Welcome to the New World

"...did I black out? Give me a break, I already have enough on my plate to deal with."

Helmut groaned and slowly, painfully slowly rose on his feet only to double over from a coughing fit. After spitting unhealthy-looking blackish mucus on the floor, he took off his glasses with lenses thicker than your mom and gently cleaned them. With this ocular monstrosity fully operational once more, he took a look at the environment.

It would seem that he was still in the same antique bookshop, situated in one of many back alleys on the Cui Hu city, China. He was busy searching for old medical books on ancient chinese medicine (you know the one - ripping off and boiling tiger's testicles, mixing them with ginseng and some such), but suddenly he was distracted by a brightly illustrated "Classic of Mountains and Seas" with a majestic/goofy -looking tibetan yak on the cover. Unable to help himself, he decided to indulge the sudden childish attraction to a bright picture book and started flipping the pages.

They were filled with beautiful illustrations of mythical creatures and picturesque landscapes, but the further in the book he got, the more messed up and distorted the imagery became. Soon, instead of graceful firebirds and flower-filled vistas, there were nothing but eldritch horrors with thousands of eyes rising from the lake and hellish views of devastated cities filled with dust and death.

Barker could sense the familiar feeling of his engine going haywire, but it all turned black before he managed to get his heart medication...

"Now that I think about it... Where did that book go, I don't see it on the gro-OAH?!"

The moment it was mentioned, the book materialized in his hand, only to be flung away out of reflex and vanishing into dust particles after reaching a meter away.

"Erm...I'm...sorry? Book? You there? Hello?"

It once again appears in his hand, but only after several second and slowly. The yak on the cover has his eyes covered with fur, but Helmut could swear he could feel a judging, offended stare.

"Come on man, don't pout - you scared me!... Jesus Christ, I'm talking to a goddamn book, am I losing it? So it's finally time for mental illnesses it would seem."

Deciding to ignore the weirdness of his predicament, protagonist opens the book only to be greeted with the sight of emptiness. It was less of a book and more of a folder now, with all pages but one seemingly torn out.

And that particular page perplexed him even more.

[Current location: Dust World]

[No stationary teleportation nodes registered]

[Amount of available teleportation nodes available: 0]

[Would you like to exit Dust World? Y/N]

[(note: you can enter Dust World only once a day, if you exit now you will have to wait until tomorrow)]

"..."

Helmut slowly closes the book and exhales. Yak lets out a vaguely irritated 'harrumpf!' as the magical stationery vanishes once more.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue."

Shaking his head, Barker exits the dusty store, only to be greeted with the sight of dilapidated buildings and dark streets with not a single soul around, a huge contrast to bustling atmosphere and crowds from before.

"Nope."

Without a second thought he turns around and re-enters the store.

After short consideration he returns back to picking books and shamelessly putting the useful-looking ones in his backpack, clicking his tongue when a couple of them falls apart due to their terrible state of disrepair. Then he casually looks around for any security cameras and ransacks the cashier too. Tries to, at least. As it turns out, all the faces of chinese leaders on the bills got replaced with portraits of Winnie-the-Pooh. The coins were left untouched, thankfully, and quickly laced the rogue's pockets. He may have been a young master of a rich family in the past, but the sheer amount of money spent on keeping his decrepit body going has left a hole the size crater in his pocket. This wasn't the first and surely wouldn't be the last time he's been a naughty-naughty boy with sticky fingers.

Deciding to stop being a wuss he ventures outside, taking mental note to whip out the temperamental book and whisk himself away from...whatever this place is...at the first sight of danger.

Walking at a leisurely pace and keeping to the shadows out of discretion, Helmut made his way downtown, taking in the views of ruin and devastation.

This little journey was mostly uneventful, if we discount that one time he felt numerous invisible eyes staring at him from an alley that looked like any other, making him bravely retreat and give a wide berth to that entire apartment block. When he sneaked a peek behind, he could've sworn that for a second he could see a woman in red looking at him from the window. Feeling the chill run up his spine, he switched to a brisker pace and kept on marching for a minute before getting out of breath and having to stop near a viewing platform overlooking a steep drop of the cliffside.

