Awake thee Tarnished

A young man in his early 20's with short straight blond hair, blue eyes, with a simple black T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers awakes on cold hard stone covered in a worn yet still fancy rug, "Ugh, my head", he groans aloud, "what happened, all I remember is everything going black and- oh wait, I remember now... and here I thought I was gonna have a normal reincarnation"

He simply rubs and cracks his neck as he stands to look around the room, its a simple mideval looking church that looks like it hasn't been cared for in decades, with a large statue on one end, and a big wooden door at the other, with bent broken and rusted weapons strewn about so he picks up a simple broken straight sword that looks more like a dagger with most of its length broken off. After a couple practice swings which let's him reconfigure his new muscle memory, when he goes to leave however, he notices a corpse of the finger maiden with a trail of blood leading outside and a glowing message on the floor next to her in a language he doesn't understand but as soon as he touches the lettering he hears a womans voice whisper what sounds like a plea in his ear, "please, help me, I don-", before it cut off as he steps back in shock, looking over at the maiden he can see due to her skin coloration she has probably been dead for about a week so he thinks it couldn't have been her who spoke, but in her lifeless hand he notices a shriveled finger, so he approaches cautiously yet he takes it without issue.

While here he looks at the maiden up close, in doing so he notices a slash across the side of her neck,

"An artery slice, professional from the looks of it, clean and without any extra damage, heartless bastard let her bleed to death", he says with a hardened look before he moves towards the large door at the entrance to the church and begins to push and notices that no matter how much or little strength he puts in doesn't matter, it opens at a slow constant speed, once open enough he steps through the door and almost falls flat on his face as he trips over something, looking at it however, he notices its another corpse but its a female astrologer with the side of the neck drenched with a dark red, "Guess I know now who wrote that message"

Noticing the gear is mostly intact however, he quickly takes their white outer coat which didn't have blood due to the inner hood soaking the blood with the leather belt and pouch from the corpse's body and puts them on, afterward he tosses his emergency weapon that he grabbed while equipping himself with the Astrologer's shortsword sheathed on his left hip, with the Astrologers glintstone staff strapped next to it, "these will probably be the only useful things this person has, I might have to come back later anyway so it's fine, what did they have in here"

After he finished searching the corpse, he proceeds to open the bag on his waist and rummage, pulling out dried meat and berries which seem to be rations, a rune which is good, and a starlight shard which is great, seeing thats everything important, he continues on down the rickety wooden staircase and across the gross moldy rope bridge that thankfully didn't break under his weight causing him to sigh in relief before making it to a black and gold mist wall in an archway, causing him to get very nervous, "*exhaaaale* you got this, you'll die but you gotta push through the pain, after all you'll come back so it doesn't matter right? *sigh* This is going to suck getting used to", he says before he pushes through the mist.

After walking through the mist he sees a large area with a large statue towering over everything and he admires it all a little more before approaching the statue and drawing the shortsword as he begins mentally preparing himself as he hears *WHOOSH* *SLAM*, and a Grafted Scion lands in front of him and rushes towards him as soon as it lands, immediately going for a stab which he sidesteps and slashes with the shortsword before it's blocked with its shield before quickly slashing him across the chest from his right shoulder to his left waist, cutting him in twain before he can even recover his sword an inch from the shield, "GAH!", he shouts out as Scion is splashed with his blood, thankfully after dealing such a blow the abomination, feeling superior over the lowly worm under its feet, simply screeches before jumping over towards a nearby castle with thorny holes in the side as the Champion bleeds out from the deadly blow.

________________________________________

Awaking once more, the Champion gets to his knees as he notices his shirt is still torn even though both the astrologer's coat and his wound have mended, so he tears the rest of the ruined shirt into strips of fabric that he wraps around his hands for better sword grip later, after that he stands before noticing two flasks clipped onto his belt on his right hip, one red and one blue, "wonder what these taste like", he mutters before before unclipping the blue one and takes a small sip, instantly recoiling at the taste,

"It feels like if ice water had a 98% caffeine concentration!", he says as he clips the flask back, all the while scrubbing his tongue with his nails to get the repulsive taste from his mouth, "God this sucks, well time for the tutorial area, I know how to use a sword from the bonus I got, but I'm not used to it, so practice is always good", he says as he begins to climb down as he slowly finds footholds in the rock, not having been a climber was something all champions had common however, as he misses a foothold halfway down and he slips, falling right on top of a torch-wielding commoner, which groans in pain of multiple broken bones due to having likely not eaten in weeks, the champion simply scrambles to his feet afterwards and stabs at the commoner which is guided by his muscle memory, allowing it to hit its mark.

[+19 runes]

"alrighty then, time to do the tutorial"