"What the fuck. What the fuck! WHAT THE FUCK!"
Grey writhed on the ground, his neurons firing wildly. It was like he was being continuously shocked. None of his muscles were listening to him at all.
He had no idea how long he spent like this, but there was no sunlight coming from the windows of the cabin at all by the time it finally stopped.
’Shit. How long have I spent out here? What about the Fog of Chaos?’
Grey had initially had a lot of time when he first left the city. He was the first to arrive, and he knew that it would take about a day before everyone else trickled through.
Was there supposed to be night between now and then? Or had he overshot it completely?
Grey had no idea. It was hard to focus on how much time was passing when he was literally fighting for his life.
Gasping for breath, Grey took a deep gasp only to find that his throat was as dry as sandpaper. It felt like the air he was inhaling was scraping his insides.
’I need water, dammit.’
It wasn’t the first time Grey had had the thought. But regardless of which loop he was on, he had never managed to find a solid source of water. When you couldn’t enter a safe room, it wasn’t exactly easy to get necessities.
He had a feeling that the Nexis Suit on his feet was helping him maintain some form of consciousness, but there was only so far he could go before his body gave up on him.
’I need to make it back to the city.’
Grey tried to gulp to wet his throat a bit, but the oddity of the action caught him off guard.
’Don’t tell me...’
Grey reached up to his face and touched it. There, a cold metallic feeling came back from the tips of his fingers.
’Fuck me. There goes my handsome face.’
After moving his new jaw around a bit, Grey slowly started to get used to it. He had been purposely forcing himself not to think about things ending up like this, hoping it would be something he could equip and unequip, but it seemed he had no such luck.
"This is what I get for calling Abby brace-face for all those years. If she’s alive and seeing me, she’s probably laughing her ass off right now." Grey moved his jaw around a bit more. "Talking feels like a fucking chore, holy hell.
"Wait. I’m wearing the mask, aren’t I? How’s this work?"
CHOMP.
A resonant echo of metal echoed and a flash of something gold and crimson flashed by Grey’s gaze with a bit of heat.
’What was that?’
He had just been trying to test out his new biting power when that happened.
’Wait, I didn’t imagine it?!’
Grey immediately scrambled as fast as he could to his status screen. And by that, he meant that he thought really hard about it, hoping it would pop up even faster.
—
[Name: Grey Temolt]
[Frame: Prometheus]
[Pending Quests: 0]
-
Stamina: 3/10
Sync Rate: 0.01%
Energy Reserve: 2.7/3
-
STR: 11 SPD: 11
DEX: 11 INT: 11
END: 11 PER: 11
-
Harmonic Stats: N/A
Free Stat Points: 0
-
Abilities:
Body
Resistances: N/A
Combat: N/A
Enhancements: N/A
Mind
Resistances: N/A
Combat: N/A
Enhancements: Lv5 Goblin Warlord Spirit
—
’Pending Quests are zero! I did it! I have a Sync Rate and an Energy Reserve now... what the hell are those?’
Honestly, Grey didn’t expect it to happen so easily. Maybe he was just so desensitized to the nonsense he had forgotten just how long it took to get to this point.
That meant he got the introduction, right? How did he access it?
It took some fiddling around, but Grey finally found it. He grinned from ear to ear.
—
[Welcome, Prometheus]
—
All he had to do was think about accessing the pinky ring and it immediately gave him feedback.
Creek.
Grey’s head suddenly snapped up. He was immediately on high alert.
There was no one in this cabin but him, and he certainly hadn’t triggered that noise.
Reacting quickly, he put the Cyber Mat and the Mechanical Jaw Tome into his Tool Space. Then he pulled out his long sword from his Weapon Space.
He found the simple action made his head spin a bit, but he bit down on his tongue to focus himself. Then he rushed to the pit that once was the fireplace.
Calming his breathing, Grey slowly peeked.
The separation in the cabin was quite odd. From the outside, the cabin looked like any other. But when you stepped inside, it looked to be half the size one might have expected.
On the wall that divided the cabin in half was the fireplace Grey had fallen through, but it was a whole step down. The room beyond the fireplace was basically the basement of the cabin, but much like the upper floor, it was also half the size it should have been.
Grey didn’t know if the exterior of the cabin was an optical illusion, or maybe he was too busy failing to dodge giant arms to notice a cement block of basement hanging off its ass. But whatever it was, there was no direct line of sight to him with the angle here. In fact, he had to stand to the tips of his toes just to get a line of sight into what was happening.
Still, he had to be careful. The fire wasn’t raging in the fireplace anymore. So if he made it too obvious, anyone on the other side could spot him.
’Shit.’
Grey had just had the thought when he met someone’s gaze. A young woman looked right back at him and then shrieked in terror.
She immediately held up what looked like a staff and blasted a concentrated beam of something at his face.
"Fuck!"
Grey dodged back and tripped. Maybe he was just too tired, but whatever the case, it helped more than it hurt.
Just as his back hit the ground, the projectile went flying over his head.