A-Zone, Written by AzPhoenix
Chapter 01
Welcome to Aldeus
-
TRANSFER FINISHED
WELCOME TO ALDEUS
Such a message was transfered to Trace's Menu. This message came also with an accomppanying notification sound which woke him up.
First reaction for him was to scream in pain and roll around as in his mind he had just been stabbed by Jackson. Even though he was still alive and well.
"AA! AAAAH?!" "?!?!? It doesn't hurt...?"
He shouted in shock as he noticed that the pain was gone.
He then proceeded to check his whole body, not even a scar was left, even the old wounds he had from his childhood were gone. The only thing that showed that something had stabbed him, the enormous hole in his shirt that he was still wearing was not there as he was wearing a different clothing compared to the ones he was wearing when he entered the capsule. By all accounts nothing had pierced his body.
After that he noticed that he was no longer in the office as there was a constant sound of water and the dark cavernous walls were around him instead of the white office walls.
"Where... am I? I got killed... So is this Heaven? Hell? It can't be heaven... or at least my definition of heaven isn't some dark damp cavern!" Trace muttered.
The room where Trace is, has 3 damp walls that radiated strange light, a pool of clear water that were supplied by a waterfall from the pool extends two small streams that run around the whole room and continue to the last known pathway. The ceiling only had a single hole that had water pouring out of it with high pressure.
"Crystal clear water and what is with that waterfall! That is just way too much pressure!" He threw a stone in to the waterfall, even though the water was clear the stone disappeared completely "This is definitely not a normal waterfall, more like a high presure water cutter". Trace thought
"Well.. there is no point in hanging around" he said with a carefree attitude and started following the small streams.
After a minute or two of walking in the not totally dark cavern he encountered a problem... as his head flies off from it's spot. No, it is not a trap but only a completely black small wolf the size of a badger dog, maybe a puppy wolf swinging its paw causing wind blades that cut through Trace's whole body separating it to smaller pieces.
After few seconds the body disappears into small particles while the small wolf was eating it. The wolf got surprised as its prey suddenly disappeared and it looked vigilantly around as if someone had actually stolen it's meal and was looking for the culprit.
At this moment unconscious Trace appeared out of nowhere and hit the water around the high pressure waterfall with a splash, this splash instantly woke him up.
"*cough* *cough*... What the heeeeell!!! IS GOING ON!!" He shouts after surfacing.
"Is this.. real?" he looked at his clothes that were tattered to an almost unwearable state, they were like rags at this point.
"But what am I doing here? last thing I remember was walking through that passageway, but now I am back here..."
"It seems like I have forgotten something? oh right, this was supposed to be a Miratech Virtual Reality... Does this mean that I am inside the game? It cannot be? But I was stabbed...? a dream?"
"Am i dreaming? Inside a nightmare?" After thinking so Trace slapped his own face quite hard.
"...Ouch...Doesn't seem to be a dream... So a very realistic game?"
*GRUMBLE GRUMBLE* "...Where you can get hungry?" "Didn't the Core say something about a menu right? Could it be?"
"Menu OPEN!" He said with an excited voice
His left arm started glowing and a blueish holographic window had appeared out of it
"OOH!, This is so COOL! It's like the very expensive Miratech infobands but without the wristband itself"
"So what do we got here" He looked at the menu window, on the window there were few blocks that had a text in them, these were Status, Inventory and Shop. The Shop, faction and event boxes were grayed it seems like those are not accessible yet.
"YES! Inventory!" he shouted in joy while checking its contents. There they were slotted from 1 to 12 included his items plus the two sets of clothing in them.
1. Weapon Kit (Mr X, Ms X, X Loader, Weapon Maintenance tools, gun belt)
2. Box of ammunition (500pcs)
3. Box of ammunition (500pcs)
4. Miratech Knife
5. Box of Dried meat (Salted) (1.2kg)
6. Box of Dried meat (Barbeque) (1.2kg)
7. Canteen (1l Water)
8. First Aid Kit
9. Miratech Lighter
10. Rucksack (localised)
11. Clothing set 5
12. Clothing set 10
First Trace took out the canteen and one of the boxes of dried meat and had a lunch? as he was hungry. While eating he checked the clothing sets, first the 5th set which had a long coat, mantle, pants, belt and hard leather boots, of course all of this were in dark colours such as black, brown or navy blue.
