Tai woke with a throbbing head and a mouth full of the taste of battery acid. Not the pleasant kind of wake-up call.

  He groaned, blinking his eyes against the darkness. Why is it dark?

  He remembered falling asleep on the couch in his apartment... which definitely had four walls and zero orange glowing blobs that looked like alien eggs around his couch.

  Wait. Eggs?!

  He sat up so fast his vision swam, and his head spun. A cluster of tennis ball-sized, semi-translucent eggs surrounded him, each one pulsing with a faint orange luminescent glow. Something moved within them. They cast just enough light to reveal slick, damp walls glistening with moisture. The air was thick—it felt like inhaling stew. Not the pleasant kind.

  There was a stench of sulfur and something worse—it smelled like someone had left a compost bin filled with rotted sea creatures out in the sun as a cruel prank. Tai gagged, clapping a hand over his nose.

  “Oh, gross…” he muttered under his breath, his voice echoing softly in the cavern.

  “This is… definitely not my apartment,” he whispered hoarsely. That was the understatement of the century.

  Tai’s last clear memory was dozing off on his couch after a marathon gaming session, still wearing his favorite comfy gym shorts and oversized hoodie.

  Now he was here—wherever here was—surrounded by what looked like eggs straight out of an Alien horror movie. If this was a dream, his subconscious had some serious explaining to do.

  “This is just a lucid dream,” Tai whispered to himself. He tried the classic pinch on his forearm—it hurt, and nothing changed.

  “Or maybe I died choking on pizza and this is hell…?” A nervous laugh escaped him, echoing softly in the eerily quiet cavern.

  Maybe he was in a VR simulation? Or he’d isekai’d himself by accident.

  Is that even a thing?

  He ran through a quick mental checklist of ridiculous possibilities:

  Option 1 - Still asleep on his couch, probably drooling.

  Option 2 - In a coma after some freak accident, hallucinating all this from a hospital bed.

  Option 3 - Kidnapped and dropped into the world’s weirdest escape room.

  Option 4 - Actually transported to a fantasy RPG realm (and definitely going to sue whoever’s responsible!).

  None of these options brought comfort.

  Tai inhaled deeply, trying to calm his racing heart.

  He carefully rose to his feet, shoes squelching in the slimy muck coating the floor. In the dim orange glow, he could make out more details: a broad cavern, rough stone walls slick with translucent slime.

  Great. The decor really screamed “Welcome to monster hell.”

  The cave’s glowing eggs and alien stillness reminded him too much of those RPG intros where a slime or monster ambushes the newbie.

  “Any second now, a tutorial monster jumps out…” he muttered, voice trembling.

  In the books, it was always so thrilling. But now it was real.

  He was actually here. In gym shorts. A hoodie. And nothing else.

  As if on cue, he heard something skitter in the darkness beyond the farthest cluster of eggs.

  Tai froze.

  The sound was faint but unmistakable: a dry rustling, like a thousand fingernails tapping on stone, followed by a heavy dragging noise. His heart leapt into his throat.

  He slowly turned in place, eyes darting over the egg clusters. Between two particularly large cloisters of eggs, he caught a glimpse of movement—pale white plates reflecting the orange light. Bones? Bone plating.

  And there—a long, slithering segment of a body creeping over the stones.

  Many legs.

  Too many legs.

  His brain connected the dots a second later than he would’ve liked.

  Centipede.

  A giant freaking centipede. Because of course it was.

  “I had to land in the bug dungeon. Right into the boss room, great!” Tai whispered shakily. “Why not a nice field of flowers? A fairy forest? Maybe a friendly Medieval-like town?… but Nooooo, it had to be a giant centipede lair.”

  He swallowed hard, backing away from the shape. As he stepped back, his shoulder bumped one of the glowing eggs.

  The leathery, semi-translucent shell was surprisingly tough, but it wobbled under his touch.

  Tai winced, steadying it with trembling hands.

  The last thing he needed was to break one and find out what kind of “surprise” hatched out.

  He had a sneaking suspicion it would not be a cute baby chick.

  The scraping noise stopped.

  The cavern fell into heavy silence, broken only by Tai’s ragged breathing.

  Somehow, that was worse.

  He frantically scanned the darkness.

  Where did it go?

  A low chittering came from above… Above?!

  Tai dared a glance upward. High on the cavern wall, just at the edge of the darkness, he saw a cluster of spindly legs clinging to the rock.

