Damsel In Distress

Dave sat in the opening for a few minutes. He had a lot to digest. The blue windows floating in the air, the strange talking skeleton, and most importantly the high-tech barrier that makes people naked are not things that one sees in day-to-day life. From the information that he had gathered till now, it was safe to say that all these were all evidence that he had been kidnapped by some sort of alien race with very high technology. And they are making him play this stupid game. Or he was really kidnapped by Gods.

What he didn't understand was, why him? There was nothing special about him, he was a normal man who lived in a small town. He didn't even have any sort of combat training. The only incentive that his kidnappers could get from him was the fact that no one would remember him if he vanishes from the town one day. And that is all.

After thinking about his new reality for a minute or two, Dave opened his status menu once again. He wanted to see what more this magical window could offer him. He opened his stats tab and another window manifested itself in front of him…

Stats

Exp-0/100

Strength- 5 [+]

Dexterity- 3 [+]

Agility- 2 [+]

Arcane- 2 [+]

Intellect- 3 [+]

Stats point available-0

Dave looked at the stats menu weirdly. He knew the meaning of the words Strenght, Dexterity, Agility, and Intellect. But he had no idea of what Arcane meant. And the numbers in the Stat Menu were confusing at well. Looking at the numbers he started thinking of how good he was when compared to a normal human. From what he could see his average stat point was 3, and this is a very low number. He had heard about these kinds of points like a menu from geeks who used to play DnD back in high school.

He opened his inventory next. A blue page full of boxes appeared in front of him. There were around 20-30 boxes in front of Dave. All the boxes were empty except for the first one. In that first box, a small emoji of a shield was blinking continuously. He mentally selected the box and a shield appeared on his left hand.

The shield in question looked like something from a medieval-style Europe. The shield itself was very heavy. He could see that the metallic shield was very thick and looked like it was pretty durable. It had two leather straps attached to it in which his arm went…

After experimenting with his status window for a while, Dave finally got the hang of most of the functions of his window. With only his mental command he could send some stuff to his inventory. But the only condition to send something inside his inventory is that he needs to make physical contact with the thing that he wanted to send.

When he opened the skill tab, he found out that he only had one skill in that tab. When he selected the tab, a message appeared in front of him…

Name- Common Tongue

Rank- Common

Description- Bearer of this skill will be able to become fluent in reading and speaking the common tongue spoken in Midgard.

Looking at the window, he didn't understand what the window was talking about. But when he started thinking about it, he realized he knew a foreign language. He was 100% sure that in his lifetime he had only learned the English language. But somehow as now he knew some other language. This was simply very bizarre but also a magical experience at the same time.

When he opened his quest tab, Dave saw that there was only one quest currently active. He opened it and a blue color box appeared before him….

Name-Race To The Top

Rank- GOD LEVEL

Description- Thrown into the world of Yggdrasil, players are given a chance to win big. A chance to have any of their wishes granted by the almighty transcendent beings. The chance to get their wish granted will only be given to the person who would venture through all the 9 worlds especially prepared to test humanity.

The winner will get it all, while the user will lose it all. Let the Race To The Top begin…

****

Dave was in a daze as he still could not believe that he was currently in such a situation. All of this seems like a dream. Yet no matter how many times he slapped himself, he couldn't wake up.

Tired of thinking and waiting at a place, he then stood up with the intention to explore the place. He knew that he was stuck here for now. And sulking around wouldn't help him at all. So with that, he stood and started looking around.

As far as he could see there was forest all around him. He didn't know where he should go. So he chose a random direction and started moving. His swords rested in his sheathe on his belt while his shield was back in the inventory. While venturing into the dense forest unknown forest, he started feeling like he was on an adventure of some sort.

After walking for about 15 min, Dave stopped. He looked around and he was still in a very dense forest. Looking around, Dave understood that walking aimlessly is very dangerous. He was feeling thirsty and he didn't have any water or food with him. And he didn't want to die out of thirst or hunger in an unknown forest. And now he was thinking about it, such a forest usually harbors one or two predators. He didn't want to come across any of them.

He looked around and soon spotted a tilted tree in some distance. The tree was titled naturally and quite big. As Dave looked at the tree, he got an idea. He immediately started running towards it. And then carefully he started climbing the tree. The idea was that he wanted to see whether he could spot anything significant like a mountain or a river. And then he would make his way there.

