Gary’s eyes fluttered open slowly as he regained consciousness. The first thing he saw was some very tall trees above him. The sky was gray, making it hard to tell if it was just about to turn to night or whether it would soon be day again. As he lifted his body, he heard a rustling sound, which turned out to come from the many leaves underneath him.

Am I in the woods? He looked around and saw nothing but trees, no sign of a pathway or road. Why did I come here? Wasn’t I jus—?

“Argh!” His head started to ring with pain. When he lifted it, he could see that his sleeves were partially torn. He tried to remember the last thing that had happened, but all that came to mind was the throbbing pain in his back.

That guy… he stabbed me! Lifting his shirt, he peeked over his shoulder but found nothing, not even after running his fingers over the supposed wound. For a second, he questioned himself. Could all of this just be a bad dream?

Alas, he quickly noticed something that made him think all of it had been real. Running down his trousers were signs of dried blood. It appeared to have dripped from his own wound. Something had definitely happened earlier.

He should have been in pain. There should have been a wound, yet there was nothing! In fact, his body felt far better than it had ever felt before.

Just what the hell happened after I got stabbed? How the hell did I get here? Shit, where the hell is “here” in the first place?

He had no memory whatsoever of what had happened from the construction site to where he was now, and in all his thinking, he had ignored something obvious. His vision had been slightly altered and in more ways than one.

Even though it was quite dark now, he could make out details in the night he shouldn’t have been able to see. The leaves on the trees a distance away, the ants crawling up their trunks, passing food to each other, and then there was the moon. It was still out, suggesting that it was still the middle of the night after all.

Hang on… are those ants? Eventually, Gary noticed the discrepancy with his eyes. How is that possible? Could it be because of all those carrots Mom has been cooking lately? They say carrots improve your eyesight… Or is that just another myth? I bet Tom would know.

In the middle of his crazy thoughts, he registered something in the top left corner of his vision. It reminded him of a notification from an email or a game. He moved his head, trying to get rid of it, but wherever he looked, it stayed there.

Then he started to touch his face to see if he was wearing anything, but there was nothing. The notification appeared to be glued onto his vision.

How the hell do I get rid of this thing? As he was thinking about the notification itself, it suddenly opened, and a screen appeared in front of him, hovering in midair.

Your bloodlust has been lowered

You are no longer enraged

State has been updated to Normal

Is that… a system?

Gary had played a few games in the past with similar interfaces. However, he wasn’t quite the gamer himself. He seldom had time for them, as he was always busy trying to come up with ways to make money. His buddy Tom would have been perfect for this, but even with his limited knowledge, Gary knew how to navigate it a bit.

The notifications looked like they could be deleted, and it looked like there were more options on the general interface. The annoying thing was it was all blocking his field of vision. Still, he couldn’t deny it was kind of cool—like he had been turned into some futuristic robot.

Nevertheless, he didn’t like what he was reading. The word “bloodlust” did not sound good at all. What exactly had happened? Had he been turned into some type of vampire and was now required to feed on blood? It would at least explain the wounds healing on his body. He had read supernatural stories about such things before.

Quickly touching his teeth, he felt nothing, and they appeared to be the same as they had always been.

Then there was the second half of the first message: that his bloodlust had “been lowered.” Reading it again, he gulped and tried to look at himself. There wasn’t a huge amount of blood on him apart from what was on his trousers. Somehow, he’d managed to escape from that construction site alive while three men were chasing him. He started to consider the worst-case scenario.

No, nothing happened, stop being paranoid! Gary thought, trying to convince himself. Surely I would have remembered something like that… But would I really?… I still have no clue how I got into the woods in the first place.

Unfortunately, with his tendency to forget even menial tasks like emptying the washing machine when his mother asked him to, he was unable to rely on his memory.

After deleting the notifications, Gary decided to study the system a little. The first thing he saw was his own image looking back at him and his name on the side with a few stats.

Name: Gary Dem

Level: 1

Exp: 0/100

Health: 100/100

Energy: 100/100

Heart rate: 42 BPM

State: Normal

He tried to figure out what this information meant. He was unable to open any sort of description, and there wasn’t really anything that told him what was going on.

“Health” seemed to be pretty self-explanatory, but “Energy”? The best he could come up with was that it might be something similar to stamina. As for “Heart Rate,” he considered that a very strange thing to appear. What worried him was that his resting heart rate had never been that low. That was a heart rate that athletes were able to achieve, and although Gary wasn’t unfit, he was far from being an athlete.

As for “State,” he could only relate it to the message he had gotten previously about his bloodlust decreasing, which he chose to ignore for now. What interested him more than anything was the level by his name. It reminded him of the RPGs that had been introduced to him.

He didn’t know why, but his favorite part of those games had never been the completion of quests or the exploration of the world but simply the grind. He would spend hours just killing creatures, watching his bars increase. Tom always complained about his playing style, stating that it wasn’t the fastest way to level up. After all, he was a “noob” in Tom’s eyes.

On the screen itself, at the top, the tab read “Status,” but right next to that was another little tab labeled “Quests.” It had a little red dot, which would usually indicate that there was something new that he hadn’t seen before. At least that would be the case if it worked like his phone notifications.

When he clicked on that, a few more screens popped up in front of him again.

New Quest Received:

Get the perfect body

You can now do amazing things you could never have done before, but you’re limited by your former weaker self. You need to get into top shape to display your full potential! Do you even lift? No? Then start lifting! Diet is crucial to this task. You will soon see improvements beyond your wildest dreams! The most important thing is to stay consistent!

Daily tasks (Monday)

Push day: Get to the gym and start pushing. Instructions will appear once you get there.

Diet: Eat 2 kilograms of meat per day. Get that sweet protein!

Quest reward: That sweet Exp you need and love

Two kilograms of meat? Is the system crazy? What does it think I am, a tiger or something? How is it even possible to eat that much?

Apart from that, the system messages seemed enthusiastic to say the least. Whoever had designed it must have been a very strange person. As Gary scrolled up, there seemed to be one more quest that he had received before that one.

New Quest Received:

Your first turning

14 days until the next full moon

Survive!

As he read this carefully, his thoughts reached a certain conclusion. He could think of only one supernatural creature in books and movies that had any relation to the full moon. Heading back to the notifications, he scrolled up and checked the first one he had received. It wasn’t a new one he had missed before, but now he remembered seeing something before the blackout.

He read the words multiple times, the first system message that had ever appeared.

I’m not a vampire… Well, it seems like I won’t have a problem with body hair anytime soon.