Chapter 1: Stuck in a Desert

On a bright night, with the sky aglow with the light of the full moon.

In a desolate valley sat a young boy on a boulder with a bloody longsword to his right.

He had a young-boyish look that indicated he was in his early teenage years, possibly 15 or 16. He was above average build for his age, about 5'7 in height, and looked like he would be a ladykiller when he got older, but for now, he was just cute. His black hair was in thin locks that were tied up in a ponytail, and he had dark skin that seemed to glisten under the bright night sky. He was wearing crude leather armor that looked to have been in use for quite a while, and he gave off an energetic and inviting feeling.

His surroundings, however, painted a completely different picture. He was surrounded by seven corpses that looked to have been killed in only a few minutes.

Each corpse only had one wound, which was a clean stab to the chest, and their expressions appeared to convey looks of surprise and terror as they died.

The young man on the boulder muttered something under his breath that only he could hear. "Status," he says before it went silent. After a few moments, he sighed in disappointment as if he had just wasted his time.

"Damn it. All these kills and not a single useful skill. What a waste of time…"

*Sigh*

"How the heck did I even get to this point? Being hunted by some third-rate mercenary group...well, at least I got some talent points."

*thump, thump*

Hearing the sound of footsteps, the boy used his hands to prop himself up from the boulder and sheathed his sword.

He had a smirk on his face while he stretched.

"Well, seems like it's time to go. Sounds like a whole lot of them are coming this time, and I don't think they'll be very happy to find their friend's corpses on the ground."

The boy then started running, blending into the darkness while running deeper into the valley.

_______

[Several Months Before]

"How the hell did I get in a desert!?"

Alex just woke up from a long night of studying, and when he got up to get some fresh air, he somehow found himself in a desert.

When he saw the terrain filled with endless sand dunes, he couldn't help but exclaim, and the noise attracted a few nearby animals. They looked at him from on top of a sand dune where they seemed to have been searching for food and then started running towards him while growling, bearing their sharp fangs.

When Alex saw them running towards him, he paused for a split second out of fear. Terrified, he ran back as fast as possible to lock all the doors.

The beasts ran at around 20 mph. They seemed to lack in speed, but they made up for it with their sharp canines that gave the impression of being able to cut with a graze.

When he locked all the doors, he finally got the courage to look through the blinds. Then, he saw that the beasts were already within thirty feet of his house, but for some reason, they couldn't come any closer. They seemed to be scared of something and Alex didn't have a clue what it could be.

"Are they scared of something in the house possibly? What could it be?" Alex contemplated. While he was contemplating, he saw that the animals didn't appear to want to leave. It looked as if they were ready to take a nap.

"Why aren't they leaving since it seems like they can't come in here? Are they waiting for me to come outside?" Alex realized something that made his heart drop. He quickly calmed himself down and looked at the beasts, clearly to try to get some idea of what he was dealing with.

He looked at the beast and what he saw was a group of animals that closely resembled honey badgers, except they were the size of polar bears. There were three of them, but one was visibly larger than the other two, which appeared to be the leader.

After taking a good look at the beast, he sat down on a couch in his living room to think about his current situation.

His house was a simple one-story bungalow that he inherited from his parents and was roughly 1,600 square feet. Even though the furnishings were nothing special, they held the warmness that could be felt from the elegant and loving hands of a woman. The house had all the usual things a house would have. It also had all the essentials a modern home on earth should have; at least by Alexandre's standard, which was a television, game console, and pc.

Even though his parents left him with their estate, they also acquired lots of debt from running their business, and when they died in a "car crash," their creditors decided to seize some of the inherited assets to pay it back, including the house.

So honestly, he only had a few more months left in there while the court proceedings went on.

Too bad for the bank, they would never imagine that the house would just disappear one day. Alex secretly wished he could see their faces right now.

Now that Alex had some time to think, he realized how utterly ridiculous his situation was for someone's house to be transported into a desert overnight. He thought, "This must be some weirdly vivid dream," so he decided to use an all-time proven method to test it. "It worked in the tv shows at least," he thought.

He decided to pinch himself, but he didn't really feel anything. Knowing that he was still hesitating, he put on a face of determination, breathed in, and pinched himself harder than he's ever pinched anything before.

"OWWWW!"

He didn't feel like he was waking up at all, but what he did feel was a stinging pain he had never felt before. He started blowing on it.

*pshhhhh*

"Even though this hurts to high hell, at least I know I'm not dreaming now," he said to justify the painful endeavor.

Now that he answered one question, he still had a big problem to deal with, and that was how to get rid of the beasts in front of his house. With those beasts still there, he couldn't go out and scout the area to find out where he was.

He decided to test their limits before he tried anything dangerous. He went to the kitchen to grab a few pots and pans to throw at the beasts.

When he finished gathering the items, he had a total of three pots, four pans, and seven spoons. He didn't take anything sharp because he had a plan for them if the test worked out.

