Free Web NovelChapter 3: Unluckier than I thought
The first thing Lian felt was the smell of blood.
Not the normal smell of blood, but a smell that was thick, rotten, and heavy, as if it was crawling straight into his lungs.
Breathing was hard.
Something heavy was pressing down on his body, and every time he tried to move, he felt soft, slimy flesh crushing under his hands.
His eyes slowly opened. A reddish darkness covered everything around him.
For a few seconds, his mind was still stuck between sleep and reality. But soon the sticky coldness of a liquid that slid across his face removed whatever was left of his sleep.
Lian raised his hand.
Blood.
His whole hand was blood.
He frowned and struggled to move his body. Something like a bone broke under his foot, and the sound of it cracking echoed in the darkness.
His heartbeat got a little faster. He pushed himself forward with more force, and suddenly his head came out from inside a heavy pile.
Cold, smelly air hit his face, and then his body froze.
Around him... was a mountain of corpses.
Thousands of carcasses piled on top of each other. Some were huge, some were half torn apart, some so big that it was hard to even tell their original shape.
Dead eyes, broken horns, and teeth as big as a human forearm.
A narrow river of blood flowed between the corpses and passed by his feet. The blood looked mostly dry.
For a few seconds he just stared. Even his mind could not fully understand the scale of what he was seeing.
Then he slowly crawled out from among the corpses. Every step he took was followed by the sound of flesh crushing or bones breaking.
Lian finally stood on somewhat flatter ground and took a deep breath.
But that was the wrong move. The stench went straight into his throat, and he had to turn his face away. freewebnovёl.ƈom
The sky above him was red. No sun was seen, no moon either. Just a huge layer of dark red clouds moving slowly, as if the sky itself was alive.
And worse than anything, there was no sound. No wind, no insect, no bird. Just the dripping of blood.
Lian was quiet for a few seconds, then the glowing screen appeared in front of him again.
[You Have Been Selected As One Of The 25,000 Sacrifices]
[Welcome To The Ruined Realm]
"...Damn it." His eyes narrowed.
So he really had been summoned.
One of those twenty-five thousand people. The same sacrifices who almost never came back alive.
"Did I get cursed without knowing it?" He sighed. With all the bad luck he had experienced, he didn’t think he would be unlucky enough to be summoned to these ruins!
It’s not that no one can come back alive from the first summoning. It’s just that it’s very hard. Very, very hard. Especially for a normal person like him. Completely impossible.
Lian slowly let out his breath and tried to organize his mind. Panicking would not help.
If he was going to survive, he first had to understand his situation. His gaze scanned the area again.
He was at the bottom of a huge valley.
Walls of black stone rose from both sides, and a faint red mist flowed between them. Huge bones stuck out from the walls, as if gigantic creatures had once been buried inside this place.
"So this is one of the ruined realms..." Lian said quietly to himself.
According to public information, each realm was a destroyed world. Worlds that once had civilizations.
They had cities. They had life. And now they were just ruins full of monsters. No one knew exactly where those monsters came from.
Only that after they appeared, every world had turned into hell.
Lian took his gaze off the sky and looked around again. The most important thing now was to find the "key."
The only way out of the realm.
Keys were usually in specific places. For example, in mountain areas they were always at the top of the highest peak. Or in war zones, in the deepest part of the forest.
But here there was nothing. Just mountains of corpses and blood. A lot of blood.
"This is not normal..." Lian’s frown got deeper.
Even for a newly appeared realm, this amount of carcasses was unusual.
It was as if a huge war had happened right here.
Or, his gaze slowly moved over the broken bones.
...This place was the feeding ground of something.
An uncomfortable pressure twisted inside his chest. Without realizing it, he slowly moved away from the mountain of corpses.
The farther he got, the more he could see the valley’s true shape.
The ground was covered in cracked black stones, and trails of blood flowed between them like red veins. In some places, broken weapons could be seen among the carcasses.
Swords.
Spears.
Pieces of armor.
Lian paused. So other humans had died here too. But there were no human corpses or human blood.
His gaze fell on a corner of the valley in the distance. A huge bone was stuck in a rock, which had caused the rock to crack and its base to become loose.
He looked around. It seemed that if that rock fell, it could also damage the rest of the valley walls.
"This might be the territory of a powerful monster," he whispered to himself. He felt his guess was right, because the monster blood didn’t look very old.
And that led to only one conclusion. He had to get out of here as soon as possible and go somewhere safe.
But was there anywhere safe in these ruins?
His gaze suddenly fixed on something. A narrow path could be seen between the valley walls. A winding stone route that went upward.
The only exit he had seen so far. His heartbeat calmed down a little. At least this place was not completely closed off.
Lian took a few steps toward the path.
But at that moment, a sound came.
Tak.
The sound of something heavy hitting stone.
His body immediately froze. A few seconds of complete silence passed.
Then again.
Tak.
This time closer.
And then he heard heavy, rough breathing. Something was coming down the path.
Lian slowly raised his head.
At first, only a huge shadow was seen in the red mist. Then a large claw placed itself on the stone.
Blood dripped from its dark fur. And then... that thing came fully out of the mist.
The monster looked like a wolf, but only in the most basic shape.
Its body was the size of an elephant. Huge muscles moved under its black, blood-soaked fur. Large, twisted horns like those of a deer stuck out from its head.
Its whole body was covered in wounds. Marks from deep sword cuts and torn flesh. Part of its side looked like it had been ripped off.
But despite its condition, it was still alive. The monster’s bloody eyes fixed on Lian.
And at that moment, a deep instinct inside Lian screamed.
Death.
If he ran, he would die.
If he fought, he would die.
Even if he didn’t move, he would still die.
He looked at that creature. At the monster that looked like it had come out of a nightmare.
The monster slowly pulled back its lips.
A row of long, curved teeth, like those of prehistoric tigers, was revealed. Blood dripped from its fangs.
And then it looked at its new prey with hunger.
