Chapter 2 [Grimoire | Kyle]

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"Ungh…" Kyle groaned and rolled to the side, placing a hand below his cheek. He could feel an ache in his back and neck, which was normal these days, but there was another dull, throbbing pain in his foot—probably from where he’d twisted his ankle the night before.

Ignoring the discomforts of his aging body, he scrunched his eyes shut tighter to block out the morning sun and tried to fall back to sleep while it was still within his grasp. He silently cursed the designer who'd had the great idea to place an eastern-facing window in his master bedroom.

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Ugh. How the hell am I supposed to sleep through that?

His brow twitched at the thought. The noise was familiar, yet unusual, like trudging through a marsh with his waders on. Groaning, Kyle groped for his pillow to tug it over his head. Instead of the soft linen sheets he expected, his fingers dragged across…

Is that… grass..?

Slowly, the fog of sleep began to recede, and his senses sharpened. He shivered violently as the damp soil beneath him sucked the heat from his body. A chill breeze passed over his exposed skin, and hundreds of teeny points tickled and poked at him. The last dregs of sleep's warm embrace scampered away as all of his senses returned, and a searing pain shot up his leg.

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"Argh!" Kyle jerked his leg up and slapped at his ankle, eyes still closed. His palm slammed down on a sticky mass of something that had wrapped around his foot. He felt the thing splatter and pieces of it landed on his chest and face, burning his skin slightly. The pain in his leg lessened after swatting away whatever was causing it—but now the acidic substance was all over him.

With the back of his unsoiled arm, he wiped his face clean and attempted to pry open his eyes against the brightness of the morning sun. After a few rapid blinks, he managed to concentrate on his leg… and the filthy sludge that was slowly dripping off.

What the hell is this?

Kyle shook his leg violently and watched as the strange, black goo fell into teeny clumps on the ground. It sizzled and popped when it struck the morning dew. Eyes widening, he swiped the remaining substance from his body and quickly scampered back from the mess. He briefly eyed the silent, goopy mass before shaking his head and rubbing his eyes again.

What the fuck was that? An’ why am I outside..? An’ where the hell are my boxers?!

His hands shot to his crotch as another cold breeze wrapped around him. It only took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust now that he was active, after which he saw that he was in the center of a vast, open field—and he wasn’t alone. A nearby figure stole his attention before he could further make out his surroundings.

"Leah!" Kyle started to crawl toward his wife, then winced in pain. He glanced down at his shin and found that a large section had turned dark, and bits of skin were torn away—almost like a spider bite… but bigger. It was of no consequence at the moment. He bore the pain and rushed toward Leah, where he knelt beside her and attempted to shake her awake. "Leah! Leah, wake up!"

She didn't move. Fearing the worst, he sat her down gently and pressed his ear to her chest. Kyle sighed in relief when he heard the steady thumping of her beating heart. His body shook slightly as he rose to his knees and examined her body.

Leah was on the shorter side, her height a whopping five feet, two inches. They were complete opposites in a lot of ways. Kyle stood precisely one foot taller than the younger woman, and his bulk contrasted greatly with his wife's slim figure. Other than his size, his features were mostly ordinary, while her hair was dyed purple at the ends, and she had several piercings in both ears.

Only… her piercings were gone. The holes were still there, but the jewelry was gone. Kyle looked at her fingers, and then at his. Her wedding band was gone, but the tattoo he'd gotten in place of one was still on his finger, as were the others taking up most of the space on his right arm and shoulder. After that brief distraction, he shifted his attention back to Leah's nude figure.

Apprehension and fury rose within him, and his fists clenched tightly as he looked over the rest of her. He calmed slightly when he saw that there were no cuts or bruises on her toned legs or flat stomach. Her curvaceous chest, too, was unmarked, and he couldn't find any trace of her being violated. When he looked over her slender neck for any marks, his eyes were drawn back to her face, where her mouth hung open—and drool tumbled out.

Instantly, his fists unclenched, and he laughed heartily despite the ridiculous situation. She was fine, and even in her sleep, Leah had a way of diverting his darker thoughts. He took a deep breath and looked around, spotting his son and daughter lying still in the far distance.

Kyle didn't waste time in reaching them. His legs carried him swiftly to his daughter, who was just a few yards closer than her brother. Just as he had with Leah, he pressed his ear to her chest and sighed in relief when he heard her heart beating. As far as he could tell, that and her breaths sounded normal.

He jogged over to his son, huffing slightly as he performed the same checks. Satisfied that neither his wife nor children had been harmed, he stood and finally took a minute to observe his surroundings… What he saw made him frown.

