The boy opened his eyes slowly.
He was feeling pain on his neck. Not just that, he was also feeling an intense headache that made him think of someone using his skull as a blacksmith's anvil. It was that painful.
'What the hell was that nightmare?'
The boy was thinking about that dream. The one about grave hunting with his friend Alac and meeting that vampire. The pale face with those fangs gleaming in the moonlight was still vivid in his mind, but he thought it was all just a dream.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a roll of tumbleweed rolling across his vision.
Rather than the familiar ceiling of his bedroom to greet his morning eyes, what he saw was this strange sight moving slowly past him. Not to mention, he was laying on the ground with his vision tilted to the side.
'What the hell?'
The boy could see something was clearly wrong with this situation. Then his eyes adjusted to the surroundings. He could see vast endless sand with dunes and grass scattered here and there, like an afterthought. Like he was in the middle of a desert.
It made him think about those old Western movies his grandfather used to watch, except this felt uncomfortably real. And at the far end, he could also see an orange sun peeking up slowly. Its rays were coming towards him but were still at a distance, not yet reaching where he lay on the cold sand.
Every single grain of sand under his body was telling him this was real.
'Where am I?'
He clearly remembered falling asleep in his own bed. But when he woke up, he had somehow ended up in what looked like the Wild West. The boy turned his gaze around the unfamiliar landscape. This desert that was completely different from his typical bedroom made him start to panic.
'But Alac and I were just...'
Bang! Bang! Bang!
All of a sudden he heard gunshots from behind. Then heavy howling followed by bone crunching sounds. The hair on the boy's body stood up hearing the high pitch sound, accompanied by that deep bone crunching noise and a growl that made him think of a wild animal caught in a trap.
It was that terrifying.
The growl was like that of a feral beast. Like something much worse than anything he had ever heard before. He quickly scrambled to his feet and pushed his back against the big rock behind him. The rough surface of the stone felt real against his spine, much too real for comfort.
'What the hell is that?'
He breathed heavily, clutching his chest as it beat quickly like a war drum. The boy was heavily confused now. He just opened his eyes and the first thing he heard was gunshots and growls of a beast and bones being crunched down like someone eating chicken.
'Am I still in a dream?'
It was a logical conclusion. This had to be some kind of continuation of that nightmare, right? But that wasn't the case at all. The pain in his neck, the cold sand under his feet, even the smell of gunpowder in the air - everything felt too real.
He couldn't just stay hidden without knowing what was happening. The boy took a quick peek behind the rock. Unfortunately for him, when he clutched the rock for support, a tiny piece of stone detached with a sound.
Crack.
'Shit!'
He quickly crouched down again. His heart was beating wildly now, like it was trying to escape from his chest. He clutched it with both hands.
He had clearly seen the beast. The thing that was tearing apart what looked like a man in a cowboy hat. And the worst part was obvious - it had also seen him too.
The boy could feel those glowing eyes burning into his memory. This creature that was completely different from anything in his normal world made him realize something important.
'This is not a dream.'
He heard sand moving behind him, accompanied by that same growl that made him think of death itself approaching. The thing was coming his way now. The boy held his breath and stayed perfectly still, like a mouse hiding from a cat.
Shlick!
Then he saw it. A dried, ugly, and rotting hand with long fingernails appeared just above him, gripping the top of the rock. The decomposed flesh hung from the bones like old leather, and the nails were yellow and cracked.
'This can't be real.'
Fear of the unknown was the oldest fear humans had. It was something that every human carried deep in their bones, passed down from ancestors who survived by fearing what lurked in the dark.
And right now, the boy had no idea what he was looking at. No, that wasn't entirely true. The boy had some idea what was happening. The moment he had laid his eyes on the creature, along with this Western setting he was in, only one thing came to his mind. A title that he remembered from somewhere.
[The Man Who Burned the Night]
A webnovel the boy had read nonstop just a week ago.
It was a typical coming of age, zero to hero story. The hero of the story, Clint "Fangbreaker" Callahan, was your typical young protagonist. His entire family - parents, little sister and brother, and other relatives - were all killed one night by a hungry vampire right in front of him. So he vowed to take revenge on every single one of them.
The story followed Clint's growth as a vampire hunter. Along his arduous journey, he would meet many eccentric characters who became his companions. He faced countless obstacles in the shape of vampires as well as humans and hybrids.
'If this really is that story...'
The boy's mind started racing. He knew what happened in this world. He knew who the main character was and how the story was supposed to progress.
'I really hope I am not transmigrated as that brat.'
But right now, with a rotting hand gripping the rock above him, he had a more immediate problem to solve.
He needed to survive first and figure out his role in this story later.