Brute Force Opening: Draft 3

I've been working on Spear of Destiny and Brute Force, a new LitRPG series, at the same time. Yes, I am insane. But I'm enjoying this story so far.

There's been drafts of this published here before, but the story has evolved considerably from my first ideas of it. I'd be interested to know what you all think.

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I woke up with a mouthful of sand.

"KhhhCK! HhhhACCK!” I flailed out with all four limbs, spat and coughed. My body felt massive, like two tons of sausage stuffed into an over-tight skin. The sun beat down on my naked skin with a dull and distant heat. 

Hearing kicked in first, then smell. The smell of the ocean was overpowering, so vivid I could almost see it before I opened my eyes. The light flooded in with a lance of pain that drilled right between my eyes and all the way into my skull. My head felt like it was full of cotton wool.

Something was severely, monumentally fucked up. For one thing, the last time I’d blinked, I’d been driving down a highway hundreds of miles away from the nearest beach. For another, I couldn’t remember a damn thing. Not just about the last hour, or the last evening. When I searched back for memories of something, anything, there was nothing. Not even my name.

My entire life before this place was one big black pause.

"Pfehh!" I hacked more sand, then lashed my tongue out around my... muzzle?

Now just wait a goddamn second.

Writhing, I thrashed over onto my side and forced my eyes open against the painful light. Then I looked down at my hands and arms and felt my sense of reality disintegrate.

Jesus fucking Christ. I wasn’t human anymore.

My body was huge. Not huge in a good way. My forearms were corded with hard muscle and covered in an armored obsidian exoskeleton. My hands were larger than dinner plates, and tipped with wicked slashing claws. Four fingers, no thumbs. Where the fuck were my thumbs?

I pawed at my face in shock, trying to make sense of it. Instead of a normal human face, there was a nightmare. A long muzzle. Six nostril vents. A lipless maw with double rows of huge, sharp teeth. My eyes were small, set underneath raised ridges of hard bone that flowed back behind my head into… what the FUCK were these?

I rolled onto my belly and struggled up to stand on splayed legs, and as I did, the four armored tentacles attached to my shoulders shot down around me like spasming harpoons. Off-balance, I pitched onto my face and ate dirt a second time. 

"KhhhACK!" The sand sure tasted real.

In the corner of my eye, a bar appeared. The bright green bar had 1999/2000 points. Other holographic meters hung below it. A Stamina bar, slowly filling up from zero. A teardrop-shaped Hydration Meter. A steak-shaped Nourishment Meter, slightly below half full. There was a temperature gauge beneath that. It was 88 degrees in sunny Wherever-the-Fuck this was.

Swaying stupidly, I peered around in disbelief. To my left, the ocean hissed and burbled. The humid coastal wind slithered over a rough outcrop of mossy rock bluffs to my right, vanishing into the dense jungle further back. As beaches went, it was nice. Crystal clear water. White sand. 

While I couldn’t hardly remember shit, I knew there hadn’t been a beach in the world this clean for at least fifty years. It had to be a virtual reality of some kind, which meant there’d be some kind of interface. A menu, an access portal, something. I tried to speak with my shark mouth, but all that came out was a garbled growl. Next attempt was to try calling it telepathically. "Show menu!"

There was no menu at first. Instead, blazing lines of holographic text appeared in the air in front of me, read out by a cool, genderless voice.

[Welcome to the Crucible, Vance.]

[Now you have awoken, you have one choice to make.]

[Fight and survive, or die.]

The text cleared. Two buttons appeared. They were red, crawling with hot embers. One read 'Fight'. The other read 'Refuse'.

Vance. The name felt familiar enough I believed it. However I’d ended up here, I’d used my real name to log into this place. 

I stared at the buttons for a few long moments. "Show terms and conditions."

There was no response. The Fight and Refuse buttons hovered patiently.

"Server Information, motherfucker! Where the hell am I?!"

[If you do not accept the Terms and Conditions of this EdenFRAME, you will be erased in 4.9 seconds.]

My oversized heartbeat stuttered. 

An EdenFRAME?

If this was an EdenFRAME, that meant I was dead.

"AUK!" When I tried to reply aloud, all that came out was a deep honk. I scowled, pulling my gums back from my teeth. "Fine! Whatever. Let’s fucking fight."

The Fight button crackled with flames, then flared with white light and vanished. The Refuse button crumbled away into pixelated dust. A three-panel holographic screen came up in their place. The User Interface looked as cheap and tacky as the fire effects. Old fashioned, like a V.R headset video game from fifty years ago.

This kept getting more surreal. EdenFRAMEs weren’t games. They were post-mortem virtual realities: V.Rs so sophisticated that anyone who could afford to upload their brain data to one retained their citizenship and their right to vote. My life before now was nothing but a big black pause, but I knew I hadn’t been rich enough to afford an EdenFRAME. And even if I had been, I wasn’t going to live out my days like this: some kind of cross between a shark, a dragon, and a xenomorph. With head tentacles.

The right panel was a picture of 'me' with some empty tables. Yeah, I was definitely not human. The center panel was a mix of information. Up the top was basic information about me, plus a Stats Table and other numeric data. The stats were pretty basic, and each was color-coded:

Vance [Temp Name]

Greater Legion: Chalkydri

Tier: Legendary

Level 2

Unclaimed

Vitality (Red): 1320/1320 HP 

Instinct (Orange): Average

Carry Weight (Yellow): 151kg (332lb )

Stamina (Green): 330/455

Ingenuity (Blue): High

Damage (Indigo): 130dps

Willpower (Violet): Average

There was no way this was a real post-mortem V.R. It was a game of some kind... but I didn’t rightfully recall going through any kind of character creation. 

Under the stats were the other table rows. Fatigue. Hydration and Nourishment, this time in bar form. Beneath those was my Equipped Items slots and a quickbar for me to insert quick-use items. I could only equip three kinds of wearables: a saddle, ‘barding’, and… collars. 

The left-hand pane contained what looked like some kind of skill tree, currently greyed out. I tried to close the menu, but instead of shutting down, the narrator began to speak again.

[Welcome to Survival of the Fittest, Vance. You have awoken in the Crucible, the arena in which the game of life and death is played. I will inform you of the Rules.]

[You are a Gladiator. The Crucible is your testing ground. It is the vessel in which Champions are forged.]

[To Ascend from the Crucible, you must find and slay the Four Servants of Demiurgos: the Daeva.]

[An ancient law requires that all Gladiators must battle the Daeva in single combat, without the assistance of other humans. However, you share this world with the Legions, powerful monsters who are permitted fight by your side. Enslave the Legions and train them to fight alongside you.]

[You may have two Legion companions at any given time: One Greater Legion and one Lesser Legion. Do not assume that Greater Legions are any more cunning and dangerous than their smaller kin.]

[The Legions will not obey cowards. If you wish to command a Legion, you must subdue it and attach the Command Collar unaided. All players are issued two Soul-Bonded Command Collars. You will find them in your Inventory.]

[The only time that rules apply to combat are in the Colosseum. Legion-only battles have formal rules which must be obeyed. The Colosseum Master will advise you of these rules.]

[If you achieve the impossible and defeat the game, you and your Legions will Ascend. Your reward is eternal paradise on the Platinum EdenFRAME of your choice, in perpetuity.]

[There are no other combat restrictions. Other Gladiators will try and stop your rightful ascent. Kill or be killed.]

My heart began to rattle and thump in my chest. I bought up my sheet again. There was no Life Counter on any of the panels, no Command Collars in my Inventory. The information I was being given sounded like it was meant for a human player. But I wasn't a human. I was Chalky… chalki… whatever the fuck it said.