For as long as he could remember, Arthur had never had the luxury of having a home. He couldn’t really remember his mother’s face, but she hadn’t truly recovered from his birth and was left with a weakened body. Still, she had been able to hold on for nearly 4 years before she succumbed to some illness. Arthur didn’t know what had killed her, and it didn’t really matter.

His father had blamed him for her situation, the blight that had befallen the love of his life. To him, Arthur was a curse, and he was treated accordingly. At first, when his mother had still been alive, it was harsh words, a lot of screaming, and the occasional slap, but after his mother died, he learned fast to hide as much as possible from the man who saw him as nothing more than a demon.

Arthur’s life had never been at risk, however. At first, that is. 

As time went past, the way he got treated became worse up to the point when his father threatened to kill him with one of his guns back when he was seven. The threats worsened until they were no longer threats, and Arthur fled from his home at the age of 8. 

Lost, scared, and alone he had to make do on the streets somehow, but surprisingly he managed to survive because of the one thing he had learned in life, the ability to sense trouble and get as far away from it as possible.

Life on the streets was not gentle, and Arthur still got beaten every now and then, but every time he got better at avoiding danger. Over the first few months he became really scrawny as he learned the way of the streets and how to beg and steal his way through life. With an appearance as pitiful as his, he got away with many of the things he did.

If someone asked him if it was a good life, he would look at them funny, but at least it was a life. Not once had he even considered giving up.

While he grew up like this, Arthur slowly integrated himself into the darker side of the coin, which was society. He joined a local gang and became a drug dealer, primarily for weed. Arthur had been 10 years old back then and didn’t even consider becoming an independent dealer. It might have offered a lot more cash, but he would have likely ended up dead in some trench without the backup a gang provided. 

He first learned how to distinguish possible customers in his new job. He already knew how to avoid trouble, which helped him avoid cops and the kind of person that stabbed you in the back to get their stuff. He still made it a point to always carry a knife with him. Better safe than sorry.

The second thing he learned was English. With that, his life turned for the better because tourists had more money they would willingly spend than the local people. As a young child, he could even suck some pity coins out of them.

Arthur’s rise painted a target on his back though, and those that envied him wanted to see the kid he was gone. Who would miss a street rat like him? Or so they thought until they learned that he used his money for protection and some weapons.

At the age of 14, Arthur had a somewhat fortunate encounter. Next to his hobby of collecting and maintaining firearms, he liked to spend his free time playing computer games. He had to go to an internet cafe for that, and there he met a man with a flaming passion for those games. The two of them somehow managed to become buddies, not friends, and the man taught him how to read. Sadly his new acquaintance disappeared after half a year, and he had to complete his training alone. It took him nearly two years until he managed to read long texts fluently.

Arthur’s interest shifted from games to books back then, and the money he didn’t spend on guns, ammunition, his rent and food, or his job, he spent on books. He liked reading a lot because it was so different from his life, and as long as he chose the correct stories, good things happened to people like himself.

It wasn’t the best life he had lived to this point, but it wasn’t all that bad either. He would probably die early, though, and was determined to make the most of his time.

That was what he had planned to do until all of humanity got teleported to a different planet 4 months ago.

While cleaning and attending to his firearms collection, Arthur had suddenly found himself in the middle of a large plaza, surrounded by a lot of random military personnel and an equally large number of civilians. It had been awkward as fuck, mainly since the soldiers all belonged to different countries. 

There had been a lot of confusion, and in the middle of it, there had been Arthur, holding his beloved sniper rifle in his hands. Two half-automatic pistols had been holstered on his hips, and a gun had been slung over his shoulder and hung to his side. All the while, he was decked in ammunition belts.

The people around him were terrified and screaming for help.

He couldn’t exactly put his finger on the reason. Maybe it was because of his small height of about 160 cm or his blond hair. It could have also been his devilishly handsome looks and muscular build. Or maybe it was because there was an 18-year-old carrying 4 functioning and loaded firearms and ammunition belts on himself in the middle of a group of confused and scared people. Just maybe. 

There was also a large sports bag at his feet where one more rifle, two more pistols, and another mother load of ammo resided, but that wasn’t the point here.

Anyways, as far as first impressions went, this one was a bit awkward but luckily lost in the ensuing chaos of this situation. Arthur did not think much about what was going on back then. He knew his appearance meant trouble, and where trouble was, he was not. So, using the confusion as cover, he made his way through the crowd, expertly avoiding the military personnel, and brought himself and his belongings to safety.

The soldiers acted slower than him and as they had to put their enmities for other countries aside until the people were safe. Sure, there were some minor confrontations, but most soldiers wanted to protect others, a noble cause, in Arthur’s opinion.

In less than three days, some kind of order was established. Most of the civilians didn’t appreciate it, not wanting to follow the orders of others. They didn’t have much choice and were sorted by their abilities and past career. Some outright rebelled, which ended in a few deaths and the termination of any open opposition, but that wasn’t more than a side note of the whole situation. 

