Demon Quest

It had been a nice day. Kitt had just gotten home from work. He had just gotten a raise for all his hard work the past year, and it was well deserved. Kitt had always been an active procrastinator, but ever since he turned 25 a few years back, he had managed to make considerable progress keeping it in check. But with the raise confirmed it was finally time for some time to himself. Tonight, he would play the last RPG game he bought a few months back but never had the time to play.

It was a classic fantasy game. A little retro and under the mainstream radar, but highly recommended by the reviews he could find. And it turned out to be quite addictive as well, as Kitt found himself spending the rest of his evening and the entire coming weekend playing through the entire campaign.

The baseline of the story was you played as the hero of the land, chosen by a mythical prophecy to defeat the demon lord. The gameplay had a very detailed and vast skill system to grind the main hero, but also a management element to it as the hero recruited help from the cities and nations around the starting area to launch a campaign into the lands of the demons.

The climax of the game took place at an island in a large lake where the demon lord had his castle. After entering the island, a timer started running down and apparently Kitt had to get to the demon lord before he could complete some kind of ritual. The game never specified what the ritual was trying to accomplish, but it probably did not matter much. Classic fantasy trope and the game stuck to its genre closely in that regard.

It was Sunday evening when Kitt had finally beat the game. He fell asleep in front of his computer with a colorful “Congratulations!” displayed over the screen as the credits started to roll.

He dreamt of nothing but darkness to begin with. Then the darkness was slowly replaced by a purple hue, lighting up gradually. Before him stood a figure. His head was hurting a little, and he failed to be able to focus on who or what it was. Bu it was talking to him. Saying something. However, the words sounded muffled. As if far away. He could only make out the last sentence. ‘Save our kind.’

Next thing he knew he was back to darkness. Except he now felt something. It was cold and hard beneath him. He was sitting on something. The ground? Stone?

He felt a warmth emanating from his right hand and noticed he was holding something. But it was too dark to see what it was.

He tried to stand up. It was a weird feeling. It was as if he had been sleeping for way too long and had to get used to moving around again. But through some struggle and arguing with his balance he managed to stand up. Cold feeling of ground or stone beneath him, and a faint gust of wind ruffling his head. Cooler than usual. He felt his head with his left hand to find that his shoulder length hair had been replaced by mere centimeters of hair covering his head.

After making sure he could take more than one step before loosing balance, Kitt started moving around in the darkness. After a short while, he found a wall with the same cold feel to it as the ground he was standing on. He used the wall to guide himself forward and before long he could see some light.

As his environments gradually lit up he could see that he was in a cave of sorts. When he finally came to the end it turned out the cave was for the most part sealed shut by large rocks, leaving only small openings here and there for light to protrude.

He moved close to the rocks and reached out his hand to feel it. And as he did, he jumped in surprise, with so much force he fell on his bum in an awkward position. Suddenly a red number flashed before his eyes: -1. Then he took a second look at his hands. They were not his hands. They were grey. He looked down on the rest of his body, bathed in the dim light from outside. His skin was grey. “AAAAAAAAAAAHH!!” And worse yet, his genitals were missing! He was like a ken doll down there. Surely this had to be a dream.

A sound of rock falling onto rock echoed through the cave. He had dropped whatever was in his hands. Looking down to his right he saw a rock. He could feel a warm glow emanating from it. It was a pleasant rock.

But this was no time to be concerned with pleasant rocks. Kitt had dabbled in lucid dreaming before. Meaning the bizarreness of the dreams become so apparent the dreamer becomes aware he or she is dreaming. He performed his reality check to confirm, pinching his nose and trying to breathe in through it. If this was a dream he should be able to breathe just fine as his body in the real world would not mov, but still be able to breathe. But nothing happened. Rather, he started getting dizzy because he was not breathing.

He counted his fingers. 5. In a dream it was never five. Kitt started freaking out. “if this is not a dream then am I going crazy or am I dead or have I become reborn as a grey person or what, oh, maaan what is going on!” He breathed heavily, catching his breath from the rant he just had to himself. He was surprised it only took a few seconds of rambling for him to lose his breath this much though. He had never been the most athletic, but he had at least for the most part had the ability to talk without getting short of breath.

In his frustration he punched the floor next to him. Suddenly a pink-purple window with black text in it manifested before him. -Ability gained: “unarmed combat”- the “unarmed combat part was in blue text with a line under it. Just like words with an external link on a computer.

Kitt was speechless. He pressed the words and another box in a slightly different shade of purple appeared before him.

Unarmed Combat. Lvl 1.

The ability to fight without any equipped weapons.

Related stats: Strength, Dexterity.

Kitt started laughing in disbelief. This was unbelievable. But somehow it also finally made sense. Unless he had actually lost his mind, this could be explained by fiction. He had indeed read about similar things. And at this point there were no other real explanation.