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Oblivion
When I woke, I was hit with an inexplicable sense of wrongness.
I was intimately familiar with my body and my senses, for it was my body, and they were my senses. My sense of balance, of temperature, of the space around me and even of time... all were eschewed. I knew, immediately, that my body, was wrong.
I could not feel my arms. I could not feel my legs. I could not feel my shoulders nor my fingers nor head nor my mouth nor anything. All I could feel was that my body was small, unnaturally compact, and narrow. I was an armless, legless, headless being, and my ability to move was confined to pitifully writhing across the ground.
I quelled my desire to scream. I failed, realizing that I did not desire to scream out of horror, but rather, out of rage. So, I desperately wanted to scream.
But I had no mouth.
What I had was a narrow, tiny passageway that disgustingly was incapable of so much as a whimper. I tried, again and again and again to scream, to be able, to have that right, the right to communicate my rage and indignation to the world. To be deprived of my limbs, I could endure, painstakingly, I could endure that. But to be deprived of my ability to express anger?
OBLIVION! I roared. I tried to roar. Nothing. No sound emerged. Save for the small recesses of what I knew to be my consciousness crying out, the world did not stir.
I moved, wriggling my body however I could, desperate to slam myself against whatever rough surface I could find and end this farce of an existence. I wanted an eternity of dark nothingness, as such would be far more preferable to an unknown amount of time as... this.
It was hard, to move. With no eyes, I could not see. With no ears, I could not hear. With no arms or legs, the only thing I could do, was fold my ‘stomach’ against itself, then push forward, skidding against the moist coldness. Again, and again, I did this, blindly, this body, moved. I was unsure how long I went. In what direction, I went. All I knew, was that I moved. I kept moving, spurned by the overwhelming desire to end this lie of a reality.
And as I moved, it became... easier.
[Skill {Crawl} has gained a Level.]
[Skill {Crawl Lv. 2} acquired]
The words, bright, brilliant, floating on a translucent blue screen, appeared. Simultaneously, the words preserved my sanity, and at the same time, they served as the one thing that almost shattered it.
OBLIVION! I roared again.
I knew what it was. My younger self was intimately familiar with them. The days when I was a reclusive child who sat in front of a computer consuming wish-fulfilling, escapist fantasy seemed to have finally come back to mock me. Did Oblivion know about my childhood? Was this the being’s way of mocking me? Of telling me that he was not as ‘oblivious’ as I thought?
The screen both damned me and saved me, and I knew, I knew, intimately, that if I possessed a mouth, a throat, and I was capable of using them, this would have been the moment I laughed. Laughed in a manner that would have me in straitjackets, with bulky men in white robes holding me down and pushing me into a room that stank of sterilizers and antiseptic.
I needed information. Urgently, I needed to ascertain that this was indeed the situation I believed that I was in. Being unable to speak, the first thing I did was to think as hard and as loudly as I could. I did my best to remember the terms, and went through them. Menu. Help. Tutorial. Status.
Status
It seemed it was as I suspected.
Status
Name: [Unnamed]
Race: [Lesser Annelid]
Specie(s): [Common Earthworm]
Level: 1
HP: 5/5
MP: N/A
HP Regen: 0.5/Day.
MP Regen: N/A
Negative Effects: [Starved]
Positive Effects: [N/A]
Title(s): [Reincarnated] [User]
I was now glad, for my inability to speak. I was not sure what I would have said, to the information that appeared before me. I did not know what sort of response would be apt, to the realization that it was exactly as I suspected. No, it was significantly, tremendously worse than I suspected.
Common earthworm.
Earthworm. I was an earthworm. As a creature that crawled upon the soil and shriveled up under the sun. As the very being that was synonymous with feebleness. A creature that was used as unit of measurement for the pathetic, the spineless and the laughable. I was that creature.
OBLIVION! THIS WAS NOT WHAT I DESIRED!
He could have merely reset the clock. Take me back to the loathed days of my childhood where my three older brothers outshined me in every way and won the adulation of my father. Where being the ignored fourth son of the owner of a multinational business conglomerate turned me into an awkward pubescent child obsessed with fictional worlds as a form of escape.
No. I was not back to my childhood, to the days I wanted everything, to the days I groveled in the sand, as a boy larger than me pressed his foot at the back of my skull and ordered me to eat sand while my older brothers told me to fight my own battles. This was not the galling, trying times of my infancy. It was far, far worse.
A pitiful human was at the very least, still human.
An extraordinary worm, was still a worm.
Was this supposed to be some form of karmic irony? Was it Oblivion’s way of teaching me ‘humility’ or making me regret not choosing a peaceful afterlife?
OBLIVION!
Nothing. Utter silence left me with nothing but the solitude of my own thoughts. The lack of communication with the being did not calm me, nor did it settle the bubbling pit of fire I felt within.
The fire died, eventually. Its smoldering embers lost to the ravages of time as all things would be, and it left me feeling cold. Cold and naked. Cold and naked and alone. Cold and naked and alone and silent.
In this cold and silence, a sharp piercing sensation stabbed at me. The realization of what it was came afterwards.
Cold and naked and alone and silent... and hungry.
