1: Rough Start
Aidan looked out at the blue sky, white clouds scattered here and there, taking in the breeze that rolled through his window.
He liked this weather. It was calm, soothing, and it helped refresh his mind when he was going through a slump. If he could, he would love to fly through the sky and get more of that incredible breeze flowing through his skin and hair.
But alas, work calls.
He shut the window tight, completely putting aside the refreshing breeze as he returned to his line of work. He sat down on the table before him in a bright room, put his hands on top, and closed his eyes.
For a solid moment, he felt nothing. Then, motes of pure blue light shimmered within his consciousness, slowly gathering to form into bigger motes, almost like balls of bright lights that continued to coalesce together in his mind.
He formed a solid shape in his mind, then acted on it, his hands glowing bright before those exact motes of energy flowed into existence. The motes then followed the shape in his mind, gradually becoming bigger and bigger before it became a circular shape with a long handle at one end.
Aidan smiled, seeing no imperfections needing any corrections, and held the glowing figure of light aloft as he used his other hand to search on top of his table. He picked up a rather bulky metal ingot, a silvery gleam that spoke of pure quality, before chucking the metal ingot into the figure of light.
It was absorbed with ease. The ingot slowly diminished in size, millions of its tiny pieces getting sucked into the forming light before disappearing completely. The glowing figure started to change color from a bright blue to a powerful yellowish silver. Aidan quickly closed his eyes to make the final touches before giving a short ‘hmmph’ of air.
The figure of light immediately stopped glowing, and what was made was a circular frying pan made of the exact silvery gleam as the ingot he put in. He held the handle up, checked the underside, and tapped it once, twice, before eventually putting it down to see if it would topple over due to some balancing issue.
It continued to be still, marking his current crafting session a success.
“Who’d thought I’d be making frying pans in the middle ages, hah.”
Aidan chuffed air before grabbing the frying pan and lifting himself off. He knew he was in a lucky position, only needing several seconds to make a valuable tool for purchase rather than several hours worth of heating and cooling in a hot forge.
But what can you expect when the system of the world gives you a uniquely OP talent after destroying your world?
Craft Successful! You have created ‘Sturdy Frying Pan’.
You have gained a small amount of experience points.
…..
Level Up! From Level 3, you became Level 4!
You have gained 1 Attribute point and 3 Stat points!
“Wait, for real? I just needed one more frying pan to level up?”
Aidan chuckled, amused at the system notification flashing in front of his face. Though he knew that the notification was a figure of his mind rather than an actual flashing square light sign glowing with bold black letters.
He swiped the notification away, putting his points for later as he opened the door from his ‘Forging Area’ to the storefront beyond his living quarters.
There he spotted a sweet old lady, wearing a simple tunic with a furred vest and a furred hat on top of her gray long hair. Aidan tapped the counter table in front to get her attention. The old lady was looking outside through the window by the time he came in.
“Here you go,” Aidan said cheerfully, spinning the frying pan once to show off before handing it over to her. “That’ll be 1 silver.”
“Oh my,” the old lady mused, taking the pan and touching the surface. She oohed at the craftsmanship. “It’s as if it’s brand new! And so cheap too! Are you sure, young man? I don’t want to feel like I’m robbing you.”
Aidan was sure that she would be terrible at haggling prices. In a place like this city with its very own underworld taking up a corner of it, bargaining was normally the right call if you want a good price on essential goods and services. Still, Aidan shook his head.
“Trust me, it’s no trouble.”
“Here you go then,” The lady coughed up the dough, tenderly placing the silver coin on top of his hand. “I hope you don’t starve yourself, you poor thing.”
“I think I’ll be fine, ma’am,” Aidan grinned. “I hope your daughter likes the gift.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will. This is such fine work you have made for me. I will definitely be coming back for more next time.”
“I would love your patronage. Please come again.”
Aidan waved at the sweet old lady, her waving back as she left the storefront through the wooden door outside. It was rather chilly outside, the season reaching its wintery blues, but for Aidan, he barely felt it.
Ever since he received his talent, he wondered if he was human at all. He looked up at his own status page, recalling the first time he first saw it when he came to this world completely naked and had no one by his side.
“It really is a crazy world we live in…”
…..
A week ago…
“What the fuck is happening?!”
Aidan breathed heavily, running through the densely packed forest riddled with branches and stones underneath his naked feet. Each time he took a step, pain shot through his soles and up his legs which were covered in sharp cuts and bleeding trails.
All the while he was holding in his exposed family jewels with his hands, trying to protect his manhood from the shrubbery he was forced to blast through as he ran. Each time he did, he was more thankful for the invention of underwear and pants as he got injuries in places he wished he hadn’t.
And the reason why he was running through the forest in the middle of the night was the sounds of howling echoing in the air, pitter-patter noises following him no matter where he went. He was trapped in some bygone location with nothing to his name, let alone clothes on his back.
All he had to go on was how he got there and why. Supposedly, his world was destroyed.
Or at least that’s what this strange box in front of him said when he first opened his eyes in this brand new place.
