He would’ve taken considerably more time to enjoy and study all of this if he weren’t currently falling to his death.
The wind bit and screeched at his ears, his face, his clothes. He fell through a low-hanging cloud, and a chill that had nothing to do with the fresh moisture clinging to his body swept over him.
He was falling.
He was falling!
“DAMMMIT!” Jack bellowed, but the frantic misery was drowned out by his terminal descent.
He desperately fought to slow his descent by extending each appendage until he resembled a particularly drunk starfish.
I’m going to die! Jack’s thought in a totally reasonable panic.
A part of him felt fatigued at the notion. As it turns out, realizing that you’re about to die is rather exhausting. Jack would know, as he’d experienced it twice now, and was about to make it three.
It took him a moment, but he realized he wasn’t just falling downward. No, his angle was too sharp for that. At this rate, he would–
“OH, YOU’VE GOT TO BE–”
He got no further. The barrier of darkness that brushed against the clouds was approaching at a precipitous rate. He wasn’t going to fall onto the town. He was going to fly headlong into that.
Staring at the nebulous void sent a fresh wave of panic coursing through his nerves. He was not afraid of the dark. Many times in his life, the darkness had protected him. It had hidden him and his sister during some of their father’s episodes. But that darkness was altogether something different. It was not merely the absence of light. It was like it actively swallowed up all light, all warmth…
Everything.
It was a chasm. It was an open maw of a nightmare Jack had no name for. And it was about to swallow him whole.
Cursing some more, Jack tried to angle his body away from his imminent collision, but nothing worked. He attempted to curl into a ball, to steer his body with any and every one of his limbs, but it was as if the very wind was ignoring him, determined to keep him on his original trajectory.
With the final shreds of the morning light at his back, he fell into the shadows. He clenched his eyes shut as he blasted through the great wall of blackness. Nothing happened other than a noticeable drop in the temperature. He expected resistance. He expected his short and rather miserable life to end in a splatter of life and limb across the monstrous construction.
Instead, like smoke, it bent around him. And so he continued to fall, flailing some more as he tried in vain to prevent his own death.
He opened his eyes.
Behind him, the wall of darkness retained its silent vigil, though he saw a tiny portal of light seep into this side of the world from where he’d punctured the barrier. But within a few heartbeats, the light, like the aperture, was swallowed up like it had never existed.
In front and below him, the silhouettes of a much, much, larger town—no, city—spread out for miles on end. It was circumferenced by a great stone wall with seven sides, though most of them were crumbling nearly beyond recognition. Inside the swallowed city, hundreds of buildings dotted the skyline, many of which leaned precariously against one another like collapsing Jenga towers. A thick mist blanketed the entirety of the ground on this side of the shadows, making it impossible to know the exact instant Jack would fatally greet the ground.
This is where I’m going to die, Jack realized, unable to think of a single thing left to do. He had no solution. There was no problem he could fix. How does one fix gravity?
What was the point of all that? Why have me spin the wheel only to throw me to my death? Jack wondered. Hopelessness, rage, and confusion warred inside of him. You called me a Banisher, whatever that is, and expect me to help this strange new world, but I’m forced to fail before I’m ever given a chance?
The mist rushed toward him.
No.
The sentiment rang out through his bones, his mind, his entire soul.
No.
NOT. LIKE. THIS.
He would not die before he rescued his sister from that abusive bastard. Before he could apologize. Before he could fix what he’d broken between them.
NOT LIKE THIS!
The mist enveloped him, and he tucked his body so that his feet were now facing the ground. Light began to stream out from his chest, pumping out until he was cocooned in pearlescent light.
What the—
It burned inside his chest until it was impossible to breathe, much less see beyond the blinding barrier.
What is this?!
It felt like a part of him, yet something far more vast and complex was clearly powering whatever this shield was. It was like pressing his foot on a gas pedal. Sure, it was his foot making the car go forward, but behind that simple action was a complex array of mechanics. In the same way, it felt like some new part of his body was willing this power out of him, but he was not its source in the slightest.
Through the pearly tint of the barrier, he could see the ground rushing to greet him.
He was about to die.
