Jake quickly pulled up his status screen to make sure that he wouldn’t die from an errant breeze.

  Sighing, fell down onto his ass, and looked at the remains of the wolf, trying to figure out what had happened. His head hurt from using that new spell, and the pain in his shoulder was a constant throbbing agony that kept distracting him. He began slowly sifting through the ashes and bones, trying to figure out why the wolf had attacked him, even if it was a small chance that anything survived his magic. A pulsing red light caught his attention, which he thought at first was just a group of embers. It was too periotic for that, though. He grabbed onto it, and pulled out what looked like a metal choker from the ashes. He stared at the pulsing choker, seeing that the light was coming from symbols etched into the blackened metal. He focused his tired mind onto a single rune, and watched it pulse like a heartbeat.

  Jake stared at the screen, mind trying to fight through the pain in his shoulder to think. Shaking his head, he decided he’d deal with it tomorrow. He looked around, seeing if he could spot the small animal that the wolf chased. He saw something being reflected in the light of the campfire, and slowly got to his feet. The pain in his shoulder flared, but he gritted his teeth and continued over to the object. Hearing wheezing as he approached, he grabbed the dagger with his uninjured hand, not confident in his abilities to cast spells at that moment.

  A silver fox was fighting for breath, barely moving. Blood trickled from puncture wounds on its torso from the wolf’s jaws. It’s breath seemed to frost on each exhale, even if the night was still warm. “So, you’re the one who saved me, huh?” Jake slowly crouched down in front of the fox, putting the dagger away, the movements causing his wounds to begin weeping blood slowly. “We’re both not doing too good right now, huh.” He winced, and tried to think of something to help himself and the fox. He looked back over to the fire, and an idea slowly wormed it’s way into his tired mind. He reached out to the Dark, but instead of the shadows leaping to his command, a massive spike of pain bloomed in his head. Clutching his head, he fell down on his ass and tried not to scream. A screen appeared in his vision, even if he could barely see it through the tears in his eyes.

  What the fuck is going on.

  He waited for the pain to fade, and opened his status again, focusing on health.

  That would have been fucking helpful to know before. Giggles didn’t explain shit.

  Jake gritted his teeth, slowly crawling to the campfire. He grabbed the skewer with the cooked deer meat, and started eating half of what he’d cooked.

  After finishing his meal, he carefully crawled back over to the fox. Grabbing his knife, he cut into the other half of the cooked meat and placed the cut strips in front of the beast. It opened its eyes sluggishly, its tongue reaching out to grab the strips. Jake continued until the rest of the meat was gone. “Sorry little buddy, but that’s it for now. Try to get some sleep.” The fox looked at him with sapphire blue eyes, and then laid its head back down. Jake watched over it until its breathing calmed, and then he crawled back to his campfire, ignoring all of the notifications that had shown up. He was too tired to deal with that shit right now.

  Jake groaned, the chirping of birds in the early morning waking him from his stupor. His left eye opened slightly, and was quickly closed again. The sun had not risen high enough to penetrate the dense forest, but he could see the clouds above him lighting up from the morning rays. He laid there for a couple more minutes, trying to fall back asleep. The birds had other ideas, and continued their morning routine of praising the sun. This continued for around half an hour, with Jake ignoring the need to get up, while the birds chirped away, before Jake violently sighed.

  Fucking birds. If I see any around this fucking glade I’m going to be eating eggs for breakfast. Hope they like watching their undeveloped children being eaten. Before he could make good on his threat, he woke up a little bit more and noticed something warm and soft pressed up against his side. Freezing, he slowly opened his eyes, and looked down. A silver ball of fur was snuggled up to his right side, rising and falling slightly. Jake slowly tried to scoot away from the ball of fluff, and got about an inch away before it stirred. He froze again, and watched the ball slowly uncurl. Dull sapphire eyes looked around blearily, before latching onto him and blinking quickly. Intelligence slowly replaces exhaustion, and the fox gets to its feet with a long yawn and a stretch, arching its back with butt in the air. Jake noticed that instead of a single tail, the fox had two, standing strait until after the beast’s stretch, and started swishing back and forth slowly. The fox yipped at Jake, and sat down, staring at him.

