"Man up"
Those words cut through him so many times in his life that he gained a resistance buff.
Hoku had no job and had no intention of looking for one; instead, spending all his time online. He watched a lot of fantasy anime, and he loved playing obscure Japanese games on badly translated websites. The harder the game the better. Specifically, he loved playing RPGs, especially ones with permadeath. If he found a game to be too easy, He would look for ways to make it more difficult, like modding and self-imposed challenges. At some point, he even started making his own mods, though they never gained a meaningful audience. He couldn't care less; he just kept pursuing his passion, even if people on the outside judged him for it.
It was 2:45 AM. The only light in the room came from his monitors, stacked around his desk like a blue light coffin. One screen showed lines of messy spaghetti code. Another was frozen on several simple error messages that Hoku couldn't be bothered to fix.
He sat back in his chair with clothes, empty noodle packets, and numerous figurines of skimpily dressed, questionably-aged characters piled up around his room, making his own little make-shift castle. 'Hah, what would that make me, the princess?'. Perhaps.
Hoku was working on a 'stronger monsters' mod for a game he beat 12 times. Getting frustrated, he changed script, rubbed at his dry eyes and blinked back into the blurring sea of code before him. Then, he lifted his hand, ready to type again, when all of a sudden, the text was gone. All three monitors simultaneously shut down, "Uhhhhh! What the hell man? I didn't save!"
He presses the power button a bunch of times, but gets nothing, so he checks the charger port: it seems to be fine. And so he follows the cord back to the socket. Well, shit, it was out a little, but as he tries to prod it back in, he feels a small bite. The electricity from the socket had jumped to his hand, making him bounce to the foot of his bed. He stares at the socket with wide eyes. 'That could've killed me,' Hoku thought, ' I gotta be more careful'
He picked himself back up and moved back to his chair when he noticed a symbol that had strangely appeared on his centre monitor. Did he accidentally open something when the screen shut off? He had never seen such a thing; it was intricate and alluring to the eye. It drew him in, in every way, because once he moved closer, everything changed.
Out of nowhere, a black hand reached out of the screen and violently grabbed his collar, "Hey! What the fuck! Let go you son of a b-" he knocked his knee on his bed, lost balance, and screeched, grabbing his desk, but finding himself soon on top of the desk, being pulled in with great power.
As the struggle persisted, he then turned his head, hoping to catch a glimpse of his assailant, but instead, catching sight of a second hand emerging from his monitor, joining its sister, making it impossible for Hoku to hold on.
With the last of his effort he clawed at various things on his desk, like one of his figurines and his toothbrush. Several objects vanished into the screen until he was the last to go. Before he knew it, everything was gone.
Hoku couldn't feel anything. He was caught in a void and all he could see were streams of unnatural colours flowing across his body like he was moving through a tunnel of light. Then the lustre turned to streams of golden light perfectly bending into his vision, flowing in and out of his eyes. Focusing and focusing until it became... legible?
[Boot]
[Human Ally Detected]
[GAngel-9 System Initialising]
[SoulSync:256/256]
[100% Initialised]
[Receiving Hex power]
[Affinity:79%]
[Access: Granted]
[Body Reconstruction Rating:10/10]
It was all so strange that Hoku thought that he was still seeing code in his bedroom. Then the several lines of text were replaced by a single line.
[Welcome To Eadrift]
The space Hoku now found himself in was dark, heavy, and cold. he only held onto a shred of his consciousness as he floated in a vast volume. He was powerless, being consumed by something greater, yet he felt at peace.
Then something changed; he felt the volume slowly disappear. Hoku's consciousness would dip in and out, but he could still make something out through his half-opened eyes.
A pair of legs entered his fading vision, thin and delicate. A woman. She held him in her arms and carefully carried him, then kneeled over at his side. A blue glow faintly illuminated her blurred figure, which brilliantly radiated in the dark abyss. Hoku could just barely make out that her pale body was bared before him, though, like day and night, her dark emerald hair flowed down to her stomach, covering her humble chest.
She peered at him wistfully, then turned away, gracefully walking towards a pile of black garments that were cleanly folded on the ground, and though he was barely conscious, he still caught sight of the young woman changing.
Now, a hooded figure stood before him. Dressed in a black cloak, which is sleek, yet ceremonial, with deep orange patterns near the top.