A scream that was more bestial than desperate escaped from his lips.
You want to take me? Fine. You don’t want to give me a chance? FINE! But I’m not going out gently.
I refuse this fate!
I’m getting back to my world, in this life or the next.
His scream transformed into a roar. His booted feet crashed into stone, and the world turned into a hail of rock and debris and dust.
As the mist parted and the dust settled, he realized—to his utter shock—that he was entirely unharmed.
The light that had encased him lingered for a second longer, and then flurried inward until he was once again left alone in the darkness.
Jack waited, his breath coming quickly despite not having moved from where he landed. His descent had created a respectable crater in the cobblestoned street, putting his sightlines closer to ground level.
From his vantage, he studied the street in both directions. To his right, it curved upward around a bend, while the left led downward toward the wall of shadows. He could see it over the ridges of the brick buildings. It dominated the horizon.
“Just what is this place? And what the hell was that light?!” he asked the air.
It didn’t answer.
He peered down at his hands again, hoping vainly that they might offer some clues.
Okay, he thought quickly. This is real. I’ve been teleported to a new world. It’s the medieval period, based on the buildings.
He looked around again for any sort of clue as to where he was, or what he should do next. Before he could so much as twitch, a blue screen crackled into existence directly before him.
He yelped and jumped back, scrambling away from the sudden appearance, but it followed him effortlessly. Somehow, it maintained the same distance from his face regardless of how he bobbed and shifted his head to see past it.
The edges of the semi-transparent screen continued to fray and spasm, as if whatever was projecting it onto his retinas was experiencing some sort of transmission interference.
Oh, and the screen had words. Words that would change Jack’s life forever.
[Congratulations! You have received a new title: Banisher]
[Title Effects:]
- [+75% damage against all corrupted entities]
- [+15% all stats when inside any corrupted zone]
- [+15% charisma effectiveness with allied personnel]
- [+10% all stats]
Jack bocked.
“10% to all stats? Wait, am I in a video game land, or something?” Jack asked aloud, his voice tight. “Does that mean I have things like Strength, Dexterity—that sort of stuff? How does this all work? And what’s a corrupted zone? Am I in one right now?”
He gazed around at the suffocating mists, which continued to move on an unfelt breeze.
“Okay, I think it’s safe to assume that whatever I flew into probably constitutes as a corrupted zone. And if it’s corruptive, then I probably shouldn’t linger,” Jack concluded, fighting to keep his breathing under control. “And that first line is troubling. If this is one of those zones, then there are gonna be creatures inside here that I am not going to get along with. But 75% boost to all attacks against those creatures is insane!”
He clenched his fist. His grip had never felt so strong. Barely restrained power felt like it was coursing through his veins, as if he’d just taken a 5-hour energy and a Redbull…
At the same time.
“Okay, wherever I am, I should probably get out of here. Maybe if I find someone normal, that 15% to my charisma will come in handy!” Jack encouraged himself.
He waved his hand through the screen and thankfully, it disappeared.
Something ahead of him drew his attention.
What is that?
Thin etches were carved artistically into every single brick of the building closest to him, and a few of them flickered irregularly. Opposite him, a three-story shop was entirely collapsed, with something dark and metallic mostly obscured by the brick and mortar.
“Why does that thing look like a mech suit?” Jack asked, taking a few steps up the sharp incline of his crater.
Sure enough, the object was vaguely humanoid and appeared to be made entirely of some bronze alloy. Stranger still, it appeared to have markings stretching across the entirety of its metal hull. It was dented and destroyed in several sections, likely from the veritable tons of debris on top of it, but the fact it kept any of its shape at all was impressive in its own right.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Who made you?” he inquired of the prone mechanical wonder before he knew what he was doing, and felt immediately foolish for asking some metal a personal question.
Okay, I’m in a fantasy world with stats, corruption, and mech suits that run on an unknown power source. Mana of some kind, if I had to guess. Jack grunted to himself. Shoot, I really hope they call it that here. If they call their magic something weird, I’m going to be so upset.
He made it to the top of his own crater. The moment he did, he heard the shift of rocks from somewhere above. Instinctively, he backed up until his back was flush with the wall behind him.
