Experiences

Asher wheezed as he tried to move his arms.

The smell of dirt and stone wormed into his nose.

"Kuk-!"

A lance of pain shot through him as he felt a series of shattered wristbones in his right arm. His left arm was too mangled and twisted to feel any pain.

In a sheer miracle of misfortune, his velocity was abruptly cancelled by an exceptionally rough bed of rocks, hooking into his flesh, ripping and tearing through his skin and bones for several meters before he finally grinded to a halt.

Several stones dug into his femur, causing a slightly uncomfortable sensation in his bones. Like something was inside his flesh that wasn't meant to be there.

He braced his fractured wrist as he pushed himself up. An inhuman misconfiguration of flesh was all that was left of his face, though Asher didn't realize it yet.

It gushed blood as he lifted himself from the ground.

Soon enough, he had wobbled to his feet.

As he looked around, Asher found that his vision had turned into a mere haze of red.

The utter shock from the impact had forced him into a state of stupor; his nerves had yet to catch up to the searing pain in his body.

"D-Dagh..." A gurgling voice vibrated out of what was left of his mouth.

He reached for his stomach, feeling something slide down it.

Whatever fragments of flesh remained of his hand came into contact with something wet.

With a dim epiphany, he realized that sticky, wet feeling on his palm was his blood.

And those bits of flesh in his grip were his organs.

Asher's mind rang as his thoughts swam with pain.

Still, he had the presence of mind to save himself before he bled out.

...

[Nostalgic Room]

Asher gasped as his rationality came back to him once again. The damp ground embraced the fabric of his cloak as he found himself lying flat on a bed of grass.

Remembering how the wind cut through his skin as he flew through the air, he shivered.

'What made her like that? She seemed nice enough before I told her that skill...'

Asher dismissed the thought. The woman barely tolerated him; it wasn't her being nice.

He opened his eyes.

The sky was grey and oppressive, and his vision was lined with dark, foreboding trees.

'Ah. Not the room, again. Figures.' Something about this mission made it so his [Nostalgic Room] instead transported him into Little Red's past.

As for how he knew it was the past, Asher could still see through his left eye. It wasn't like last time, where he was blind in that eye.

Asher suspected that the reason why he wasn't taken into the 'room' was the same reason as why he couldn't use [Fragmentation].

The Abnormality's will...

He waited for his body to move on its own like last time.

However, even after a few minutes of catching his breath, Asher's body didn't move.

'Maybe...?' His right arm shot up, its fingers splayed out to block a few rays of sun from his eyes.

He could control himself this time.

"Woah-!" Asher yelped as he lifted himself to his feet. His body felt so light that it was almost like he was floating; his body was literally weightless.

...Not literally, though.

With some thought, he halfheartedly punched out to a tree a few meters away.

Asher watched with some awe as the tree crackled and fell to the ground, the air pressure alone snapping the trunk in two.

So he really was Little Red right now, which explained why his body felt so inhumanly light.

She was... strong. Much more than he originally thought.

Even if he added two hundred to his Fortitude right now, Asher still wasn't sure if he could do such a feat. After all, two hundred was only about ten times more than his current Fortitude.

He retracted his arms back inside his cloak, grabbing his weapons strapped underneath.

The leather grip and polished wooden handle in his right and left hand respectively comforted him more than they should have.

Suddenly, a deafening howl pierced the forest, dozens of miles away.

Asher bent down in agony, clutching his ears in an attempt to block out the soul-wrenching pain that blossomed in his mind, a pain not of his own.

This was the pain Little Red felt.

The pervasive pain quickly evolved into rage as he flicked open his blade, digging it into the ground instinctively.

"I HEAR IT!"

Pure savagery coursed past Asher's veins, stripping the control his mind had over the Abnormality's body.

He snarled as his cloak fluttered wildly behind him. The sky seeped with crimson hate.

The surroundings blurred as he shot forward.

He raised his gun, shredding the trees in his path with a single shot.

A single-minded path of destruction.

