"Man up."
Those words cut through him so many times that he practically gained a resistance buff.
Hoku never cared for such things; instead, spending time with his favourite hobby. He loved playing games. The harder, the better. Especially ones with permadeath. If he found a game too easy, he would look for ways to make it harder, like downloading mods or restricting his controls and doing self-imposed challenges. At some point, he even started coding his own mods, though they never gained a meaningful audience.
It was 2:45 AM. The only light in the room came from his monitors, stacked around his desk like a coffin of blue light. One screen showed messy lines of code. Another showed the interface of an RPG.
He sat back in his chair and stretched. Clothes, empty noodle packets, and numerous figurines of his favourite characters piled up around his room, making his own little make-shift castle. 'Hah, what would that make me, the princess?' Perhaps.
Hoku was working on a mod for a game he already beat on the hardest difficulty, 5 different times. Getting frustrated, he moved to a different part of the script. He rubbed at his eyes, then blinked back into the blurring sea of code before him. He lifted his hand, ready to type again, when all of a sudden, the text was gone. All three monitors simultaneously shut down.
"Uhhhhh! What the hell, man? I didn't save!" He proclaimed.
He pressed the power button repeatedly, but got nothing, so he investigated the side of his computer, checking the charger port: everything seemed fine. So he sighed, got out of his chair and jumped on top of his bed to follow the cord all the way back to the socket, which sat behind it the head of it.
"Damn it," he said: there was a small gap between the plug and the socket. Hoku moved his hand towards it, but as soon as he got hold of the plug and tried to prod it back in, a bright blue spark assaulted his eyes.
He quickly retracted his hand and leapt back on his bed. Once he quickly recovered himself, he stared at the plug with wide-open eyes. 'Jesus, that could've killed me,' he thought.
At least the plug was in. He turned back towards his desk, but hesitated the moment his computer entered his view. A stange symbol had appeared on the center of his main monitor. Did he accidentally open something when the screen shut off? He had never seen such a thing.
It was intricate with thin green outlines on the outside and 2 stars making up the inner pattern, like some kind of pentagram or magic circle. The pattern painted lines of light across his dark room.
Hoku blinked, and in an instant, though he couldn't put his finger on what, something had changed.
He squinted and crawled forward on his bed. A small, round part at the very centre of the pattern was now gone, replaced by the void of the screen, like a piece missing from a puzzle. Hoku moved his head to the side to inspect further. When he did, the black circular shape seemed to expand.
He moved closer and closer, noticing that it almost seemed like it was getting bigger and bigger.
Then everything went black. In an instant, something cold and lifeless touched his face. "Ahhh!" He shouted as he jumped off his bed and back to the floor. He scrambled away erratically. Hyperventilating. Blinking rapidly. He could see again.
At this height, he could only see the underside of his desk, but there was a silky prattling sound coming from where his monitor was. Hoku found difficulty gathering the nerve but reluctantly rose to see above his desk.
What he saw was a shadowy creature of some kind. A grotesque wraith carved in the shape of a hand scowled atop his desk. It seemed to have emerged from within the inner bowels of his computer screen, with which it was still fused. Bizarrely, cursive lines of text crawled across its body, making its form clear in the darkness of the room.
Hoku's entire body froze. It was crawling on his desk like a giant arachnid. It moved around before stumbling into a lamp on the right. Just before it could fall, the hand wrapped its dark fingers around it, beginning to feel its form.
Hoku couldn't find his voice and simply mouthed profanities in response. He took the initiative to carefully manoeuvre over his bed and try to reach the door. He got off the floor and reached for the handle, taking one last look.
It was gone.
The arm connected to the hand that led out of his computer screen extended out like a snake, bending off the edge of his desk into obscurity.
Feeling his organs melt, Hoku desperately stalked his room looking for the rest of the creature. A bone-chilling fear spread from his arm to his wrist. He felt like the handle of the door was frozen solid.
He searched for the white words that were mapped onto its surface like a candle in the dark, but he could only spot more and more of the unnatural black bending in and out of the scattered objects.
Hoku pulled on the door. But the door pulled back. Hoku thought the coldness in his wrist was coming from his body, but once he turned his head to the handle. He realised he wasn't the only one holding on.
