Hans woke up and immediately knew something was wrong.
His body was a wreck and the pain he was feeling was unlike anything he has ever experienced. This is what he imagined being hit by a truck would feel like but even that might not explain this.
He tried to open his eyes and the light alone made him want to throw up. That split second was enough for him to see the dark ceiling with purple crystals embedded in it.
'What the... where am I?'
He tried to sit up and his body refused. His arms felt like they weighed a thousand pounds and his chest burned so bad he stopped halfway and just lay back down, gasping for air.
'What the hell happened to me, I am in so much pain I can't even think clearly.'
He turned his head slowly after hearing footsteps. That small movement alone sent pain shooting down his spine but that didn't matter, cause what he saw made every drop of blood in his body go cold.
'W-W-W-What the- am I d-dreaming?'
There were two figures standing by the door. They were tall, taller than any human had a right to be, with dark skin that carried a faint greyish tint to it. One of them had curved horns growing out of their temples and the other had a pair of large bat-like wings folded behind their back. Both of them were wearing armor and holding weapons.
They were looking right at him and he stopped breathing entirely.
'Those are... There is no mistaking it...demons.'
His heart started pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. His chest was already in agony and now his lungs were not working properly either, so he started hyperventilating.
'No no no no no. This can't be real, this isn't real. I'm dreaming, yeah, I have to be dreaming.'
But the pain was too real to be a dream and the demons looked too solid to be a hallucination. They were real, standing right there, watching him with expressions he couldn't read.
'I died... I must have died and gone to hell.'
The thought made his hyperventilating get worse. His hands were shaking, his vision tunneling, and the rational part of his brain shut down completely.
'Oh God, oh God, oh God. I actually died and went to hell. Dad was right, I asked too many questions and this is what I get-'
He tried to move and get away or do anything, but his body was so broken that all he managed was to shift a few inches on what he now realized was some kind of stone bed before his arms gave out again.
The demons by the door shifted when he moved. One of them said something to the other in a language he couldn't understand, their voices deep and guttural. The winged one stepped forward slightly and Hans flinched so hard he nearly fell off the bed.
"Stay away from me!" he shouted, or tried to, because what came out was closer to a hoarse croak since his throat was so dry it felt like sandpaper.
The demons stopped moving, exchanging a look before the one with horns held up a hand in what might have been a calming gesture, but Hans wasn't calm, he was the furthest thing from calm that a human being could possibly be.
His breathing was getting faster and shallower. Dark spots were appearing in his vision and his fingers were going numb from the hyperventilating.
He could feel himself about to pass out and some desperate part of him thought that maybe that was better, maybe if he passed out he would wake up somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't this.
Then something appeared in his vision.
[Host is experiencing a panic attack]
[Elevated heart rate: 187 bpm]
[Oxygen levels: dropping]
[Recommendation: calm down before you pass out again]
He blinked at the floating text.
There were words hovering in front of his eyes. Translucent blue text, suspended in the air like some kind of display, except it moved when he moved his head, staying perfectly centered in his field of vision no matter where he looked.
'What... what is that?'
[Hello.]
[I am your System.]
[We need to talk, but first, please breathe.]
He stared at the text, then at the demons, then back at the text again.
'...the pain is so bad I'm hallucinating.'
[You are not hallucinating.]
[I am real. The text you are seeing is being projected directly into your visual cortex.]
[Also, your heart rate is still at 174 bpm. Seriously, breathe.]
He wanted to argue with the floating text, but his body was making it very clear that it agreed with whatever this thing was.
He forced himself to take a breath and it hurt. He took another one and that hurt too. But slowly, painfully, his breathing started to even out and the dark spots in his vision began to recede.
[Heart rate: 156 bpm]
[Much better, we can talk now.]
'What are you?' he thought, not sure if this thing could even hear him.
[I can hear you just fine.]
[Like I said, I am your System. Think of me as a support structure built into your body. I manage your status, monitor your condition, and help you survive.]
[Which, given your current condition, is a full-time job.]
'My current condition?'
[You are severely injured, and I will keep the explanation simple since you seem to be on the verge of another panic attack.]
[You were summoned, pulled from your original world to this one by the beings standing at that door.]
He looked at the demons again. They were still watching him, though they backed off slightly after his outburst.
'Summoned? What do you mean summoned, like a summoning ritual?'
[Yes. One of the demons here performed a spell that pulled your soul across dimensions and reconstructed your body in this world.]
[However, the spell did not go as planned. There was a catastrophic malfunction during the transfer.]
'A malfunction, what kind of malfunction?'
[The energies used in the ritual were incompatible with each other. They collided while your body was still forming, and the result was significant damage.]
[To put it in terms you will understand:]
[Your bones have multiple fractures. Your organs were strained well past their limits and the internal channels that would normally allow you to interact with the energy of this world were destroyed before they could finish forming.]
[97% destroyed, to be specific.]
He tried to processed this but his brain felt like it was running through mud.
'So that's why I feel like my insides are on fire.'
[Yes, that is an accurate way to describe it.]
[Your body was essentially broken during the summoning process. The demon who performed the ritual was injured as well, if that makes you feel any better.]
It didn't make him feel any better, but he was too overwhelmed to say so.
He lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together what he was being told. He was in another world, and it was a demon that summoned him here. The summoning went wrong and cause his body to take severe damage. And now there was a voice in his head that called itself a System.
This was insane, all of it was completely and utterly insane.
'Am I... am I dead? Is this actually hell?'
[No, you are alive, and this is not hell.]
[This is simply another world, and the beings here are the native inhabitants. They summoned you for a reason, though I do not have the full details on what that reason is.]
[What I do know is that they went through considerable effort to bring you here, so it is unlikely they intend to harm you.]
He looked at the demon guards again. If they wanted to kill him, they could have done it while he was unconscious, and that much made sense at least.
But they were still demons. Everything he was ever taught told him that demons were evil, they were enemies of God and their very existence was an affront to everything holy.
He could hear his father's voice in his head, clear as day. "Demons are the servants of the devil. There is no good in them, there never was and never will be."
'Then why haven't they killed me?'
[I cannot speak to your religious framework.]
[What I can tell you is that your body needs rest. You are in critical condition and this level of stress is not helping your recovery.]
[Survival probability is currently at 58%, and I would prefer that number to go up, not down.]
'58%?! There's a 42% chance I die right now?'
[I have been working to keep you alive since the summoning, so trust me when I say 58% is an improvement over where we started.]
He didn't know what to say to that.
He was exhausted, completely drained and the panic burned through whatever energy he had, leaving him with a hollow feeling.
The demons by the door didn't move, they were just standing there, watching him. He didn't know what they were waiting for but he hope it was not death or torture .
'I want to go home,' he thought, 'I am sure they have their reasons but they ripped me away from my family.'
The System didn't respond to that.
The guards suddenly straightened up and moved aside, which told him that someone was coming, and whoever it was, they were important.