Now the other set, the 10th set... Which had a hooded robe, a shirt, pants, leather shoes and... underwear...for females...
"... This isn't what I took? ...right?" He said while holding the white brassiere in front of him. No need to say but he had an excellent pokerface on.
And when he finally got his bearings he stored the whole set into the Inventory Hopefully to never ever take it out again.
He then equipped the set number 5 and tried to see his figure from the water's reflection, but it was all for nothing as the water was so clear that it did not even reflect anything, also the darkness didn't help seeing any better.
He also checked his Weapon kit that contained 3 different things. These things are Mr X that is a very loud handcannon, Ms X which is a silent handgun and the X Loader, a part to combine these two handguns to a single rifle named X Blaze.
The X Blaze has enormous penetrating power and range, also the X Loader has a variable zoom scope for longer distances when using the X Blaze mode. The user can see much farther ahead from 1 times to 10 times the magnification.
To go more into detail of the guns the Mr X is loud not due to explosion (But due to some special fault in the design, for some reason there are countless booms that increase the speed of the bullet fired at but after a while the bullet just explodes, the scientists did not have a single clue as to why it happened also hitting something also causes the bullets to explode on impact. The maximum measured range is around 200 to 400 meters on earth depending on bullets used.
On the other hand the Ms X is a silent type as the weapon comes with a longer barrel this somehow neutralises the sonic booms but it also lowers the speed and range of the bullets. On the good side it is completely silent. Ms X has an effective range of 100 to 250 meters depending on bullets used.
Lastly the X Blaze which is completely rifle like, has a scope and other small gimmics that help the user such as a carved barrel that increases the bullets rotation thus increasing the penetration power. Also it has a Miratech accelerator built inside it, that accelerates the speed of the bullets to the limit, but because the bullets are flying too fast they will explode after flying a bit over a kilometer. X Blaze makes sound two times, when fired and when the bullet explodes after a certain distance. The scientists back on Earth couldn't explain why or how the bullets really exploded same as with the Mr X.
The bullets that Trace has are all of the same kind they are known as the 'solid' X Miratech bullets. Designed specifically for the X series of weapons there are also some other special bullets for the X series such as flame blasts or shockwave bullets but Trace couldn't get his hands on any as they were deemed to be too dangerous even for self defense.
The X series of weapons were the experimental weapons that use Miranium mineral's extraordinary properties to create a weapon for the military but all of the X series seem to have some kind of problem, one of them was the ridiculously high manufacturing cost and/or short effective range. But this was all in the past now as the modern military uses MX series nowadays that were invented post WWR when the properties of Miranium were analyzed and known a bit better.
Of course Trace could not get his hands on to those weapons that were tightly guarded by the military, which is why he bought the pre-war guns of the experimental X series instead of the modern MX ones.
"Now then" said Trace and equipped the gunbelt and holstered Ms X. "Time to explore".
After cautiously walking around for some time, he noticed a small pup of a wolf sleeping on the ground near a puddle of water.
Trace took Ms X out of the holster and pointed the gun at the wolf. Aiming carefully he shot the pup in the head, but to his shock the bullet didn't penetrate the head like he had imagined, instead the bullet launched the pup towards nearby wall the puppy started yelped in pain.
After a moment the wolf pup growled and unsteadily got up. The pup then noticed Trace and dashed towards him at a speed that Trace could barely even follow. But to his luck the shot bullet had caused a minor concussion and the pup stumbled just before reaching Trace falling in front of him. He then shot the pup another time from point blank range, the bullet left Ms X and hit the head of the pup again, this time the impact was so hard that the pup's undeveloped skull couldn't handle the second shot and got crushed causing the pup to fell down lifelessly.
Trace then used his foot to turn the pup around. To check if it is dead while breathing roughly. This was the first time Trace had actually killed a living being and his mind was full of adrenaline that his body produced when fighting for his life.
After few minutes he finally had calmed down and his hands had stopped shaking. "th-that wa-as intense" he stuttered in relief.
He then took a hold of the black wolf puppy's corpse and dragged it to his 'base camp?' near the pool.
