The world around him paused.
‘W-What!’
He tried to move but found himself incapable of moving at all, even his eyes were frozen inside their sockets. The only thing that was not frozen were his thoughts. Everyone in his direct field of view were unmoving, as though someone had taken a picture and now he was captured within it, the cars in his peripheral vision frozen in their lanes. All motion, everywhere in his vision, had ceased. If he was able to move he would be shaking.
“ESTABLISHING SETTINGS”
The voice spoke, and somehow he knew, this voice was omnipresent. That every single creature that was also frozen in time, or whatever strange magic this was, could also hear the unfeeling emotionless voice.
“INFORMATION LEVEL SELECTED: LOWEST”
“DIFFICULTY LEVEL CHOSEN: RESTRICTED”
“NUMBER OF CONNECTIONS: RESTRICTED”
“NUMBER OF SERVERS CREATED: RESTRICTED”
“USER MODELS: RANDOMIZED”
“POWER SYSTEM: RESTRICTED, RESTRICTED, RESTRICTED”
“CONNECTION STRENGTH: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: LAND”
“RESTRICTED: AIR”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: OCEAN”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“TUTORIAL: DENIED”
“TWO WAY CONNECTIONS: RESTRICTED”
“SHOP ACCESS: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: NIGHTMARE”
“RESTRICTED: LOWEST”
“RESTRICTED: HIGHEST”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“RESTRICTED: RESTRICTED”
“ACCESS TO SETTINGS PANEL: DENIED”
“OVERALL DIFFICULTY RATING: PLANETARY EXTINCTION EVENT”
“CURRENT SETTINGS ARE NOT RECOMMENDED!"
“A MESSAGE FROM THE ADMIN”
“Good luck! Have fun!”
“MESSAGE ENDED”
“SETUP UNDERWAY”
“FARTHER INFORMATION ON SETUP IS RESTRICTED”
‘W-What on earth is happening!’
Everything the voice said swirled through his head, but one line in particular stuck out to him. Overall difficulty rating: planetary extinction event…
‘Is everyone really going to die? I don’t even know what is happening! I would have preferred an asteroid!’
“SETUP COMPLETE”
“ESTABLISHING CONNECTION WITH USER AND SYSTEM INTERFACE”
“UNPAUSING IN TEN SECONDS”
“10… 9… 8… 7…”
Alberhorn’s eyes unfroze.
“6… 5… 4…”
‘Deep imaginary breaths’ he thought ‘If I am understanding this right then this is supposed to be some sort of sick bastard version of a game…’
“3… 2…”
His gaze settled. ‘If it's a game then perhaps there is a way to win… or at least to survive…’
“1… Starting”
Time started, and it was even more jarring than when it froze. The sound of brakes and cars colliding as was, people screaming, breaking down and crying, bewildered faces, confusion, all of these things happened all at once.
Alberhorn stood unmoving amidst the storm of chaos. ‘What do I even do? How can I prepare for whatever is happening? What even is happening?’ He thought for a moment and an answer came to his mind. ‘It’s like one of those system novels my brother is obsessed with!’ he racked his head trying to remember how one of them went. ‘I guess I should apply video game logic, it seemed pretty game like. What was that final message? Something about an interface? How do I activate that?’
'That's... different...' He paused, stunned. 'Does it sense my intent? So, I guess this is supposed to be me, what is an Avatar? and how do I obtain one? it doesn't look like there is a leveling mechanic, or perhaps I just can't see it yet? I mean there is not much of anything... this doesn't help me at all, he had no why to confirm it yet, but he suspected Unlocking Avatar would greatly how useful this thing is.
The screams and panicking that had started to calm down started back up again, pulling Alberhorn from his thoughts. dismissing the interface he scanned the crowd of people, quickly realizing something was happening. Everyone was running, which wasn't too different from how they were acting before but now... they were all running in the same direction...' Alberhorn looked in the direction that they were running away from and his heart pounded. In the middle of the street was a... hole? It looked like the fabric of reality was forcefully being torn apart as something began to take shape. It was terrifying. Before he knew it, he was running. A sobering thought entered his head: 'Planetary extinction event.'