  Two—no, wait—six bulbous, glassy eyes caught the orange glow and flashed.

  Tai’s stomach flipped.

  The centipede was on the wall, halfway to the ceiling, its massive body partially coiled around a rocky column. It was as long as a city bus and about as comforting to look at as a live grenade. Its carapace looked like overlapping plates of bone—pale, jagged—and along its sides wriggled dozens of serrated legs.

  Worse, from its front end—near what must be the head—a forest of slimy tentacles drooped and writhed, two of them freakishly long like nightmare-grade squid arms, each tipped with a barbed point.

  Tai had played enough horror games to recognize a boss monster when he saw one. A hysterical giggle bubbled in his chest, but he swallowed it down.

  Don’t lose it. Think, Tai.

  He patted himself down. No weapons. No armor. Not even a pocketknife or a stick. Just gym shorts now stained with slime and an oversized hoodie that read "Play hard. No extra lives," with three pixelated hearts printed across the front—only one still full. Oh, the irony.

  In every RPG manual, isekai webcomic, or manga he'd devoured growing up, the hero always started with something—a magic sword, a mysterious ring, a talking animal companion.

  For a wild second, Tai let hope spark. He raised his hands, squinted one eye shut, and yelled, “Fireball!”

  Nothing.

  “Magic bolt!…?” Still nothing.

  The centipede didn’t even flinch. If anything, it tilted its grotesque head slightly, like it was trying to figure out whether Tai came pre-seasoned.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  If this were a game, Tai’s character sheet would read:

  Class: Confused Civilian

  Race: Unprepared Human

  1 × Walking panic attack in casual wear

  1 × Hoodie with bad luck enchantment

  0 × Useful gear or weapons

  1 × Special Ability: Desperation Monologue (usable once per existential crisis)

  Feat: Shout Anime Spell Names and Hope for the Best

  He vaguely recalled a book—or maybe a web serial—about an Australian-Japanese guy who levels up by fighting monsters. According to that logic, you had to defeat a creature to unlock your powers.

  Which was fine when you were up against a level-one slime or a basketball-sized hamster.

  But this? This was an end-of-dungeon, nightmare-fuel, boss-tier centipede from the eighth circle of hell.

  What am I supposed to do, boop it on the nose? he thought hysterically.

  Tai stared at the thing slowly inching toward him and whispered in a shaky voice,

  “This is not beginner content. I want a refund.”

  Tai ducked behind a big cluster of eggs. Maybe if he stayed very still, the centipede would lose interest? Like a T-Rex... that was vision-based on movement, right? Or was that just Jurassic Park nonsense? Tai couldn’t remember.

  His legs were shaking so hard he was probably making things worse. If the monster was vision-based on movement, Tai was basically a beacon of light.

  The centipede’s head swiveled, slow and deliberate, scanning the cavern. Its mandibles clacked. Its tentacles writhed and whipped through the air, as if tasting it. Tai saw viscous orange drool spatter onto the rocks below. Each drop hissed and smoked where it landed.

  Acid. Of course it had acid saliva. Why not?

  Suddenly, the creature’s tentacles froze mid-air. One of its many glossy eyes locked onto Tai.

  His breath caught.

  It sees me.

  For a second, man and monster locked gazes in the flickering half-light. Then the centipede released a shrill, chittering screech that reverberated through the lair. Tai’s hands flew to his ears at the piercing noise. The monster unfurled from the wall with terrifying speed, crashing to the ground. Its dozens of legs blurred as it charged straight for him.

  “Nope. Nope, nope, nope!” he squeaked, stumbling back.

  Tai spun on his heel and ran. Survival instinct overrode the part of his brain that wanted to curl into a ball and cry. He sprinted past clusters of eggs. The cavern exit—there had to be one, right?

  There! Far across the chamber, he glimpsed an archway of stone. If he could just—

  Mid-run, Tai’s boots slid on the slime, and with a very comical but very badly timed flail, he went down hard.

  “Help! Somebody?...” he yelled instinctively, knowing full well it was useless.

  The cavern was empty—just him, this horror monster, and those eerie, glowing eggs.

  Is this really how I die? he thought, scrambling to his feet.

  This had to be a dream. A vivid one. A very vivid, absolutely cursed nightmare.

  Tai squeezed his eyes shut and shouted, “Log out! Quit game! Wake up! Wake up!”

