Deadworld Isekai

In the moments after his teleportation, Matt's mind was filled with an all-encompassing giant of an intrusive thought.

How would I possibly describe everything that's happened to me back to anyone I knew on Earth?

Just the concept of teleportation alone would be sensational. Most sci-fi shows with teleportation back on Earth had never bothered to explain what the act of moving from point a to point b felt like.

Now, Matt knew. His first unexpected transfer to a dungeon had taught him something that no one else on Earth knew. Teleportation didn't feel like anything at all. He was just whisked away and suddenly conscious of being in a new place. Sometimes that was the dungeon itself, other times it was a body-less in-between place.

This time was different. This time, the teleport yanked. There was no smooth, seamless transition. It felt like a rough pull that seemed to tear him apart atom by atom. He was dimly aware of the process throughout, hanging in a kind of half-existence for what could have been anywhere from a very long fraction of a second to a very short year.

Eventually, he arrived at the same non-existence space he had experienced on his first teleport. But something felt wrong.

Where once there was no sensation at all from the space, now there was. Matt still had no sense of having a physical body, but something about the space now carried a sort of charge he could sense. Like a mental field of static. The sheer weirdness of Matt's second life had rendered him mostly immune to finding certain things as odd. This felt different. Matt's head was ringing with paranoid thoughts.

Ding!

Error. Multiple entrant verification checksums failed. Analyzing…

That didn’t sound good. The system seemed remarkably bad at fixing errors and had estimated it would take years to get Matt off the planet. He hoped the dungeon system would prove better at fixing things, especially because he had no idea how long he could survive in this form. Even if he couldn’t starve or die of thirst in this state, he didn’t look forward to months or years existing in a state of stimulation-free nothingness.

Error cause discovered. Participant has changed a number of system-level dungeon spawn preferences:

Challenge Mode: Enabled

Foe Spawn Distance Forcing: Adjacent

Dungeon Mission Blind Mode: Enabled

System Guardian Participation: Excluded

WARNING! This combination of dungeon preferences is untested and may result in errors. Proceeding under the current settings will result in an approximated 400% increase in dungeon difficulty. Would you still like to proceed?

Yes / No

No, not a chance. Matt thought, immediately. He was surviving appropriately leveled dungeons just fine, but was also keenly aware of how delicate a balance that survivability hung on. He wasn’t sure he would come out on top with a 10% increase in difficulty, let alone something designed for a level 12. He mentally forced as much a negative response as he could muster, something between “No, never, under any circumstances” and “Are you insane? Absolutely not”.

The window didn't respond in the slightest.

This is bad. Matt tried desperately to cancel the dungeon. He mentally envisioned a finger, then directed it to poke at the “no”. There was no response. Then, suddenly, the window glitched. Just for a moment, the static electricity feeling he had been sensing surged up, and the screen scrambled like a faulty digital television signal. This isn’t good, he thought. There’s no way that’s good.

Entrant response accepted!

You have opted to challenge this dungeon at maximum settings. Be warned: your foes will no longer keep their regular patterns. The environment will contain several enemies, consistent with a “swarm” type challenge.

Your initial spawn will be close to at least one threat, and your objectives will not be given to you. Your guardian is excluded from the dungeon itself and may not communicate with you or offer guidance in any form.

On successful completion, your rewards will be adjusted relative to the difference between your level and the level of the dungeon. Good luck, Challenger!

No! No! Matt mentally screamed. I didn’t adjust any settings! I refuse!

And then he was conscious, in the dark. Whatever light was present when he woke up was dim enough that he could barely see a quick motion of something headed towards his face. He didn't have time to dodge the claw, fang, or whatever else it was. For a second after the hit, he felt nothing. It was as if the enemy missed.

A wave of pain exploded around his eye. He screamed.

Adrenaline being what it was, Matt was on his feet and running well before he could have consciously decided to. He wasn't quick enough to escape a second attack that raked across his feet but his brand-new armored boots stopped the attack.

He was running nearly blind. Not only was it dark enough that he only had impressions of the space he was running through, he also couldn't open his right eye. The pain was pulsing like waves. He put his hand to the wound and it came away hot and wet.

Matt ripped the torch from the strap on his survivor's pack, infinitely grateful that it was long enough that an earlier him decided against packing it away. The auto-light function activated after what felt like an eternity, giving him a hazy vision of where he was.

It was some kind of mine or cave system. The sides were made entirely of rock with only the thinnest layer of dust cushioning his steps. Glancing behind him, he caught the outline of what was chasing him. The light was dim, but enough to see that the monster was large, low to the ground, quadrupedal, and quick. Its gait was more of a scurry than a gallop. Thankfully.

