"…Ugh… I swear… never touching tequila, or those damned questionable fungi, again…" Steven Miske groaned, consciousness returning amidst waves of dizzying pain.
His head felt crammed inside an old-fashioned steam engine running wildly off its pistons, each throb of his pulse a devastating hammer blow within his skull.
Was this the aftermath of the data overload, or… something else entirely?
As his head pounded, countless chaotic fragments of knowledge—like corrupted data packets—churned in the recesses of his mind.
He forced his eyes open. A garbled "Neural Connection Error" message flashed briefly across his retinas, quickly replaced by a sight that almost made him hurl up his stomach contents.
Instead of the expected soft luxury med-bay bed or at least a cold, sterile floor of a laboratory, there was… mud?
And a patch of overgrown grass reeking powerfully of humus and some indescribable, "primordial-grade" stench—a foul miasma blending the body odor of some colossal unknown animal with the pungent sap of unfamiliar plants.
It was a smell Cecil's supposedly state-of-the-art environmental sampling module would likely crash trying to analyze!
"Hey, Cecil?"
he called out tentatively to the omniscient AI butler supposedly residing in his head.
"I am here, Sir."
Cecil's infuriatingly precise, clipped London accent materialized in his thoughts. A sliver of relief cut through Steven's panic;
at least he wasn't entirely alone… provided the NeuraSync chip in his temporal lobe was still fully functional.
"Initial environmental scan complete. Atmospheric composition: Oxygen approximately thirty-five percent; carbon dioxide levels nominal; multiple unknown fungal spores and volatile organic compounds significantly exceed Star Alliance safety standards. Humidity eighty-five percent; ambient temperature thirty-two degrees Celsius (nearly 90°F). Local geomagnetic field exhibits unusual stability. Conclusion: There is a ninety-one point seven percent probability that you are no longer situated within your original spatio-temporal coordinates."
"No shit, Cecil!" Steven scanned his surroundings, a cold dread trickling down his spine despite the heat.
The sky arched above, a blue so pure it felt almost violent.
Sunlight struggled to pierce the dense canopy layers of gigantic, alien-looking ferns and ancient trees towering to impossible heights, finally splashing down in mottled pillars of light that danced with fist-sized insects, their wings iridescent, their colors lurid as if spawned from a fever dream.
The earth beneath felt preternaturally solid, ancient, radiating a sense of immense age.
And beneath that solidity, a faint, almost subliminal, constant tremor resonated from deep within—like some impossibly vast creature shifting in its slumber, or perhaps… the World Tree, Ignis, drawing breath?
No skyscrapers. No mag-lev vehicles. No convenient drone deliveries—only an endless, menacing expanse of primeval forest teeming with unknown dangers.
And closing in… a swarm… a swarm of gigantic mosquitoes, their wings a blur like desperate propellers, their proboscises gleaming coldly like hypodermic needles.
Getting tagged by one of those… wouldn't that mean instant exsanguination?
"Fuck! This has to be a dream! Even the latest holo-immersion rigs aren't this realistic!" He fiercely pinched his thigh;
the sharp spike of pain was brutally real, yanking him fully awake.
The rough texture beneath his fingertips drew his gaze downward.
His limited-edition Lunar Wolves vintage jersey—three hundred StarCredits down the drain—was gone. In its place?
Several large, rough-edged leaves emitting a raw, green smell, lashed around his waist and chest with flexible vines, offering minimal coverage.
This ensemble… even Tarzan might hesitate, then grudgingly concede, "Bro, points for… bold primitivism!"
"Shit! My clothes? My smart hub? My aerial drone? My…" He slapped instinctively at his wrist. Empty.
He reached a trembling hand to the familiar interface port at the base of his skull… Relief washed over him—the NeuraSync chip felt intact.
But every external device, every piece of his networked life, was gone!
He couldn't detect the faintest whisper of a network signal! Total isolation.
"Smart hub link severed. Unable to establish MindBridge connection. Currently operating solely on NeuraSync chip's internal processor, utilizing bio-electric power reserves."
Cecil reported with infuriating calmness. "Internal storage data integrity estimated at ninety-nine point eight percent. However, certain high-privilege encrypted files may have sustained corruption during the overload event. Detecting high-frequency acoustic signatures in the vicinity… Analysis model matching… Negative. Audio characteristics do not correlate with any known bio-signatures or mech-acoustic profiles in the Star Alliance database. Recommendation: Maintain concealment, Sir. Your vital telemetry indicates mild dehydration and elevated stress markers."
"No kidding!" Steven felt hot tears prickle his eyes but suppressed it, trying to access the knowledge stored in his chip.
