- Prologue -
"What the hell...?"
The first thing he noticed was a stench that jabbed straight up his nose.
A rank, sour, acrid smell—the smell of death, one he'd never encountered before, yet it made his whole body recoil on instinct.
That alone told him this place where he now lay was not the cozy blankets of his studio apartment from the night before.
He opened his eyes.
A night sky so fantastical it could never be seen on modern Earth welcomed him.
Countless glittering stars, and a blue moon floating softly in one corner of the sky.
He looked around.
It was too dark to see clearly, but even so, death stretched out before him in such abundance that he knew at a glance.
A battlefield where blood and steel had mingled.
The traces of a hellish battle filled the wide field to overflowing.
The corpses of countless fallen humans and bizarrely twisted, blackish beasts.
No matter how he looked at it, this wasn't the modern world—hell, it wasn't even Earth.
What the hell is going on?
Before he could even fully register his bewilderment, a sudden ringing pain shot through his head.
"Nngh—"
A groan slipped out between his lips.
He'd collapsed onto the ground, soaked with something—water or blood, or maybe both—and had barely managed to collect himself when
a frantic voice sounded inside his head—a voice that was definitely not his own.
[Get out of there right now!!!!]
He didn't know whose voice it was, but his body moved on reflex.
He rolled across the muddy ground to dodge, and something sharp slammed into the spot where he'd been standing seconds before.
"Grrrrr—"
Five blood-red eyes, as if nothing remained but ferocious wildness and killing instinct.
Its long, torn snout was packed with huge, pointed teeth—not the teeth of a carnivore made for chewing and tearing meat, but the teeth of a killing machine built to bite enemies to death.
The strange, rippling pitch-black fur covering its body—could it even be called fur? It had a dark sheen, looking less like fur and more like metallic thread.
Four legs planted on the ground. Four more legs twitching from its shoulders and back. And something like a long tentacle.
It resembled a wolf, but only resembled one. It was a bizarre, grotesque form that could never exist on real Earth.
But at the same time, it was a familiar shape.
The art style had changed from anime to 3D realistic, but not so much that he couldn't recognize it.
"<Heuksu>?"
That appearance belonged to the <Heuksu>, the main enemy of the mobile anime gacha game <Abyss Flood>—the game he'd been playing just last night right up until he fell asleep, before getting so pissed off that he'd gone and cussed it out all over the community forums.
The creature had been rendered in 3D realistic style so perfectly that he recognized it at a single glance—so much so that it made his skin crawl with revulsion.
His otaku instincts, honed over years of games and novels, immediately reached a conclusion.
It was absolutely absurd... but at the same time, he'd hit the jackpot of that exact scenario every otaku has imagined at least once.
A normal otaku might have been beside themselves with excitement, but he felt fear before excitement.
And for good reason—this <Abyss Flood> he'd been dropped into was a godforsaken world that would probably rank near the top of any "worlds you never want to visit top x" poll among otaku.
"Krrrr—!"
Boom! The monster kicked off the ground like a bullet leaving a muzzle and lunged at him. Watching its shadow bear down on him, he muttered.
"I'm fucked."
No, what the fuck... I never sent a 5,700-character complaint message or email to the author or the game company, you know?
Sure, I did set the board on fire a bit.
Ah...