The black hand wrapped it's dead fingers around his own hand. He jumped back from the door and shook his wrist with all his might before landing on the floor.
The hand let go of him but held tightly to the doorknob. It wrapped its mass around it like an anaconda finding its prey. Closing the door until a click was heard.
Hoku backed up, "Wait, please don't hurt me," he pleaded.
The hand dropped to the floor.
"Listen, I don't know what kind of demon lord or galactic wizard I've wronged to deserve this shit."
Hoku's back hit the side of his bed. He gulped.
"What do you want with me? I haven't done shit!"
"L-lemme think."
"Okay, okay, okay, maybe I said some mean things online."
"If I knew they were involved in the dark arts, I would've been a little nicer."
The hand came near. Its fingers, eerily tapping the floor.
Hoku kneeled down and prayed, "Please man. I promise I'll never make any mistakes again, I'll live my life to the fullest, please, just give me one more chance."
Hoku tensed, closing his eyes.
But when he opened his eye, it vanished. he checked back at the doorknob, but it wasn't there. His eyes caught it's form near his the foot of his bed. as it retreated, unwinding itself through the foot of the bed and the pile of clothes, until it eventually retracted back to the top of the desk and back into his computer screen.
Sitting by the side of his bed, Hoku gawked behind him at the desk. Warmth finally returned to his body. He breathed out in both relief and confusion. But then, his computer crackled.
With violent speed, the black hand pierced through the screen, grabbing Hoku's collar in one fierce motion.
A force that Hoku had never felt the intensity of. He was vaulted over the bed and dragged towards the desk. He let out a muffled outburst, "Wai-". But he had no time to speak. He groaned and tried to claw at the black hand, but his fingers phased through its black holographic form. Horror creased Hoku's face. Before his legs could be fully pulled over the bed frame, however, he hooked onto the side with his foot.
The hand wrestled for a time, and Hoku felt pain building in his legs and neck. Suddenly, it whipped itself up and down, causing Hoku's foot to unhook from the bed.
His arms crashed into the desk. Several objects fell off. He held himself close to the side of the desk as immense pressure pulled on his neck.
He surrendered his struggle to regain his breath. As a consequence, his head, then body, then legs were swiftly pulled over.
Hoku caught himself just as the hand fused and retracted into the screen. He gripped the computer's edges. But it became unmovable. It felt like heavy air assaulted his face. His grip slip and the pulling force invited him in to screen.
Hoku couldn't feel anything. He was caught in a void, and all he could see were streams of unnatural colours flowing across his body like he was moving through a tunnel of light. Then the spectrum turned to streams of white golden light perfectly bending into his vision, flowing in and out of his eyes. Focusing and focusing until it became... legible?
[Boot]
[GAngel-9 System Initialising]
[SoulSync:256/256]
[100% Initialised]
[Attuning Hex power]
[Affinity:79%]
[Access: Granted]
[Body Reconstruction Rating:10/10]
It was all so strange that Hoku thought that he was still seeing code in his room. Then the several lines of text were replaced by a single line.
[Welcome To Eadrift]
The space Hoku now found himself in was dark, heavy, and cold. he only held onto a shred of his consciousness as he floated in a vast volume. He was powerless, being consumed by something greater, yet he felt at peace.
Then something changed; he felt the volume slowly disappear. Hoku's consciousness would dip in and out, but he could still make something out through his half-opened eyes.
A pair of legs entered his fading vision, thin and delicate. A woman. She held him in her arms and carefully carried him, then kneeled over at his side. A blue glow faintly illuminated her blurred figure, which brilliantly radiated in the dark abyss. Hoku could just barely make out that her pale body was bared before him, though, like day and night, her dark emerald hair flowed down to her stomach.
She peered at him wistfully, then turned away, gracefully walking towards a pile of black garments that were cleanly folded on the ground.
Now, a hooded figure stood before him. Dressed in a black cloak, which is sleek, yet ceremonial, with deep orange patterns near the top.
She looks in some direction, sad, or maybe scared, as she seems to say something beyond Hoku's ability to hear. As time passed by, with her by his side, he could only feel the rest as his eyes were becoming too heavy to maintain. She kissed him on the forehead, and soon after, she was gone.
