A sense of emptiness welled up within Leon as he stared up at the moss covered ceiling.
‘Where am I?’ He thought to himself. The last thing he remembered was the white light of the hospital and Megan’s voice telling him to hang on. Did he make it? Did he not?
A few moments passed as Leon arranged his thoughts into something coherent and easy to understand.
A truck hit him while he was crossing the road just after he split with James and Megan. After that, he was rushed to a hospital, and then something else happened. While Leon tried to be as optimistic as possible, it just was not easy, as the sight before him was too bleak to paint any positive picture.
‘I’m dead, aren’t I?’ He concluded with a hint of regret. If he had known he was going to die so soon, he would have tried shooting his shot earlier, and asked Megan out on a date. He had always had the hots for his young and feisty boss.
An unknown amount of time passed as Leon processed all his assumptions and conclusions in his mind. He had read a lot of mangas and watched lots of anime, while also reading an ungodly number of novels, and he had never thought that something like this would happen to him.
‘Ah, can I move?’ Leon flexed his fingers and felt the sensation of them moving, but he felt as if there was something wrong. At least he could move, although stiffly. He turned his head to look at his body, but froze the moment he set his eyes on his body.
‘WHAT?!’
.
.
The sound of two solid surfaces coming into contact rang through the rundown, partially collapsed cathedral that stood in the middle of an empty and abandoned wasteland. Leon walked around the large hall that he had found himself in as he tried to get accustomed to his ‘new’ body.
After walking around the entire length of the hall that was comparable to about two basketball courts, Leon finally sat down on a small stone he suspected to have fallen from one of the open patches in the ceiling of the abandoned cathedral.
“What is going on here?” He muttered to himself and held up his dark hands. His empty eyes stared down at the pitch black bones that flexed as he willed.
Leon realized he was no longer human, much like some of those books and anime that he had read and watched. He remembered reading a book where a gamer got whisked away to the world of the game he was playing and ended up evolving into a powerful lizardman.
(A/N: A small reference to my earlier work, ‘Digitized: The Reincarnation Project’.)
Perhaps something similar had happened to him, but he wonder why of all races he could have been reborn into, he was reborn as he was. He was reborn as a damn Skeleton Soldier!
Leon observed the pitch black coloring of the bones that made up his new body. The black bones held a subtle glow to them, but that glow seemed to absorb all the light that shone on the bones.
Taking another look around the run down cathedral, Leon noted that there were several other broken skeletons strewn around the hall, along with some weapons – swords, spears, and a few daggers. It seemed like there was a fight of sorts around here in the past.
“Is this area safe? Or will I get chewed on the moment I step out of the cathedral?” He asked himself out loud as he got up and made his way to pick up one of the swords. The blade was chipped and worn over time, but at least it was something that he could still use to protect himself if push came to shove.
With the old sword in hand, Leon made his way to a small opening where the left wall of the cathedral had collapsed on itself. He did not bother with the grand double doors that stood tall through time, and went for the easier way out.
Stepping out of the hole and into the open, Leon noted it was daytime, something he had noticed from the light that shone into the cathedral hall from where beautiful stained glass must have occupied once upon a time, but all that was left was dust and broken glass.
The sky was covered with gray clouds, though, and gave the surrounding area a dull and gloomy look. Leon took in his surroundings and noted that the cathedral was in the center of a rundown and abandoned town. Most of the buildings were collapsed and there was no sign of life present at all. Not even a tumbleweed.
Crunch…
The sounds of Leon’s footfalls were the only thing that could be heard in the area. Even the slight breeze that blew through the desolate place did not make the slightest hint of a sound. Truly, the place was abandoned through and through.
Screee…
As Leon was making his way past the rubble of a collapsed house, an almost silent screech reached his ‘ears’, and he immediately reacted, distancing himself from the rubble where it came from. His action was rewarded by a scary-looking insect missing his foot by a few feet.
The insect resembled a plump millipede and possessed an abundance of legs that it used to crawl and squiggle over the rough ground. It was about two feet long and a foot thick, and was a truly scary sight to behold.
Seeing that it had missed its prey the first time, the creature screeched again and rushed madly at Leon, prompting him to raise his sword and swing it to ward off the mad and hungry creature.
He sent the creature flying with only a slight scuff on its carapace. Sure, it was cracked, and a bit of purple blood leaked out of it, but the overall damage done was negligible to it. The millipede righted itself and rushed at Leon again with a vengeance, snapping its mandibles as though already imagining his bones being crunched between them.
“Ha!” Leon cried out as he raised his arms above his head and swung it down tip-first and plunged it into the head of the raging millipede.
Purple blood spurted from the wound as the creature writhed and twisted in its last moments. Its mandibles clacked pathetically as life slipped from it, and in a few more seconds, it stopped moving, signaling its death.
[Ghost Millipede killed. You have leveled up.]