consumable item. I wasn't going to question the logic behind it or how it even worked. Normally, I would've asked those questions, but at this point, I didn't really care…I'd been exploring for sixwhole hours and hadn't found anything of value until I stumbled upon this pack of cigs.
Now, while I'd never smoked much before, between the interface saying the chance of getting cancer is reduced by ninety-nine percent AND Gamer's Body? I think I'll be fine.
Part of me was tempted to light one up here and now. The pack came with one of those cheap matchbooks taped to the back, which I'm pretty sure would still work as a firestarter since the cigarette pack was still in prime condition.
Thank you, Golden Age packing methods. You may have just saved my ass, I chuckled
I looked up at the sky and… "Huh, it wasn't that dark a while ago…was it?"
The sky was a deep shade of indigo, and I only just now seemed to notice how dark it was getting.
"And cold too…" I shivered as a strong gust howled across the snowed-over street.
Well, that settled it, no more exploring for today…
"How long is a day on Ganymede anyway?"
I entered my base with a sigh of relief and shut the door behind me.
Of course, I'd taken the time to grab a bunch of powdery snow and lay it out in thin and hopefully inconspicuous smatterings across the building, just so I would have a primitive detection system in place. It would alert me of any activity near my base and would hopefully let me escape the base before an incursion if need be. I still had to build my noise traps though, and I was on the lookout for materials to build a couple of simple distraction traps or two as well. Those would undoubtedly help.
Apparently, me spreading the snow everywhere as a security system didn't count as me crafting something…which sort of sucked.
Oh, stop being so greedy. No way in hell that throwing a pile of snow on the ground is "Crafting."
"Eh, whatever. I still technically think it's a 'tool' for detection if I had some unwanted intruders come in, but you do you, all-powerful voice in my head."
Don't you get coy with me, kid. It's not like I can change a finalized system either, so even if I wanted it to count as crafting I won't be able to edit it.
I shrugged. It didn't really matter. But it had been…a while since I had any social interaction and teasing Lilith seemed like a fun way to pass the time, and stave off the eventual feelings of isolation and loneliness that came with being...well, probably the only human being on Ganymede.
God, I better find a way to the Last City soon…or else—
My thought was interrupted by a loud growling from my stomach.
And…I was just noticing how thirsty I was too…
Fantastic.
With that thought, I let out a loud yawn and stretched my arms and legs a bit, only now feeling a sense of fatigue.
Huh, exploring really distracted me if I'm only really feeling tired and hungry now…
Then I noticed something.
It wasn't cold in my base anymore. No, I should correct that…it wasn't that cold. At least compared to the outside. I didn't feel the bone-chilling, piercing cold that the outside environment had…in fact, compared to before, it felt pleasantly warm!
You can thank the base claiming mechanics for that.
Damn, definitely glad for that.
But besides that, I also really haven't taken my helmet off at all…
Should I even take it off?
Oh, who am I kidding? I want to see if I have the same body as I did before the plane crash, of course I'm gonna take it off.
I was lucky that my base had a bathroom with only a slightly cracked and broken window. The additional warmth in my base was a nice addition too. So I reached up, finding two buttons on either side of my neck, and pressed down on them with my thumbs.
I heard a click, and in a hiss of pressurized air, I took my first real breath on Ganymede. The air was cold enough still to prick my nose slightly as my breath condensed in the atmosphere to form a little cloud.
"Huh…"
That was all I had to say as I absentmindedly dropped my helmet to the side, staring into my reflection, both familiar and unfamiliar.
It was undoubtedly my face, but…enhanced. My facial structure was more symmetrical, my nose smaller, my skin a healthy pallor and full of color, and the blemishes, acne scars, and stress lines were completely face started flushing a bit as I stood in the cold and just stared. But the things that were unfamiliar to me, to my own person, were my hair and eyes.
Deep, blood red eyes stared right back at me in surprise, slightly offset by the cracks and breaks in the mirror and covered a little by pure, pale white hair that was as white as the snow outside. My now white hair came down a little longer than I remembered since my bangs were longer and covering my eyes up ever so slightly.