The rift in space pulsed. a wave of force that blasted cars away, rippled through the road shattering it, anyone too close to it were flung away, most simply rag dolled against the road or pavement, some unlucky ones simply crashed into walls and died instantly. Everyone lucky enough, or wise enough to get far enough away from it, were instead knocked over by the pulse of force. After a few seconds, when most people had managed to pick themselves up the pulse came back. instead of pushing everything away it shoved it towards the rift like a wave that returned to the ocean. Once again people were pulled over. Loose objects were sent flying through the air, into the rift, vanishing, all while the rift in space grew. Then it pulsed again, and the pulse came back. forth and back, out and in.
Alberhorn had managed to wrap his body around the pole of a street light, and watched in horror as the people around him were tossed and yanked, played with, by this... thing!' rather quickly they were devoured by the fracture.
The screaming had stopped. No one was left with any energy to scream. every time some did scream it meant that they were about to die, and at this point not many people were dying, they were already dead. The street light he was calling to had gained six other people, some of them climbed over him to cling on to it from higher up, one person had even managed to catch onto it as they were being sucked in, they had now managed to wrap themselves around the thin end near the bulb itself. A pit had formed around the large rift as its pulses grew stronger, and stronger. Alberhorn knew he was doomed, eventually he would be forced off or the pole would be ripped out of place, whichever came first. He had originally considered using the outward pulse to propel himself out of the effective zone, but quickly realized an issue. It sucked things in more than it pushed them out. Alberhorn might be able to get ten meters away using the blast but before he could anchor himself to anything he would be sucked twenty meters or more into the rift.
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"If any of you manage to survive this... remember me, my name is Yelok, my Father named me. He... he was a strange man, he never spoke much. I suppose I will meet him soon." An older man who also clung to the street pole spoke, his dying wish, to be remembered.
"No," Alberhorn spoke, his voice firm. "You might die but we will all die together."
Pulse
He used the brief time in between pulses to move his arms around the man, who was on the other side of the pole to him facing the rift.
He spoke again spite coating his words "If the damn rift wants us it will have to take the pole as well."
Pull.
"O-Okay, I will try."
"Yeah!"
Pulse.
"Everyone listen up!" Alberhorn yelled "None of you are allowed to let got!"
Pull.
"If someone is slipping, grab them! and if you are slipping, grab someone!"
Pulse.
He didn't bring them hope or a chance, he offered them spite.
Pull.
And they accepted it, the people moved and shifted, rather than fighting for the best grip for themselves, they made sure everyone was secure, that everyone had a grip, and they held on to each other.
Pulse.
Minutes later they all still stubbornly clung to the street light. The rift continued to grow, its pulse and pull growing stronger, but it was slowing. Its starting growth was staggering, it rapidly grew into an abyssal hole severely meters in diameter in the span of half a minute. Now nearly ten minutes later it was barely double that, and in the last few minutes it hadn't grown at all.
"Something is happening with the hole!" The girl who was still somehow wrapped around the top of the street light shouted.
Alberhorn's gaze sharpened on the space rift. 'could we survive?' something was indeed happening with the rift, something was... emerging from within?!
A massive circular maw filled the sphere of broken space, somehow facing out in every direction as if distorted. The hole was gone, and in its place was a maw that somehow faced outwards in all directions yet seemed to maintain its original shape.
The pulses stopped.
"RUN!" Alberhorn shouted, while unwrapping himself from the pole disentangling from the other bodies clamped onto it.
Before he managed to take his second step a great roar shook the ground. He collapsed onto the ground, his balance lost. He attempted to pull himself off the ground but before he could the air changed, and he felt a feeling he was all too familiar with by now, suction. Alberhorn was ripped across the road, his fingers bleeding as he dug his nails across the damaged road, pulling chunks of it in his desperation. The people on the pole watched in horror as the one who pushed them to try and survive longer was ripped past them, screaming and clawing, desperately fighting to resist the pull. and us he was consumed by the unholy maw, it turned its gaze on them and pulled, with terrifying force they too were consumed, streetlight and all.
