Pathstrider in Teyvat (Genshin fic)

"The sky looks so pretty~ …"

Taking a deep breath through his nostrils and releasing it slowly through his mouth, Ethan relaxes further into the purple grass surrounding him. Never before has the air tasted so great! It was difficult to explain, it was just extremely refreshing.

"Wait… Purple grass?" Confused mutters escape his mouth before he belatedly realizes something is off. Hurriedly he rises to his feet and looks around him before his mouth inadvertently makes a confused noise.

"Eh?" As Ethan's brain was working overdrive to sort through the impossible sight before him, his mouth continued to fire off noises that anyone with sufficient intelligence would deem "confused" or "stupid" noises.

"Huh!? Hee? Haa? Bah-ha!" Ethan's brain finally sorted through the sudden influx of intense confusion, stemming from Ethan observing his surroundings. Harshly pinching himself on his thigh to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

"OUCH! Huh?" The pain was as real as it gets, so it likely wasn't a dream, but if what he is currently seeing isn't something straight out of a videogame then he'd eat his shoe.

"What the heck is this situation… " Sighing, while looking around "I'm on some kind of cliff with a great height which lets me see that my current surroundings aren't something you'd see on Earth. I'm pretty sure of my guess since everything is PURPLE!" Shouting a little at the end Ethan's voice disappeared into the distance.

The grass was purple. The tree leaves were purple. The ocean reflected the purple sky, filled with purple-hued clouds.

Ethan, as a person from Earth, had never seen such a picturesque scene with his own two eyes before and was in a trance.

*CRACK* *BOOM* *CRASH*

Ethan immediately snapped out of his daydreaming when he heard the sounds of thunder. His head snapped from side to side to look for signs of lightning strikes.

"I could've sworn those were close by. Anyway this shit weird, and I don't want any part of it. Should I just go back to sleep? Maybe I'll wake up in my bed?" Nodding to himself for thinking of such a good course of action, Ethan was about to lie down on the grass again to sleep when suddenly... *BOOOM*

"..." Ethan saw his life flash by his eyes. A lightning strike struck down, barely a meter in front of him. The noise was so loud that his ears were ringing, but he didn't even notice as he was too caught up in his thoughts.

'#*@/&! that was close. I ain't sleeping on this cliff... Nah-ha not in a million years' Mechanically turning around he started walking down the cliff towards where he saw a shore in the distance. His pace was anything but slow and steady. He was basically power-walking down the cliff toward the shore.

Ethan's state of mind wasn't calm enough to realize that to get to the shore he needed to walk through some woods. Woods he has never traversed before...

After running on auto-pilot for a while Ethan suddenly stopped when he saw the creature in front of him.

"Is that an electro slime from genshin?" Yes, in front of Ethan was a giant more realistic-looking version of the "Electro slime" mob from Genshin Impact. It was a big round bouncy purple ball-looking thing. It had an antenna stick pointing up from its head where lightning seemed to gather. To finish it off it had two round "eyes" in the upper middle part of its body.

"It looks kind of cute, to be honest." As Ethan was admiring the slime, it finally seemed to sense him and started waddling in his direction.

"That's surprisingly slow. I was thinking of running away, but if the slime is this slow I shouldn't be in any danger." Satisfied with his conclusion Ethan decided to stay and observe it. Perhaps the graveness of the situation had yet to sink in, but Ethan didn't seem to care...

"Huh? Where did it go?" After blinking his eyes Ethan lost track of the slime. Suddenly a shadow cast over him and he hurriedly looked up to see the electro slime floating right above him.

"SHIT!" Ethan's body was already moving on auto-pilot. While he cursed he threw himself to the side and barely managed to narrowly escape the slime's ground pound. Landing roughly, face first to the ground Ethan was eating dirt.

'Fuck! My nose hurts like a bitch. The grass tastes kinda bitter tho, wonder if it's poisonous with the purple color and all.' Stupid thoughts were crossing his mind when he suddenly felt like he was being electrocuted.

*BZT* *BZT*

'FUCK, I CAN'T EVEN CONTROL MY BODY. STAND UP, RUN, RUNN!! AAARGHH' As Ethan was getting electrocuted for the second time, his survival chances grew dimmer with every passing second.

'Is this how I die? Hopefully this is just a lucid dream. I pray to every god out there that I wake up in my bed aft- AAARGGH' This making it the third time Ethan's body was getting electrocuted, his consciousness was rapidly fading.

'Ugh, I'm so exhausted... I just wanna sleep for a while. There's nothing I could do anyway... It's not like I conveniently have some superpowers, a system, or even just a status screen or som-' Stopping his train of thought was the materialization of a "status" screen in his head. His focus was immediately grabbed by the red exclamation mark beside the "Path(s)" tab. He didn't even register anything else on his "status" page. Mentally "smashing" the exclamation mark he prayed inwardly that it was something that could save him from his current situation.

There seemed to be 7 choices under the "Path(s)" tab, with 6 of them being greyed out. His will instantly zoomed in on the only non-greyed-out option on and "clicked" it.

Suddenly, the air around Ethan became heavier, but only for a moment, before it went back to normal. Ethan didn't personally know what had changed but his body and mind were working overdrive on survival instincts. He used everything he could to turn his body around, so he was lying on his back before lifting a twitching hand and pointing his finger toward the slime.

"Disappear." Almost growling, it was obvious that Ethan was less than amused by his attacker's actions. The large electro slime that had been torturing him, and almost ended up killing him, disappeared. No, that wasn't the right word. It seemed to have been sucked into a yellowish void that closed within half a second as if had done its job.

'Finally some peace. I'm so tired... I'll just rest my eyes for a bit...' *snore* Ethan's consciousness finally gave out within 5 seconds of defeating his adversary. His body was working on overdrive trying to heal him from the burns, caused by the electro slime. Alas, Ethan was only human. Without proper medical attention, he might just succumb to his injuries. Especially since he was lying on a patch of burnt purple grass in a forest, possibly habited by numerous electro slimes, or possibly some other dangerous creatures...

But Lady Luck is a whimsical goddess, and luckily for our protagonist a man clad in a green adventurer-looking uniform stumbled upon him and hauled him back to camp to better treat him.

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A/N

Just dropped this chapter instantly when I finished it... Might drop a chap daily, til I reach around 10 -15 depending on my motivation and/or how much time I get to write.