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Wolves in the Wilds
🕑 Added 2022-01-16 16:03:30 +0000 UTCAs I looked at the neon blue screen in front of me—my soul?I found myself wondering about how I came to be here. Last thing I knew I had been driving home for…oh, so the universal-isekai hunter got me too? Fucking drunk truck drivers! My thoughts were derailed as the blue screen pulsed once, bringing my attention to it, or to be more accurate the words written in its centre.
Select World for Reincarnation.
Huh? A freaking blue slide with the font on it like that Transformers game…did I just get a gamer system of my own, adn why am I so fucking calm about it? Like, I realise that I should be hysterical and freaking out like Wanda in a torture chair with Vision’s head on her lap but instead, all I feel is the calmness the likes of which monks would kill to achieve.
The word’s in front of me pulsed once, and I felt in my bones—wait, I can’t feel anything, so do I even have them?—much like a loud speaker playing music in my ears. I just stared at that single sentence, comprehending its meaning completely yet not understanding it all as I tried to make some sense of the situation.
Obviously there is no way forward save for reincarnation in some fantasy world if all of this is going the way I thought it was. Reincarnation fanfictions were a favourite of mine, hell I had even started my own SI-reincarnation fic a few weeks ago. Gamer Reincarnation fics on the other hand, took that awesomeness to a whole nother level. And now I was being chosen by some higher deity or power for playing an RPG game…Would it be something like the Withcer 3?
World Selected: Witcher 3- The Wild Hunt
Wait what?! I hadn’t really selected it, I was thinking about it, you damn system! For fuck’s sake, I don’t wnat to battle Drowners or Spiders for the rest of my life!
Error: Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt unable to be loaded due to unknown reasons. Commencing restart…
I am not going to like whatever is now going to happen, that much I understood when the blue display suddenly turned red and the words on it pulsed with a glaring white light, before they vanished and another phrase took its place.
Welcome to the Continent, Soul transfer underway…
That’s it? That is all I was going to get from this console or system even as it was reincarnating me in the Continent, a place with so many dangers that it wasn't just dangerous…it was fatal at every turn of the street! Foolish and totally stupid population aide, that place was filled with monsters, literal and figurative both! And to say nothing of the wars which happened in that place, the racism and the fact that I will totally be out of my time!
However, as I felt my mind grow sluggish bit by bit, I couldn’t help but focus on a singl-wait, a double silver lining in all of this. Gamer fics were awesome because the protagonist always had a boundless growth potential, and maybe I will have the same going for me.
The other? Well, I wasn’t dead any longer was I?
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I didn’t have any memories of my past life. I knew that I was reincarnated, and feelings of love and care were associated with the words ‘parents’ and ‘friends’, but that was about it. No names, no faces,, not a single speck of information about my previous life remained in my head after my rebirth. As a baby of about 1 month old, my days are spent by pissing, crying, shitting and then crying a lot more for all the time I am awake.
By now, I had managed to gather that I was born to my mother, Iva Fiona, after a drunken night of debauchery. She was an elf, and despite the slightly gaunt face and the sunken eyes, she was always cheerful and happy to be around me. She worked in a mummer’s troupe, travelling from settlement to settlement along with the rest of the group as they performed plays and acts. She never took me out of our tent during the day, leaving me swaddled in her clothes and with the way my body was, I was incapable of moving even a single inch, let alone following after her.
For the next month too, nothing changed in my life. No new people, No new things and not a single second where my mom didn’t smile at me, her sea-green eyes shining with adoration and joy. However, one morning when I woke up to my mother stroking my head, it was followed by her soothing, soft voice as she whispered my name.
Rhaehal.
No surname, no mentions of the place from where we came from. But that was fine, she was my mother who loved me enough to forgo her own comforts for me. I was damn sure I could live and laugh with just a first name to call my own. After a few minutes of playing with me, she went out of the tent, no doubt to prepare for the show today when a blue screen, just like that time in the void blinked in existence in front of me.
Congratulations! You have completed the following achievement
Hidden Quest: Naming for Gaming!
Due to the high mortality levels of the Continent, and the general crimes against the elves, some Elven mothers refrain from naming their children until they feel that they won’t have to bury their child within the first few weeks of motherhood. To prevent emotional attachment on some level, the names are given only when the child survives into its third month.
Oh...I feel like I should have been shocked or scared or even suffered a panic attack by this description, but I felt completely normal. Like it was not a big deal that my mom hadn’t named me for the past two months because she honest to god expected me to die. WHy the fuck was I so clam about this? I raged in the confines of my mind, but even then…it felt muted. Almost like there was a barrier between the truly explosive bomb of feelings I should have been feeling and the actual emotions that were running through me.
The screen in front of me vibrated once, or at least it felt like it did in my head, bringing my attention to the sudden pop-up on it.