----At the camp----
"Man, this small wolf is heavy. How can such a small thing weight so much..." Trace though out loud while catching his breath.
"Well at least this shows that I can hunt for food, Now let's see about this wolf"
Trace then took a look at the wolf's corpse and noticed that the fur did not have any major damage in it, Even though those bullets he shot should have been able to easily penetrate a single centimeter thick steel wall at that range.
"Well, ain't this awkward. If my first shot wouldn't hit the head I most likely would have died... This fur is way too tough for it to be a normal wolf or this 'game' is broken..."
He then proceeded to pelt the wolf, but to his surpise the Miratech knife could not penetrate it's fur easily, even though this knife could cut bones as if they were vegetables like carrots or cucumbers. The thing about Miratech knifes is that they are edgeless and mostly harmless until activated. But when it is activated the blades edge starts to glow blue and then it can cut through almost anything.
By anything, I mean with a bit of strenght, this knife could be punching holes into solid concrete
Trace then pelted the wolf with some difficulty, the bad bits were defurred and made into strips that could hold things together like strings and ropes. The good parts were put into his rucksack and then put into back into his inventory. As the pelt was too small to be actually good for anything.
After the pelting, Trace used his knife to dismantle the rest of the wolf. During the dismantling Trace found a mysterious sparkling stone.
"Well, well, well, What do we have here? A treasure of sorts? What does it do? what it is for?" [Trace] pondered for a moment and decided not to dwell on it as there was still some of the wolf left to dismantle.
After fully dismantling the wolf, He was having a dinner? of sorts
"Now, what should I do about this?" He wondered and looked at the pile of wolf meat, bones, fangs and claws while eating dried meat.
"Don't have anything to cook it with me... I should have brought a portable stove or something..."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He then piled the meat a bit away from the entrance so that the smell does not lure other beasts to him while he is asleep and washed himself in the pond. The rest of the wolf he stored inside his rucksack and put them to his inventory while taking the small wolf pelt away from it.
"Getting a bit sleepy, better to rest."
He then laid on the ground a bit away from the entrance and used the small pelt as a pillow, it was soft... enough.
----After around 6 hours of sleep----
Trace woke up after sleeping sometime as he heard odd sounds around him, he suddenly sprang up from the ground and varily looking around without making any big noises only the shifting of his clothes could be barely heard and the light taps of the holster ligtly touching his thigh that couldn't be heard through the waterfalls constant running sound.
After cautiously looking around for a while, he then breathed a sight of relief as he couldn't see any immediate threats. There were still some odd sounds coming from the entrance. Trace cautiously sneaked to take a look at while wielding Ms X.
What he saw was something very surprising, It was a very large black wolf eating the meat of the one Trace had killed earlier. This wolf was at least 2 meters tall more than 10 times bigger than the smaller one earlier...
Trace backed off from the entrance and hid behind a nearby rock taking Mr X out of the inventory and checked that they were ready for a fight.
He then proceeded to peek behind the rock only to notice that the giant black wolf was staring at him, right in the eyes. Trace froze for a moment The wolf was glaring at him as if determining the threat level of its prey. Trace didn't take any sudden movements but as most of his body was behind a rock the wolf did not see Trace readying his weapons for an imminent attack.
The wolf grinned and that was the moment when Trace sprung into action, he suddenly rose from behind the rock and emptied both 10 round magazines in quick succession. This sudden movement and souds surprised the wolf and allowed Trace to land most of the bullets before the wolf had time to react. Most of the bullets just bounced from the wolfs hard fur, but two lucky shots from Mr X had hit the wolf and caused some damage to its right ear and left front foot as the right ear was partly missing and the leg had some blood flowing out.
The wolf then growled angrily and rushed towards Trace with a speed so high that Trace could barely react to it by dodge rolling behind the rock nearby. Most likely because the wolf injured leg had caused it to slow down a bit so that Trace even had a chance to evade.
Even when barely dodging the wolf was already on its next attack, it swinged its right paw which flashed red and then only a second later Trace was in pieces.
YOU HAVE DIED, INITIATING RESPAWN, LOCATION...UNKNOWN, INITIATING DRAMATIC ENTRANCE. FIGHT!