"Cecil, pull up everything you have on 'primitive wilderness survival,' 'edible flora identification,' 'Paleolithic megafauna threats'… Now!"
"Retrieving… Warning: Cross-referencing data with current environmental scan suggests some retrieved information may not be applicable to the current environment. Please utilize with caution. For example, entries pertaining to 'Tyrannosaurus Rex' indicate primary habitats inconsistent with inferred current coordinates…"
Just as Cecil droned on, piercing screams and chaotic shouting erupted nearby.
The sounds were primal, terrifyingly real—wild battle cries mingled with guttural roars, and something else… a high-pitched, wavering wail like that of a terrified infant, yet carrying an eerie quality that burrowed straight into the bone marrow, awakening vestigial fears!
Steven furrowed his brows, the harsh tribal language just meaningless noise until the NeuraSync chip in his head pulsed faintly.
A flicker of bio-electric current, and Cecil began to work: "Detecting acoustic patterns consistent with hypothesized proto-Huaxia linguistic family, or possibly an earlier precursor… Attempting real-time contextual interpretation based on phonetic logic and situational stress indicators…"
Soon, those chaotic sounds began to resolve into chillingly comprehensible phrases in his mind:
"…Run! Run now! The Paoxiao—they come!"
"…Afu! Father! Help me! The beast… it took Amu!" "…Curse the monsters! Kill! Kill them! For the tribe!"
Paoxiao?
The name, dredged from his overloaded memory banks, triggered another cascade of corrupted data fragments.
Blurry, horrifying images flickered—a creature matching descriptions from ancient, half-forgotten bestiaries: form like a goat, face like a man, eyes bizarrely placed beneath its armpits, armed with tiger fangs and human claws, its cry mimicking an infant's—a man-eater.
Before he could fully grapple with the terrifying data point, he looked towards the source of the commotion, and the scene unfolding nearly made him gag on the synth-protein nutrient paste he might have consumed days ago.
Not far off, nestled in a small jungle clearing, sat an encampment so rudimentary it barely qualified as such.
A few scattered, dome-like huts framed with massive, yellowing bones from some unidentifiable megafauna were crudely covered with rough, poorly tanned hides and gigantic, tattered leaves resembling monstrous banana fronds.
And this pitiful semblance of shelter was being overrun by a pack of gray-green horrors!
These monsters stood roughly half human height, their bodies vaguely resembling muscular goats, but topped with grotesquely twisted faces mimicking those of malnourished infants.
Saliva mixed with bloody foam dripped from beneath sharp, interlocking fangs like those of a great cat.
But their forelimbs were the stuff of nightmares: hideously elongated, emaciated human hands, skin like dried parchment stretched taut over bone, capped with jagged, obsidian-black nails, grotesquely proportionate to an adult human's.
They emitted those bloodcurdling, infant-like shrieks as they moved with the terrifying speed of hunting spiders, their human claws tearing through hides, snatching at the terrified figures darting between the huts.
The humans of the tribe, regardless of age or gender, were mostly bare-chested, or clad only in heavily worn animal skins or rudimentary grass skirts.
Their hair was matted, faces and bodies streaked with crude red and black pigments in patterns that defied interpretation.
The weapons clutched in their hands were heartbreakingly primitive—crudely polished stone axes, heavy wooden clubs, spears made from sticks fire-hardened to a point, even massive animal femurs sharpened along one edge.
Etched onto their faces were the harsh lines of survival against an unforgiving world and the raw terror of the immediate attack, yet beneath it lay something deeper, more chilling—a kind of numb resilience, the look of a people long accustomed to the brutal realities of killing and being killed, perpetually struggling near the bottom of a savage food chain.
"…Game over, man… This isn't some B-list creature feature set. I've actually crash-landed in a real-life Monster Hunter game, except I'm playing the defenseless Aptonoth about to become lunch…" Steven's face was sheet-white, his legs trembling like leaves in a gale.
"Cecil! Where's the damn System?! The newbie gift pack?! Isn't there supposed to be an 'Appraisal' skill, or at least a 'Minimap' function?! What happened to the standard-issue golden finger cheat every transmigrator gets?!"
"Sir," Cecil replied, its synthesized voice utterly devoid of sympathy, "I must reiterate. Analysis of all known data, including extensive cross-referencing with popular transdimensional fiction tropes, indicates the 'golden finger' or 'system interface' you describe is not a recognized component of standard spatio-temporal displacement phenomena, nor does it align with established principles of theoretical physics or extradimensional mechanics. Survival remains the immediate priority. High-velocity threat detected, vector closing rapidly. Threat assessment: Extreme. Evasive maneuvers strongly recommended, Sir!"