After using some of the plundered coins to buy potato chips and water from a (bafflingly) still working rusty vending machine, he made himself comfortable on a rickety wooden chair and leisurely rested as he admired the view.

A couple minutes later his intuition flared up, something was wrong, very wrong!

"OH MY GOD, MY SHOELACES GOT UNTIED! HOW EMBARASSING!!!"

Helmut quickly squatted to tie them before anyone noticed, and right at that moment he felt something fly over his head.

"!"

"..."

"Must have been the wind."

Decidedly ignoring whatever it could've been, he sat back and took out one of the medical books to study. Minutes passed, an hour, two. Helmut put away the manual, stretched and yawned.

"Who could've known you could use nettle sap for that? Pretty amazing, albeit primitive technique... But man, this Silent Hill -wannabe world rocks! So quiet and totally not dangero-"

An ear-piercing shriek broke the silence, followed by a loud crackle of electricity. As Barker turned around, he was graced with a scene of a giant blue slug chasing a man in guard uniform down the road, then lightning-mageing him into Kentucky Fried Chinaman.

"You wot."

It didn't even take a second before another chinese man ran outta nowhere in the direction of the slug with a fierce war cry.

"Guys, come on. Don't-"

All he could do was to watch on as the two sides indulged in mutually assured destruction.

Results: three dead bodies. One medium-rare human, one well-done human, and one goopy puddle of blue acid smoothie.

Barker scratched his head and shrugged. Can't blame him, what are you even supposed to say in a situation like this anyway?

With trained movements, he proceeded to check bodies for loot. Although all the previous times he picked pockets of drunkards, not corpses; this undeniably made the process a little bit awkward. A little bit.

"Now who have we here? Wei Xiao Bei, nice name. The wallet's contents... Are anything but nice. Come on man, only 50 yuan?"

Just as he wanted to start lecturing the still smoking corpse about importance of sharing, Helmut got startled once again by mysterious book that flew out of his body and proceeded to chase and greedily devour an orb of light that risen from Wei Xiao Bei's body. With an audible burp the book opened wide and grew two additional pages.

"...you done?"

With an affirmative 'moo!' the book flew back and nestled in its master's arm.

But before he could check the contents, a bunch of weird humanoid fish armed with wooden clubs ran out from behind the corner - no doubt attracted by previous racket. Noticing Helmut they didn't hesitate to charge at him, screaming "kaluluji!" and "zhiba!".

"Go tekeli-li yourself, dumb bastards! Ciao, ha-ha-ha!"

With a smug expression Helmut swung the book open with a theatrical flair and pressed on confirmation "button" to teleport out of Dust World.

[Preparing to exit, starting the countdown.]

[60...59...58...]

"...I hate you."

Taking care to keep his pulse in check, Barker invoked his inner Ganju Shiba and made a beeline towards the nearest tree, then proceeded with climbing onto it in a fashion you wouldn't expect from someone who looks like a dried prune.

[44...43...42...]

Six fishmen surround the tree, some attempt to climb it, but couldn't even make several centimeters up because of their unfortunate body composition.

Absolutely livid, they start striking their clubs at the tree.

"Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeeeeeh! Sock it, ya dumb wankas!"

[30...29...28...]

Despite not knowing any human language, these inbred cousins of Ichthyander easily catch up on the childish mockery and throw anything from pavement stones to empty cans at the insolent prey.

"Ow! You filthy buggers! Just you wait until I bring a sashimi fillet knife next time!"

For the remainder of time the bunch of monsters and a human kept playing a friendly game of baseball with random trash for balls and a tightly gripped 1L bottle of mineral water for a bat.

The mutual calling of the other side's mother a whore in english and fishovian(?)/waterish(?) came to an abrupt end when countdown finally hit zero.