The Doomsday Reaver Chapter 34: Chapter 1 Welcome to the Doomsday Trials

Read chapter 34 of The Doomsday Reaver by icohalliday on NovelPedia.

Everything hurt. It felt like every bone in my body had shattered, my lungs deflated like a burst water balloon, and the left side of my face would've lost a beauty pageant to Two-Face. Then again, I'd fallen fifty feet. By all accounts, I should've been dead. Silver lining. [Zone loading: Epoch - Stone] I'd landed on what seemed like gravel, the tiny wedges of sharp stone giving a nice crunchy agony as I pushed myself to stand. My arms were like jelly, and my legs, well, they were completely busted. If I was going to move, it was going to be half ghoul, dragging myself along from here on out. [Checking for latest version - please update] [Tutorial - missing] [Class - missing] And there was that voice in my head, soothing and alien all at the same time, like the most polite robotic butler known to man. I was only half-listening, focused as I was on not bleeding to death. I scanned my surroundings, only then realising I was naked. As in butt-naked - my jeans, hoodie, underwear, even my Christmas socks that I inexplicably wore all year round were gone. Damn it. They were vintage. [Health - CRITICAL - 20/250] [Mana - 15/15] [Stamina - 50/100] 'Yeah,' I said, 'thanks, that's real helpful.' I was on a cliff edge, a low wind howling. It was midday and temperate, so I wasn't going to freeze to death. I was no botanist, but I could see a distinct lack of grass, replaced instead by vegetation that seemed too enormous, too exotic to be of this world. At least I hoped it was of this world, or at least the same postal code as Earth. [Checking firmware - HUD missing] [Game files - corrupted] [Checking cache] A distant roar pulled me from my thoughts. Fuck it. Broken or not, if I was going to die on this alien world, I'd do it on my feet. The UI, it seemed wasn't totally busted. I could see my own character portrait in the top left corner of my vision. My own face, mangled and bloody to reflect my current status. I smiled, but my character portrait just grimaced back. [Checks complete - game loaded] [Welcome to the Doomsday Trials] Something growled. Shit. It wasn't any creature that lived in the modern age. If I had to describe it, I'd have said it was a sabretooth tiger, about twice the size of a regular tiger, its matted fur already caked in the blood of its last kill. Its eyes were a deep red. It had no pupils. It was salivating and staring straight at me. 'Oh,' I said. 'Fuck.' It lunged at me, propelled by what seemed like three hundred pounds of prehistoric muscle beneath that fur. I dodge-rolled instinctively. I'd never in my entire life dodge-rolled, and yet it had seemed as familiar to me now as a shiver in the cold. I ignored the agony in my legs, adrenaline pumping as the sabretooth tiger ran in a tight arc before lunging at me again. I could barely see, fuck, I could barely stand, and so when it lunged again I was a hair too late, its enormous claw snagging the bottom of my abdomen. Pain seared, the intensity of the red blooming across my vision increasing. I didn't need a HUD to tell me, one more hit and I was dead. I couldn't fight that thing. I hadn't thrown a punch since school, and even those had been feeble. Out of options, I tried to run, but my legs protested, threatening to collapse completely. My run became a hobble, and that monstrous creature could outpace me on my best day, let alone a day when half my guts decorated the ground. Time to get creative. I scanned the terrain, searching for anything that might help me. There was no time to think however, as the sabretooth lunged again, this time instead of barrelling straight for me, it seemed to dance, sidestepping left then right before swiping in a large arc. This was better telegraphed, and I was able to duck under it - barely. It kept moving, propelled by its momentum and kept pacing in a circle. It slowed to a walking pace, its chest rising and falling. It continued along the same path, but was visibly slower, for all of five seconds before launching once more int