Koda dreamt of a snowy village.
Lonely and desolate, with nothing but dense forestry to surround it.
The village was destroyed, multiple zombie-like humans with extremely skinny bodies and disgusting parasitic insects protruding from their skin were walking around listlessly.
Suddenly, they all began moving backwards and the moon fell over the horizon.
The sun rose from the west, flying through the sky and disappearing in the east.
The falling snow flew up from the ground and returned to the clouds.
Koda quickly realised that time was flowing backwards.
In an instant, years and months went by.
The snow disappeared, revealing the pathways and ground of the village.
The zombies all began acting more like humans, talking and interacting with each other despite still appearing extremely skinny.
Time slowed, stopped then continued flowing at a normal pace.
[Aspirant!
Welcome to the Nightmare Spell.
Prepare for your First Trial…] ‘Woah woah woah, slow down.’ Koda’s face turned pale and his body convulsed, not being used to the body he was placed into.
A dull ache radiated through Koda’s stomach as he shivered from the cold.
He was wearing a leather tunic and a dark blue scarf, but neither protected him fully from the biting cold.
He looked down at his body and his eyes widened.
He could see that he looked vastly different, his body was thinned down.
His skin was still really tanned despite being in such a cold environment and he seemed to be the same height, just… skinnier.
His posture was improved as well, needing some time to get used to.
He looked around, noticing that he was in the very village that was doomed to be overrun by zombies in the near future.
He looked at all the other villagers that were equally as frail and skinny as himself.
Everyone was walking around with distant expressions, not one person seemed to show much of anything on their vacant expressions.
All Koda could smell was rotten flesh and corpses.
His eyes narrowed.
This wasn’t what he was expecting, he figured that he’d be placed in a far better circumstance than this, maybe something like a privileged young master of a castle or something like that… so, he kind of figured that this was a pretty bad start.
But… if it was a bad start, the reward would be great.
Right?
Remembering what Master Gabriel had told him, he ignored the biting cold and focused on trying to read his runes.
As soon as he focused, shimmering golden runes appeared in the air in front of him.
Now, he didn’t quite understand these interesting symbols, but he somehow knew what they meant.
He brushed past all the useless information and found the Rund describing his Aspect and… clicked his tongue in disdain.
‘Oh come on…’ *** Name : Koda True Name : — Rank : Aspirant.
Soul Core : Dormant Memories : — Echoes : — Attributes : [Strong Gut] Aspect: [Starving Vessel] Aspect Description: [You are a very hungry little man.] *** Koda’s eyes narrowed further and his mouth opened and closed.
‘So… I’m fat?
Real funny spell.
What the hell am I supposed to do with this?!’ As soon as he thought of this, a loud voice came from behind him.
“Oi, Brat!
Your breaktime is over!” Koda hurriedly dismissed the runes, which were only visible to him, and tried to make sense of what was happening.
A moment later, he turned to see the only fat person in the village.
An elderly man with a bald head and a grey beard was staring right at him and motioning him to enter his store.
Relaxing slightly, Koda followed the man’s gesture and entered his store.
Right away, the smell of rotten meat filled his sense of smell, making him hold his nose in disgust.
The tall, fat man stared down at Koda with confusion.
From just seeing him, Koda could tell the man was quite paranoid, constantly glancing around and already skeptical about Koda despite apparently being familiar with him.
“Come on, brat.
You have to cut each chunk into even strips so we can hand them out to the others.
They’re waiting on you, so come on!” His booming voice distracted Koda from the stench and he quickly understood what kind of situation he was in.
By the looks of things, Koda was currently inside of a starving village as the apprentice of the village butcher.
“B-but… isn’t it all rotten?
Won’t they get ill?” Koda asked, nearly vomiting right where he stood.
The butcher raised an eyebrow.
“Rotten?
What gave you that impression?” He asked, suspicion creeping into his voice.
Koda shook his head.
“Nevermind, but it doesn’t smell very… nice.” Maybe he was just used to living in luxury and having high quality meals every single day.
The old man’s eyebrows relaxed and he shook his head.
“We don’t have anything else, you know this.
You know if any of us even think about going out to hunt, the beasts of the forest will come and hunt us all down.” He said, turning to face a villager that had been waiting at the entrance of the butchery.
Koda sighed in relief, realising that the cold had retreated from the butchery and it was actually quite warm inside.
He looked around and hurriedly walked to the slab of rotting meat on the counter behind the old man.
Glancing to his right, he saw a rusty meat cleaver and his face contorted.
‘Not only is this meat disgusting, the knife I’m supposed to cut it with is rusted beyond belief!
This is not safe at all to consume, not like I’d ever want to eat such disgusting meat anyway.
I’d rather starve.’ He thought to himself as he picked up the knife and started chopping.
The motion was almost natural to him.
The person who inhabited this body before Koda must’ve been quite a hard worker, even after koda took his place, the muscle memory was still there.
Though, for Koda, it was quite difficult.
The motions were fine, but picking up the heavy cleaver was quite the task for his frail body.
After cutting the meat into even strips, he looked closer at what exactly he was cutting.
His nose scrunched up and his eyes narrowed.
He noticed… purple veins running through the dull red meat.
Resisting the urge to vomit, he took a deep breath and looked over at the old man, who had been called “Old Bram” by the villagers that had entered the store.
The old man looked back, then at the strips of meat and sighed.
“What’s the matter with you?
Took you all day to do that?
You did that in an hour yesterday!” He said.
Koda shifted uncomfortably but lowered his head.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t really mean it, but the old guy was very large and imposing, very scary.
Old Bram shook his head and waved it off.
“Just go home for today.
See you tomorrow.” He said before closing up shop.
Koda nodded and left from the same door that he had entered.
Once outside, the biting cold returned.
It was much worse now though, now that it was nighttime.
He couldn’t see very well, there were no streetlights or anything to aid his vision, so he used the shadows to make sense of his surroundings.
Struggling through the dense snow and realising he didn’t know where his home was, he decided to look around the village to see if he could learn anything about his goal.
After all, he couldn’t spend the entire nightmare just butchering meat all day, there was a certain threshold he had to reach in order to return to the waking world.
He thought of a few things to consider while butchering that meat.
Maybe he had to solve the starvation problem?
Maybe he had to find a way out of the village?
Maybe he had to stop the village from turning into zombies?
That last one was the one that he considered most likely since it was a main part of the vision he had seen when first entering the nightmare, a village filled with zombies.
He groaned.
“How the hell am I supposed to stop these guys from turning into zombies if I don’t even know what caused them to become zombies?!” He said, his voice muffled by the snow.
At that moment, a light turned on inside of the house he was standing outside of.
Just like the other buildings, the house was made entirely of wood and was quite old fashioned.
Then, the window slid up.
“What are you doing out in the snow, Koda, get in!” A strangely familiar voice came from the window.
Koda’s eyes tried to focus on the figure in the window, but the snow made it hard.
He had just been called by his name.
What were the odds that he shared a name with the body he was inhabiting?
That made things a lot easier.
All he could make out was a pale, thin man with shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes.
“Get inside, idiot!” The voice continued.
Not knowing what to do, Koda obliged.
yay!