The Unavowed 1 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Abdulla

The Unavowed
Chapter 1

-VB-

“GACK!”

I rolled on the rocky, moss-covered ground and held my face as it bled. “FUCK!” I screamed as my cheek felt broken.

Broken with pain!

“FUCCKKK!!”

My scream echoed around me, and even though my pain, my situation didn’t feel right.

The last thing I remembered was getting out of the car to go to work, and then suddenly, I was falling down to a dimly lit rocky, moss-covered ground.

Gritting through the pain, I slowly stood back up, stumbling once or twice as the pain flared.

“W-Where the fuck am I?” I finally uttered when I saw where I was.

There was no sky above; a high ceiling cavern hung above my head. The cave was wide and had walls at certain intersections. Worse, I heard skittering sounds.

“... Fuck.”

I winced as I limped towards the side of the tunnel that didn’t have sounds coming originating from. Something else felt broken, but I wasn’t in any circumstance to stop and examine myself.

I didn’t want to find out what was making the definitely big and not human skittering sounds quickly approaching me.

My vision whited out for a moment when I moved wrong and pain shot up my entire body. When I came to, I was biting down on my lips to the point of bleeding and slumped against the wall. I didn’t feel good. I felt so weak and tired, even though I was normal when leaving my car before whatever brought me here.

“... Fuck, I’m confused as hell,” I laughed weakly.

I ended up sliding down the wall and almost screamed again as my leg screamed in pain.

The skitterings grew closer, and I knew from hearing that the approaching “horde” of insects were large.

Very large.

And I was a wounded mammal incapable of fighting back.

I just hoped it wasn’t flies or maggots. I had no desire to be eaten alive slowly.

“Get them!”

The skittering noise stopped coming toward me, and turned back to face something else.

Skittering insects met the roars of … people?

I winced as an explosion shook the cave.

I wasn’t sure long it took for the battle to end and then for the people to find me, but by the time I heard someone else, my eyes were closed and I’d fallen asleep.

Just five more minutes, am I right?

“Hang in there! Someone get me a potion!”

For a moment, the cavern around me ripped away from my vision, and I saw a giant entity.

[Destination]

It was an Entity. I realized that it had … followed me? I saw a star that was a hole in reality.

Oh.

The Entity had used me to punch a hole -.

No, wait, what?

I stared at it with wide eyes even as I slumped further down.

‘I… how did I know that’s an Entity?’ I thought to myself in the midst of this hallucinogenic vision as the hole in reality tore wider. It took me a moment to realize something else.

‘I’m the bait.’

The Entity and I both paused and stared at the hole in reality as it tore wide open and something big came lunging in after the Entity.

A giant hand - attached to a giant arm - burst forth after the Entity from the other side of the hole in reality. Composed of stars and miracles, the Hand tore into the Entity’s side.

[Revenge]

The Entity screamed.

[PAIN]

Reality warped as the Entity struggled futilely, but faced with something beyond its - and my -  understanding, it was too weak and small.

The Entity screamed.

[PAIN]

Parts of its crystalline body broke away as the Hand shook the Entity. Then the hand specifically tore chunks of the Entity and purposes tossed them towards me.

[Reward]

And a small network of such crystalline Shards blurred down towards me…

‘Cheap bastard, can’t even give me pieces of its own power…’

I faded away.

-VB-

Slowly, my eyes opened.

I felt … weak.

I felt weak before, and the weakness I felt now - the heaviness of my body and limbs, the strength it took to keep my eyes open, and the deep fatigue that kept me invisibly chained to the bed - wasn’t as bad as it could be.

It was certainly nothing less compared to having multiple tubes and holes in my body and being nearly completely paralyzed.

Nothing compared to the feeling of weakness being in that hospital bed had been.

Also, the bed fabric was too coarse to be hospital fabric. For all of its faults, hospital fabrics weren’t coarse.

I rolled my head to the side towards the bigger portion of the room.

I was immediately greeted by something straight out a dream, because a bare medieval-ish looking room where they kept actual patients didn’t exist in the world. Right?

It was the next course of even that happened that clued me into the fact that my current circumstance - and what happened to bring me to that cavern - may not be as impossible as a dream.

The wooden door to the room opened, and I found myself staring at a well-endowed woman with cat ears.

It was also the point in time that my brain bluescreened.

There was a sexy cat woman in front of me, and from what she was wearing and carrying, she was the one nursing me.

And I was fairly certain that the t-shirt and jeans - that didn’t fit in with the medieval theme - on the wall right next to the door were my clothes.

Fuck, was I even dressed right now?

She paused after closing the door.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

… Huh, I just understood her even though she wasn’t speaking any language I knew.

“I… guess I am? What happened to me?\

The cat-woman snorted. “That’s what I want to know. No weapon, no armor, and not a member of any familia. That’s how we found you, you know? If it wasn’t for us using one of our elixirs, then you would be dead…” she talked on and on about how much of a waste that had been and about why I should be thankful and -.

But my mind had bluescreened again.

Oh shit.

I’d been in the Dungeon.

I was in Danmachi.

[SALUTATIONS!]

And … you know, I think that’s my Shard speaking to me because I clearly remembered the Entity getting torn apart and Shards coming for me.

[Reward]

I shivered.

“Hey, are you listening?”

I looked up, forgetting to hold myself together as I met her eyes.

She looked down at me quizzically.

[UPDATE!]

My brain melted from the information dump, and my eyes rolled up in their sockets.

For the second time in the last subjective hour, I fell unconscious.