"-!" Just when Asher was sure he had reached the place where the howl came from, an arm suddenly swung toward him from above.

A single claw stabbed into his eye.

Little Red screamed as her skull fractured. The width of the claw was too wide for her eye socket to contain.

He leapt back, assessing the situation as blood gushed profusely down his cheek.

The Wolf dropped from above, leering at him with a wide grin. With a flick, the flesh on its claw splattered onto Asher's cloak.

"In such a hurry, what for? Something good happen to you?"

Asher growled as he pinched the hem of his hood, pulling it to cover his left eye.

"DIE." He raised his gun.

The wolf vanished into the shadows, out of the gun's sight.

It appeared behind him-

Asher flickered onto its back, predicting its trajectory.

A hint of panic flashed past the wolf's glowing eyes as Asher roared.

His blade flicked open, raking a meter-long gash into the wolf's flesh before it could react.

"You!" The wolf turned its head, aiming to bite the figure on its back.

*BOOM*

Only to get a mouthful of lead.

Thousands of metal pellets tore through the wolf's mouth, shattering teeth and mauling its flesh.

The wolf coughed out a puddle of teeth and blood, glaring viciously at him before fading into the shadows.

"It isn't time yet... Wait your turn, Red."

With that, it was gone.

Asher panted, covering what remained of his left eye with his hand.

He stepped toward the puddle of blood and teeth in front of him, stashing away his gun and blade.

A grim sense of satisfaction reverberated through his soul as he picked up a shattered tooth with five metal pellets embedded inside it.

With a sweep of his hand, he collected a two dozen of the more intact teeth, sweeping them inside his cloak for later.

An eye for a few hundred teeth. Good trade.

Now he just had to wait. Wait for round two.

The world shattered into light.

...

Asher took in a deep breath, finding himself back in the forest, lying on the ground.

The scenery above him was almost exactly the same as in the 'room', a gray cloudy sky and several trees stretching upward into it.

Standing up, his face turned pale as he looked behind him, staring at the path which he was thrown from.

A grisly path of dried blood and flesh trailed behind him, filling the air with the scent of blood. A few scraps of cloth visible on the ground helpfully informed him that his clothes had been shredded off his body.

"Yuck. So... What do I do now?"

He thought about his next move, but he couldn't really think of anything to do that would help him.

Asher found a patch of grass, plopping down to rest for a second.

He thought about what he saw in the 'room'.

Just like last time, it didn't show a room, but instead gave him a glimpse of Little Red's life. He wasn't sure how accurate those hallucinations were, but he assumed the emotions she held in them were real.

Like that inhuman desire for vengeance.

But, since those hallucinations were too short, there wasn't much meaning to be gleamed from them. Hell, he didn't even know why she was so hell-bent on killing it in the first place.

How different was this version's background compared to the plot of the story Mei told him? He felt that the plotline of the story Mei told him wouldn't result in such an emotional outburst at every hint of the wolf's presence.

And besides, the wolf died in the original story, killed and skinned by the huntsman.

Asher stood up, wincing as the wind chilled his bare skin.

'I need some new clothes... Should I go back to her house to ask for some?'

The System didn't respond.

'C'mon System, why did she throw me out in the first place, was I too weak still? Did she not believe me?'

[Heading back is an option, if you can convince her to take you.]

[There are many methods of completing the mission. Simply do what you see fit.]

He looked down the trajectory he was thrown in. Over there, perhaps a few kilometers away, was the tiny trail of rising smoke.

That was Little Red's cabin.

He took a step forward, though with a bit of hesitation.

"I mean, I have to get out of this mission, right? Completing the objective..."

Although there was no official objective according to the System, the name of the Punishment mission suggested that he had to take a side, either the Wolf or the Mercenary.

And as much as he didn't want to be tossed around by Little Red, he sure as hell didn't want to go to that lupine monster for help.

"Now I just have to convince her. I think she said something about not liking my tone?"

Asher stepped forward as he mumbled to himself, determined to go back to the real world.