Matt was too shocked from his injuries and moving too fast to get any more details than that. He could hear the footfalls behind him, heavy and powerful. The monster didn't seem to be gaining on him, but Matt also wasn't widening the gap.

Turning his attention to the path in front of him, Matt saw the glint of a new set of claws flashing at his face. He slowed down, barely avoiding the swipe. The animal lashed out again, and again, and again. It gave him zero breathing room or ability to recover.

Matt reflexively shoved the torch forward and heard a hiss as the fire singed the animal. The cave smelled a bit like filthy hair. In the meantime, the steps from the first monster were rapidly getting closer. He was about to be in a lot of trouble.

A moment later, survivor’s instincts virtually yelled at him to move to his left. He didn’t question it. Diving to the left, he heard the two animals slam into each other. Then, he was falling down something.

When he finally hit the ground, the impact blasted the torch from his hand like a cork from a champagne bottle. The sudden deceleration had pushed every atom of air from his lungs, but he forced his body to crawl after the torch. He couldn't survive without light.

A sharp pain blossomed in his arm when he tried to put weight on it. Maybe it was broken. He let it hang limply at his side. Above, he could hear the animals squabbling at each other in high-pitched shrieking noises. He hoped they were fighting but couldn't count on them doing so for long.

When Matt got the torch, he realized that he had no good way of picking it up. He had been crawling because it was the only signal his mind could give his body. Now that he wanted to stand, he realized that his legs were like pudding. Completely useless.

For a second, he considered giving up. But something in him gave him energy to bite the torch and carry it in his mouth. The flame from the torch cooked the side of his face as he fumbled it into position. He tried to scramble as far away from whatever shaft or cliff he had fallen down as he could. His knees were still usable as he lifted and pushed with them.

Behind him, he could hear motions and claws scraping rock. The things were after him.

He couldn't fight. He couldn't stand. That left hiding. Matt desperately shook his head and used the light to make sense of the space he was in. There was nothing. He was in a bare rock tunnel, just like the one before.

The torchlight flickered, casting shadows that looked like monsters. The sounds were also growing louder. He had maybe a couple of breaths left before the monsters were on him again.

Matt took another look at his surroundings when he saw it. There was a small gap in the rock wall, barely big enough where he might be able to squeeze through it on his stomach. He was next to it in seconds.

He quickly shifted his pack off his broken arm. Another wave of pain as the motion shifted the broken bones in his arm. Using precious seconds, he slid the pack as far into the crack as he could before diving in himself.

It wasn't tall enough for him to fit. He forced the issue. As he buried his torso, the roof and floor of the crack ripped his skin and forced all the air from his lungs. He couldn't breathe. He pushed on, only able to move because of the crack's slight downward incline.

As Matt got the majority of his body into the crack, it widened out just enough that he could take a labored gasp of air. His torch, falling ahead of him, showed a small space just beyond where he was. It was a pocket maybe big enough to accommodate his body.

At this point, almost his entire body was in the crack. Only his feet were still outside. Matt desperately reached forward, trying to gain leverage to squeeze further. Then, he felt a breath of air on his ankle. Moments later, one of the animals' jaws closed on his ankle. It was sharp. Matt felt the feeling go out of his lower leg as he screamed soundlessly from his airless lungs.

The blood flowed downward, slicking his body enough that he could pull through to the cavity with his one good arm. Behind him, the thing clawed at his legs, apparently unable to traverse the crack itself.

He was through. Blood seemed to fill the cavity. Everywhere he looked was dotted with red. This was beyond what he had experienced before. The blood just gushed out of his leg and face.

As quickly as he could, he knotted his rope into a loop and made a tourniquet for his leg with one of the trap spikes. It wasn't perfect, but there was some small chance it would be enough.

Suddenly, the adrenaline left Matt. He fought to keep his eyes open.

The torch. I have to put out the torch.

He managed to snuff it just a few moments before he lost consciousness.

—

I guess it was never going to be that easy.

Matt was glad to be alive. He wasn't meant to survive the encounter with the first monster, let alone the second. The combination of dumb luck with the cavity and survivor's instincts kicking into overdrive saved his life.

He also learned something new. Vitality had patched him up. He wasn't glad to learn that his vitality came with significant limitations.

His foot was gone. The end of his leg had healed somehow. He was no longer bleeding and new skin covered the stump. His right eye's vision was also dark. It had healed enough that it didn't hurt anymore, but it seemed like seeing from it again was beyond his regenerative powers' ability.

The one good thing was that his pack was next to him. Matt fumbled around for the canteen and used the water to wash the scabbed blood from his face. He drank and ate, safe for now.

Then, reality hit him. For the first time since landing on Gaia, Matt started crying.

He was crippled, in the dark, and surrounded by gigantic monsters that were easily capable of killing him. And once again, he was alone.