There was… nothing. Well, almost nothing. In the distance, Kyle could see the canopies of the pines that were standard near his home. Despite them being so far away, it was obvious that they were much larger than he'd come to know… but at least they were familiar. Turning, he could see a few hills in the distance. Two, maybethree miles out, if he had to guess. Kyle’s frown deepened.

There's somethin’… familiar about this place. He winced and shifted his weight to his good leg. Damn, that stings.

Shifting his attention to his immediate surroundings, he could see the figures of others lying in the distance, the closest being a few hundred yards out or a bit farther. Beyond that, he saw more, though even with his vision as great as it was, he could only scarcely make out the features of the nearest. They looked to be male and female, but it was difficult to tell. Then, something struck him. He turned and judged the distance he'd jogged to reach his kids.

Now, let’s see… If I was layin’ there… That means Leah was about three yards from me. So, Rowan is at least a hunnerd yards from where I was, makin’ Maeve around the same. That's…

Kyle squinted and pictured the layout of his home and the approximate locations they'd all fallen asleep. His eyes widened. They were each lying right where they should have been, only… ten times farther. He squinted toward the figures he'd seen in the distance. If his hunch was right, those would be his neighbors, who lived just across the street. He was surer of this when he noticed the smaller figures not too far from them—their children, he was sure.

Rather than helping him, the observation left Kyle even more baffled. A few thoughts had crossed his mind, but none of them would really explain that coincidence. They could have been drugged and dragged here, yet none of them were injured—present party not included. There were no signs of bondage or footsteps in the damp earth other than those he'd just made. He did spot a streak of dead grass leading off toward the hills in the distance. He traced it with his eyes and noticed that the trail ended right where he'd woken up.

Wait… where’d that..?

"Leah!" Kyle jumped and hobble-sprinted back toward his wife, doing his best to ignore the pain in his leg. The black sludge that he'd kicked away earlier… it was moving—and it was heading straight toward his sleeping wife. The thing oozed forward at a snail's pace, but Kyle was nearly a football field's length from where he'd awoken. He wouldn't have even noticed if it weren't for the creature's dark color standing out against the bright green of the grass.

His breath came out in bursts as he reached his wife just in time to leap over her body and land right on top of the vile creatures. Like toothpaste squeezed from a tube, black goo burst from the beast, and he gritted his teeth as the acidic material burned against his already damaged skin. Not taking any chances, he continued stomping down on the vermin until it was splattered into oblivion. Despite there being nothing left but mush, Kyle kept on until a sharp pain in the bottom of his foot caused him to stop and jump back.

He collapsed tiredly to the ground, breathing heavily and staring at the steaming pile of sludge until he was sure it wouldn't start crawling after him or Leah. With a groan, Kyle awkwardly pulled his foot back to find a deep gash on the bottom of his foot, along with a cracked marble clinging to the ooze that was practically melted onto his skin. Blood seeped from the gash, mixing in with the dark substance.

Without warning, the gunk holding the marble moved—he jumped to his feet and brought his foot down on the ground as hard as he could. The sound of glass shattering reached his ears, followed by immense pain.

Kyle fell back to the ground and pulled his leg up to find the glass had shattered and the sludge that had clung so tightly before was dropping from his skin. That… didn’t bother him as much as the glass. The shards embedded in his skin turned to vapor… which then proceeded to drift into his body through the open wounds.

Ugh. I think I’m gonna be sick. His foot throbbed, but he didn’t attempt to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, and he needed to rest. It wasn’t like he had anything to bandage it with, anyway. Kyle’s chest heaved as he tried to suck in as much air as possible. Then, before he could gather himself, a mechanical female voice shouted in his head, causing him to jump and lose the little progress he’d made toward calming down.

"Congratulations Human, for reaching Stage 1!"

"Congratulations Human, for being the first Human to reach Stage 1!"

“Shit!”

It sounded as if it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Kyle jerked his head this way and that, searching for the origin of the noise as his mind reeled. He didn't have time to think before his thoughts were intruded upon again.

"Human. Please use your Grimoire to select a reward."

Human? Grimoire..?

Kyle felt a slight pressure above his brow as soon as he'd thought the questions. It felt like a needle had been jabbed into his temple, and someone was pushing the plunger, driving in some substance that didn't belong. The pressure continued to build, and just when he thought his head would explode, the tension vanished. He tried to roll to his side and instantly regretted moving.

A new pain assaulted him. The veins in his neck started to bulge, his face became red, and he grasped desperately at his throat when he suddenly found himself unable to breathe. Sizzling sounds erupted from the damp grass around Kyle as he writhed on the ground. His skin, it was… burning away.

Barely forcing his eyes open, he saw large sections of his skin bubbling as it melted, forming large pools of black sludge on the ground around him. Then, what was left of his body began to glow with a faint blue light. An icy chill wrapped around his mind, and he suddenly felt cut off from his body. The pain remained, yet it was distant… like he was feeling it happen through someone else rather than experiencing it himself.