And I knew that I wasn't suddenly an albino. My skin was a healthy shade of peach, my eyes were a deep red and not a pinkish-red associated with most albinos…hell, my hair was just an unnatural shade of white. I could go outside and grab a clump of snow, put it and my hair side by side and there wouldn't be a shade of difference between the two…
I looked a year or two younger, the years of stress had vanished, and even the scar I had gotten when I was six was also gone…
Part of me wanted to be mad, but honestly? I liked this look a lot more than my old one. There was no dysphoria, no feeling uncomfortable in my own body. This was my body in every way that mattered. It was just...upgraded?
"Lilith…was this your doing?" I slowly asked, feeling a myriad of emotions, uncertainty the chief among them.
Yup. Like I said before, your body was seriously damaged, and it would take far more work to rebuild your body than just give you a new one. Especially to take all the brain matter that was spread over a kilometer under the sea and parts of your body inside the digestive tracts of dozens of sea creatures and rebuild your brain. Honestly, it was just easier to build a new one at that point and insert your soul into it.
I…I felt a storm of emotions inside me, but the one I felt the most was…
"Lilith…thank you…"
...gratitude.
I never wanted to die, but a fresh start? People would kill for such a chance. People died for much lesser things...and I got one for free. I honestly felt a little undeserving of it, but the fact that it was me who was picked…I didn't know how to feel about it, but I felt…grateful.
"Thank you." I gave the most sincere and heartfelt thanks I've probably ever given to anyone.
I-I…you're welcome, John.
+1 Affection with Lilith [09/100]
+1 Obedience with Lilith [09/100]
I smiled into the mirror as I saw that message. Honestly, having a voice inside my head… wasn't so bad sometimes.
"Anyway…" and goddamn, my voice sounded so sexy! It sounded so much…richer without my helmet. "I'm gonna head off to sleep now seeing as the Sun is setting…tomorrow's gonna be…interesting."
Not in the least that I'll have gone two days without food and water. I can only hope Gamer's Body has some sort of way to conserve water better because I'm gonna have gone two days without it when I wake up.
But on the bright side, I do have a way to start a fire now, so all I really need now is some sort of container to melt snow, tinder for starting the fire, kindling, and fuel. Which meant more exploration tomorrow. Luckily, I still have a lot of areas left to explore, so there is that to look forward to.
With my plan for tomorrow in mind, I put on my helmet and trotted off to the mattress in the corner of my base. I shrugged off the fact that it was supposedly dirty and was just glad I didn't have to sleep on the couch that was pretty much tearing at the seams..
Just annoying that I don't have any covers to snuggle under…fucking Ganymede…
And with that thought in mind, I collapsed in a heap on the mattress and…
"Mmm… Comfy…"
The rustling of branches and the muffled and distant sounds of ambulance sirens greeted me.
"Huh… it's this dream again…" I spoke aloud, frowning.
The gently falling snow and flashing red and blue lights were my world for a split second before everything cleared up. I was standing on the side of a road, two cars were wrecked together in the middle of the road, and their frames were mangled into unrecognizable shapes.
Then the smell hit me: the crispness of winter, the sickening odor of blood, the harsh clinical stench of antiseptic, and the pungent fumes of gasoline all mixed together into an acrid mess of smells that hit my nose as I looked upon the scene in a mix of detachment and regret.
The white-colored woods were lit up by alternating red and blue glows, casting an eerie light over the area as paramedics rushed back and forth.
Snow gently fell from the cloudy sky. The crescent moon and a few stars were the only things left in the night sky.
It was that day, almost five years ago, recalled in perfect clarity.
The day my parents died.
"That's weird…usually I'm seeing the perspective of…me?" I muttered in curiosity, as I walked up to a paramedic… and phased right through him.
"That's never happened before…"
I've had this recurring dream almost four dozen times. It was always in my perspective… always.
So why is it different now?
"We've got one! He's alive!" one of the paramedics shouted.
I didn't care that much since I've seen this part of the dream countless times, but never from an outside perspective before…it was still odd to be so detached from everything, even in a dream.
But curiosity got the better of me, so I went ahead and followed the paramedic, and like a specter, I just sat and watched the scene unfold. A paramedic pried open the crumpled door as another grabbed a stretcher and pulled out a dazed, fifteen-year-old me from the backseat of my parent's car.
My younger self had dirty blond hair broken up by smatterings of blood and a large bleeding gash on his temple, a young but defined face, and blue eyes that spun towards the paramedic that put him on the stretcher.
