the roar

Aldrich woke up in his base, on the couch. He stretched after waking up and observed his new leather armor and leggings. Looks like he happened to get new clothes in the real world and the nightmare realm at once.

Aldrich looked at his prized weapons strewn on the floor and picked up the long sword, this one gave him a better feeling than the short sword. Today he was going to hunt outside too.

Name: Aldrich

Age: 15.5

Strength: 2+

Agility: 1+

Endurance: 1+

Vitality: 2+

Intelligence: 1+

Spirit (black): 2+

Essence: 12

Abilities: eyes of insight Lv.1

Condition: blood of ######

Aldrich decided that he would upgrade his spirit by the end of the hunt.

Aldrich walked out of the house after deciding his direction today. Aldrich looked at the sky and suddenly realized he had never seen the sun here. A fact that made him subconsciously uncomfortable.

Aldrich didn't waste time and chose one of the random houses on the left street. The house he chose was the smallest and most humble of all the houses in this street.

This house, like most houses was sealed, Aldrich broke the wooden boards and waited outside. Aldrich didn't plan on entering rashly. Husks were attracted to noise.

He didn't know how many husks there were here, so he planned to draw them out with the noise of the broken wood. Fighting in the darkness of the house is risky, but out where there's better light? Now that is obviously more advantageous to him.

Aldrich waited by the door and sure enough a husk came running. Aldrich hid by the door and when the husk was about to pass by the door he put his foot in its way.

The husk tripped and fell face first into the tiny stone steps that lead up to the door. Even Aldrich felt a little bad about it. A once childish prank could be utilized like this.

He didn't expect it to be that brutal, but of course he didn't give the husk any time to get up and stabbed right through it.

Aldrich breathed easy as he absorbed two red orbs. He looked back at the open house but there was no more movement. He went inside cautiously.

He searched the house which was much smaller than his base but it was empty. He felt a little stupid for choosing his base as the base when it was jam-packed with husks.

If he could've found this house first then maybe he wouldn't have had to die twice.

The empty house had much less furniture compared to his base and only had two floors.

The husk had no weapons to speak off.

Perhaps this was his easiest kill so far. Aldrich looked all over the house for anything valuable and in the only bedroom in the house he found a strange leather poket.

Aldrich opened it carefully and to his surprise he found coins in it. They were dirty but in a good condition. There were three silver and five copper coins.

The copper coins were nothing he had seen before, they were square shaped and had a hole in the center of the square. While all the coin in the empire were circular. The silver was normal circular shape.

But it continued to get even stranger, the imperial copper had Acladon I's palm on one side and the final wall on the other. But this square coin had the likeness of a winged tiger on both sides. The likeness was unclear, it was blurred somehow.

The silver of the empire had the sacred peak on one side and the sword of Acladon I on the other. This silver didn't have any marks perhaps eraser by time or they just didn't have any.

Aldrich stared at the coins in his hands unflinching, he closed his eyes in resignation. There were many clues before this but he always chose to ignore them. Clues that lead to a terrifying conclusion.

That this... place, might be a completely different world. A world that even the empire didn't know about.

Another valid and more likely possibility is that this could be like the Eastern continent, a far away land that will sooner or later be discovered by the empire.

Still that didn't explain how he can appear here not to mention he had revived from death twice. Perhaps, this 'death' isn't real?

But... that feeling, when he recalled that terrifying and disgusting feeling of death he couldn't really tell. What is real? What is not? He found himself unable to ascertain.

Aldrich returned the coins back into the pouch and took it with him. He decided to get back to the base, he didn't feel like hunting anymore.

On the way back, the eternally unchanging town suddenly experienced a change. There was a roar. It was so powerful and deafening, before he realized it, Aldrich was rolling on the ground covering his ears.

It seemed like the roar was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Aldrich started uncontrollably scratching his face, violently tearing away at his skin, his eyes rolled backwards.

It felt like an age had passed and yet it also felt like the time to blink, just as suddenly as it happened it ended. After the roar ended he managed to stop his hands from tearing his own face apart. Aldrich got back up, held his sword with both hands and looked around wearily.

Aldrich had expected to be ambushed by some kind of monster or another but nothing happened, seemingly everything was back to normal. And his face was hurting like hell.

However that silence was once again shattered, this time by a plethora of sounds of crashing and howling, screaming and shouting, unintelligible cries erupted from all over the previously quiet town.

Aldrich recognized some as the familiar moaning of husks hundreds, thousands of them all at once. And others were completely new to him. Aldrich looked around him and found the husks were all trying to break out from the boarded houses along the entire street.

Aldrich was sweating buckets of cold sweat. The previously quiet but terrifying town had become loud and even more terrifying. Abruptly he noticed something from the side of his eye heading towards him, very quickly.

Aldrich wielded his long sword with both hands and attacked in a downward slash. But his opponent, a giant roach as tall as his knee, was much nimbler and faster than expected.

It dodged the attack and jumped latching onto his leg. Aldrich was taken back and out of balance after missing the strike. Soon after regaining his composure he quickly noticed the giant roach was gnawing at his leg.

Fortunately his new leather leggings protected him. For now.

Aldrich debated on striking is down with his sword but feared he might hurt his own leg. So he found a better alternative.

Aldrich looked at the corner edge of a building right behind him and kick it with the leg that the roach was attached to. Disgusting yellow pus exploded out of it and splattered everywhere.

Aldrich pulled back his leg and was surprised that he actually got one orb out of the giant roach.

'Even something like this can give me an essence orb?'

Aldrich suddenly looked behind him and saw four roaches emerging from the fog and heading towards him with the same speed as their now dead kin.

Aldrich focused and moved his hands to what he felt was the best way to hold a long sword to have his right hand at the top end of the grip and the other hand at the bottom of the grip, closer to the pommel.

This will allow for a much wider range of arm movements with the sword.

Aldrich now had a better understanding of these monsters so he waited until right before the collision before stepping forward and sidestepping to the right.

With a single slash he shattered two of the giant roaches and injured the third. The last one managed to latch on to him and started climbing up his body. Before it could get far however, Aldrich stent it flying with a punch.

It landed on its back, revealing many disgusting legs and struggling in vain to flip over. Aldrich stabbed right through it and turned to the last injured roach. Aldrich killed this one like he killed most roaches in the real world, he stepped on it.

Almost on que, he heard a crackling noise behind him and he saw dozens, no, a hundred giant roaches all swarming in his direction.

Aldrich decided to cut his losses and run. As he made a run for it, he was overcome by that hunger and then he realized he only got the essence orbs out of three roaches, missing two of them.

He almost turned around but forced himself to keep running. Soon the feeling of hunger subside a little but it had not disappeared completely, a force wanted him to go back and get the orbs, an unbearable voice at the back of his head compelled him to obey.

Aldrich was aware that he died and revived twice but he didn't know for certain how many times could he revive? What if his next death was also the last?

Besides the feeling of death was horrible beyond words, he would rather lose two orbs than go through that feeling ever again. No matter how valuable these orbs were his life was of greater importance.

Aldrich reached the base successfully and closed the door firmly behind him.

Aldrich took off his sword and dropped it in the weapons junk pile. He then walked back to the room he first saw when he was restrained on that strange bed by the old madman.

'Now that I think about it didn't that madman stab me in the heart with some kind of red crystal? I wonder what that was about?'

Come to think of it he never came back here after he first left. He looked at a book shelf, he picked one at random and opened it. Unfortunately he couldn't understand a single word.

It wasn't like the common tongue of the empire at all. Completely foreign, absolutely alien to him.