The shadows were deep, barely penetrable. I stumbled over crumbling and pitted stones as I chased Nyssa through the corridor, the light from the door fading with each step forward. Sparks lit the darkness a few dozen feet ahead as Nyssa’s claws scraped against the stone. She was getting farther and farther ahead.

  “Nyssa!” I hissed.

  She kept running. Something beyond her moved. A half dozen pairs of red-glowing eyes, only a few feet from the ground, opened and turned toward us.

  When I was a kid, I watched a nature documentary about the nighttime lives of lions that was filmed with special infrared cameras. Whenever the lions would look toward the camera, their eyes would shine, glowing in the darkness. That image of a predator’s glowing eyes got lodged in my mind, and for years after, whenever I’d go outside at night, I’d look in the darkest shadows, worried I’d see two glowing orbs peering back at me. It took years, but I eventually got over that habit and the fear faded.

  Those glowing red eyes Nyssa raced toward brought me right back to my childhood, staring into bushes hoping to see nothing. I nearly fell as I skidded to a halt.

  “Nyssa!” I screamed as she continued forward, “STOP!”

  More eyes opened in the darkness. Sinister. Unlike with me, the number of eyes and their malevolent intent caused zero hesitation in Nyssa, intense determination strangling any fear I felt through our bond. She barreled forward, slamming into one of the creatures, its eyes disappearing. Some of the eyes remained fixed on me, but most turned to where Nyssa and her victim had fallen. I still had no idea what monsters were before me, but Nyssa was surrounded.

  She was going to die.

  She had been all excitement and ferocity as she’d charged forward. Pain, not extreme, shot through the bond, fear breaking through. It was this that pushed me past my own fear and into the fray. The thought of her determination and excitement being snuffed out the moment she exploded into the world drove me to act.

  I charged forward, thoughts of self-preservation dissolving. In their place, . It rose unbidden from depths of my own making. Barely, I kept it in check, allowing it to push me to act.

  I shifted my hammer to my left hand, opened my inventory, and quickly focused. A stone only slightly smaller than a volleyball landed in my palm. I whipped it forward. Red eyes disappeared as it smashed into the horde.

  And then I was upon them. Whatever the creatures were, they were just shorter than my belt line. I waded into their ranks with swinging hammer and stomping feet. Red orbs bounced and darted around me, trying to stay away from my flailing weapon while they clawed and bit at my legs.

  A growing bloodlust muted the pain. I bellowed as my hammer crunched bones and split skulls. I had a sense of where Nyssa was, her ferocity rising above her fear to match my own tide of anger. I swung both hammer and fist as I flung the little beasts from atop her. She emerged from beneath their bodies with tearing claws and rending teeth.

  We fought and we killed.

  The dark corridor stilled, and I swung my gaze about, looking for my next target. There were none. We were alone. Nyssa came close, her body and emotions taught with expectation. The fight had shaken her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

  I felt an affirmation come through our bond, but I could tell it was part bravado.

  “Give me a second,” I said. I wanted Nyssa to take some time to rest and, hopefully, decide to turn back, and I also had the compulsion to go through my regular gaming tasks.

  I thought of my fragments, and a number appeared on the edge of my vision: 218

  Name: Henry Harding

  Age: 28

  Height: 6’6”

  Weight: 360 lbs

  Class: N/A

  Race: N/A

  Bonded Companion: Nyssa - Onyx Griffin

  Fragments: 218

  Level: 3

  Attributes:

  Body: 6

  Mind: 6

  Faith: 0

  Luck: 10

  Affinities 0/1

  Passive Abilities 0/3

  Skills 2/4

  Heave - Level 2

  Heavy Weapons - Hammers - Level 3

  Spells 0/0

  ! I suddenly felt very stupid. Ever since I’d woken up, I’d felt physically great. I’d climbed a large portion of a mountain, run back down, and waded into battle, all without being completely exhausted. Yesterday, that level of exertion would have put me on my ass for a week. I really should have guessed sooner that my stats had changed. I’d gained points in my body stat, which would explain the added feeling of strength.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  How?

  My fragments had decreased, and I’d leveled up three times! But I hadn’t done . I stared at my stats. What did body even mean? Suddenly, like a dropdown menu on a website being opened, the body stat expanded, revealing three more stats.

  Strength: 2

  Resilience: 3

  Agility: 1

  I turned my focus to my mind stat, and it too opened.

  Fortitude: 1

  Awareness: 4

  Intellect: 1

  My body and mind stats had both increased by four and three, respectively. They were clearly a total of these sub-attributes. Why were some higher than others?

  I focused on faith and luck to see if they had any sub-attributes but nothing happened. I was a little frustrated. I felt like I was still missing something about leveling and attributes, but I wasn’t going to complain about how I felt. I felt great. Better than great. I felt like how I imagined little, healthy children feel. I had energy in spades, and my body felt strong, resilient. I supposed that made sense, given my strength was two and resilience was three. Agility being my lowest body stat also made sense.

  “I wish there were a way to be notified when my stats changed,” I said to myself.

  .

  The sound surprised me. Hope that meant what I thought it meant.

  "Ah, well,” I said, dismissing my character sheet. I could figure it out later. I opened my inventory, put my hammer away, and looked around. My eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out the monsters at my feet… kind of. I bent down and inspected one that still had an intact head. Squinting, I realized what I was staring at.

  “Goblins.”