Another shift of pebbles, this one a dozen feet to his right.
Then his left.
“Gral! ‘Ak grekthul zhulkek lakh!” a voice spoke from somewhere above him.
It sounded as if it’d be right at home with a sink’s garbage disposal unit. Whatever language it spoke, it was guttural, vile, and far, far, too close.
I need to get out of here, Jack decided. He looked left. Right.
If he went right, he’d just end up deeper in the ruins of this city. If he went left, he’d eventually reach the wall of shadows and be able to exit back into the light and, God willing, safety.
He edged his body to the left, careful to remain as close to the wall that hid him as possible. His foot caught on the lip of a loose cobblestone, and he tripped, recovering quickly but not before his right palm slipped on a jagged corner of the wall as he corrected his footing. He grunted out a curse, but the tiny sound seemed to fill the eerily silent city.
Jack waited, frozen. He watched the rooftops. He caught a flash of gray. There was a rush of wind, and three forms crashed into the street before him.
His gaming days—as well as his healthy obsession with cinema and anime—helped him give a word to the three hunchbacked creatures.
“Orcs. Dear God. You guys are orcs,” Jack observed, not sure whether to feel fascination or horror.
They stared at him with malice glowing in their eyes.
Each had gray skin, thin but sharp canines protruding from their lower jaws, black eyes with yellow pupils, and rags covering their leperous skin. Pus oozed from over a dozen scabs across their bodies, and Jack could just barely make out a hodge-podge of iron armor over the rags.
The orc in front of him held a wicked-looking whip barbed with bits of rock and bone. The orc to his right had a thin sheet of metal wrapped on one end with a cloth as a makeshift hilt. The ‘blade’, if one could call it that, was stained red.
It was the monster to Jack’s left that gave him the most pause. It bore no armor, no weapons, and its torso was uncovered, leaving unnaturally pale skin exposed to the elements.
He might’ve been imagining it, but he felt he could see inside its body to the organs and bones beneath. Worst of all, its shoulders were slumped over by the weight of its too-long arms. They were nearly double the size of the others and were tipped with black nails on each of their spindly fingers.
As he quickly focused on each one, something warped and fuzzed over their heads. It crackled silently in a loose rectangle before disappearing again. He tried to focus harder on the strange appearance and thought he saw some letters, but couldn’t be sure.
These must be the corrupted creatures that title thing was talking about, Jack realized.
Indeed, as he took a closer look, new details started to crystallize. One had a horrible limp from what appeared to be a crippled leg. Another had a dozen long cuts across its emaciated skin. And the long-limbed orc looked terribly dehydrated and shaky on its legs.
Whatever these creatures were, they were not the fierce vanguard of whatever army they hailed from. If Jack had to guess, these were the grunts. The rejects. The stragglers.
And with all my current stat and attack boosts, I should be able to take them! Jack thought.
He had no idea what his baseline stats were, but had to hope they would be enough for this confrontation. He was pretty sure he was about to find out.
The center one with the whip spoke first, its head tilting to one side. “Grah! ‘Akorl thrakul kuleth nokh grala. Grakul thrakol-oth, zul Flakerash-og lakthur vorgukh-ol-oth?”
Its voice grated against the back of Jack’s mind, and he clenched and unclenched his fists rapidly.
“Ghor zharakul grala. ‘Ak zhulgek—grakol’ul ghorl grakh laknarga! Vorgek lakh, thrakul!” the one on the left answered. It licked its lips and exposed its black teeth.
The one in the middle smiled back and started to approach beside its brethren.
“You…” it said in garbled English. “Meat. Die… Now.”
The other two laughed, and Jack grit his teeth.
“Like hell I will,” Jack retorted and raised his fists, scowling at his would-be murderers.
The orc feinted to his right, but this wasn’t the first time Jack had been ganged up on. He waited until one of them actually came in for a strike. He didn’t have to wait long.
The orc with the sword slashed and jeered, saying something else in orcish, but it was the one with the unnaturally long arms that struck first. It whipped its appendages out and forward, and Jack ducked, feeling its iron nails rake the air where his head had just been.
