Webnovel

Chapter 1: Consume Me In This New World / A Life Reborn

Ishikawa's head quickly emerged from the liquid, whatever it might be and after taking a few seconds to replenish his oxygen counter he began his swim to what he thought was land. The liquid was hard to swim through, it wasn't hurting him so it couldn't be stomach acid but it definitely wasn't water. Well, whatever it was it was quickly dropping Ishikawa's stamina bar to get through it. After swimming straight through the green liquid for what felt like an hour, Ishikawa finally could feel land brush up under his feet, and then quickly managed to get out of whatever that strange liquid was.

After further inspection of his clothes, there didn't seem to be any holes nor were any messages popping up about him taking long-lasting damage like it did when a player would get poisoned, but at the very least the clothes were ruined and would need to be changed once he had access to his menu.

"Oh, why did the game developers add a feature where my clothes could get ruined?" Ishikawa said out loud directed at no one. Though talking about something other than the giant snake monster that just ate him made him feel a little better and let him distract himself from the current situation a little bit.

Then after taking a few seconds to blindly look around, finding a few pieces of wood, old and rotted. Ishikawa managed to light a rudimentary torch. For the first time in a long time Ishikawa could see, and almost as soon as he could he wished he hadn't. Below him the ground was pink, and a fleshy texture could be seen, it was solid but definitely flesh. Turning around the liquid he had swum through was a thick dark green. Quickly Ishikawa came to the horrid conclusion that he had arrived in the snake-like creature's stomach, why the place wasn't filled with stomach acid he didn't know.

All he did know was that if he didn't start exploring and looking for an exit, he would die a slow and agonizing death of starvation. He might as well have died in the thick green liquid. Slowly and now filled with a will to live that only being taken out of the darkness and into a newfound light can achieve.

After taking a few seconds to gather himself up Ishikawa began his journey to escape from the giant snake's stomach. A few hours passed with almost nothing happening, no sights to be found, seen, heard, or smelled. In fact, it became so boring for Ishikawa that he eventually began singing, anything to pass the never-ending process of traveling through the snake's stomach.

"God, I don't even know what time it is! I hope my mother isn't knocking on my door already, I still haven't managed to take out the trash!" Ishikawa said, talking to himself. Hoping that it would make time progress a little quicker and that he would be able to escape from this place with no more problems. That's when he felt it, the creature was moving, and as such was his stomach. It shifted and stretched causing what felt like a level nine earthquake on the Richter scale.

After a few long and painful moments, the quake stopped. That's when Ishikawa saw it, out of the corner of his eyes he could see what looked like another creature. One that while riddled with holes had a strange reliableness to a creature from nordic mythology. Like lightning, Ishikawa began to run, was this the end of his journey, and had his long time searching finally paid off in this weird hell hole-like place?

Once Ishikawa had made his way up to the creature he couldn't believe his eyes, lying in front of him was in fact a Leviathan, the creature from which the plague he had been searching began. A smile slowly crept onto Ishikawa's face, and happiness bubbled deep within his soul. He had done it all that was left was to claim his prize, he firmly stuck out his hand and touched the blue mess of a creature's flesh. Then nothing happened, no message popped up, nothing.

"No, no, no this is what I have to do right?" Ishikawa asked no one, frantically he began moving around the creature grasping his torch with the weight of a dead man, sticking his hand in the countless holes that riddled the body of the creature, trying anything to get infected.

"Wait, maybe I need to eat its flesh!" Ishikawa thought out loud, quickly he grabbed his torch by the end and thrust it repeatedly into a piece of the creature hoping a small piece of flesh would fall off.

Searing pain immediately shot through Ishikawa, blood rocketed from his mouth and all over the creature, slowly moving his gaze downward he could see the creature's white teeth piercing his stomach, well one tooth in fact. Slowly his health drained, beeping at him, letting him know he was about to die then right before his health bar reached zero a message appeared before him.

[You've been infected with ~Ancient Leviathan Plague~]

A smile quickly flashed across Ishikawa's face, then his hp hit zero.

[Y*u h@ve Di%d]

Darkness surrounded Ishikawa. At first, the darkness was very cold, but slowly a warmer sensation began to take over, spreading throughout his entire body. While Ishikawa had never died before he knew this isn't what it looked like on the YouView videos he had watched. In those, the dead player would see a death screen followed by a logout penalty. Not allowing them to log back into the game for 24 IRL hours.

Slowly Ishikawa opened his eyes, expecting to see his reflection from the glass in his capsule staring back at him. Instead, a lush green field lay before him, and an apple tree behind him. His eyes widened in shock and his head swished about trying to understand what was going on.