A Challenge to the World

"You are very smart."

Kai heard his mother's voice through the water. He did not know where he was, but it was dark, and he felt numb, floating through a sea of memories that seemed so very far away. There were faint images in the water that flashed as he passed them by through the currents of his mind.

He saw himself sitting at his cramped dorm desk, six cans of empty energy drinks crowding around him as he scowled at lecture notes. Then there he was clicking away in front of his low-end laptop as it whirred away, its cheap fan trying to keep up with running Champion's Rift while his head tried to always step one step ahead of his competition to make up for frame drops and lag.

"You can live free."

His mother's voice came to him louder now, clearer, though still quite muffled in the flowing stream of his consciousness. He felt comfort in those words, and he drifted towards them. Then red tinted the water around him. Bright red that could only have come from a torn throat.

--

Kai woke up with a jarring start, panting heavily. He was shaking, clutching at himself like at any moment, he was going to freeze to death. He saw nine curious, glowing pairs of eyes, some yellow, some red, peering around him.

It was pitch black, and within a moment's notice he willed his system to heal him and manifest kappa eyes capable of seeing in the dark.

>>>

Host restoration unable to be initiated. The host is already in stable condition.

Manifesting kappa ocular systems.

Stock level: 10/100

Advice: Seek out more biomass to restore stock levels to stable levels.

>>>

Kai heard the system's voice ring in his head, his status written down and glowing in the bottom of his vision. It seemed like in the midst of a fight, the system ran on a functional form of auto-pilot that took cues from his thoughts as soon as they came into his head.

Hence, he could keep his healing passively on so long as he kept willing it and manifest parts without any delay.

The system had not done that before, when it was at level 0. Kai had to continually will himself to heal, and he had to continually hear a confirmation from the system. He instinctively understood this to be part of the compatibility boost he reached between himself and the system after getting to level 1.

For now, though, he had more immediate concerns to deal with. His eyes turned a gleaming yellow with tiny little black dots for pupils, and the darkness around him lightened up as he gained night vision. The nine kappas from before were staring at him, but their posture was not threatening.

More like in awe as they crowded around in a semicircle a few feet away from him.

"He's awake! Look!" said one of the kappa as it pointed a webbed finger at Kai.

"Yeah, I am," said Kai as he sat up. He felt the ground under him was soft and warm. A layer of grassy bedding atop cold, moist earth. "You guys gonna deal with me now?"

He did not see any hostility from the kappa, and he certainly hoped they had none. If they did, he did not see much of an escape, and he had no biomass left to fight with. An immediate scan of his surroundings indicated he was somewhere underground, and any potential exit lay behind the crowd of kappas.

"Deal?" One of the kappa looked around to his brethren, and they all shrugged.

"Kill me," said Kai.

"Kill you!?" The kappa jumped up and shook his head with enthusiasm. "No! You beat our boss! That means you're our boss now!"

"Huh," said Kai as he narrowed his eyes, getting a read on the rest of the kappa. They seemed to agree, nodding to each other. "Guess you guys healed me, then? Thanks for that."

"No, you heal by yourself in your sleep. Do all humans do that?" said another kappa, a female judging by the tenor of her voice, though appearance wise, aside from having red eyes, she did looked no different than her male counterparts.

"I like to think I'm unique, but hell if I know. Maybe humans here can do that. You're asking the wrong person," said Kai. He questioned his system.

'You can heal my injuries even when I'm unconscious?'

[Inquiry registered. To answer: Affirmative, provided the host's injuries are lethal and require immediate restoration. However, restoration of the body alone will not restore the host's consciousness, and its rate will be significantly slower.

Advice: do not rely on automatic restoration. Avoid unconsciousness to begin with.]

'Gee, tell me something else I don't know.' Kai paused in his thoughts. 'But thanks. You've been saving my ass more times than I can count.'

[Appreciation registered] was all the system said. Kai shrugged and focused on the kappas.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"In our home," said the male kappa that first spoke to Kai. He seemed to be something of a spokesperson, talking the most confidently while the rest mostly nodded along with him.

"Which is where?" said Kai.

"Underground. Where scary hanzaki won't find us," said the kappa.

"More details. Underground where? Did you have to drag me far?"

"No. There is big rock nearby. This under that. Safe, so no worries!"

"Okay." Kai once again took another look at the kappas, making sure that there was not any ill intention in their eyes or body language. None. Just curiosity. The innocent, almost child-like kind. He started to feel a little less tense. "You all got something for me to eat?"

=====

Kai munched on his fourth fish as he sat cross legged in the kappa burrow. It was a weird looking fish that looked like koi but with glowing red fins.

He ate it raw as the kappa did not have any concept of cooking, and he did not mind the taste. It was incredibly fresh, tasting better than any cheap ass sushi he had the privilege of having back home, and he did not waste any opportunity to raise his biomass.

He ate the fish completely, bones and head and everything even if it was a little disgusting and hard to stomach. One thing he quickly came to realize as he ate was that his teeth had an interesting property of being able to chew through basically anything.

