Little Rodent

The hit Laz had gotten as a form of response had forced him to fly in the air until his body interlocked on the cold concrete of the walls with a loud thud.

The process had come as fast as he couldn't have imagined, but he was sure that the feeling he got after the hit was like he phased through a wall. Within nanoseconds — if there was the possibility of counting in such — his body had surged with a certain momentum that instead of causing him to collide with the synthetic walls of the limited void, made him pass through it as if it were mist.

The sensation the process had given him was disorienting. It was as though he was pulled from by another magnetic force which caused him to slip through a membrane of thick, yet intangible cold syrup. For a fleeting moment, time had felt stretched.

The moment the view of the world outside the void came into his vision, it turned blurry at first but simultaneously yanked him back to the grasp of gravity. He twisted in the air with a sharp breath, and that was only when he slammed his back into another wall with a loud thud.

"Oh!"

He gasped, looked carefully at his hands and flicked his wrist to make sure he was able to move again. He thought flicking his wrist wasn't going to be a good test, so, he brought his hands together and clapped his face.

'I'm still alive.'

Then, he slowly turned his head around to be sure he was no longer in the limited void where he had found himself. To his shock, he was back in the room in which he had woken. He thought after advising him to partake in his trial mission, the system was somehow going to throw him into an area where he was going to fight monsters or solve puzzles to succeed.

But, no—

'The hell?! Throwing me back to this damned room, and later on, you will term it laziness?!'

He reclined to the wall, now thinking hard to find out ways to start his trial. He wanted to understand how someone's trials started in this so-called Land of Call. If only he had read through the manual Codez D. Bing had published, he might have had a bit of knowledge.

That was when the realization dawned on him.

Even though it was true it had taken him a process to escape the limited void, it didn't just automatically happen. The pull was as a result of a catalytic agent, he had felt his body have contact with a strange solid.

A strange solid?

'Yes, likely a figure.'

He thought after seeing the looming shadow of a huge creature approaching him. His face was still down to the ground, but the shadow grew taller showing that the creature was drawing near. Then, as if to notify Laz who still looked down on its presence, the monster growled.

"Grrrrrrr...!!!"

The distortion caused by the deep growl caused Laz to shift into his reality. The realization that he was in the room with a monster had made him lose his mind, but after hearing this sound, he raised his head to the towering figure before him and froze, in resonance to time.

"Huh."

The monster before him didn't even give him time to assimilate whatever his undertaking in this kind of tight situation should be, it instead struck its trollish hand carelessly on the wall right above Laz's head. The strike seemed to have come in a careless move because it missed its target, but it was all because Laz was at the least fast to have ducked his head to miss the hit by a strand of hair.

'Damn... this could have ended my life.'

Laz thought as he crawled carefully to the closest corner wall of the room, a short distance from the door, and leaned his back on the wall, stretching his legs forward to a sitting position before raising his head to meet the monster slowly turning its grumpy body towards his direction.

It had a small face, sharply angular with a pink and moist nose in its middle, framed by long, sensitive whiskers that fan out like delicate antennae. He had yet to see the eyes of the monster but he assumed that it should be beady black, glimmering with cunning intelligence that always scanned for threat or opportunity. His decision to judge before taking it in was wrong, but he had his reasons.

The ears that decorated the small face of the creature were rounded, swiveling subtly as if to catch every sound.

He wanted to laugh at this sight but thought against it knowing he was still in danger.

It was funny how a monster that, based on his rough estimation, measured at least 26 ft was only gifted with such a head. Plus, that was when it only dawned on him the height of the room he was in.

'Well, at least I can say, my trial has started.'

The difficulty to ascertain the truth of the matter came, but he thought regardless. After all, his survival now depended on how long he was going to keep up with the monster till his time in the Land of Call ran out if actually it would do. Or, his ability to end the monster's life. Most especially, now it had fully turned to meet his glaring eyes.

Laz sat straight up with a flint of determination creeping into his consciousness. The last thing he thought he was going to do was give the monster in front of him the triumphant feeling that it was going to cradle up a weakling.

Even though, the bitter truth was that Laz was nonetheless still weak, and only thought of the best way to solidify his survival in this world. And his resolve seemed it would be doing him some favor if he made use of it as wise too.

The monster, now fully turned towards Laz was making advancements, on slow paces. Within intervals of five seconds, to say the least, it threw each step. Its full body was hunched, with its spiky bones that protruded from behind its back. In its front, on its torso, Laz could see the bone cavities of the thoracic cage which connected to a network of bones of different kinds, but centrally to the sternum. He wondered if monsters like this also had the same framework as a human skeleton.

Meanwhile, his daze was cut short the moment his eyes traveled to meet the long fingers on the expanded feet of the monster, bearing sharp claws before returning them to the tiny head once again. Judging from the size of the feet he just acknowledged, he was sure the monster could end his life at this moment in his sitting position.

Cleaving off the thought of his death, he returned his gaze to the head of the creature and muffled not out of disengagement on what he called a "non-supposed creation", but out of the fact that the huge monster towering before him now was a rodent.

'The little rodent? The rat evolved?'

He gulped, pressing his hands on his chest to remain calm. But, the immediate reaction of what he used to know to be the rat, the little rodent, reminded him that he was in no situation to be calm.

With a quick, precise and accurate speed, the monster struck the wooden floor, sending rubbles of disintegrated sharp stick wood toward Laz.