He put the gathered items in a black trash bag and headed outside.

Even though he went outside, he was barely at the edge of the porch. He made sure to leave the door open and place the trash bag in front of him, so that there was nothing blocking him in case he had to make an emergency retreat.

After he set up his escape route, he took out a small pot and threw it at the beast to the right of the boss.

*bang*

It hit the beast's head, and then it got halfway up to pounce at Alex, but it seemed to remember it should be pretending to sleep.

Alex yelled, "Stupid beasts! Did you really think I didn't know you were pretending to sleep?!"

Then he threw two pans at the same beast. One hit its shoulder, and the other just landed in front of it, but this time, it just ignored him.

He then moved on to the others. He threw one of each item at the one to the left of the boss, but it didn't react either. He threw the rest at the boss, but it didn't react at all. He thought to himself that if he hadn't seen one of them move at the start, he might've questioned whether or not they were faking.

He then went back inside to get all the knives and other sharp objects. Then, he started throwing them at the beast. He started by aiming at the eyes, but he was too far away to be precise and whenever he put a considerable amount of force into the throws, they went wildly off course. Sometimes they would hit the bodies, but it would barely leave a mark because of their tough skin.

Running out of things to throw, Alex soon saw that he was getting nowhere, so he sat down for a few minutes to think of other ways to solve the problem.

He first had the idea of staying in the house until the beast got hungry and just decided to leave, but then he thought about the fact that there were three of them. The two underlings could just go and hunt for food while the boss could stay there and watch him. The underlings might even bring back more beast with them, so that idea was a no-go.

After scrapping a few more ideas, Alex remembered something. His dad had a crossbow.

He remembered how much his dad loved to hunt and how excited he was when he got it, he was praising it and talking about how top of the line it was and how good the specs were, but Alex never really listened.

He remembered that when his dad's business started taking off, he never had the time to go hunting anymore, and he eventually just left it in the garage where it had been collecting dust ever since.

He went to the garage through the interior door and, there he saw some scattered boxes.

On one of the boxes it wrote, "hunting tools," so he went in there and found a few knives in leather sheaths, an old hunting rifle they didn't have any ammo for, and finally a sleek crossbow with five bolts beside it.

He picked up the crossbow and blew on it to get some of the dust off.

He looked at it and saw that it was a little over two feet long. It was heavier than he thought it would be, weighing in at almost eight pounds. It was a camouflage grey that suited it perfectly.

Alex was relieved to see it have a scope because if not, he wouldn't have a clue how he would hit the beasts. He might've even had to get closer to them, and that would have made the danger increase exponentially.

He then took a look at the bolts, which were sleek black and looked very aerodynamic.

He also decided to take a hunting knife, just in case he needed to fight the beasts in close range, but he hoped that it wouldn't have to come to that.

Alex then went into the kitchen to clean the scope of the sniper, and while he was there, he decided to make a mixture of crushed up rat poison and cleaning detergent to coat the bolt in to try and slow them down just in case the bolt doesn't hit a vital part and kill them.

After preparing all the weapons he needed to fight the beast, he went into the living room to think up a plan. He came up with the idea of first setting up a barricade of furniture to slow down the beasts when they ran towards him. Though he knew that it wouldn't do much, he could only hope it would give him enough time to shoot a few more bolts.

After setting up the barricade, he decided that he would peek through the window and shoot at the bosses' eyes and hope it dies instantly, or at least disable it since it was the strongest.

He predicted the other two beasts would react in one of two ways, either run away scared or counterattack to get revenge for their boss.

Alex thought it unlikely they would run away, so he geared his plan towards them counterattacking.

He thought it likely that after the beast saw their boss killed, they would be stunned for a little bit before they started counterattacking, so he would probably only have a few seconds to reload before they reached him. He would have to take another one of them down when he reloaded so that there would only be one left by the time it reached the porch. Then he would handle the last beast accordingly.

After Alex got the specifics down, he decided to waste no time and start putting it into action.

He took out almost all the furniture from the house, including in his parents' room. He then set them fifteen feet away from the porch. He made sure that it was wide enough that it was difficult to jump over it but short enough as to not block his shot. Even if the beasts decided to avoid the barricade, it would still take them a few seconds to move to the side.

After he completed the task, he sat down to calm his nerves. He was kind of anxious because it was the first time he was going to try to kill an animal that wasn't an insect, not to mention an animal that size, so he was understandably tense.

But he knew he had to toughen up or he would die. It wasn't the time to hesitate because delays caused problems, and the beasts could suddenly decide to leave to get some help to deal with whatever they were scared of, then he would lose the initiative, and he would be screwed.

So without further delay, he opened the window, put the crossbow through the space, got in an optimal firing position to minimize recoil because he knew the first shot at the boss would be his only chance to kill it, otherwise it would be three against one, and he would surely die.

He took a deep breath to clear his mind of any distractions, looked through the scope to get a good shot at the bosses' eyes, then he fired.