Hell Difficulty Tutorial - Beyond Death

I'm running through the forest, a hundred billion goblins on my heels, their supersonic rocks cutting through the air like vengeful meteorites. I duck, weave, punch them all until their tiny heads pop like overripe fruit. When the last goblin falls, I leap straight to the moon—their moon—the root of their infestation. It explodes beneath my fists, shattering into stardust.

That'll teach them.

Now, where the hell did that cocksucker Jim...

Ping

The sound yanks me out of my delirium. My dream fades, replaced by a notification hovering in the darkness of my mind.

[Side quest completed]

Please choose one of the following rewards:

Flint and Steel Fire Starter

Crossbow

Short Sword

Pouch of Dried Rations

Portable Leather Flask

Small Hand Shovel

Cloak

Mace

Longbow

Light Armor

Leather Bracers

Chainmail Hauberk

Full Plate Armor

Shield

Spear

Dagger

Halberd

Greataxe

Greatsword

Scale Armor

Padded Armor

Bedroll

Clothes

Waxed Canvas Tarp

Sling

Warhammer

...

The list goes on. Hundreds of items, randomly thrown together like a medieval yard sale. No categories, no rhyme or reason—just a mess of weapons, tools, and junk.

Seriously? Ads in my dreams now? Can't a guy sleep in peace?

I try to swipe the notification away, waving my hand lazily in the air. Except... my hand doesn't move. It doesn't fucking exist.

Confusion flickers in my foggy mind.

I open my eyes—or try to. The world is dark and sticky. It feels like I've been shoved into a watery sack and crammed into the trunk of a car. My body feels crushed and constrained, soaked in something viscous.

Panic begins to rise, until I notice the steady stream of air entering my lungs. It's not coming from my nose—it's clogged, useless. Instead, it flows through a strange tube melded to my teeth, like a snorkel.

Revulsion churns in my gut, but I force myself to stay calm. Thank you, Reason, truly.

Oh. Right.

That.

The chaos in my head finally starts to settle. Disjointed thoughts fade, replaced by fragments of memory: the isekai, the fire, those goddamn goblins.

And now… quests? Seriously? What even qualified as a "side quest"? I sure hope it's because I killed those goblins. Screw those guys.

The list of rewards is still hovering, a chaotic mess of options I can't be bothered to scroll through. I know what I need. Weapons, armor, all that gear—it's useless in the long run. What I need is water. Fresh water. A simple bucket of it, specifically. My throat feels like sandpaper wrapped in razor wire, and the thought of drinking anything else right now is nauseating.

I select a "bucket of fresh water". The blue window disappears.

Nothing else happens.

Of fucking course, nothing happens.

I mentally smack myself, clearing away the last bits of lingering dizziness. Right. Where would the system even put the damn bucket? It's not like I'm lying around in a nice open space right now.

My mind drifts, dredging up hazy fragments of what happened after I killed the last goblins. It's blurry but a few details stick. I remember hitting Level 4 and dumping all my points into Constitution—anything to stop my body from breaking down completely.

Then came the immediate problem: foreign tissue merging with mine. The risk of death from a cytokine storm was too high to ignore.

Then there was the... hydration issue. I had to drink something, and fast. Goblin interstitial fluid—basically salty water—was the least disgusting option available. Blood and lymph are saltier, which equals worse. I drank until I could think straight, then forced myself to eat. As much goblin flesh as I could stomach and then some.

Afterward, I dug a hole—somehow. Wrapped myself in a goblin-skin sack for insulation. Fashioned a hollow bone tube and fused it to my teeth to breathe through.

And then I slept.

And now I woke up...and I feel like boiled diarrhea.

Every inhale drags cool air through the tube, scraping against the edges of my teeth. The exhale isn't any better—hot, stale air rushing back up and out like it's fleeing a burning building. It's uncomfortable, vile even, but it works.

It's fine.

I remind myself: I'm alive. That's what matters. My body feels like it's been tenderized, every nerve screaming in its own language.

I feel the urge to move, to tear myself free from this cocoon of filth. My body isn't listening. It's locked in place, buried under layers of dried flesh and goblin skin.

Fuck no, this isn't fine.

Why the hell did I do this to myself?

The answer comes unbidden. Cool, logical, unrelenting. To stay hidden from predators. Where the fuck could I hide other then underneath the ground?

Panic tries to rise, clawing at the edges of my mind. Discipline smashes it back down, wielding Reason like a club.

I breathe deeply through the tube, the taste like rot and salt. My thoughts settle into a rhythm with each inhale, each exhale.

I could let it go, drift back into the darkness of sleep. A tempting thought, but the voice of Discipline demands action.

I almost tell it to shove it and crawl back into unconsciousness. Almost.

"Status," I call mentally, the word clear in the chaos of my mind.