Some time later, Hoku finally woke up.
He rolled onto his side, coughing violently, water spattering out from his nose and mouth. His lungs were on fire, and every muscle in his body ached.
He touched his palms against the stone-hard floor, trying to sit up, immediately wincing as he noticed his clothes. they were soaked through, dripping and clinging to his skin.
Above him, there was no sky, only jagged stone and strange, black buds scattered around. He was in a cave.
Hoku noticed a blue glow that washed his surroundings.
A lake, still and round, emanating light, casting ripples across the walls.
He peered into the blue vortex, his spiralling dark blue eyes investigating the reflection. He had wavy short black hair with red frosted tips.
The lake warped him into a wash of colour. Despite its beauty, Hoku couldn't help but curse it as he would quickly deduce that it was the culprit behind his dripping clothes.
Then he asked the crucial question.
"Where the hell am I?"
Hoku scanned the area. There were two twisted tunnels on either side of him. He wondered how he even got into this predicament. 'What was with that freaky hand?' He thought, trying to remain light-hearted, but his expression betrayed him.
"Is this for real?" He asked, playing with the pebbles on the ground.
He had to think of how to get out. Survival came first, but he barely knew anything about surviving in the wilderness. 'Well, at least I have water.' He thought, and as he was just about to comment further on his shitty situation, he noticed something.
There was something buried in one of the softer patches of stone. Wet, in one piece and relatively ok condition.
Hoku blinked. Then he blinked again.
Lying there was his limited edition, swimsuit variation, Narune Hiru figurine. Hoku gasped and rushed to pick it up, soon realising that there was more good news.
His toothbrush, a campus flyer he's never looked at, a comb, an empty can of Fanza, a pack of tissues and...
THANK THE HEAVENS
'I must've tossed my phone when I was being dragged in.' He thinks, gleefully staring at the device. His parents used to taunt him by asking, "Is your phone more important than your life?" So Hoku felt rather proud that he could now answer that after throwing it at a primordial demon as a last resort.
Unfortunately, his joy was cut short, as his phone was just as soaked as him, and sadly, it didn't have the mental fortitude to survive. He clasped his hands together and held a mini funeral. "Goodbye, old friend, hope you get reincarnated into a new life with your own harem to boot". He said.
Hoku started gathering up the rest of his scattered, waterlogged belongings. Most of it was junk, but seeing it all here gave him a strange sense of confidence in this strange place. His mind wanders back to his wobbly recollection of a hooded girl as he thinks to himself, 'I wonder where she went.'
He sorted through each item one by one; most were to be left behind, between things that he couldn't fit in his wet pockets and things that probably weren't going to help him. In fact, there were even a couple he didn't recognise; he spent so much time glued to his screen that the thought didn't alarm him.
He found one long object that was pretty strange in shape and texture. He reached out, gripped it firmly, and pulled. It didn't budge.
He frowned and tugged harder. Still nothing.
A flicker of embarrassment kicked in, 'I really should've monopolised on that gym membership.'
Still, he wasn't about to give up just like that. So he picked up his desk light and tried bashing at the spot. Bits of dirt and stone started to chip away. He bashed again and tried pulling as more dirt piled away.
But it really was stuck.
Hoku sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow. The cold air in the cave was starting to creep in.
"Jeez, okay! I'll just take what I have," he muttered in utter defeat.
But before he could stand.
He noticed that the dirt didn't stop moving.
Instead, more of it continued to pile off. Hoku's body tensed. He started to slowly backpedal. Then the ground rumbled lightly. Hoku jumped back, now moving away with more haste, abandoning the rest of the buried items, only taking the items in tow.
Suddenly, the floor lurched violently, sending a shockwave rippling through the stone and the water in the lake. Hoku started sprinting with all the speed a gamer could manage, being rocked from side to side on the vibrating ground. Regrettably, this caused a loose item to drop from his busy hands.
it was Narune Hiru!
Hoku ran until he reached one of the tunnels, rounding its corner, managing one final look across his shoulder, seeing the last of Narune waving and wishing him good luck, and capturing the disastrous shadow that lay beyond her.