With this new development, Kyle found himself better able to focus on what was happening to him. His body… it was changing. The feeling was disconcerting, and he could vaguely sense his bones becoming denser. His muscles squirmed and moved about beneath his scalding skin, and new tissue rapidly replaced that which fell away.

Kyle's body experienced rapid shifts between blazing hot and ice cold as it seemed to destroy and reassemble itself. In his mind, the frozen shield soothed and protected him. It allowed—or perhaps forced—him to experience every sensation without giving him a chance to slip into unconsciousness.

Then, more apparent changes began to take place. Thoughts and ideas began to flow more freely, while seemingly organizing themselves more swiftly than before. Kyle opened his eyes fully. The range of his perception had somehow expanded, and he could easily make out Leah's body through his peripherals. He found himself worrying about the hell that he was experiencing—though the concern wasn’t for himself, no—for some reason he worried that they would have to endure this same torture. And then, without warning, it was over… and something new demanded his attention.

What the—?

He blinked.

He shook his head and blinked again. It was still there.

Hovering just a foot or so in front of him was a thin brown book. Its cover was plain and tattered, like a child had used a few pieces of cardboard, some scrap leather, and a glue stick to make their own notebook. There couldn't have been more than four or five leaves of paper held within. It looked plain, but… it was floating.

Holy… shit…

Not forgetting the torture he'd just endured, he was skeptical… Even if whatever had happened to his mind made the experience distant. Now it felt like nothing more than a bad dream… or maybe something that happened long ago. Strange. Tentatively, Kyle reached out to open the book, but it did so of its own accord before his fingers could even brush against it. It opened to a page that was almost entirely blank. Almost… but not quite.

In the center, there was a single word penned in delicate script.

[Name?]

Kyle squinted in confusion. He looked away from the strange book, studying his surroundings and examining the lifeless goop near his bare feet. His eyes shifted from the substance to the book, to the towering trees in the distance, and back to the substance. Notions of fantasy and the hundreds of books he'd read began to fill his thoughts.

Was that… Was that a… Slime? An actual Slime? Oh shit. Did I just kill Rimiru?! No, no. It wasn’t blue.

He reached out slowly and tapped a dislodged fragment of the goop. It jiggled slightly from his touch but didn't move otherwise. He scraped off a tiny bit of the gel. The tip of his finger burned slightly from holding the gooey substance, but it seemed… numbed somehow. The damage was nowhere near what it had caused initially.

Kyle pulled his hand close to his eye, but kept it far enough that he wouldn't accidentally touch his face. After a dozen seconds or so, his fingertip sizzled slightly. He hurriedly wiped it against the ground, brushed off the strange material, then looked at the damage. Under the effects of the substance, he found the tip of his finger had turned dark, and there was a slight groove within the discoloration. It looked like a small amount of skin was missing, reminding him of pictures he'd seen where climbers had experienced frostbite.

That there’s some strong stuff. It's a good thing that critter came to me first. It could o’ gone for one of the kids. Kyle shuddered at the thought. Still, the strange beast had aroused his curiosity. Will more of the little boogers be comin’ this way? Are all Slimes acidic? And where the hell’d all the pain go? It’s like all the hurt just vanished.

He studied his shin and the bottom of his foot, even poking them a few times for good measure. It seemed that whatever happened to his body had repaired the damaged skin. So, seeing that he was no longer injured, he moved on. Getting stuck on a single subject wouldn't do him or his family any good. Then, after making sure that none of the goo had splattered on his wife, Kyle took a moment to gather his thoughts.

So, we have a Slime. A mysterious voice. And a floating book that's asking for my name… Was my whole neighborhood… isekai'd?

Excitement swelled within him before he could help it, and he caught himself grinning. Though, that smile didn't stay for very long. His family was with him, and if this was some kind of fantasy world…weren't Slimes supposed to be some of the weakestcreatures? He'd only gotten some of its ooze on him… and it had hurt.

Kyle glanced toward his wife, who lay sleeping only a few feet away, and his children, unconscious nearly a football field's distance from him. His frown deepened, and he turned his attention back to the book, hoping that it held some answers. It hovered there, unmoving and patiently waiting for his response.

Should I give it my name? Maybe I’ll give it an alias? One o’ my ol’ screen names? Hogar the Invincible! Ullyr the Huntsman!

"Kyle," he spoke softly, glancing around to see if anyone else was up. It seemed awkward to speak to a floating book, and he wasn't sure he wanted others to think he was a loon, not in this situation. Only a second had passed after he gave his reply when the ink on the page began to move.