Alberhorn screamed in horror as he rocketed down the throat of the gigantic creature that swallowed him. It was like one great terrifying water slide. Fear consumed Alberhorn as he continued to slide down the creature's throat, constantly gaining speed. After a while though he stopped screaming. How long had he been falling for? One minute? Two? And nothing seemed to change. How large was this creature?
“This is ridiculous!”
Alberhorn glanced at his watch that despite all it had been through was still functioning and on his wrist. Three hours! He had been falling over three hours, constantly gaining speed. A while back he had felt a strong sense of… magic? He didn’t know how he could sense it. It felt similar to when everyone was frozen but a bit different. In the three hours of nothing, he had come up with a few ideas on what it could be, but in the end he had decided it was probably space magic, or was actually time magic. Due to how long this creature's throat was. If it even was a throat, or a creature. He suspected some sort of space distorting magic. As he was pondering the nature of his current situation the voice from before spoke once again.
“WE WILL NOW BEGIN YOUR AVATAR CREATION PROCESS.”
“...”
A similar magic to the one he hours back in the… tunnel? It felt more like a tunnel than a living creature, It felt far too large to be alive.
The magic sensation stopped and he found himself in a black…? White…? There wasn’t any colour, nor light, but he could see, but there wasn’t anything to see. Looking out into the absence of anything started to give him a headache, it felt like he was somewhere that shouldn’t exist. He waited for something to happen, for anything to happen. Time was strange like it was barreling forward in the same place. He glanced down at his watch to try and understand it, and didn’t see anything, his arm simply wasn’t there, he didn’t have anybody at all.
“A-am I dead”
He thought, and for some reason he knew that his thought would be audible to anything around him. Perhaps anything else that existed in this great expanse of space, that seemed to stretch on for infinity while not even existing, would be able to hear his thoughts.
“GREETINGS. ARE YOU READY TO CHOOSE YOUR AVATAR?”
As the voice spoke his mind was stripped of all other thought, anything that was related to the question asked of him was secondary, as though locked behind some cage in the back of his mind.
“What does choosing an avatar entail?”
“YOUR CURRENT OPTIONS ARE SEVERELY LIMITED DUE TO THE SETTINGS CHOSEN”
“What are my current options? Who chose these settings?”
“YOUR OPTIONS ARE: RANDOM ENTITY WHEEL OF FORTUNE…”
“Is there only one!?”
“OUT OF THE OPTIONS OFFERED WHICH WOULD YOU LIKE TO EXCEPT?”
“You only gave me one option! Who chose these settings!”
“...”
“Answer me you blasted voice!”
“THOUGHT DIRECTORY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. INCREASING OUTPUT. PLEASE CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS: RANDOM ENTITY WHEEL OF FORTUNE…”
“I choose, random entity wheel of fortune.”
A randomizer wheel of impossible proportions appeared in the void. It was already spinning, the words written down on each of the possible outcomes moving far too fast to read. As the wheel continued to spin, the spell cast upon his mind slowly lessened…
“That… That was terrifying! I didn’t even have control over my own thoughts!”
The wheel continued unbothered as Alberhorn struggled with the last few hours of his life. Then it continued to spin even after he managed to calm down, and continued still. The amount of possible outcomes were staggering. By now it had slowed down just enough for Alberhorn to get a grasp of just how many ‘options’ there were for the arrow that sat at the top of the wheel to land on.
“Mmm I wonder if…”
Alberhorn, after staring at the spinning wheel for an uncountable amount of time, began to feel bored, it was a strange thing to get bored when the world was ending. So deciding he had nothing to lose he tried to talk to the voice.
“Voice thingy… um, how many possible outcomes are there on the board”
After quite some time passed Alberhorn started to feel a bit awkward as nothing but silence answered his question.
“THE: RANDOM WHEEL OF FORTUNE. HAS A TOTAL OF 13 MILLION POSSIBLE OUTCOMES.”
Oh! It answered!... Wow. That's a lot of different outcomes… What even are these outcomes?
“Um… excuse me, but what are the different possible outcomes?”