Trace then Appeared in the midair above the wolf, but this time everything was in slow motion except Trace who had his weapons reloaded. Trace somehow knew the moment he takes a shot at the wolf, the time will start to flow normally to everyone. He carefully aimed both of his guns while still slowly falling towards the wolf.
The moment Trace pushed his the trigger the flow of time returned to normal and Trace Emptied both of his magazines again towards the giant wolfs head. This time all 20 bullets hit the wolfs head, the wolf was pinned to the ground by the continous gunfire for a few seconds as Trace fell on top of the wolf's back.
When both magazines were empty again the wolf instantly got up and tried to take some distance but to the wolf's bad luck Trace was already on its back and the wolf could not make any. This did not stop the wolf from trying to shake Trace off of its back. Trace had put Ms X into the holster and manually reloaded Mr X all the while trying to hold on for his life.
After somehow managing to fully reload Mr X, Trace moved towards the wolfs head just as the wolf smack its back at a nearby wall... *Splat*
Trace was squashed between the wolfs heavy body and the solid wall at a high speed.
YOU HAVE DIED, INITIATING RESPAWN, LOCATION...UNKNOWN, INITIATING DRAMATIC ENTRANCE. STAY DETERMINED!
This time Trace appeared from the ground below the vary wolf, or to be specific right under its nose. Both of his weapons were fully loaded yet again, but this time Trace only wielded Mr X. and used his left hand to grab a hold of the wolfs neck and emptied his magazine at the point blank range targetting the wolfs left eye.
The wolf yelped from the pain as each bullet had caused an enormous impact to its head, even possibly injuring its left eye. This caused the wolf to go into a rage and it started trashing around without directions. Trace had to drop off from the wolfs neck and swapped the now empty Mr X to the still reloaded Ms. X and tried to look for an opening against the dangerously trashing wolf.
Everytime the wolf hit a wall it stopped for less than a second, this was the opening Trace was looking for.
Trace then used Ms X to hit the wolfs already injured leg, After seven shots he had managed to hit the wolfs leg once, the sudden burst of pain caused the wolf to clear its head and focus on the immediate threat to its life, that threat being Trace.
The wolf glared at Trace with its remaining eye that was glowing with madness, bloodthirst and murder as Trace has been the first person in the wolfs whole life to cause so much damage and pain to it.
Trace still decided to shoot the remaining 3 bullets towards the wolf but to no ones surprise the wolf was still a bit faster than Trace and evaded the incoming bullets and followed by a counter attack by launching wind blades with a swing of its right paw.
As Trace had seen the red glowing paw attack before he barely managed to dodge it... or not, as the wolf had somewhat predicted Trace's direction of dodging and managed to cut Trace's left arm off.
The wolf grinned and cautiously approached the now wounded Trace that was screaming in pain with the sudden loss of his arm.
"AAAAHHHH!!! YOU MOTHERTRUCKER! My freaking ARM! AAAH! it freaking hurts!" Trace shouted in pain while rolling on the ground blood gushing out of his wound, cursing his enemy.
If Trace can not stop the bleeding he will soon die.
The wolf was still approaching Trace while staying vigilant, as it would not have been the first time Trace had managed to caught it by surprise.
"The medkit" Trace gasped in pain, totally forgetting the danger near him.
Trace had summoned his first aid kit from the inventory and took out a tourniquet. Applied it to his wound to stop the bleeding. Bleeding has been stopped but only to find the wolf right next to himself, ready to bite Trace's head off.
Trace had no time to react before the wolf chomped down on him.
YOU HAVE DIED, INITIATING RESPAWN, LOCATION...UNKNOWN, INITIATING DRAMATIC ENTRANCE, AIM AT THE WEAK POINTS!
After some time Trace had appeared some distance away from the wolf which was happily chewing Trace's body. He still could see the wolf.
Trace was surprised to find out that he still had his left arm. This time he was determined to kill that wolf and took out the X loader and connected Ms X and Mr X with it to create the strongest weapon in his arsenal the X Blaze. He then put 2 bullets into the loading slot back to back. After loading the X blaze's fusion chamber, Trace aimed through the scope, his target was the wolfs remaining intact eye. He then took a long breath and slowly breathed it out, time seemed to move in slow motion, the X loader hummed while creating its bullet. If this shot hits its mark the wolf is either dead or about to be.