Gamer’s mind: Dampens your emotions and instincts so that you can think and act better.
The pop-up closed after that, leaving me with the revelations that for all intents and purposes, my mind was already that of a witcher’s, or at least as close it can get to it without those mutations. And this skill was likely the reason that I didn’t freak out during the time when I selected the world. Before I could think any more on the matter, the text in front of me changed, and this time it was certainly a sight better than the last one—though I think I could have been better.
Rewards received:
10 EXP.
Bonus Rewards: Mini-Map activated.
Earn 490 EXP more to level up.
Instantly, I became aware or I guess I knew the area in my immediate vicinity. I knew for how much farther than me the tent extended, and in what shapes and sizes the patches of grass and bushes were present around it. I didn’t actually know in what radius this ability worked, but if I had to guess, I would put it around seven to eight feet at the maximum, because despite hearing the voice of my mother I couldn’t ‘see’ her in my mental eye. But until I could learn to even crawl, this skill was the best thing I could hope for.
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Eight months later, I woke up to the screams of death echoing around me. With the gamer’s mind evidently active at all times, I didn’t cry or make a sound even once as my mother picked me up from the tent and started to run into the first. From where my head was nestled upon her shoulder, I could make out the roaring fire of the camp and the small, fast shapes moving about the tents, the screams cutting off one by one until only the silence prevailed.
My mother murmured something, her whisper lost in the sound of rustling leaves before a small light winked into being above us, illuminating the surrounding area in a ghostly, white light. By now, the campfire was nothing more than an orange speck in between the intersped trees and quite suddenly, I realised our situation now that I was not half-asleep.
Our camp had just gotten attacked by monsters, for no men were so short and so fast at the same time. And now we were running through a forest, defenceless save for some bit of magic my mother could apparently do, and all this had to happen in Temeria of all places.
Fuck.
“Don’t worry Rhaehal,” she whispered, her hand coming up to pe my head as she ran through the night. “I will not let anything happen to you. We will get out of this forest, there is bound to be a settlement nearby this forest, especially with Vizima so close to it. We will get out of here, and then-AAH”
Her reassuring words were cut off abruptly as she suddenly stumbled and fell forwards. Thankfully, there was grass and fallen leaves all around, which saved me and her both from any injury. The pale light above us bobbed in its place, before with a series of sputtering flashes, it too disappeared, leaving us drawing in darkness. I heard my mother’s whimpers as she scrambled o get up and take me up from the ground, but as soon as her hand touched the banket I was in, a new presence appeared around us, its form shining a bright red in my mind’s eye as my eyes snapped towards where it was. However, despite knowing that the thing was standing just a few steps to our left, I could see neither hide nor hair of it, the darkness around us finally becoming the nightmare it was always told to be.
I tried to scream, to cry, to warn my mother of the approaching monster, but despite a pitiful whimper leaving my throat, my mother didn’t understand me. I twisted and stirred in her grip, and I felt her hold tighten upon me as she started to stand up. I wanted to scream and make her run, but despite the thesaurus inside my mind, I couldn’t do anything but cry softly and even then, my mother just stood in her place, the red shape in my mind becoming more twisted and thought-consuming with every passing moment..
Why wasn’t she moving?! And why the fuck couldn’t I say the words that so despretly wanted to come out? As these thoughts swam through the forefront of my mind, the clouds above us parted a little, bathing us in the murky moonlight. And I got my answer for why she wasn’t running at the same moment the monster—for the dark, malevolent, blood red colour could mean only one thing—moved. I felt something warm spray across my face, and when my eyes cleared themselves of the liquid, I saw a small claw, barely the size of my head sticking out of my mother’s throat. Blood welled out her mouth as she looked at me, tears shining upon her cheeks as she gurgled something.
Oh. That is why she hadn’t run, she already knew there was a monster just beside us. Numbness so profound that even the Gamer’s Mind couldn't compare spread over me as I watched blood drip down her ruined neck into her cleavage, before with harsh yank and another spray of blood, the monster removed its claw from my mother’s throat. Through the mangled mass of blood and flesh that was her neck, for a brief moment I was able to make out an orange, slit eye blink at me as my mother fell to her knees. Despite no way to breathe, despite being in incomprehensible pain, despite knowing that she was going to die and become a monster’s meal, my mother didn’t lose the smile on her face as she deposited me on the soft ground.
Her trembling fingers ghosted over my face, and then her body started to jerk slightly as the loss of oxygen made itself known. A second later, I was staring at the stump of my mother’s neck instead of her smiling face, a fountain of blood erupting from the headless body before it slumped forwards, revealing the short, blood covered monster behind it. Its lips were pulled into a snarl, the wrinkly, whitish green skin giving it an appearance like it had just taken a dip in an algae covered water body. Its claws were undoubtedly sharp, and strong too if the way it had severed my mother’s head in a single swipe was indication. Its eyes were burning furnaces, the orange colour even more pronounced in the dimness around us as it bent towards me, its head tilted slightly as drool started to leak from its maw.