Probably a side effect of his system, but one that he could likely use in combat when it came down to it.

>>>

Biomass restored.

Current stock: 50/100

>>>

It looked like the fish, much like the glowing mushrooms, gave him a lot more biomass than did normal meat or plants. Good thing to note. Creatures and plants that seemed special would be better to hunt.

"So," said Kai as he swallowed down the last of the fish, licking blood off his fingers like a wild animal. He felt a little barbaric, but then again, he probably should not really give a shit about table manners at this point. "Don't you all hate humans? Why help me?"

"Humans bad, but you okay," said Ryo, the name of the male kappa that usually spoke up.

"Humans bad?" Kai sat back and eased up to talk. Seemed like for the first time in forever that he felt like he could relax even the slightest bit, and he relished the feeling. "Had a bad run in with us before?"

Ryo blinked a few times before looking around to his fellow kappa, and they shrugged at him.

"We never see human before. You the first," said Ryo plainly.

Kai nodded his head slowly, confused. "That so? Then where's the hate come from?"

"Old boss Raku said they all mean," said Ryo. "But you not. Want to play games? Raku never played games with us."

"Hm." Kai began to suspect something about the kappa. "How old are all of you?"

"Eight," said Ryo.

"Me too."

"And me."

"Me! Me!"

And so on and so forth until every kappa had confirmed that they were just children.

"We all come from same hatch," explained Ryo.

"Gotcha. Then Raku, what was he to you all? Aside from being a boss?"

"After this, we can play games?"

Kai took a moment to answer. He had spent so much time in his head being serious, worrying about life and death every single moment that it took him a few seconds to unwind down.

"Or not," whimpered Ryo as he sensed the silence. It was evident that Raku had not treated them with much kindness at all.

"No, it's okay. Sure, we can play games. You'd have to teach me, though," said Kai. "First off, though, tell me about Raku. How he came to be your boss and all that."

Ryo told the story. "Raku says we used to live down the stream, in the big lake. There were lots and lots of us. One hundred, he said, and ten scary bosses like Raku. But humans came down eight years ago and chased us away. Raku says he saved us and raised us here."

"Damn," mumbled Kai. He did not regret killing Raku because it truly was a life and death situation with no other alternative. But he did have some sympathy for the monster if its backstory was one of essentially escaping genocide.

"Raku always say to be grateful we alive. Always made us play the fighting game, even when we were too tired. Said that without being strong, we would never go back home," said Ryo.

"Well, do you want to go home?" asked Kai.

Ryo shook his head. "No. Like it here. Not too scary. Lots of fish. Hanzaki usually slow and sleepy. Outside is scary. Forest scary. Up the water scary, down the water scary." He clapped his hands, a squelching sound coming from the gesture as the moisture laden skin slapped against itself. "But here, not scary. We can play games here! Boss, you promised to play games. Let's go!"

===========

Kai spent the next few hours learning the games the kappa played and joining in with them. They had variants of a lot of children's games. Using rocks to play marbles or the fighting game which involved drawing a ring and trying to shove each other out of it.

There was also a hide and seek game done in the water, and during that, he committed to memory all the details about the stream.

The stream water had powerful currents easily powerful enough to sweep the average man off his feet, and the source of that power came from a crashing waterfall far upstream. The waterfall was enormous, standing atop a cliff face dotted with protruding tree branches where birds occasionally rested before flying off.

The stream itself was interesting, too. It was quite wide, capable of probably fitting a soccer field in it. Huge boulders dotted the width of the stream, and they were not anchored to anything, simply floating in suspended animation even as the raging current crashed around them.

Under the stream, there seemed to be a lot more space underwater than seemed physically capable. The water extended deep down enough where at a certain point, light did not reach, and it was from this zone onwards that the kappa did not dare go down for bigger and meaner creatures like the hanzaki slept there.

Downstream, the water poured into another waterfall flowing downwards, and when Kai came to the water's edge, he felt his breath utterly taken aback.

There truly did seem to be an entirely new world sprawled in front of him. The waterfall poured down into an enormous lake that must have been hundreds of feet below. He realized he was on a mountain, and not just any ordinary mountain.

A floating one that cast a great big shadow below that sprawled over both lake and vast swathes of great forest. In the horizon, he could spot the peak of another floating mountain, though at this distance, it looked like a tiny grey speck covered over by clouds.

There was absolutely zero sign of civilization. No smoke. No lights. Nothing.

Just pure, unadulterated nature. Verdant greens and clear and skies and blue waters. What the world must have been like thousands of years ago before the approach of manmade cities and industry.

He felt it hard to believe that there had been any humans here. In a way, he felt alone. He would have to survive in this great big new world by himself without anything from his past life to help him.

Could he do it?

No, it was not a matter of could. He had to. He clenched his fists as he stared down the vast expanse of this world. He would challenge it with all he had.

He would not rest until he could bring justice to his mother's death. She had never failed him before, and he would not fail her now, not even with the entirety of fate and circumstance and whatever other abstract principle people brought up when they gave up fighting against him.