It didn't take long for me to notice that there was another presence here with me though…in the distance, on the opposite side of the road, was a shadowy figure, clearly female judging by the silhouette, but shrouded in a dark purple and an ever-changing mist, and piercing yellow eyes that were brighter than the ambulance's headlights. At the top of the presence's head were massive, ornate, and curling horns shrouded by purple mist. She seemed to stare at me as if surprised I could see her before she cocked her head to the right slightly.
Her entire body was shadowy and transient, but her eyes were piercing, and they cut right through me as if to stare at my very soul.
"That…that was never in the dream before…" I muttered in confusion as I stared at the entity in front of me.
I looked away to see that my dream self was seemed to have regained his bearings, the gash in his temple bandaged up as he looked around in confusion, before spotting the paramedics attempting to pry open the mangled driver side door, another one coming to help before they managed to force it open..
I knew this part of the dream well, and even though I've seen it dozens of times, it was always the most painful.
"D-Dad!" my dream self yelled out, running towards the crumpled heap on the snowy ground. A paramedic attempted to grab him but my dream self managed to give him the slip as he stumbled away and almost tripped before coming to rest beside my dad.
In the past, my dad would brag that he could have easily become a male model if he stayed in Germany. I never really doubted him.
He was undoubtedly handsome, with baby blue eyes and deep blond hair that was always perfectly straight. A sculpted face and a muscular body. Y'know, typical handsome guy stuff. There was no doubt why mom fell for him.
It was also one of the reasons why I looked up to him so much—I still look up to him to this day—I was blessed with an amazing father in my life that I could look up to and want to be.
I couldn't say the same for many people.
So that's why, even after I made my peace, even after I fixed myself up. It was still a punch to the gut to see him like that, mangled and barely breathing, bleeding out on the snow.
It was an indescribably painful feeling to fifteen-year-old me.
"D-Dad!" he yelled out.
"Dad!"
"DAD!"
One of the paramedics moved to stop dream me, but another stopped him.
"J-John…" It was weak, accented English, but a response nonetheless. A bloody hand reached up and cupped my dream self's face.
"Sei der Mann…zu dem ich dich erzogen habe…" he choked out a globule of lifeblood as dream me panicked.
"No..nononononono! Dad, please!"
No matter how often I've seen this dream, no matter how often I've revisited the memory, the heartache never truly disappeared. And even as a detached observer, I start to feel my eyes become wet. Something in me begging me to look away.
"J-John, remember…remember…." he coughs, "remember my words…remember what I have taught you…be…better than me…" he hacks out another cough, but smiles at my younger dream version. "You will always be my little…hunter…" a final breath and he stills. My fifteen-year-old self seemed to break.
The next few moments were painfully obvious to an observer. He seems to stop moving, eyes staring ahead, unfocused as tears silently fall into the winter's snow.
A paramedic brings out a blanket and covers him with it, no doubt soon to bring out a body bag and put my father's body inside it—I knew it would happen, of course, since I'd already visited this dream many times over. But he doesn't even register it and just stares at the corpse of my dad. Even when they bring out the cadaver pouch and stuff his corpse into it.
The only time he responded was when they brought out my mother's body. Then he shifted from a blank gaze to a quiet almost muffled sobbing.
This depressing scene went on for over a minute until a paramedic pulled him back to the ambulance.
That was…until the person behind the crash was pulled out from his wrecked car.
Short cropped black hair, ruined shirt, average face, and a nasty gash on his forehead, the man stumbled out, assisted by a paramedic.
That was when my dream self absolutely lost his shit.
It was also the part I regretted the most, and I still cringed looking back on it. It was warranted at the time, but I could've done so much more to help both myself and the one who had just exited the vehicle.
With a scream of anger, dream me rushed out at the surprised man, and tackled him to the ground. The paramedics ran to try to peel me off of him.
"YOU KILLED THEM!" he screamed with so much rage and sorrow that the man looked shocked.
His tears streamed freely now, he sniffled once before bringing down weak, clumsy punches on the grown man's face. Hit after hit rained down until the paramedics finally separated him from the man.
"L-look kid, I'm sorry I...I..."
"YOU KILLED THEM, YOU FUCKER!"
"K-Kid..."
That's when he tried rushing him again, only to be pulled back by a paramedic before dream me fell down, sobbing hard into the paramedic's shoulder as he was taken back to the ambulance.
