[ Error!!! ]
[ Error!!! ]
[ Error!!! ]
"Ah… but… what the hell…" Ryan tried to get up, but hit his head against the wall. His vision flickered between the darkness of his eyelids and a hazy blur.
"What… happened?" He struggled briefly, slipping and falling toward the floor, which greeted him with crushing pain and cold, along with even more nausea and confusion.
[ Warning!!! ]
[ Warning!!! ]
[ Warning!!! ]
[ Emergency Mode Activated. ]
[ Difficulty Selection Skipped ]
[ Character Creation Skipped ]
"Damn it…" Ryan brought a hand to his forehead, trying to wake himself up, but what he saw only made him more desperate.
[ Multiple Critical Failures ]
[ Aborting Operation… ]
[ Critical Failure!!! The User Is Out Of Range. ]
[ Critical Failure!!! The Gateway Is Closed ]
[ Critical Failure!!! The Operation Cannot Be Aborted. ]
"Wait what?!" Ryan focused on the words in front of him, growing increasingly exasperated.
[ Attempting Again… ]
[ Error… ]
[ Error… ]
The system kept trying again and again under Ryan's scrutiny, yet all he could see were more and more error screens. He swallowed hard, trying to make sense of the situation. Up until that point, there was only one certainty. This wasn't his new home.
This was the Unnamed Game.
"Okay… let's start from the beginning. Where am I?" Ryan said, looking around while still on the floor, rolling his body side to side, while trying to regain control of his five senses, which were still dull and foggy.
He then opened and closed his eyes, properly waking his sight. And with his eyes still shut, he focused on his other senses waking them one by one. Slowly, he started to get new information about the environment.
"It's warm…" he murmured, feeling heat radiating toward him, the warmth of a flame.
He opened his eyes and followed the direction of the heat source and soon met a fireplace. Around it, his gaze slowly traced the shape of a wooden cabin, then fell upon a glass window revealing the outside.
"Snow…" Ryan muttered, seeing a heavy blizzard on the other side, so strong it threatened to shatter the glass with its howling winds."Looks dangerous."
"Okay… time to get up."
Tired of rolling around, Ryan tried to push himself up using his hands. However, he quickly realized he couldn't. He exerted as much strength as he could, yet couldn't move his hands. He could only move his arms in a limited way.
He frowned, then tried moving his feet and legs. He soon noticed resistance there as well, though he had more freedom than with his upper limbs. Ryan then brought his hands as close to his face as possible.
His eyes sharpened as he saw ropes tightly binding his wrists. A line from above extended down to his legs, binding his lower limbs the same way. But the rope didn't end there, in fact, it stretched much farther.
Ryan followed the rope until he realized he was tied to another person on the cabin floor, actually two others: one connected through the lower limbs, and another through the upper limbs. Those, in turn, were tied to others, and so on. There were at least a dozen people here, all bound to one another.
"Alright… everything is not alright…" Ryan let out a strained, almost masochistic laugh. "Did this game really have to start like this?!" He looked around in panic, searching for a captor.
But there was no one.
It was just them.
Ryan frowned again and analyzed his surroundings. Soon he realized that everyone, except him, was unconscious. But more than that…
Ryan crawled like a worm toward the nearest person and began shaking him rapidly.
"Hey! Buddy! Wake up!" Ryan kept shaking him as fast as he could. "Come on! Wake up!" he shouted, unconcerned about the others.
"Hey man! If you don't wake up right now, we're both going to regret it! So wake up damn it!" Seeing no response, he clicked his tongue. "I warned you!" He then proceed to slammed his head hard against the man, hard enough that he felt his own skull sink.
Ryan struggled, cursing with muffled cries of pain. He deeply regretted that decision.
Still, no response.
He gritted his teeth. None of them woke up from the commotion, especially not the one he was actively disturbing.
Ryan clicked his tongue in frustration, his head turning from side to side, searching for a way to free himself that didn't involve sticking his hands into the fire and roasting himself alive. Then his eyes widened, he noticed an exotic axe nearby, made from a single piece of bone, embedded in the old wood, clearly out of reach of the prisoners.
"Well… at least I won't have to leave here charred… but now what am I supposed to do about this?" Ryan stared at the rope that tightened with even the slightest movement. To reach the axe, he'd have to exert enough force to move himself, and drag everyone tied to him along, which would be exhausting and painful. "Think positive… It could be worse, right Ryan? You could be in your new luxury home, soaking in a jacuzzi, eating gourmet food made by your new servant… oh, what a terrible life."
Ryan took a deep breath, sitting up as he prepared himself. The two strands of rope tightened due to his movement, and then he pushed with both legs to stand up awkwardly.
"Okay Okay… You can do it Ryan! You can do it! The quicker you start, the faster you finish… Let's go!" The two ropes bound to him resisted his movement. Ryan let out a muffled cry as he had to drag the weight of two other people just to take a few steps, but this was only the beginning.
Step by step, he advanced, while the weight of more and more people was added to the burden. In just a few steps, Ryan was already carrying the weight of four others. And unless he reached the axe soon, it would become six.
"Damn it!" he shouted as thick sweat ran down his forehead and his legs began to protest. Even so, the axe was almost within reach. But then, he paused involuntarily, feeling the heavy bodies holding him in place. Six bodies. "Just a little more, Ryan, you can do this! you can!" He took a deep breath, deeper than ever before, and then released everything in a fierce scream that threatened to shake the cabin apart.
Six bodies tried to keep him pinned in place, yet he kept moving forward.
Until they became eight.
His eyes bloodshot, he clenched his teeth, letting out more and more painful cries.
"Just a little more Ryan…. Just a little more! Argh…ahhh."
Finally, with no strength left, he collapsed to his knees, thick sweat pouring down his face like a stream. His breathing was extremely ragged, and his exhausted body trembled, pale and drained.
Even so, the blade's edge was within reach.
"That's it!" he celebrated briefly, letting out a quiet laugh like a madman lost in his own insanity, his eyes gleaming. He quickly pressed the rope binding his wrist against the blade and began rubbing it rapidly.
As soon as the rope snapped, Ryan massaged his aching wrists. The weight of all those bodies had been concentrated there, leaving marks and causing intense pain. Even though it had lasted only a short time, none of it could be taken lightly.
He quickly grabbed the axe and freed his legs, finally standing up victorious.