Arthur hadn’t been able to escape the tests. He had tried to fake his skill with guns, but he had faked it so well that it became apparent he was pretty good at dealing with firearms. After that, he had no choice but to reveal his criminal background.

To keep an eye on him, they gave him a crash course of ‘How to soldier’ as he liked to think of it, and put him together with a few marines. They were his guards, but at the same time, they were his team.

It was a weird situation, to put it simply.

While he learned the basics of being a soldier, the military fortified the mess of a city they had found themselves in. The buildings seemed to have been teleported just as randomly as the people, turning the settlement into a maze. At least there was enough food to keep everyone fed for a few months, though nobody knew what would come after that.

Arthur and his captors were used as scouts after he grasped the basics. Sadly they didn’t get to use any of the vehicles found in the city as they were kept for emergencies. There was no fuel supply, so it made somewhat sense.

The scouting missions were dangerous, though, for Arthur, they were also a chance to escape, so he made it a point to always take his bag full of weapons with him. The thing was heavy as hell, and he had to sleep on it to make sure the others couldn’t look inside, but he somehow managed to get by.

In the following weeks, his team contacted villages, towns, and cities with the same random assortment of houses, equipment, animals, and people. 

In a way, Arthur had been lucky to end up in a city with an incredible military presence. Not all places had that kind of authority in them, and without order, there had been a lot of fighting. One village was completely empty, with corpses littering the ground, though that was the worst they had seen.

The military didn’t take in any refugees, much to the scorn of some people who wanted to thin their supplies for some reason. In the end, relief squads were sent out to establish order, help, and increase their reach. At least, that was his thought on the matter.

Any resistance they encountered was often squashed by a show of force, and fights ended without too many casualties. Only so many people were willing to fight a dozen tanks for the bit of power they had gained.

Now, 4 months after the teleportation incident, Arthur and his team of captors were in some kind of birch forest. It was one of the most eastern regions they knew of, and they still needed to find settlements here or get past this area.

The group of six was moving at a slow jog, pausing every now and then to draw their findings on a crude map. Around noon they took a more extended break to restore some stamina. They didn’t really have to hurry anymore, so they took their time.

Then, Arthur felt something change in the air, not just the air, but everything around them too. The whole forest had gone deathly silent. He couldn’t put his finger on what was happening, but he instinctively knew something was different.

He warily looked around the camp and knew there would be trouble, so he began to arm himself. The other five didn’t pay any attention to him, but that changed when he assembled his sniper rifle.

They stared at him as he stood there, 4 pistols holstered on his hips, the sniper on his back, and a rifle to each side. With the addition of the ammo belts, he looked like a walking weapon depot.

Arthur’s captors snapped out of it and readied themselves while the team captain spoke up. “Arthur, what is the meaning of this? Immediately disarm yourself!” It was clear that they hadn’t suspected him of doing anything after 4 months.

He eyed them warily and stepped back as they aimed their weapons at him. Should they open fire, he would be dead without a doubt.

The team captain stared at him coldly. “Arthur, I’m not going to repeat myself. Disarm yourself immediately or-”

The voice was cut off, and a random shot whistled past Arthur, but he couldn’t pay attention as a sudden feeling of change overcame him. His body began to itch as if thousands of worms were burying themself inside of him. Something changed on a fundamental level, adapting his being to the change that had occurred before, and with a last shudder, the feeling was over.

The whole thing happened so fast that he could catch his body falling to the ground and witness the rest of the team not stopping their fall. They started writhing and screaming in agony, their bodies changing and growing visibly.

Arthur paled in horror and relieved himself unwillingly as he watched on. He took a shaky step back but was interrupted from making a run for it by a shimmering blue screen that appeared in front of him.

[Integration successful. Congratulations, you have been successfully connected to the system. You can now access your status. Be aware that any beings under the influence of any universe except the Lotusriver universe will likely call you a nice snack after the integration. May you progress past your limits!]

Arthur just glanced at the thing, but he only took notice of the universe, integration, and him being a snack. He looked at his team and established a new definition of terrified. 

Their skins had cracked and made a place for something new to grow. In a matter of seconds, they were nothing more than piles of cancer growths, and then they started to take different forms.

Arthur buckled over to his left and puked. That sight had been horrifying, disgusting, and repulsive.

What had been his former teammates started to change a bit slower. Legs grew, and tentacles formed. Many black eyes and terrible mouths with teeth designed to rip out the flesh of anything living opened.

Arthur looked up and froze for a split second before his instincts took over, and he started slowly walking backward, trying to get some distance between himself and the abominations. 