She looks in some direction, sad, or maybe scared, as she seems to say something beyond Hoku's ability to hear. As time passed by, with her by his side, he could only feel the rest as his eyes were becoming too heavy to maintain. She kissed him on the forehead, and soon after, she was gone.
Some time later, Hoku finally woke up.
He rolled onto his side, coughing violently, water spattering out from his nose and mouth. His lungs were on fire, and every muscle in his body ached.
He touched his palms against the stone-hard floor, trying to sit up, immediately wincing as he noticed his clothes. they were soaked through, dripping and clinging to his skin.
Above him, there was no sky, only jagged stone and strange, black buds scattered around. He was in a cave.
Hoku noticed a blue glow that washed his surroundings.
A lake, still and round, emanating light, casting ripples across the walls.
He peered into the blue vortex, his spiralling dark blue eyes investigating the reflection. He had wavy short black hair with red frosted tips. Also he was wearing a mismatched pair of a grey pyjama shirt with black jeans, and badly fitting black sneakers.
The lake warped him into a wash of colour. Despite its beauty, Hoku couldn't help but curse it as he would quickly deduce that it was the culprit behind his dripping clothes.
He asked the crucial question.
"Where am I?"
Hoku scanned the area, There are two dark tunnels on either side of the lake. He wondered how he even got into this predicament. 'What was with those freaky hands?' He thought, trying to remain light-hearted, but his expression betrayed him.
"Is this for real?" He asked, playing with the pebbles on the ground.
"I seriously got kidnapped into another dimension"
More importantly, he had to think of how to get out. Survival came first, but he barely knew anything about surviving in the wilderness. 'Well, at least I have water.' He thought, and as he was just about to comment further on his shitty situation, he noticed something.
There was something buried in one of the softer patches of stone. Wet, in one piece and relatively ok condition.
Hoku blinked. Then blinked again.
Laying there was his limited edition, swimsuit variation, Narune Hiru figurine. Hoku gasped and rushed to pick it up, soon realising that there was more good news.
His toothbrush, a campus flyer he's never looked at, a comb, an empty can of Fanza, a pack of tissues and...
THANK THE HEAVENS
'I must've tossed my phone when I was being dragged in.' He thinks, gleefully staring at the device. His parents used to taunt him by asking, "Is your phone more important than your life?" So Hoku felt rather proud that he could now answer that after throwing his phone at a primordial demon as a last resort.
Unfortunately, his joy was cut short, as his phone was just as soaked as him, and sadly, it didn't survive. He held a mini funeral. "Goodbye, old friend, hope you get reincarnated into a new life with your own harem to boot". He said, saluting the air.
Hoku started gathering up the rest of his scattered, waterlogged belongings. Most of it was junk, sure, but seeing it all here gave him a strange sense of confidence in this strange place. His mind wanders back to the hooded girl as he thinks to himself, 'She must've pulled them from the lake. I wonder where she went.'
He sorted through each item one by one; most were to be left behind, between things that he couldn't fit in his wet pockets and things that probably weren't going to help him. In fact, there were even a couple he didn't recognise; he spent so much time glued to his screen that the thought didn't alarm him.
There was one that was pretty strange in shape, however. He reached out, gripped it firmly, and pulled. It didn't budge.
He frowned and tugged harder. Still nothing.
A flicker of embarrassment kicked in, 'I really should've monopolised on that gym membership'
Still, he wasn't about to give up just like that. So he picked up his desk light and tried bashing at the spot. Bits of dirt and stone started to chip away. He bashed again and tried pulling as more dirt piled away.
But it really was stuck.
Hoku sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow. The air in the cave was starting to creep in.
"Jeez, okay! I'll just take what I have", he muttered in utter defeat.
But before he could stand-
He noticed that the dirt didn't stop moving.
Instead, more of it continued to pile off. Hoku's body tensed. He started to slowly backpedal. Then the ground rumbled lightly. Hoku jumped back, now moving away with more haste, abandoning the rest of the buried items, only taking the items in tow.
Suddenly, the floor lurched violently, sending a shockwave rippling through the stone and the water in the lake. Hoku started sprinting with all the speed a gamer could manage, being rocked from side to side. Regrettably, this caused a loose item to drop from his busy hands.
it was Narune Hiru!
Hoku ran until he reach one of the tunnels, rounding its corner, managing one final look across his shoulder, seeing the last of Narune waving and wishing him good luck, and capturing the disastrous shadow that lay beyond her.