"Saiyonara sucker" Trace mumbled in a low voice just before pulling the trigger. *PA!-DISHHHH* The bullet flew out of the long barrel of X blaze at an enormous speed hitting the wolf straight into the remaining eye, pierced through its whole skull and continued until it buried itself into the damp cavern walls making a few meters deep hole, the size of a finger into it.
Not even a second has passed and the wolf had fallen limp on to the ground.
Trace was surprised at how much more effective X blaze was compared to the Mr X as Mr X barely could damage the wolf even the weakest weapon Ms X managed cause some damage only when hitting an exposed weak point such as the open wound on the wolfs injured front left leg.
Trace then detached Mr X and Ms X from the X loader and stored it and put both of the guns to his gunbelt... only to find out that all of his clothing is in pieces, even the gunbelt where he was going to put his firearms is nowhere to be found... only the boots and pants were still in somewhat good condition. Everything else was in almost unusable pieces, it is a miracle that they are still somewhat wearable, they could drop off at any given second.
After collecting his first aid kit and guns into his inventory he walked to the corpse of the giant wolf and collapsed from extreme exhaustion, this battle only lasted for a couple of minutes, but for Trace it felt like hours, his body has been going on overdrive and over exerted its capabilities during this time thus draining all of his remaining energy and making him collapse.
---After around 10 hours of 'rest'---
*Yawn* Trace was finally waking up after an intense fight to the death battle.
'I have never slept this good before in my life' Trace thought to himself. He then tried to get up and stretch his muscles but his body was all sore and incapable, this reminded him of the intense battle against the giant wolf from before.
Few dozen minutes later Trace had finally been able to sit, his muscles were so sore that even the smallest movements proved difficult. With the power of hunger he had managed to get his hands on the dried meat in his inventory, he also took out his canteen from there. But a small problem has arisen... The canteen was empty as Trace had forgotten to refill it before going to sleep, so now he has to make his way to the pool. Those five or so meters proved to be one of the hardest task today, as he had to crawl.
In the end Trace managed to get next to the water by enduring
After eating and drinking his fill he used the nearby water to wash his body as he had finally gained most of his motoric skills back. He then checked his status and inventory.
INVENTORY
1. Weapon Kit (Mr X, Ms X, X Loader, Weapon Maintenance tools)
2. Box of SOLID X ammunition (436pcs)
3. Box of SOLID X ammunition (500pcs)
4. Miratech Knife
5. Box of Dried meat (Salted) (0.6kg)
6. Box of Dried meat (Barbeque) (0.6kg)
7. Canteen (1l Water)
8. First Aid Kit (Bandages 75%, Disinfectant 100%, Pain Killers 98%, Tourniquet, Scissors, Tape 100% and MiraTech Healing Gel 100%)
9. Miratech Lighter
10. Rucksack (Small wolf pelt, Small wolf Claws, Small wolf Fangs, Mysterious glowing stone)
11. Clothing set 10 (Female: Robes, Underwear)
[Trace] noticed that he only has around half of the dried meat remaining, It should have lasted for 4 days at least as it provided enough proteins, salts and calories. But not even 24? hours have gone, Trace had eaten 2 days worth of food stuff, if it continues like this Trace will have nothing to eat after tomorrow's breakfast.
Next he checked his status
NAME: Trace 'Maron' Aqualie (ALIAS: NONE)
STATUS: Healthy
CLASS: NONE
ABILITIES: Respawn (Lives:6/10 Charge: ~6 hours remaining)
ASPECTS: Azurefeather (Inactive)
AWAKENINGS: NONE
'Wait? why I haven't checked this before?' Thought Trace.
Trace then continued to stydy his status. Even though it was a bit simple it still had some elements that caused confusion. Elements like Class, (inactive), Aspects and Awakenings
'So this game world has a class system? I wonder how it works'
Trace then after a while of pondering he sneezed as the cave was still chilly and he had almost nothing on. These clothes couldn't even be called 'rugged' they were more or less rags. As his situation was as such, a sudden thought had flashed in his mind, this was the 'forbidden' clothing that were in his inventory... or at least the robe could prove warm and useful.
