Welcome to the Doomsday Trials

Everything hurt.

It felt like every bone in my body had shattered, my lungs deflated like a burst water balloon, and the left side of my face would’ve lost a beauty pageant to Two-Face. Then again, I’d fallen fifty feet. By all accounts, I should’ve been dead.

Silver lining.

[Zone loading: Epoch – Stone]

I’d landed on what seemed like gravel, the tiny wedges of sharp stone giving a nice crunchy agony as I pushed myself to stand. My arms were like jelly, and my legs, well, they were completely busted. If I was going to move, it was going to be half ghoul, dragging myself along from here on out.

[Checking for latest version – please update] [Tutorial – missing] [Class – missing]

And there was that voice in my head, soothing and alien all at the same time, like the most polite robotic butler known to man. I was only half-listening, focused as I was on not bleeding to death. I scanned my surroundings, only then realising I was naked. As in butt-naked – my jeans, hoodie, underwear, even my Christmas socks that I inexplicably wore all year round were gone. Damn it. They were vintage.

[Health – CRITICAL – 20/250] [Mana – 15/15] [Stamina – 50/100]

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘thanks, that’s real helpful.’ I was on a cliff edge, a low wind howling. It was midday and temperate, so I wasn’t going to freeze to death. I was no botanist, but I could see a distinct lack of grass, replaced instead by vegetation that seemed too enormous, too exotic to be of this world. At least I hoped it was of this world, or at least the same postal code as Earth.

[Checking firmware – HUD missing] [Game files – corrupted] [Checking cache]

A distant roar pulled me from my thoughts. Fuck it. Broken or not, if I was going to die on this alien world, I’d do it on my feet.

The UI, it seemed wasn’t totally busted. I could see my own character portrait in the top left corner of my vision. My own face, mangled and bloody to reflect my current status. I smiled, but my character portrait just grimaced back.

[Checks complete – game loaded]

[Welcome to the Doomsday Trials]

Something growled.

Shit.

It wasn’t any creature that lived in the modern age. If I had to describe it, I’d have said it was a sabretooth tiger, about twice the size of a regular tiger, its matted fur already caked in the blood of its last kill. Its eyes were a deep red. It had no pupils. It was salivating and staring straight at me.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Fuck.’

It lunged at me, propelled by what seemed like three hundred pounds of prehistoric muscle beneath that fur. I dodge-rolled instinctively. I’d never in my entire life dodge-rolled, and yet it had seemed as familiar to me now as a shiver in the cold.

I ignored the agony in my legs, adrenaline pumping as the sabretooth tiger ran in a tight arc before lunging at me again. I could barely see, fuck, I could barely stand, and so when it lunged again I was a hair too late, its enormous claw snagging the bottom of my abdomen.

Pain seared, the intensity of the red blooming across my vision increasing. I didn’t need a HUD to tell me, one more hit and I was dead.

I couldn’t fight that thing. I hadn’t thrown a punch since school, and even those had been feeble.

Out of options, I tried to run, but my legs protested, threatening to collapse completely. My run became a hobble, and that monstrous creature could outpace me on my best day, let alone a day when half my guts decorated the ground.

Time to get creative.

I scanned the terrain, searching for anything that might help me. There was no time to think however, as the sabretooth lunged again, this time instead of barrelling straight for me, it seemed to dance, sidestepping left then right before swiping in a large arc. This was better telegraphed, and I was able to duck under it – barely.

It kept moving, propelled by its momentum and kept pacing in a circle. It slowed to a walking pace, its chest rising and falling. It continued along the same path, but was visibly slower, for all of five seconds before launching once more into its attack.

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Wait a minute, I thought. Two wide arcs, then a sidestepping manoeuvre.

The sabretooth tiger was fast, but its attacks were in a predictable pattern, each time following the same sequence. It wasn’t attacking like a real animal; it was more like a boss from a video game. It would fight through three of these patterns and then falter, having to walk a few seconds, as its chest heaved.

My eyes widened.

‘Stamina?!’ I cried wildly.

[Stamina 46/100]

That was it! If I had a stamina bar, then maybe everything did in this place. That little walk it did wasn’t random; it was the sabretooth tiger regaining its stamina.

So this place had rules. Good. Rules could be understood, and more importantly exploited. I glanced to the edge of the cliff, the seed of an idea forming.

It was time to test my theory, and if this had really been a video game, I’d have let it come at me properly, learning its move set, allowing it to attack, even kill me. In this place? Other than the user interface, it seemed pretty goddamn real. Real pain, real consequences. I couldn’t be sure if I would respawn, and now definitely didn’t seem like the time to find out.

I had to make this count.

I baited it, flailing my arms like a madman, hoping to taunt and enrage it. It worked! Oh shit, it worked, I realised as the sabretooth tiger’s speed picked up like a ship on a high wind. I meanwhile, fought the impulse to roll and move all over the place, conserving what paltry stamina I had in the face of this prehistoric monstrosity.

Two arcs, wide. I understood now, able to dodge the blows. I stepped back, chancing a glance backward. I was on the edge of the cliff now. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but a single slip and it was over for me.

Death before me and death behind me.