He punched once. Twice. Three shots into its pale ribs and stomach. Instantly, Jack could tell something was off. His fists moved too fast, the impacts too strong. If this was his new title at work, it was already proving its worth a hundred times over again.
He pivoted back and around, forcing the three of his attackers into a single line.
“Meat… Not know…Its place,” the orc with the whip declared with a snarl.
Jack ignored it, his mind instead focusing on how to fix this horrible situation. He couldn’t run.. If he did, he’d not only be more out of breath, but could get easily cornered. He didn’t know this city or its streets.
No. He had to fight them now.
He also needed to end this quickly. He had no idea if there were more of these creatures out and about. If this went on too long, more might come, and then he would definitely die.
A thought struck him.
I was given a divine skill, right? Just like most people who are isekai’d in those stories from Earth. Mine apparently sucks, according to Steward, but maybe it can help here!
It was time to find out. He briefly closed his eyes, focusing all of his willpower on using his first true spell. This was it. It was time to unleash the power that apparently made him a Banisher!
“Soul Fusion!” Jack suddenly shouted.
Nothing happened.
“Soul Fusion: Activate!” Jack tried again.
Again, nothing.
Come on!
The orcs watched his warily, and he knew he was out of time.
“Activate skill: Soul Fusion!” Jack yelled.
He got a system notification for his troubles.
[Skill casts failed. Insufficient attributes.]
“Dammit!” Jack roared in frustration.
There was a dry click of the tongue, and the orc in front of him dropped to the ground with incredible speed. Before Jack could react, the whip was already zipping through the air. His arms, already in a defensive position by his face, took the worst of the attack. He yelled out in pain as stones and bones woven into the leather weapon cut thick grooves into his forearms.
He felt a yank, and his right arm was jerked forward. He stumbled, and the long-limbed creature rose up from its kneeling position and stabbed a speared hand toward his sternum. He just barely managed to twist out of the way, turning the disembowelment into a long cut along his left ribcage.
The pain was unimaginable.
Jack collapsed to the hard ground with a cry, stunned as he was dragged by the wicked purchase the whip had on his right arm and wrist.
No! Not like this.
The defiant promise surged out from that deep part of himself he normally kept so well guarded. But on the streets of this forgotten city, he didn’t even try to hold back his anger. His rage at this whole damned situation.
“Not like this,” Jack repeated aloud.
He would not die here. Not before he could get back to Earth and make things right.
The back of his head collided with an upturned stone, and he saw stars flash across his vision. He tasted blood.
Three screeches of bloodthirsty delight rose up, and the orc with the makeshift sword came to step on either side of his chest. It eerily mirrored when Tony stood over him, brass knuckles raised to pummel the life out of him.
Not like this.
He had to get back to Jane. He had to make sure she was alive!
“No.”
The word escaped his lips before he’d fully understood his own revelation.
This world wanted to kill him? This world wanted to bury him before he had a chance to stand up? It wanted to fight dirty?
Fine.
So would he.
In that moment before a sword’s edge, he realized that he’d been unconsciously holding himself back. He was playing by rules that didn’t apply here. By boxing, MMA, rules. But here…
Here in the darkness, he would die if he didn’t give it everything he had. He had come too close to dying on Earth, all because he hadn’t defended himself with everything he had. He’d failed against Tony. He wouldn’t fail again.
A peace came over him. He wasn’t defeated. He could still do this.
He met the gaze of the orc who loomed over him, defiance burning like a sun inside his chest. He was done holding back.
Jack smiled. There was just the tiniest seed of madness in that smile.
It was the grin of a man who would do anything—anything—to win.
The ghoulish creature must’ve seen something truly terrifying in that flinty expression, as he hesitated for just a moment, and that was all Jack needed.
Right arm still taut under the whip’s bleeding grip, he resorted to his legs. Like the snap of a bow string, Jack whipped his legs up and under the orc’s wide stance right before he crunched his heels into its nether region. It flew back from the force, doubled over even before it hit the ground over a dozen feet away. Green blood exploded from its mouth.
That was way farther than it should have been, a part of Jack mused.