  “Ok, this is weird. Thought you would have already been gone by now.” Jake can’t wake up as fast as the fox, and is slowly coming awake. He fumbles around in his inventory, grabbing his [Bum’s Best Friend] and taking out a cigarette. The fox quirks his head like a dog, and quietly yips again. Jake stops with the smoke half way to his mouth. “What, hungry? You can’t eat these. Go eat the deer.” He gestures back to the butchered deer and the still slightly smouldering pile of ashes that was the wolf. The fox stares at him for a few seconds, then stands up and slowly walks to the deer. It has a slight limp in its left hind leg, but other than that it seems perfectly fine.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Seeing this, Jake slowly rotates his right arm, testing if he had healed as well. His arm was very sore, but no shooting pain was felt. Smiling to himself, he popped the cigarette into his mouth and lit up. Laying back down, he stared at the clouds while lazily taking drags. Well, that was an interesting first day. Kind of surprised that I didn’t kick the bucket there. After he finished with his smoke, he flicked the butt away, grabbed his [Leather Water Skin], described by ‘leather bag that holds water’, and took a long drink. These item descriptions could use some work, and why is it that only my skills and things like that are filled with Giggles' sarcasm? As he was about to put it back into his inventory, he heard another yip, and looked over to the fox. It was sitting behind him, staring at his water skin. “Alright, here.” He sits up and pours some water into his hand, offering it to the fox. The fox slowly approached, sniffed the water, and began lapping it up. After a few more refills, the fox stopped drinking and laid down, staring at Jake.

  Kind of weird, but fuck it. Jake began going through his notices for the fight with the large wolf.

  Ah, my first quest. Jake scratched his chin, thinking. Well, the right thing to do would be to accept this quest, and go on an adventure to stop some evil wizard from, more than likely, perfecting his mind-controlling device. But, I’m not a good guy, so… He declined the quest with a wave of his hand, and looked at his [Twin-Tailed Frost-Bound Fox].

  “You, my fluffy little companion, need a name. I can’t really call you my [Twin-Tailed Frost-Bound Fox]. That is way too much of a mouthful. You’re not really a Soap-Bubble Fox-Dragon thing, but how about Mizutsune? It’s a name from an incredibly powerful fox back in my world.” Well, from a game in my world, but it will work.

  Jake quirked an eyebrow. Ok, what’s this? Pet Window.

  “Well, aren’t you the cutest little ball of death.” Jake stood up and, waving at his new pet to come along, walked out of the clearing, Mizutsune following right behind him. As he walked, he threw his three attribute points into Vitality and Endurance, and looked at his full status screen.

  Closing the window, Jake looks around. The trees seem to be thinning out, allowing more sunlight to break through the canopy above. Half an hour later, he is finally able to escape the forest, quite suddenly. Raising a hand to block the sunlight from his eyes, he looks out to see the landscape of Laeris for the first time, besides the forest that he was dropped into.

  He was standing on top of a large hill, looking at rolling plains that stretched far into the distance, outlined by a massive mountain range that extended behind him and to the west, based off of the direction that the sun was rising in. He could barely make out what looked like buildings next to a river that trickled down the mountain side, but it was too far away to get any specifics. Large beasts lumbered through the plains. They looked like cows, but twice the height of one, and they had wings. Big. Winged. Cows. What the fuck is this… A screech resounded through the air, and an even larger winged creature flew down from the sky and slammed into one of the cow-things. It was big, had scales, wings and a tail. The cow-things scattered, slowly flying into the air. After quickly tearing the cow-things head off with its jaws, it launched back into the air, dragging the headless corpse with it. As it flew away, it released a terrible roar, blasting fire into the air. Jake stared, awestruck, as the beast flew away. After it disappeared, Jake continued to stare where it had gone over the mountains. His mind finally clicks, and says something that will stay with him forever.

  “Holy shit, that was a fucking dragon.”