“...USER ANOMALY HAS BEEN DETECTED. SCANNING FOR CAUSE…”
“That's not good is it!? What does an anomaly mean?! What are you going to do to me!?”
“ABNORMALLY STRONG SOUL HAS BEEN DETECTED. SCANNING DATABASE ON HOW THIS HAS ONLY NOW BEEN DETECTED… USERS OLD LIVING HABITAT HAS BEEN REGISTERED AS A BARREN WORLD. RAPID SOUL GROWTH IS EXPECTED… USER HAS SURPASSED STANDARD SOUL GROWTH… FOLLOWING PROTOCOL… PLEASE REMAIN CALM AS WE HAVE NOW YOU HAVE NOW BEEN DESIGNATED AS A VIP USER. A GUIDE AS NOW BEEN DISPATCHED TO YOUR DESTINATION. ALL FURTHER QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS WILL NOW BE HANDLED BY YOUR NEW GUIDE.”
“...What just happened?”
The Wheel Of Fortune disappeared towards the end of the voice's speech leaving him alone in the void once again.
“Greetings.” A monotone voice echoed through the void.
“Ahh. Hello.” Alberhorn replied, should he be surprised? At this point he didn’t really care.
“Hmm… you certainly find yourself in a rough predicament.” The disembodied voice said, then processed to mutter to themselves about Alberhorn's future. “Lowest information level… I could probably stretch some rules as a guide… hmm… ah, the dreaded wheel of am I going to be a dragon or a toadstool… hmm… I could probably tamper with the statistics… hmm… spawn location… yikes… I can't change that… what about…”
The person that seemed to have been called to this realm seemed to be deep in thought, and Alberhorn decided it best not disturbed them, as this new entity seemed to be on his side… for now.
“Well… I best catch you up to speed.” The voice abruptly stopped muttering and began to give Alberhorn answers to questions about this weird calamity that seemed to be happening.
“I am not able to tell you as much as I would like, due to restrictions on information placed by the game host. Nor will I be able to answer most of your questions. But here is the bare minimum that the rules allow. Firstly, portals have opened in your world that upon entry will transport you to another world called [RESTRICTED]. There are [RESTRICTED] different locations different portals could take you and you have entered one that will take you to [RESTRICTED] Unfortunately this will be rather difficult as [RESTRICTED] [RESTRICTED] [RESTRICTED] Ah. it doesn’t seem to like that. Hmm… moving on then. The wheel will change you into whatever entity it lands on, which could be a good thing… or a really bad thing. If you get an apex level existence you are set, you will however always be at the start of the entity's life cycle and the wheel can't land on anything that is [RESTRICTED] Really? Well… Good luck kid. I’ll enable the VIP option for users with strong souls. Oh, right, the reason I am here is because you have an abnormally powerful soul. It's about [RESTRICTED] stronger… I really hate it when the lowest information option. I wish I was able to tell you more, it is in my best interest for you to live as long as possible, so, here is some advice, your situation is pretty dire, I am not able to tell you why, but hopefully you are so dumb as to not know why. My advice, don't be passive, or too defensive, you won't be able to survive this if you are cowardly. Stay alive kid. Unfortunately I am also on a bit of a timer due to that stupid setting so I won't be able to answer any of your questions. Good luck.”
A wheel once again appeared in the void, this time its rim was a far bit more lavish, golden looking with flashing lights.
“Wait… did he say he could become a Dragon?! I might not die, and I could become a Dragon or some other mythical creature!” Perhaps it was a dumb thing to focus on, and in hindsight it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t going straight to his demise, but to hear someone confirm his suspicions and tell him that he might become some powerful creature was a great improvement from being digested or some other yet unknown fate.
With new found resolve Alberhorn looked as the Random Wheel Of Fortune Soul VIP Edition spun around at incredible speeds. Good luck, have fun? Perhaps he should simply make the most of his current situation… All right, no looking back!
Without warning, the wheel came to an abrupt stop.
DING! DING! DING!
Entity selected
New Avatar: All Consuming Legion
Rarity: Very Rare
Ranking: Strong
Potential: Supreme