He had been terrified before, but now he was horrified. So much, in fact, his body was shaking uncontrollably, and he had pissed himself, again, he noted in the back of his mind. He was sure that this scene would follow him for all of his life, and the only reason he hadn’t screamed until now was the absolute fear he was feeling.

The things started to move and stand up while Arthur was still slowly backing away. Suddenly all of their eyes focused on him, and you could tell because they tugged the flesh they were embedded in his direction. His breath caught, and his heart missed a beat.

Then they screamed the worst scream Arthur had ever heard. It was worse than someone scratching a chalkboard with their fingernails. His nails were rolling upwards, and all his hair stood straight. He shuddered through all his shaking.

The abominations suddenly took off on the run, and Arthur pulled his trigger in shock. He turned around and ran as fast as he could, which was not fast enough because they were faster than him. His fire was focused on one of the things, but it refused to die.

While still running, he turned half around and shot again, but his rifle heated up with every shot for some reason and it began to hurt after the 20th something round left the barrel of the weapon. That was definitely not supposed to happen. Not thinking about it, he cut through the string that held the rifle on his body with a knife and threw the firearm behind himself.

Arthur turned his back fully to the abominations and tried to run faster. One of them stepped on his rifle, and the weapon exploded, which should also not have happened.

Arthur was thrown five meters by the shock wave and rolled on the ground for another two before his back painfully impacted a tree. The guns he was carrying with him made the impact much worse, and he would likely be bruised to oblivion if he survived. Everything became fuzzy for a second, and his ears were ringing. “Fuck!”

He turned around and looked at the impact ground. There was a small crater, but somehow nothing was on fire. The trees nearby were splintered, and a random tentacle was wriggling on the floor. Everything smelled of gunpowder, so intense that Arthur could smell nothing else. That was also not normal, he thought, as the ringing in his ears was lessening.

The abomination that had stepped on the rifle was hanging limply from a branch it had been impaled on a few meters in the air. Blood was slowly dropping to the ground. Relief spread through Arthur. “Dead.” He did not have enough mental capacity to say more right now.

After taking a deep breath, he looked around for the other four. The one he had shot first had left a trail of blood behind and was slowly dragging itself in his direction but would likely die before it reached him. The other three were nearly unharmed, though, and in the process of standing up again but never leaving Arthur out of their eyes. “Fuck! Fuckedy fucking fuck! Shit, hell fuck!” He had no idea what was going on, but cursing helped him to clear his head.

He stood up as fast as he could and ran again, the abominations not far behind him. His left leg hurt like hell, but not enough for it to be something serious, so he tried to ignore it. Arthur noticed that he had lost his knife and second rifle and screamed in frustration. He just wanted to survive, damn it! 

He took one of his pistols, shot a few times, and the damn thing got hot again. Arthur threw it at the abominations, but they had learned, and a tentacle slapped the firearm away. It exploded harmlessly somewhere in the forest without setting anything on fire.

Something made his weapons unreliable, which did not spell good for him. 

Arthur got more desperate and took the other two of his guns. He focused his fire on the abomination nearest to him, missing three times before getting in nearly a dozen hits. His guns were overheating again, so he let them drop. This way, the monsters couldn’t kick them away like a baseball.

The guns exploded between the first and the second nearest abominations, for whatever reason the firearms were doing that. 

The result was good and equally bad for Arthur. Good, because the second thing didn’t have legs anymore and had slammed directly into the third one throwing them both way off. Bad because the first abomination was now even closer to Arthur, still running after him, even though half of its back was missing and bleeding all over the place.

Arthur cursed. The sniper was still on his back, but it was useless in this situation. He gripped his last pistol and shot once at the nearest tentacle thing.

It gurgled, blood came out of its mouth, which it had a lot of, and it flopped over, not moving anymore.

Arthur sighed. He was out of breath, and his feet hurt, so he slowed down a little. 

Arthur looked at the last abomination just in time to see it standing up again. He also noticed that one of its tentacles had been ripped in half and absentmindedly noted that it had likely lost it in the first explosion, not that it mattered.

He shot it once, hit and turned fully around again, only to slam his left shoulder into a tree at nearly full speed. Arthur made a pirouette and fell over. He managed to catch himself with a roll, hitting the muzzle of the sniper with his head in the process and stood up again. Turns out rolling around while carrying a sniper wasn’t recommended, who would have thought.

The thing screamed.

Arthur’s shoulder and arm hurt, they were most likely dislocated, and he wheezed in pain. Pushing through the agony, he turned around and took another shot at the abomination.

The pistol got hot, much earlier than his other guns, and Arthur despaired a bit more. He let it fall to the ground and now had only his sniper rifle left. In the worst case, he would need to use it as a club.

Arthur ran around another birch tree and tripped over a root he hadn’t seen. He was so shocked by the stupidity of this mistake and likely his following death that he didn’t manage to catch himself with his hands. 

He closed his eyes before his head slammed into the ground, and he lost consciousness.