To say it had been an interesting week would be putting it mildly.
Everything that had happened after his supposed ‘death’ had seemed like some strange fever dream, something that he could only imagine after passing out after playing too many video games or after a long session pouring over a monster manual.
His meeting with the ‘Demon Lord’ had certainly seemed like something out of a game or maybe a bad anime. A second chance at life in a new world, with a new body, summoned to defeat a great evil? Magic, monsters, heroes and an end boss waiting for him at the end of his journey? Sure, it was better than ‘you all meet in a tavern’ but it was still pretty basic. Although, he had to admit being summoned by the great evil himself was a nice twist, as was the fact that he was being summoned as a low level creature instead of your normal adventurer.
He’d have to remember this when he woke up so he could tell his gaming group; it could make for a fun campaign if played properly. For now he might as well play along and pick a creature; he looked over the options briefly before picking the weirdest option with a smirk.
“Sure, I’ll be a pixie. I always end up playing the Cleric anyway.”
----
Jacob opened his eyes on a new world. And promptly began to panic.
Realisation crashed down on him almost as harshly as that car did. He’d died. Just walking across the street, minding his own business and then SPLAT. That was really all it took in the end, he’d had his whole like planned out but one reckless action and it was over.
Although, it wasn’t really over if he was here. He really had been given a second chance after all.
That said looking out of the crevice he had woken up in he wasn’t sure how much of a chance he really had. The cave system was teeming with life; plentiful, varied, aggressive and violent life. Goblin’s swarmed everywhere, breaking apart glowing crystals and carrying them off, bullying anyone who got close and often times killing them. Glowing balls of light floated serenely through the air right up until they randomly decided to fire balls of light at whoever they felt like, sometimes sending the creature running and sometimes resulting in a fight that left either participant dead. Little lizards crawled around, almost invisible on the cave floor before dozens of them appeared all at once to ambush and kill a larger creature before devouring it whole. Slimes and giant rats and countless others filled the cave as well.
And he was just a tiny little pixie with fragile wings and no way to defend himself.
So he stayed in his crevice, or as high in the cave as he could and just watched. He didn’t seem to need to eat for some reason, his body being sustained by some other force, though as the glowing crystal near his crevice grew dimmer he began to feel weaker. Watching the other pixie’s in the cave gave him some answers; the crystals seemed to be of utmost importance to them and therefore to him as well. They seemed magical in nature, or so he assumed, and pixies seemed to naturally feed off of this magic somehow, either draining it slowly or breaking off pieces and absorbing it all at once.
He discovered that they could cast spells in this way as well. A simple healing spell and some kind of shield as well; he should have remembered that from his talk with the Demon Lord but with the shock of his awakening it somehow slipped his mind. This was how he first found out about the system notifications as well, a little mental message box appearing in his mind the first time he saw each spell being used, and if anything made him question the nature of his reality it was seeing a real life video game notification pop-up. Maybe this really was a dream after all, could he be in a coma?
He supposed in the end it didn’t really matter. This was his reality now one way or another.
Jacob retreated to his crevice after this and began practising his magic. The two spells he had were basic and not all that useful in a fight, but they might keep him alive; the healing spell was exactly what you would expect but what he had thought was a shield turned out to be something else. The field it created around himself didn’t actually stop anything from passing through it, but it did make his skin feel harder somehow. Maybe it was some kind of defensive buff? He would have preferred a proper barrier spell, but this was better than nothing. He had seen other pixies cast in on others in the cave; did that make him a support class? With this wimpy form he doubted he was a self-buffing Paladin-type. Or was thinking about this in video games terms the wrong way to go about this?
It was hard not to, the way these message kept appearing in his head. Low MP, no MP remaining, used Mana Crystal, MP restored; he had seen those message a lot in the past few days. At least restoring his mana was easy, just standing near one of those crystals was enough for it to start to regenerate or he could break a piece off and restore it instantly.
All of his practice has made Jacob fairly adept at using his spells as well, to the point where it was nearly second nature now, but he wasn’t any closer to figuring out how he did it or, he felt, learning anything new. Maybe it was time he ventured out a bit?