  I looked at the carnage, lumps in deep shadow. Maybe two dozen goblin corpses lay strewn about. I couldn’t make out their skin color, but if I had to guess, it was green. Their limbs were thin and long, their ears pointed. I supposed I couldn’t be sure they were goblins, but it seemed like a good guess.

  “I really need a light,” I said, squinting closer at a goblin’s mouth. Long, thin teeth extended over the bottom lip. I’d never seen anything in any game, book, or movie where goblins had such long and sharp incisors. An idea struck me. “Are these fucking goblins?” The darkness and glowing red eyes made a little more sense if that were the case.

  I checked a few other goblins, and they too had the same long, pointy teeth. The others had their faces caved in, making it impossible to tell what their teeth had been like. I shivered. I went through the bodies, touching each with the intent to loot, causing the monsters’ inventories to open. Most had rotten clothes and a few coins. Besides those, I found two basic daggers and a small metal device called a torch. I took the daggers, the torch, and the coins.

  I stared at my inventory, realizing I had come upon a problem. My inventory was eight squares by eight squares. With my hammer, which took up four of those, all sixty-four slots were taken up. My inventory was full.

  “You don’t happen to have an inventory?” I asked Nyssa. She huffed, which I interpreted as a negative.

  “Damn.”

  I thought about discarding some of the most-likely-to-be-junk items, but figured I could dump them as I found better junk. “I hate inventory management.” I looked up at the ceiling. “You could have just given me an infinite inventory, Dev. Plenty of great games do!”

  I pulled the torch from my inventory. It fit nicely into my hand, though a little small, which was normal for me. It reminded me of a lighter but with a metallic shield on one side. I found a little notch on its side and flicked it like I would a lighter. Light bloomed before me, a cone bringing my surroundings to detail. It had been a slaughter. Viscous blood, red so pale as to be nearly pink, was everywhere. My sandals squelched as I took an involuntary step back.

  I looked to Nyssa to see if I was the only one feeling sick. She sat on her hind legs, licking her talons clean of goblin. I retched. I felt disdain come through our bond as if she were telling me to get over it.

  I looked down, and on the floor at my feet was a goblin whose head had been crushed in by my hammer. One of its eyes hung stringy from a socket. I retched again and rushed forward, trying not to step on any dead bodies.

  When everything had been shadows and shades of gray, I’d stepped around the corpses easily, but now that I could see their broken faces and spilled brains, my feet had no grace. I stumbled and fell, crashing atop a few final bodies that had fallen at the edge of the battle. I retched a third time and scurried off the bones and flesh and onto the bloodless stone beyond the fight.

  I looked down. Pale blood and gray brain matter clung to my shirt. I brushed it off with a yelp and then placed my hands on my knees, nausea nearly taking me to the ground. I took a few breaths, then stood. I disgusted, but not nearly as much as I would have thought. It was the grossed-out you’d get from being thrown up on by a toddler, not the type of grossed-out you’d be when covered in blood and brain matter.

  “At least it doesn’t stink,” I said under my breath, still taking deep breaths. If there had been a stench to match the carnage, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my food down.

  Nyssa did a final lick of her talon and then made her way to me, jumping from body to body. She landed beside me, but where I faced the way we’d come—the doorway, a prick light far down the corridor—she faced further into the darkness. I turned to look in the same direction, holding the torch before me.

  “You want to keep going?”

  Her feelings weren’t so cavalier as they’d been when she’d first darted into this place; I now felt trepidation through our bond. She was nervous, but her nervousness only served to underscore her resolve to push forward. She chirped in the affirmative.

  I looked down at my legs, finally noticing their dull pain. My blood mixed with the goblins’, dark red against their pale. I pulled up my torn pant leg to assess the damage. My legs were covered in shallow scrapes and pairs of puncture holes. I’d been bitten at least a dozen times during our fight.

  I dismissed the thought. Usually, according to most versions of vampirism, becoming a vampire required more than just a bite.

  Nyssa looked up at me, her head bobbing with expectation. She wanted to move forward, but not alone. I had no other option. I couldn’t leave her here, and she’d continue by herself rather than leave with me.

  “All right,” I finally said. Let’s go.

  by Protohn

  What if the Phoenix from the X-men wound up in the Lord of the Rings, fighting to protect Middle-earth? That’s the question at the heart Rise of the Fall of Man. When Gene Grey is granted powers by a superhero based system after his untimely death, a cosmic upheaval lands him in the fantasy world of New Venturis. Now blessed with immense powers outside of the world’s system, Gene must tread the line between being the savior they need to end their centuries long war and being the great destroyer who upends the way of the world. Follow him in the first volume of the GreyMatter Omnibus: Rise of the Fall of Man as he begins to grasp the depths of his power and clashes with the Dark Lord’s forces. Will Gene become the hero New Venturis needs? Or will his aberrant powers bring about the fall of man?

  What to expect

  - Gay male protagonist

  - A love at first battlefield sighting

  - Sci-Fi Psychic powers meets Fantasy magic abilities

  - Siege Warfare

  - Isekai LitRPG gone wrong with elements from 2 different systems, think Mutants and Masterminds meets Pathfinder

  - A nerdy protagonist who's kindhearted to a fault

  - Intense battle scenes with cozy character building interludes

  - Meddling cosmic entities

  - Sentient systems

  Volume 1 status

  Over 66,000 words on Patreon with 47,000 available to read on Royal Road.

  Daily chapter releases Monday through Friday at 10am est.

  Cover art by the amazing illustrator, with typography by the fantastic, !