Defiance of the Fall

prepared an emergency phone in the camper in case something went wrong, and he opened a cupboard and took it out.
The phone was in working order, but it got no reception.
This was weird, as they’d had a decent signal yesterday.
Even if they were camping and enjoying the wildness, they wouldn’t stop at a spot with no reception, as no one was ready to go a whole day without surfing on their smartphones.

He also noticed from the time that three whole days, not one, had passed since the world went mad.
He truly had blacked out hard after tending his wounds.
The date only further reduced the chances of his travel mates and Hannah coming back.
At least it also probably meant that the monsters kept to their territories and didn’t wander around as much as he feared.
He wasn’t sure he would be able to handle another of those demon dogs at the moment, even with knowing their weaknesses from the last fight.

With food settled and not having any pressing issues, he started to take account of what had happened, and what to do from here.
The absurdity of the situation finally hit him, and Zac spaced out with glazed eyes, unsure of how to proceed.

A distant roar brought him back to reality.
This was no time to slack off; he was by no means safe at the moment.
He was in the middle of the forest surrounded by crazy monsters, and that glowing pillar still shone in the distance, reminding him that more monsters might come.

Perhaps the pillar was a portal to hell or something similar, and demons could keep flooding through from their infernal plane.
Or was this an alien invasion? The monsters could be something like Zergs in a popular computer game he’d played back in the day.

Then he finally remembered the weird robotic voice he’d heard earlier, and the confusing things it said before it started its crooked gambling scheme that almost cost him his life.

’

“Welcome to the multiverse…” he mumbled.
If the TV shows and comic books he had devoured throughout the years were any indicators, a multiverse was a connection between multiple planets, galaxies and even dimensions.

If the voice was to be believed, Earth had been introduced to some larger system, and due to this, there were suddenly demons roaming the forests.
But that didn’t mean that only demons were around.
What about other monsters or races? Would he suddenly meet elves jumping around in the trees, shooting arrows at him with pinpoint accuracy?

The voice also said it had initiated incursions.
It seemed reasonable that the huge pillar in the distance was the incursion, which would mean he probably wasn’t too far off with his demon-portal theory.
And when it spawned in the forest, the demons came with it.

But that meant that the monsters wouldn’t necessarily spawn next to it, as one had already been in the camp when he came back.
It was hard to tell the distance to the huge pillar, but it should take hours on foot to get there.
And something called a herald had spawned right on top of Zac, resulting in the largest emotional roller coaster in his life.

Finally, he had gotten stronger for some reason with all these changes.
Both his speed and power saw noticeable improvements from whatever the weird voice did.
It almost felt like he had gotten a power-up like in some video game, which made sense after having seen the floating windows in the dark dimension.
He still didn’t understand why the prompts were designed to look like some old-school RPG.
Was it his mind desperately trying to make sense of an insane situation and adjusting reality for him?

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Fantasy monsters, magical portals, and gamelike elements.
If some parts of the world were turned into an RPG, did other elements get introduced as well? At least there was no health bar, and the demon had no description or text above its head either.
In fact, the only time he had seen any true game elements was when he was in the black space the voice brought him to.

’

He tried to notice anything in the periphery of his vision, but there was nothing there apart from the vision of the now somewhat bloody and grimy trailer.
Tyler’s parents would probably be pretty pissed off when they saw the state of their camper, he thought with a smirk.

If they’re even still alive, he then realized somberly.
If the world was turned to shit at his location, what about the rest of the planet? Would it be safer or even more messed up? What about his hometown?

Thoughts of his father and younger sister surfaced, and a sense of urgency appeared.
If this was a global problem, nowhere was safe.
Zac had no idea what was going on, but he would have to figure that out on the way.

He needed to get back home.