The system obeys with a flicker

---

[Name]: @̶̨̥̈́̎̇̆̅̔̓̀̀#̵͖̫̯̦̦̯̜̃̍̂͛̎̓͝͠͠$̶̲̭̟̠̮̂́&̶̱̖̎̌̅́̀̾́̽͝(̶̼̪̼̘̮̜̞̰͖̂̆̓͝)̷͈̂̾͋̓

Difficulty: Hard

Floor: 1

Time left until forced return: 4y 363d 23h 59m 30s

Lvl 4

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 13

Constitution: 18

Mana: 3

[Primary Class]: Unavailable

[Sub-class]: Unavailable

Skills:

Soul Well - lvl 2

Fleshcrafting - lvl 6

Flesh Perception - lvl 1

[Skill Points: 0]

[Stat Points: 0]

Twenty hours of sleep. Figures.

I stare at the timer and shake my head. Was the side quest just to survive 24 hours? Who knows? Who cares?

The stats went up more than I expected, somehow, so that's a nice surprise. Fleshcrafting's level jump makes sense, too. Considering how much I relied on it, anything less would've been disappointing.

What stands out the most, though, is Flesh Perception. I fucking knew I felt the shaman moving his wrist.

The words gleam in my mind, sparking a hundred theories.

When did it unlock? Was it tied to something specific I did, or was it the accumulation of all my fleshcrafting antics? Can I force new skills to emerge by repeating actions long enough? Are skill levels reflections of my current capabilities or actual power-ups?

Probably a mix of both.

The questions multiply, burning through the haze of exhaustion. I need answers. Experiments. Research.

But not here.

I do give the skill a test run though.

It's similar to Fleshcrafting, I realize as I inspect my body with it, but without the "shape and mold" parts. Just observing what's going on. The static remains, buzzing faintly in the back of my mind as I don't actually see my tissues through visual stimuli, but now there's clarity—a translator between me and the chaotic signals that I'm getting.

If Fleshcrafting was like trying to sculpt clay in a pitch-black room with progressively steadier hands, then Flesh Perception is watching that same clay, in the same darkness, but with a flickering candlelight somewhere in the distance. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better.

And what I see—what I feel—is an unmitigated disaster.

Boy, did the old me prioritize efficiency above all else.

First of all, I have no legs. None. Not even a hint of thighs—just an abrupt end at the coccyx. My arteries and veins have been rerouted with surgical precision, and it's clear why. Blood pressure. I didn't have enough blood to fill all those vessels, and goblin blood wasn't an option. That nearly killed me during the fight, triggering immune reactions so violent I came within a hair's breadth of two aneurysms.

Then there's my left hand—or, more accurately, the stump where it used to be, but that's old news.

But the worst part? I'm not just skin and bone—I am skin and bone.

The goblin muscles and tendons I'd fused with my own had to go. Keeping them meant risking death by immune response, so they were excised. Completely. Somewhere along the way, I must've decided that preserving my skeletal muscles intact was a luxury I couldn't afford, and I took a generous rejection margin.

Sure, my vital organs—kidneys, liver, heart, brain—are still intact. That's great and all, but I'm pretty sure if anyone saw me right now, beggars would be lining up to donate food out of pity. Hell, starving kids in third-world countries would pat their stomachs and say, "At least I'm not that guy."

I try to laugh, but the bone tube melded to my teeth cuts it short, turning it into a wet gurgle. I choke a bit, the taste of the goblin bone sharp and sour on my tongue. Does it matter? No, of course not. None of this matters.

Because I fucking won.

Everything else—missing limbs, shredded muscles, the fact that I'm currently encased in a goblin-skin cocoon like some deranged caterpillar—is irrelevant. I won, and I'll do it again. Again, and again, and again.

That small, feeble part of me whispers that I could rest a bit longer. Just sleep, just recover. That part is weak, and I stab it mentally with the jagged knife of my will. No more rest. No more weakness.

I need water.

The thirst gnaws at me, pushing everything else aside. That's motivation enough.

I focus on moving, and my body obeys. The first thing I do is wiggle. It's awkward, but it works. I shift my torso side to side, grinding the goblin skin sack against the earth. The sensation is disgusting, like dragging damp leather against my raw flesh, but the edges begin to tear.

Piece by piece, the cocoon loosens. My bones creak as I twist and strain, my single arm pulling at the confines while my body undulates like a worm. The stench of goblin flesh fills my nostrils, though the tube in my teeth does little to help. I take one big gulp of air and will it to detach. The bone obeys easily.

The sack splits, and I claw my way upward, dragging myself out of the shallow hole I'd buried myself in. Dirt clings to my skin, mixing with the gore of goblin remains that still coat me. Every inch I pull feels like a mile, but eventually, my head breaches the surface.

The light hits me first, blinding and unrelenting. I squint, groaning softly, but I keep moving.

I have wasted enough time.