It wriggled to the top center of the page, where it spelled out his name in that same flowing script. There was a dim flash, and his name started to change color. Watching the colors turn reminded him of staring at an oven while waiting for it to heat up.

From black to a dimly glowing orange… then from orange to a cherry red. Liquid spilled out from either side of his name, and strange symbols began to form from the fluid, seeping across the top, sides, and finally, the bottom to form an intricate glowing border around the title page. He grimaced. That chill he'd felt before had returned, and it seemed to become more intense the brighter the words became.

Is this cold… protectin’ me?

Then, without warning, the sensation stopped. The book slammed on the molten lettering, and a bright flash blinded him. Kyle blinked rapidly to regain his vision, and when he did, he found the book… or Grimoire, rather… had changed entirely. Where the tattered bits of a thrown-together book had just floated, there was now an austere leather-bound journal. It was still just as thin as before though much more pleasing to the eye.

It opened on its own, revealing the slightly altered cover page. Beautiful, charred illustrations lined the border. As Kyle stared at these images, he felt something had changed, not about the book… but about himself. He couldn't put his finger on it, and before he could consider it further, ink poured from the page's frame and formed more text within.

[Achievement | Host has Awakened and reached Stage 1]

[Reward | Innate Ability | Appraisal, Tier 1]

Stage 1? Is that like… Level 1 in a game?

Once Kyle finished reading, the pages of the Grimoire leafed over just swiftly enough that he couldn't view their contents. He marveled as the tome moved autonomously until it stopped at the back cover. Then, to his astonishment, a new page began to grow from its spine. Other than the fact that it was materializing from nothing, there didn't appear to be anything remarkable about the paper.

He waited patiently until it was finished, observing the strange phenomenon as the word 'Appraisal' penned itself in the top center of the page. The script began to change color… and then a scalding sensation tore through his mind. Kyle could feel that strange cold attempt to quell the blaze, but it wasn't enough. He pressed his hands to his temples.

There was a loud thud as the book slammed shut, and suddenly… it was over. It stopped as abruptly as it began, and he could feel the peculiar chill wriggling around within his mind, swiftly cooling the lingering heat. He panted, heaving in deep breaths as he tried to right himself from his fetal position on the hard ground.

“Can’t ya just… give me… a warnin’?” Kyle sputtered.

The Grimoire hovered before him… and if he didn't know any better, he would swear that it had purposely placed itself between his eyes and the sun's light. With its shadow blocking the glare, he could clearly see the changes. It was filled with odd, scorched markings similar to those around his name on the first page. He used the back of his arm to wipe away the sweat that had formed on his brow.

Now what..? Kyle hesitantly reached out a hand, flinching slightly as the Grimoire danced back from his reach. That pain had been intense, and he didn't care for another taste. Yet…

How am I supposed to work this thing?

"Land. Stop. Uhh, Book, come closer. Close?" The book slammed shut, and Kyle flashed a boyish grin. "Open!"

He begrudgingly forced himself into a seated position as the Grimoire returned to the first page. The initial prompt had vanished, and a new but similar one had taken its place.

[Achievement | Host is the first Human to Awaken]

[First Reward | Ability Stage Advancement | Only one Ability detected. Innate Ability, Appraisal, shall be advanced to Stage 2]

[Second Reward, Option 1 | 1 AAP. 1 IAP. Random Stage 2 Inventory Vessel]

[Second Reward, Option 2 | 1 AAP. 1 IAP. Random Stage 2 Weapon—Small]

Inventory? As in, magical storage space, Inventory? What the blazes are AAP and IAP supposed to be? An’ what the hell is Tier 2?

Kyle shook his head and focused on the choices before his mind could wander too far. Nothing indicated his decision was timed, but he wasn't interested in finding out the hard way and possibly losing out. He currently had nothing on his person, a fact he was constantly reminded of by every chill breeze that flowed across his skin.

He briefly skimmed the second option, but it took little convincing for him to choose the first. A small weapon would probably be something like a knife, and might’ve been the better choice for a naked man in the wilderness, but if the vessel did what he hoped it would do…

But… ain’t no one out here to give it to me… Kyle looked around, not seeing any alcoves or stations where he could pick up a reward. An’ how do I go about choosin’? Well, it seems that simple commands are workin’ just fine, so…

"Option one."

There was a light pop, and seemingly out of thin air, something with a long strap fell into his lap from the space above him. The sudden noise made him jump, and the item was tossed to the ground from his movement. He shook his head, laughing as he shook his head… then, he froze.

Kyle heard the sound of paper slowly fluttering in the wind. He turned toward the tome and found the pages shifting toward the back. They stopped on the final page, where the word Appraisal was seared into the top. The words began to glow…

Oh no… Not again…