I couldn't even feel any fear or a shred of anger at my situation. My mother, beheaded and lying in two pieces around me. My new life, about to end in a heartbeat if the incoming claw meant anything. And still, I didn’t feel anything. And then suddenly, the monster fell sideways, its head parting from its body midway as they both thumped to the ground.
“Damn it! Fucking Nekker!” a voice cursed and suddenly, a blue presence appeared on my map, my eyes automatically turning towards the man. “Huh? A baby?” he said, and I felt large hands pick me up from the ground. Rough fingers wiped away some of the blood on my face as yellow eyes peered down at me, the shining hilts of two swords were visible over his right shoulder. “Better to take him to Kaer Morhen than leave him out to the wolves here…even though he is going to the Wolves now that I think about it.”
A Witcher.
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The name of my saviour is Vesemir. Apparently he had been in the forest for killing a Wyvern, and he had heard the screams from the camp, which led to him investigating it and then saving my ass. He was a sassy kind of man, not something I had expected from the brief memories I had of him from the games and the novel. But then again, that Vesemir had been much older, and seen much more than the one currently fighting a swarm of Drowners while I had been left on a tree branch.
Six feet above the ground.
But even then, the thought that even the smallest of twitches may send me plummeting to a messy end was the farthest thing from my mind as I watched the witcher dance in between the dozen or so drowners. His silver sword, affectionately named Scorpion—because he liked to use oils on the monsters, he had told me two days ago—moved more fluidly than a blade that long had any right too. Without even looking behind him, Vesemir bent backwards so that his back was parallel to the ground, his sword moving in a circle around him as he slashed the bellies of three Drowners in one go. At the same time, his left leg rose off the ground, and with a short shout, he rotated in mid-air, decapitating the drowner just beside him.
A few seconds later, Vesemir took me down from the branch and started to walk towards his horse, the fisherman beside it looking at the Witcher with equal parts awe and fear as he shakily handed a pouch of coins to him. Getting on his horse, Vesemir dumped me in a bag he had created for carrying me, which was tied to his back with a strap that went around his chest.
“Well little one, let's get to Kaer Morhen now shall we?” He asked with a grin as she looked back at me, and I nodded in response, causing him to snort as he shook the reins and spurred the horse onwards. “I still can’t believe a babe about a year old can understand me clearly. Were you hit on the head or something?”
And that was another thing which came up a few nights ago. Vesemir had been roasting a deer when suddenly, he had started to say random names with the intention of choosing one for me. Anyra, Corban, Kiyan and several others were spoken aloud, but not once did the man look at me, his eyes closed as he cooked his dinner. However, he must have somehow sensed my fussing, because when he turned towards my wiggling form, he asked
“What are you twisting about for? You had milk and a shit just a few minutes ago?”
I had truggled even harder at that, some embarrassment leaking into my thoughts, even though I had long since made peace witht he fact that at any random moment of the day, I would piss and shit myself and there wasn’t a single fucking thing I could do about it. Thankfully, other than wrinkling his nose and glaring at me every time I soiled myself, Vesemir wasn’t neglecting my hygiene and hunger both, the man having procured several nappies and a large bottle of milk in the last village.
I tried to scowl at him, or at least as much as I could with the paltry control over my muscles, but it must have been enough for Vesemir because he asked, “You don’t like the name or something?”
I nodded at that, and for a moment, Vesemir just looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. Which, to be fair, I could understand. Not many human babies out there could understand words and respond to them with a nod or a shake of the head at such an age.
“I have had too much to drink tonight,” he murmured and moved closer to me, his pupils contracted into black dots as he kneeled down and picked me up. “I just imagined you nodding of all things, when all you can do is shit and piss yourself.”. I scowled at him, waving my chubby fists around as I made a small noise in my throat. Vesemir’s eyebrows climbed into his dark-brown hair, his eyes widening as he almost dropped me in surprise.
“Yo-You can understand me?” I nodded at that, and this time Vesemir did drop me in shock. Thankfully before I broke my back in the ground, he caught me and brought me up to his face level, his eyes searching all over my features as if I was something peculiar.
“Well, not the weirdest thing I have seen ever since I set off on the Path,” he commented after a few moments as he sat down and put me next to him, “So, your mother already gave you a name, that is why you don’t like these ones?”
I nodded, and thus, Vesemir decided to call me little one until I could speak my own name.and despite not linking the name one bit, I was stuck with it at least for three years…Fuck.
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