He then followed his thoughts and took and equipped the robes, shirt and pants he had, leaving the shoes and the underwear still in the inventory. After putting them on Trace suddenly had a surge of emotions struck his mind and was feeling a bit weak on his knees. Calming down took him a minute or so, then he took a look at the giant dead wolf.
'That somehow looks a bit bigger than before... am I imagining things?'
'Better get started on the dismantling, this time I should somehow cook the meat and use the fur as protective clothing. Before I starve to death, I only have so much edible food remaining...'
'And do wolves have even any meat in them? The small one earlier might have been a bit different, can my knife even penetrate this fur?...'
Trace then began to slooooowly dismantle the wolf, a bit by bit his knife had managed to remove the fur from the meat.
After many hours of taxing manual labour Trace had finally dismantled the giant black wolf into three different piles. First pile had all of the fur, second had bones, fangs and claws and the third one had meat and innards. He also found another mysterious glowing stone, this one was the size of his fist and had a swirling vortex moving inside.
"Now then, what should I do with all this..."
"Clothes might be a good idea, But first comes the meat as it can spoil"
Trace pondered about what to do with the meat, how to cook it or such he tried to use his MiraTech Lighter but its area of effect is too small to effectively cook anything.
The lighter on the other hand was a revolutionary creation after the WWR as it was completely environmental friendly and was known for having a 'limitless' supply. It also has 3 different functions, one is the basic lighter function to create a small flame like the standard gas lighter. Second function was that it could be used as a torch as it produced an enormous 'cold' flame that was completely unscientific. Third and final function was the so called 'blaster' that produced a contained flash which then was launched. This 'blaster' could ignite flammable surfaces from 5 to 100 meters depending the surrounding conditions. The longest meassured distance that they could ignite was around 628 meters but it was made in 'perfect' environment that would only be possible in a completely man made situations. At first the technology for this lighter was designed to be the main weapon system of a space craft but it was soon noticed that the 'Blaster' could not ignite anything in space... in the end when these lighters came to the sales they cost more than a firearm... They also required a license to be allowed to buy one.
Back to the meat problem.
Trace had finally found a way to cook the meat... this was made by stacking stones one in each corner of a larger plate like stone then putting the miratech lighter on under the plate like stone to heat it. After a looong while the plate like stone was hot enought to be used in cooking Trace put some thin slices of the wolf meat onto the heated stone. The meat started sizzling.
During the time when Trace was waiting for the stone plate to heat up, he was using his miratech knife to process the fur and leather of the wolf and trying to make makeshift clothing.
In the end he only had managed to cut the original pieces into pieces of somewhat usable sizes before the stone was heated enough.
Trace used the claws of the giant wolf to turn the wolf steaks around, he was a bit sad because he did not have anything to season the meat with.
'Should have brought some salt with me... Or some kind of spice atleast.'
After getting the hang of cooking with the stone, Trace had finally managed to cook the wolf meat to a satisfactory.
Little did he know that most 'Monster' meat is inedible to a normal person and has a 100% mortality rate... people that have eaten monster meat have died just after finishing their meal, claiming that it has been the best food they have eaten in their whole life just before starting to suffer from the toxins and dying around 1 to 2 hours afterwards. There have been rumours about people who have 'survived' for more than 24 hours before eventually dying in excrutiating pain.
"Bon Appetit" He said out loud just before chomping on to his big bad wolf steak.
"Oh man this is so damn good!" Trace shouted in surprise without noticing any changes on his body and started vigorously eating his delicious steak with every bite, the juices were flowing from the steak.
After finishing the steak, Trace vision started to blurr but he was in such a bliss that he didn't even know that his body was starting to get effected by the toxins of the meat.
Only a minute or so later Trace fell to the floor and started convulsing. Sweat pouring from every pore from his body, The sweat carried out black goo like substance from within. Trace was totally paralysed, his whole body was out of his control, even though he was paralysed, he still could feel pain. The only thing he could do this time was to endure the pain, which at times felt like someone would have stabbed him in various places and from time to time it felt like his skin would have been cut off.
For some reason or another Trace couldn't pass out from all of the pain. After two hours Trace's body finally gave up and he died. But for him these two hours felt like eternity.
YOU HAVE DIED... INITIATING RESPAWN... LOCATION...UNKNOWN... ENDURANCE IS THE KEY! This time There was another notification also which said CONGRATULATIONS!