Resident of Earth, Aidan Munez:
Your world, planet Earth, has been destroyed. Fret not, because you have been chosen to be dimensionally transferred to Primal Alpha. As for the rest of humanity, they are dispersed and separated into separate planets far across the wide multiverse.
Due to this, you have been granted a boon as compensation for the displacement and the loss of your planet.
Talent received: Path of Harmony
From here on out, you can do whatever you wish in this world. Introduce yourself to the people, become a reckoning to the populace, or live plainly in solitude. Do whatever it is your heart desires. There is one instruction you should follow, however, and that is to get out of your current location and do not stop–
It is heavily suggested that you run.
The last part of the message jump-started his still addled brain brain and forced him to do just that, because he was certain the howls were proof that this entity sending him this message wasn’t joking around.
Covering his family jewels in shame, he ran full tilt at any direction, his heart hammering against his chest as he recalled how his own world was destroyed.
It was how any apocalypse would start–the sky burned bright red and the ground split in half. The earth shook and tides rose. Every natural disaster that you could think of has occurred, all at the same time, happening everywhere at once.
He was just out doing deliveries on his side hustle when everything took place. It just happened all at once. There was no warning, no precedent. It was exactly how a rapture would occur, except that no chosen being ascended high into heaven and leaving all the sinners behind.
Before he could even grasp that the radio to his car suddenly turned off, the buildings he drove besides suddenly sunk into the earth, grabbing everything and everyone into the depths. For a moment, Aidan thought that he was going to have to do something sick with his car, bypassing all the turmoil around him to be the only survivor in the area.
Unfortunately his car drove right into an opening maw where the street vanished into the cold abyss beneath, taking his consciousness with him.
He thought he died. Perhaps crushed with his own car in between the plates of the earth. Perhaps he was burned to a crisp at the lava he saw while he fell, the flash of bubbling heat the only thing he saw before everything turned black.
In that darkness, he truly believed he died. Yet there was no pain. He didn’t feel the burning heat that would boil him alive, but instead just a void where his chest would be. He didn’t feel his arms, legs, or anything else for that matter. He couldn’t hear, see, or even speak. He just stayed in that darkness, wondering if perhaps he had done so many sinful things that he might have ended up in hell.
If not, then perhaps it was purgatory. Either way, it sucked.
Then this notification came into being, and when he read it, he suddenly found himself in the forest with no clothes to speak of.
Sweat flowed off his skin, his ears becoming incredibly aware of the howls becoming louder. Something was coming. A lot of things were coming–towards him.
His foot hit a snag and he toppled over, his body ramming into the ground several times before landing stiffly to one side, both his shoulder and lower back taking the brunt of the fall along with equally bruised toes on his right foot.
“God… dammit! Fuck!”
He cursed, no longer paying attention to anything as pain froze him, sucking air between his teeth as he felt his toes bleeding profusely, seeing bits of wood and stone hanging off of the increasingly purple skin.
Still, he forced himself to keep moving. He picked himself up and trudged onwards, ignoring the shooting pain as he kept running, jumping over several piles of broken wood and log and landing on stable footings on the ground.
But in the end it was for naught. One of the things he feared jumped out of the woodwork to pounce right at him. He managed to evade it just in time for it to land on the ground, giving Aidan a good look at the creature in front of him.
It resembled a wolf, but while it had the silver furred mane and the fangs and claws reminiscent of the thing, it carried a large horn on its forehead, and a glittering gemstone at the center of its chest. Aidan could barely believe what he was seeing, knowing full well now that this world was definitely not the same as Earth.
Buck naked in the middle of a forest with a dangerous predator right in front of him. This was the very definition of being absolutely fucked with no way out.
“E-Easy there, pup…” Aidan muttered, hoping against hope that it would at least wait for him to get his bearings. He only just got released out of that strange void, and now he failed in getting out in time before something approached him.
The wolf, or whatever it was called in this world, didn’t seem to care about his pleas as it growled incessantly, stepping closer with each step that followed.
During his mad dash, he didn’t really pay attention, but he recalled the notification he had received before. It said that he received some kind of talent or whatever, and he read enough stories to know that this is normally where he would receive some kind of power.
When the fantasy wolf continued to step closer, he tried all that he could to bring out whatever it was that he received. He felt something move.
He wasn’t quite sure what it was. His heart was hammering against his chest to focus on that feeling, so he tried to do it again. Something definitely moved this time.
With his hand out, the wolf reaching closer as the meters between them decreased, he knew the only thing he could do was to go all in on that feeling that occurred. There was nothing beside him that he could use as a weapon, and he doubted he could go full on defense with his naked body as it was.
He focused inward, sensing the ‘something’ that moved within him. When the wolf finally pounced on him, he let go of whatever reserve he had and let loose that feeling that was churning up within him.
He felt his body instantly getting colder as though something left his body. His head ached in ways that he couldn’t explain, and his mouth somehow ran dry. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened.
The wolf that jumped straight at him completely dispersed in a gory mess, body parts flying everywhere as blood rained down on him and the ground.
Aidan just looked at the now displaced body parts of the wolf, its innards and fragments scattered everywhere on the grassy ground. There was only one thing he could have done in that situation.
He turned to the side and vomited the contents of his stomach out.