Not that he was complaining.
Using the diversion of a flying ally, Jack rolled backward, coming up on his feet and negating the tension on the whip long enough for him to punch the orc holding it in the throat. It choked, and he used his free arm to grab the now-limp hilt.
He twisted the whip around its neck, using both his ensnared and free arm to dig the jagged length of the leather into its flesh. It screeched and clawed at Jack, but he kept one of his knees firmly planted in the small of its back. The third creature roared and lumbered toward him, using its long limbs to lope like some spindly ape. Despite the awkward gait, it ate up the distance with shocking speed.
Moving on adrenaline and desperation, Jack jerked his arms back right as he shoved his knee forward with all his might. There was a slurping sound, and then the orc beneath his grip was no more.
Jack watched as a plume of wispy energy exited the monster and swept into him.
Then, to his utter shock, words scripted themselves across his vision.
[Level 3 Orc Scout slain - 600 EXP gained]
It went away after a moment, but it was so surreal that Jack didn’t notice when the pale orc tackled him to the ground.
“YOU DIE NOW!” It screamed into his face, punctuating each word with a slam of Jack’s head against the cobblestone.
Jack’s vision went blurry. There was one—no, three—no, four—no, two—pale orcs. His eyes rolled back, and he fought to stay conscious. The beast snarled and opened its mouth, its jaw unhinging so that the mechanic could see way too far inside its gullet.
The edges of his sight were growing darker and darker, echoing the shadows of the great wall in the distance. His fingers swept across the dirty floor of the street, searching in vain for something, anything, to help.
His right index finger, already slick with his own blood, brushed against something hard. Using little more than a fingernail, he scratched at it until he was able to drag it one inch closer. Then two. By the third movement, his other fingers were able to find purchase along its length. It was cold and metallic.
The pale orc’s widened maw descended over and around Jack’s head.
He didn’t hesitate.
Gripping the metal object with every ounce of flagging strength he could muster, he jabbed it into the creature’s neck.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Warm green liquid dripped down onto him, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was that the monster froze, its black teeth less than an inch from Jack’s exposed skin. It went limp, and Jack used his grip on the metal to shove the orc away.
[Level 4 Orc Berserker slain - 700 EXP gained]
The second notification blipped into his vision despite him being largely unable to see the world clearly. Despite that, he could read the words just fine, almost as if they were emblazoned on his very irises rather than floating just a few inches in the air in front of him. He barely had time to read them before they faded out of view, only to be replaced by a new message, this one rimmed with gold lettering, as opposed to the pale white of the previous one.
[Congratulations! You have reached Level 2! 5 AP gained.]
“A… P?” Jack grunted as he drank in the air.
He forced the issue to the back of his mind, choosing instead to put all of his effort into extricating himself from beneath the monster’s corpse. He was barely halfway out from under it when he made eye contact with the third, now swordless, orc. Fear and rage warred inside its gaze. It hesitated, as if deliberating whether it could finish him off.
The orc glanced down at Jack’s tight grip on the metal, back at Jack, then dashed away, stumbling through the debris of a collapsed building until he could no longer see the monster.
He sighed, finally releasing his hold on the metal. It was only then that Jack noticed it was the makeshift sword. He rested his head back on the street, watching thick storm clouds swirl and shift in an endless dance.
“That was… a lot,” he muttered, not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry or scream. “Welcome to my new home, I guess.”
Jack laughed. There was little mirth to it. He could nearly hear the hysteria beneath the sound as it echoed in this dead city, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He bled red. They bled green. He wasn’t dead. They were.
He… He had killed living things.
The laugh slowly faded on his lips.
If I hadn’t gotten that title, I would be a dead man right now, Jack realized.
It didn’t matter how weak those orcs were. He should’ve been weaker. That said, he’d managed it. Bleeding and broken, sure, but he’d done it.
He survived.
Lying there, not two feet from the corpses of his would-be murderers, Jack closed his eyes. And it was there that he slowly—painfully—started to sift through the absolute helstrom he had been thrust into. Like pieces of a puzzle, he began to piece them together until he felt he had a good working idea of his problems.