Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

he came across one that pulled him up short. It was a picture of the Assassin… in a treehouse. And he wasn’t alone.

The tall man squatted on a small plastic stool and sipped from a tiny teacup, one pinky out. Across from him, looking perfectly pleased, was the most adorable little otter, also drinking from a teacup.

Hal blinked and swiped to the next photo. There they were again. He swiped again and again. Each image was like a frame in a flipbook. As he swiped, they put down their cups. Poured more hot tea and continued sipping.

After the twentieth photo, the otter seemed to notice the camera. It hopped down from its seat and waddled toward the camera, then covered the lens with a paw.

The next images were black.

And then his normal photos resumed. Hal tried to swipe back to the dozens of photos that should not have been on his phone. But when he did… there was no trace of them.

He put the phone away and tried to forget about the photos. He wasn’t sure what was going on with him or where he was but he needed to get moving. Standing still in the wilds, no matter where he was, wouldn’t help him.

No cell reception. No food or water. The air smells weird, everything seems off about this place and there’s a village ahead. Oh, and yeah I saw some crazy Assassin murder some baby-faced guy who looked like he was cosplaying as a Greek god.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to take a deep breath. The village ahead was nestled between two of the larger hills in the distance. As he made his descent, he could keep it in sight as long as he took a slanting path to his left.

Try as he might, Hal was having trouble remembering precisely what happened in that large room. He had smacked into the hard marble floor of the place in much the same way as he arrived here.

But the rest of it was all jumbled with fear, pain, and haze.

The image of the Assassin stood out clear in his mind, though. The jean jacket, red hoodie, red sneakers, and fingerless gloves were hard to forget. But for the life of him, he could not remember the face.

There were only glowing eyes that strangely reminded him of old TV scanlines under that hood.

Hal had the strangest feeling like the Assassin wanted to help him. Though he couldn’t imagine how. It was another mystery he hoped to solve in the town below.

As the town grew closer, more of the strange meeting began to unravel. The Assassin used Babyface’s dead arm to brand him. He clearly remembered the savage pain, though his left forearm felt perfectly fine now.

Pulling his sleeve up, Hal’s breath hitched in his throat.

He had a glowing tattoo. It was astonishingly intricate. He was so consumed with the mark on his otherwise unblemished skin that he nearly ran right into a boulder as big as a horse.

When he poked the skin, it felt as normal as any other part of his body. The only difference was the glowing golden ink. It caught the pale light of the midday sun filtering through the thick cloud cover and reflected it in a gilded shimmer.

The tattoo was a series of triangles with intricately inscribed lines within each shape. It resembled a twenty-sided die, a d20. Except it was flattened and spread out.

Without the strangeness of the Assassin and Babyface, he might have been able to believe that he got drunk. And so inebriated, got a tattoo of the triforce he always secretly wanted but never dared to follow through on.

The six extra right-angle triangles surrounding the four in the center refuted that idea. Not to mention the triforce had an empty spot in the center. Not another triangle filled with curious marks.

Pushing his sleeve back down, Hal pressed on toward the village hoping to find answers there.

Hours had passed since he first checked his phone for a signal. He was fooled by the initial distance to the village. While it couldn’t have been more than a few miles away, those miles were over tremendously hilly terrain.

Where a single mile of walking might only cover a quarter of that toward his destination.

After descending the final hill, the village spread out ahead of him. A low stone wall served as its border. Not even tall enough to stop somebody from stepping over it.

People milled about in strange clothes that made Hal wonder if he had somehow stumbled upon the ren faire. Men walked about with swords belted to their hips and in similarly strange clothes.

But rather than an air of frivolity and fun, everybody looked dirty, angry, and eager to be about on their business.

So it came as a welcome surprise to Hal, checking to make sure there wasn’t at least a Wi-Fi signal, when a broad-smiling man motioned him over. The man stood between two leaning buildings – more like rough shacks – away from the main dirty road thoroughfare.

Once he got close enough that Hal didn’t need to shout, he held up his phone and pointed to it. “No signal around here, huh?”

It was a common enough ice breaker and relatively benign. So his shock was complete when the ruddy-skinned man – still smiling – reached out and grabbed his wrist. Hal was jerked off his feet with superhuman strength. The man flipped Hal over and dragged him deeper into the darkness.

Stunned and dazed, Hal fought for breath that wouldn’t come. He wheezed, feeling hands darting all around him, turning out pockets and rolling him over until he was face-down in the dirt.

Head still ringing, a flash of words appeared in his vision. A small red bar in the bottom left shrank a little then faded away.

The [Broken Thief] uses Mug.

You take 2 points of damage.

Your items are stolen!

What the-?

By the time Hal gathered his wits enough to understand he was just mugged, the man was already gone.