"Speaking of monsters... What's it doing?" Eric muttered looking at the four legged feline below them. It Stretched it's front limbs and pressed itself on the ground.
"Oh no."
Eric's heart sank immediately as a wicked thought crossed his mind. "It's not planning to jump, is it?"
As if mocking him. The beast stretched its powerful legs and leaped into the air.
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"Beautiful"
That was Eric's first thought when he appeared in this world. He lay on an open grass field staring at a mesmerizing sky.
"What the hell is that!!!"
That was Eric's second thought when he appeared in this world.
He was chased by what he could only describe as an abomination. A fire-breathing monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. The chimera tracked him around the dark and mysterious forest that night and only left him when he got to a calm lake. The next night he was chased by a fusion of a lion and an eagle. The third night, a bloodthirsty group of orcs.
Eric didn't need to be a genius to know this wasn't a dream. He was not in his own world anymore. He sat beside the extremely calm lake on his third night looking at the sky.
"I'm really not hyped about becoming sixteen, Grandpa." He muttered.
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It was as though time stopped.
Eric and the abomination stared at the phantom beast. It was directly above them. The feline had jumped with so much force there was now a huge crater on the forest floor. Their hearts sank under the beast's bone-chilling gaze.
"Get away!" Eric yelled.
As if walking on the air, the phantom beast leaped towards them and took the abomination's wing in its mouth, tearing it off with ease.
"Aaaah!!!" Accompanied by the Abomination's blood and screams, the three beings plummeted towards the ground.
Roar!!!
The phantom beast roared, and like it wasn't affected by the fact that they were freefalling from the sky, it started moving towards Eric.
"Oh no," Eric thought. He put his hand underneath his clothes and brought out a makeshift dagger. It was a large and sharp bone wrapped in a torn layer of his clothes. The bone looked similar to the phantom beast's tooth. Holding the bone, a bad memory resurfaced in Eric's mind.
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Red... wet... blood... pain... screams. The first time He had met a phantom beast.
The phantom beasts were unlike the others. They were stronger and faster. Some even had special abilities. Eric had seen many horrifying monsters during his three-year stay in Dreamscape's forest, each one more hideous than the next. Yet none of them came close to the phantom beast. They were not ghastly-looking like the other monsters; most of them even had appearances of animals from Eric's world.
When Eric first appeared in Dreamscape, he had already accepted his fate of not being able to survive. He found out surprisingly that no matter the monster that chased him, as long as he wasn't caught off guard and insta-killed, he would always outrun them. It was almost like his body's speed increased proportionately to the monster that was after him. As long as he managed to run, he could not be caught.
Eric didn't understand why, but his life was saved a lot of times because of this. This confidence is what allowed him to survive. Finding out he couldn't sit still and die of hunger. He would go to get fruits, and using his enhanced body, he would escape back to the lake if he was ever spotted by any monster.
The monster's inability to move close to the lake made it a safe haven for him. Eric himself never went towards the lake. He had a thought that if even the other monsters were afraid to go near it, there had to be an even stronger monster in there. Yet over time Eric's curiosity grew; perhaps it was due to his loneliness. He began wondering what was in the lake. It never stirred. It was always calm and beautifully reflecting the colorful sky of Dreamscape. There was once a time Eric thought it looked like a portal to another world.
One day during his quest for food, Eric was ambushed by a snake monster. The reptile beast managed to bite Eric and poison him before he ran away. Eric sat by the lake; he could feel his life draining from the poison in his system.
That night Eric snapped.
"Why!!!" He shouted.
"If I died in my sleep, why not just take me to the afterlife or something? Better still, erase me into nothingness. Why do I have to be brought here to suffer?!"
"Was this meant to be a second chance at life?!"
"Well, I don't want it!!!"
"Kill me!"
His voice echoed across the water... Then there was a splash and growl. A silver-coated tiger came out of the water. Compared to the other monsters Eric had seen, this one was normal-looking, yet it gave off a feeling the other monsters didn't. The feeling of frustration and nonchalance toward death was instantly replaced by fear.
"It's fine. Once I run, it won't catch me." Eric assured himself, clenching his injured arm. He didn't know how wrong that statement was. That night Eric came face-to-face with one of the beasts at the top of the food chain in Dreamscape, the Phantom Beasts.
The phantom beasts defied all logic. Eric's streak of being uncatchable was useless. It wasn't even a fight. He was caught in the monster's teeth and flung around like a ragdoll. The first three minutes were accompanied by ear-piercing screams followed by silence, the kind that caused an uneasy feeling in your bones. Eric lost his voice from the screams. The only things left were the sounds of teeth and nails digging into flesh and the sounds of Eric's body slamming into the trees and ground.
"Help... me... Any...bo...dy... Please." Eric's thought process dwindled slowly from the sheer volume of pain he was experiencing.
"It hurts... if I'm going to die... let me die. Why must it hurt? ...Why?" Amidst the monster's brutality. Eric slept.
When He woke up, He was in a pool of blood, his own blood. His legs and hands were bent at irregular angles. His clothes were in shambles, and he had a broken tooth from the phantom beast embedded at the side of his stomach. The rest of the beast was nowhereto be found. How he was alive, he didn't know. He just lay there in his own blood without moving. Not like he could if he wanted to, but he didn't. That day the last embers of hope in returning to his own world died.
"I don't care anymore. If I die, I die. As long as it doesn't hurt."
As though a higher power was at play, Eric was never attacked even as he lay there in his own blood. He lay there for a whole week with no food or water. Just the silent prayer that the Phantom beast should not return. What happened to it? or why it didn't kill him that night. Eric didn't know.
Over the week his body healed. His bones aligned themselves. Even the tooth in his side was expelled, solidifying his suspicion that his body was no longer normal. Even the poison from the snake monster seemed to have been removed. Eric thought that was perhaps due to the alarming volume of blood he lost.
After that incident Eric lost the will to live. He stopped actively trying to avoid danger except if it was something that would cause him pain. He began exploring the forest, something he was afraid of doing before. This caused him to have a lot of run-ins with different monsters and learn a lot about them. Which is how he found out some monsters were intelligent and could communicate with human speech. He became popular among those types. Taunting them was one of the only forms of entertainment for him in this world. Thankfully his ability to outrun every monster he meets was only ineffective when facing a phantom beast.
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Staring at the large tooth in his hand, Eric looked at the ground that was rapidly approaching, then back at the phantom beast that was actively trying to get to him. He chuckled and raised the sharp tooth.
"This is going to hurt... for us both."