  He opened one eye.

  No menu. No pause button.

  Just a bus-sized centipede on his tail and a very real chance of dying in gym shorts.

  In a last burst of desperate hope, he pushed off the slick ground and resumed his sprint toward the exit. But it was hopeless—the centipede was closing in with terrifying speed.

  Tai’s dash was cut short by a sudden cascade of glowing symbols that exploded across his vision.

  “What the—?!” he shouted, stumbling. He nearly tripped over an egg, catching himself on the wall. The symbols hovered in midair, semi-transparent and flickering like a failing projector. They meant nothing to him—just indecipherable runes in a language he didn’t know. Some looked almost like letters or icons, but there was no time to figure them out.

  This is a really bad time for hallucinations! Tai thought frantically. Out of sheer reflex, he swatted at the floating symbols as if they were bothersome flies. They moved with his vision, refusing to be swiped away.

  Meanwhile, the thunder of the centipede’s approach shook the ground beneath him. He could feel the vibrations climbing his legs.

  A bold line of text pulsed urgently in the center of the glowing display.

  Tai’s panicked brain managed to latch onto a single word that somehow appeared in English: “Select.”

  “Select? Select what?!” he barked incredulously.

  Was this like one of those character creation screens from his games?

  Now? Really?

  Maybe his brain had decided to gamify his impending death for maximum irony.

  The centipede screeched again—closer, angrier.

  Tai risked a glance back. The enormous horror was plowing through its own nest of eggs in a frenzy to get at him, crushing some under its bulk with wet, popping noises. Maybe it didn’t care about keeping its babies intact—good to know, but not exactly comforting when he was between it and the exit.

  Tai stumbled backward, the flickering menu still monopolizing his vision. In the ghostly glow of the interface, he could just make out a list of options. They were labeled with arcane terms that meant nothing to him:

  Pyro Shard. Umbral Shard. Terra Shard. Aqua Shard.

  And at the top, highlighted:

  Aether Shard [Neutral] < Default >

  Next to that, in smaller text:

  Class > None

  No Path Selected > No path available.

  Another earth-shaking thud snapped Tai’s attention.

  The centipede slammed its body against a stone outcrop, trying to squeeze through a narrow gap between the egg clusters. It let out a frustrated hiss, spraying acidic drool wildly.

  A few sizzling drops landed on Tai’s jeans, and he yelped as the fabric smoked. He slapped at the spot, extinguishing the burn.

  His jeans now had a hole, and the patch of skin beneath stung angrily.

  Real pain. Real acid. Real giant monster.

  This wasn’t a dream or a VR sim. He was here—wherever here was—and about to become centipede chow.

  The floating text blinked faster, pulsing like it was demanding attention. Some kind of prompt?

  Maybe it wanted him to choose one of those “shard” things. Was this the worst possible time for an RPG pop-up? Absolutely. But if video game logic applied, maybe choosing a shard would actually give him powers. Or maybe it was just the universe’s way of saying: “You died. Create a new character while watching your own death.”

  He didn’t have time to ponder further.

  The centipede finally bulldozed its way through the narrow passage with a shriek, close enough now that Tai could see the reflections of egg-glow dancing across its bony hide, glinting in its many eyes.

  Desperate, Tai did the only thing he could: he mentally slammed the giant imaginary “OK” button on the default choice—whatever would make the damn menu go away.

  The interface flickered again, this time more urgently—almost like an error message.

  But Tai had neither the time nor the mental capacity to care.

  “Yes, yes, default, go! Accept!” he shouted in a panic, squinting and trying to focus—If mental commands worked like everything else so far…

  To his immense relief, the menu responded. A chime sounded in his ears—bright and incongruously cheerful, like he’d just booted up a friendly desktop assistant.

  The flickering text coalesced into a single message:

  Aether Shard [Neutral] – has been selected

  /////... Core Selection Complete.

  / No path has been found…

  / Class: Not available

  / Unexpected Anomaly

  / WARNING! Core [unstable]

  .

  .

  // UNEXPECTED ERROR...

  Tai couldn’t make sense of all of it, though he did catch the word ERROR just before the entire interface blinked out of existence, right as the centipede lunged.

  (I literally have over 100 pages just explaining the magic mechanics, history, traditions, biology, politics, and social structure - and I’m still expanding it.)

  So if you’re into this genre too… I’d really love to hear what you think.

  —Tai