I could only watch on, in a mixture of regret and sadness at the look the older man took. One of self-loathing. It was only a few years later that I learned that the man killed himself a month after the crash. Out of guilt.
It was even later that I learned that the reason behind the crash was because some lazy friend didn't want to drive four hours out of town and back to pick up his drunk friend and told him to "drive back himself."
"It's the things we do in the heat of anger that we always regret the most…"a familiar voice spoke up from my side. I didn't even need to look to know it was her.
"I know," I responded. I knew perfectly well that anger is often what causes the worst regrets in people's lives. I knew that lesson better than most.
"You forgave him…?"
I shook my head. "No, not really…I just shifted my anger onto his supposed friend. After all, the blood of that man and my parents are on that friend's hands…all because he couldn't bite the bullet and pick up his drunk friend." Sighing, I continued. "I'm not that much of a saint to just forgive him like that…but I can choose to hate the person truly responsible for it."
"I see…so you still harbor resentment towards that man for your parents' deaths then?"
"Yeah, yeah, I do…he could've done a number of things, like stay at a motel or pay someone to drive him home, but he instead gave in and drove...drunk, on an icy street in the middle of the night. He's not completely without fault, though he already paid the price more than enough."
And I wasn't without fault either...after all, it was at my insistence we came out here…
"Why this dream?"
"It usually happens when I'm in a stressful position or situation. I think being isekai'd into an abandoned city surrounded by hostile aliens counts as a stressful situation. As for why? I don't know why, but the human brain can be weird like that. Maybe it's a sign or something, I'm not sure." I said with a shrug before leveling a stare at the shadowy form on my side.
But enough of my dream...
"So why are you really here Lilith?" I sighed. "You're not just checking up on me in my dreams, right?"
"No, it's because I want to get to know you…truly know you as a person." She moved in front of me, her near blinding eyes boring into me "After all, we're going to be partners for quite a long time."
I huffed in amusement. "So, you know about me already…now tell me about yourself. You've been annoyingly cryptic in that area, I'm afraid."
Lilith's form froze for a split second before she turned back towards the scene of the dream. My fifteen-year-old self bored a hateful glare into a guilty, angsty man, bathed in the blue and red light of the ambulance.
"Eventually…I'll tell you, don't worry. But not now."She sighed before turning to me.
Narrowing my eyes at her, I had to hold back a bit of a scowl. "Again with this evasion—what's your angle here, Lilith?" I leaned in closer. "What are you trying to sell?"
She didn't respond.
"You're soon to wake up, but trust me on this."She sighed. "Please."
"Trust is a two-way street, and I can't trust unconditionally…"
"You don't need to do so unconditionally. I brought you back and gave you a second chance and a gift…"I heard the smile in her voice."Just have a little faith."
"Alright, fine. Keep your secrets." I let out, frowning. "But whatever. I've got places to explore anyway."
As soon as the sentence ended, my dreamscape vanished.
I woke up with a yawn and a stretch, feeling revitalized as the fatigue from yesterday vanished into the ether.
The first thing I noticed was that it was dark. The second thing was the howling of the wind outside my window.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" I looked out my window, and sure enough, Jupiter was still up in the sky, although it was blocked by a thick haze of white snow.
Hell, I couldn't even see the rest of the block my building was in. It was still nighttime too, and there seemed to be no sign of dawn soon, nor was there any evidence of the snowstorm clearing up at a convenient time. The howling wind and the flurries of snow had also decreased visibility to less than a few meters outside my window. It was a shame that my base had turned frigid as well since the Base Claim had warmed the apartment complex up quite a bit, enough that the temperature inside was warmer than it was outside, which was a significant increase in quality by my standards.
"A blizzard, it had to be a fucking blizzard!"
That's when an extremely loud growl came from my stomach, followed up by how dry my mouth was.
"Oh fuck me, really?!"
Christ, I hate this moon.
[x]
AN: This chapter was originally meant to be the first half of what I originally planned for a 10k word chapter 2, but I decided to just sit and try to write out a 5k word one instead. So that meant I had to cut out a lot of stuff and add in new things, such as the dream sequence for example.
Chapter 3 is being worked on and is 2/5ths the way done. So you guys don't have to wait long for the next chapter to come out.
And MASSIVE thanks to Dreadon for beta'ing this chapter. Would definitely be worse off without his golden touch lmao.
Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this!