Dave jumped on the tree. The bark of the tree was very slippery, because of which he had a very hard time climbing up. As well as there was nothing that he could use to pull himself up. Thus after struggling to climb up for a minute, he finally gave up.

'And people say that we are descendants of the monkeys' Dave thought. He looked at the tree once again and started thinking of a way from which he could easily climb it. As his mind was working on the ways from which he could try to get up, it was then he heard a scream…

AAAHHHH!!

From the sound of it, the scream sounded like a female. It was very high-pitched. And it sounded as though it was close by. The idea of meeting another human here sparked curiosity in his mind. Thus Dave started running in the direction of the scream.

As he ran closer to the sound, he also started hearing the sounds of explosions as well. He didn't know what was the cause of the explosion. The constant sounds of the explosion were frightening him in some sense, but he could just not ignore the screams of a fellow human being.

When Dave got closer, he saw a small cluster of rocks in the middle of the forest. And he sense that the sound was coming from behind the rocks. The rocks looked very easy to climb, so he quickly got to the top rock slowly. And what he saw beyond the rocks blew his mind…

In his town, he had come across many kinds of wild animals. One of them being a porcupine. The porcupines back at home were easy to deal with. They were of the size of Beagle and only one baseball bat was enough to scare them away or beat them away. But the thing in front of him was unlike any porcupine that he had come across.

This thing was big. It was almost big as an overgrown Tiger. This creature had a long neck like that of a turtle. But its back was covered with green-colored quills like that of a porcupine. It sure didn't look like a porcupine to Dave, but it was the closest animal that this creature resembled.

The porcupine in front of Dave was bleeding from many places. And its head was facing a brown man in his twenties. This man was standing between two rocks. The only exit was blocked by the big ass porcupine screeching while looking at the man.

The interesting thing about the man was the fact that he was holding what looked like a cane. This cane had a blue color crystal at one of its ends and there was some sort of energy being emitted by the cane. The energy in question had formed a barrier at the entrance which was blocking the porcupine to come near him.

SCREE!!!

Dave looked at the whole ordeal with amazement and shock. After all, it is not daily you see a giant creature like this. While the way that the man was making a barrier to keep the creature at bay was also very astonishing. If he is not wrong then that guy was using magic.

It was then the porcupine screeched again and this time, and he suddenly bowed his head. Dave didn't understand what the porcupine was trying to do, but in the next instant, the porcupine did something that creeped that crap out of him. As the porcupine leaned forward, all the quills on his back started pointing towards the brown man behind the barrier. And then they were launched from his back to their target with incredible speed.

The quills directly penetrated the nearby tree. While they were not able to penetrate the barrier. But the force of the quills was able to form cracks all over the barrier. And from the looks of it, the barrier would not stay there for much longer. The only good thing was during the previous attack the porcupine has wasted all the quills that were originally attached to its back. Now his back was bare.

But it was then Dave saw something that send a chill ran down his spine. The quills of the porcupine started growing at an astonishing rate that was visible to the naked eye. And he was right that then the porcupine would be able to send another quill attack towards the man behind the barrier within a few seconds. And based on the appearance of the barrier, the man would not be able to sustain another attack.

"AAAHH!!!! KOI BACHAO!!!" the man yelled in a foreign language that Dave didn't understand.

It was then Dave started taking action. The porcupine's attention was occupied by the man in front of it, so it was safe to assume that it would not anticipate a sneak attack. Thus he quickly started circling the rock formation so that he could get as closer to the porcupine as he could.

He took out his sword and his shield. He didn't know whether his plan would work or not but he had to try…

As soon as he got near the big creature, he instantly climbed to the top of the rock. He positioned his sword in his hand. He took a deep breath and then quickly jumped on top of the porcupine's head. He wanted to cleave the creature's head from its body.

And with the momentum from his jump and the sharpness of the sword, it might have been possible.

But as soon as Dave made contact with the creature's neck, the sword sliced through its skin. But in the middle of the slicing sword got stuck as it made it to the neck bone. The sword got stuck and refused to move at all. And as soon as the creature felt the pain from the sword, it went berserk.