The skin was pulled taunt. The mouth opened sideways and was filled with rows of teeth which I hoped to never discover the true sharpness of. The pole of the rake was between it and me, and was still the only thing keeping it from reaching me with its first lunge.
Dad had insisted that we all learn some self-defense. I wasn't an expert, but muscle memory took over and I snapped out a front kick into the monstrosity's chest. I was sent flying backwards. Sorta.It turned out that the primary reason it hadn't mauled me yet was the same reason that my kick couldn't knock it away.
One of its oversized rear feet had been impaled on the tines of the rake when it leapt at me. I was quite literally saved, even if only temporarily by something out of an old cartoon.
I don't know quite what came over me, I just know that I acted. I didn't scream for help even after my initial shock. I didn't want mom or Rosy to come running and end up getting mauled by this thing.
I leveraged the handle to knock the creature off its feet, before reaching out quickly to grab one of the shovels from the corner. The
creature screeched when it fell backwards, and I saw purple blood oozing from its foot. It seemed furious and ravenous all at the same time.
Without even knowing what I was really doing, I brought the shovel down on its head. It was so feral it didn't even have the sense to protect itself. I was cut and ripped into a couple more times, but with each impact from the shovel against its head it became more sluggish.
I kept beating at it feverishly. I rained blow after blow down on its head and clenched my teeth to prevent myself from shouting with each solid whack. Soon it was just twitching, but I didn't stop. A part of me said
it was dead. Its skull was crushed. But it was still moving, so I didn't stop.
Purple blood and brain matter were splashed over me, but I was driven by fear and instinct to keep going until there was no chance it was alive.
It would be cool if I could have said that this was some epic struggle in which I dodged the attacks of a fiendish beast and finally prevailed due to skill, but nothing could be further from the truth. I was all cut up from numerous claw attacks, mostly across my abdomen and thighs, and I'd killed the evil squirrel with a pair of garden tools. At least I didn't have to use an evil trowel.
In the moment, I wasn't hurting, but that was only a matter of time when the adrenaline wore off. I only really won because the rake had impaled it and slowed it enough for me to smash its head with the shovel.
From there, it had just been brute force. I hit it and hit it while it frantically clawed away at me. There was nothing pretty about this as my red blood pooled with its purple blood. Its head was shattered. The teeth were either cracked or shattered, spread along the floor in gory trail of saliva, blood and bone.
The eyes were only so much pulp. Still, I couldn't look away. It was morbidly disgusting, yet, oddly captivating. This couldn't be any kind of natural creature. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it did have a lower jaw, which hinged down, but the upper part of its mouth split to the sides.
Maybe it was the odd experience with the
lawyer and maybe it was the freakish monster in front of me, but my first thought was to wonder if my uncle had been some kind of mad scientist. All that was pushed from my head as a blue screen opened behind my eyes. I waved my hand for a second to bat it away before I realized it was in my head. Rather than freaking out, I read it.
This was rather game like. My inner nerd squealed even as the surreal situation swirled around me. I wanted to laugh hysterically, and then my body started to shake as the adrenaline started to fade. In a world where I had just slain a mutant squirrel, I clung to the blue screen in front of my eyes like an anchor. An enigma for my conscious mind to dissect and unravel. Something the gamer in me approved of.
From the Committee for New World Integration. Greetings, human. You have become the first human to slay a mana infused monster outside of a dungeon. Congratulations! You have gained XP.
Error… you can not gain XP as you have not yet been fully integrated into the system. Alternative rewards being considered.
Decision pending.
To say I was excited in the moment would have been an understatement. I'd read more than my fair share of books or watched
cartoons all about people who got sucked into a new world. Sometimes it was more like an apocalypse as the system came to the Earth.
That got my heart pounding. Committee for New World Integration. That definitely sounded more like the apocalypse style. Shit… if this was happening to me then did that mean that my sister and mom were
experiencing the same thing now? Was the entire world? My heart was pounding and my blood pumping. I might have been prepared for this, but they weren't. Hell, I was looking forward to it.
Fear for them caused me to push the blue screen away. It responded while still flashing in the corner of my eye to show me that there were still more notifications. Then I moved towards the door, except it had shut
behind me and I wasn't able to open it.
The last couple years had been a whirlwind. Dad's death—looking after the family, school, then my 22nd birthday—and finally finding out about the house and the stipulations my uncle had. It almost seemed surreal.
Maybe that was part of why I was so quick to accept what was happening to me at that moment. It was also why I wasn't going to lose any more of my family.