Epoch of Desolation: A Post-Apocalyptic Litrpg

No one needed to tell him. His memories weren’t complete, but he still had the survival instincts of a human. One which was automatically triggered at the sign of danger.

Well, it had been triggered now. The hairs on his fair skin were standing on end.

Rain was seated diagonally on the hospital bed he had climbed upon, looking over his right shoulder.

Not just looking though—staring.

From the direction of where seemed to be the door to this hospital room he was in, glowed a pair of bright amber orbs peering straight back at him.

He could feel it—instinctively. They were hunting eyes. And that gaze planted upon him was the kind a predator gave their prey: a sharp and determined gaze.

Suddenly, the silence in the room had its own layer of silence.

Rain could hear his breaths, his heartbeat, the sound of blood pulsing in his veins, and worse, the low growl of the golden yellow coated and black spotted beast leering voraciously at him.

Normally, from his ingrained instinct as a human, Rain believed it should have been bad for the animal that he was a badly dehydrated teenager who was more bones than flesh. But he could well see that it did not care. Rather, he could smell it. The stench of death. And it was from his body that the pungent smell oozed.

As if to confirm his thoughts, and further plunge his heart into a deeper, sinking well, the words before Rain’s eyes condensed ethereally and shuffled into new words.

[Side Plot]

A Mutated Jaguar has appeared, and it holds animosity towards you. Survive.

Rain’s brain turned to mush as soon as he read what was before his eyes.

Haha… He chuckled weirdly. Just bring back my Division selection message. I won’t put it off again, huh…?

The words didn’t change though. They remained… stubbornly.

Rain’s face turned purple.

He’d barely just gotten control over his body, the pain of making use of it was still extremely overwhelming, so how in the world was he supposed to survive the onslaught of a wild cat all on his own?

His heartbeats pounding intensified in the same manner that a furnace would be agitated by the toss of an extra couple of woods.

Maybe it was due to the possibility that he had not completely gained a solid grip over all his emotions, but he felt like the current one cloaking him wasn’t only of fear. Rather it was a mixture of both it and anger. In fact, anger probably took the cake. Because…

Why the actual fuck was the Jaguar just standing there staring back at him?

On second thoughts, how long had it been doing that? Did it think so little of him that it felt like it didn’t need to sneak up on him to kill him? Didn’t cats pride themselves on sneak attacks?

Rain’s eyes tightened, and his expression hardened.

His brain had reminded him of his state and how little of a threat anything with intelligence would see him.

The Jaguar could take its time if it wanted, and it would still kill him without as much as a struggle. After all, the average human would lose to a regular Jaguar without even a hint of difficulty. And even though the one before Rain was somewhat lean, like it had just made it into its youth, the message had tagged it as mutated, while he… he was less than the average human.

He had no chance.

Survive.

That word stood out from the message before his eyes and Rain grimaced even further.

To hell with you damned Jaguar. Mutated or not, there’s no way I’m dying here. I have memories to pursue. A lost life to find. Something flashed in his mind, and Rain’s perception of time dulled for a brief moment. A family to seek…

That was true. He had not thought about it before, but he obviously should have a family. A father, a mother, a sibling, or siblings—maybe a sister, or… brother. He had a family. A family to seek. He definitely did.

All of a sudden, the Jaguar’s growl was no longer low.

Rain saw the beast baring its fangs at him now.

Maybe it had smelled his relief and hated that he was feeling that way. Hurt the big cat’s pride, perhaps. At the end of the day, it was a predator, and no predator liked their prey feeling relaxed before them.

What the beast didn’t know though was that Rain had already pushed aside the thought that he was its prey. After all, to find his family he had to be alive; and alive and kicking he would be.

Rain was not sure, maybe there was a manual book within his skull, but for some reason he felt confident as scenes of plausible ways to survive swirled about in his head, playing at a bizarre speed.

He had a chance.

Finally, the Jaguar inched forward, and Rain instantly settled on one scenario of the countless he had seen.

First… Intimidation.

At that thought and moment, the message before Rain’s eyes reverted back to the pulsing little light it had once been, shifting to the edge of his eyes and making itself almost unnoticeable again.

Rain understood then. The light was controlled on command by his state of mind. If he was focused on it, it would appear. If he was not, it would hide.

That’s pretty neat. He thought to himself while still keeping his gaze on the Jaguar. Then he gnashed his teeth together in a makeshift predatory manner and… growled… on all fours.

He looked completely stupid. But it worked. The Jaguar stopped moving and seemed to tilt its head at him.

But only for a moment.

The next second it pounced forward with a loud snarl. Maybe in a fit of rage, Rain was not sure, but he wasted no time thudding to the floor with a squawk and turning the hospital bed over with all of his strength to intercept the agile cat.

His intimidation scheme had not worked. The next thing was…

Rain threw his gaze upon the syringes scattered on the floor, scooped up a bunch. And as the cat nimbly leaped on top of the hospital bed’s frame—as though it had anticipated such an action from its supposed prey—he dug them all into its hind leg from behind.

There was a guttural cry from the Jaguar as it tumbled to the floor in anguish, but Rain did not have the time to relish in the tune brought about from his handiwork. He instantly buried the jaguar underneath the hospital bed before it had the time to regain its wits.

Possibly it was the adrenaline coursing through his body, nevertheless Rain found himself standing on both his feet next, despite the mind boggling pain; not just standing, though, running—if he could call it that.

A few seconds later, he was out of the spacious hospital room.

Rain knew it was because of the Jaguar’s pride that his ploy of escaping the room had succeeded, but it still baffled him how he had been looked down upon.

Were all the animals that way? Prideful and enjoyed imbuing their prey with fear before ripping them to shreds?

Mutated… That word took center stage in Rain’s head for a second as he used all his strength to slam the hospital room’s door shut, closing the still-wailing Jaguar inside it.

The fact that the Jaguar was still on the floor left a deep impression on Rain. He’d expected it to have already been up and about to attack once again before he’d even left the room.

Was it that the ‘mutation’ the Jaguar underwent was purely mentally?

Truly, he had not seen anything special about the animal’s physical features; on the other hand, it even looked less stocky than he would have imagined for a large cat.

Had it been granted the wit-like qualities humans had in exchange for physicality?

If so, then Rain believed his ordeal was going to prove much more difficult than he’d expected.

A hunting cat with the same level of smarts as a human was too crazy of a threat to battle. But even worse was that it was too much of a threat to remain with in the same location. Rain instantly came to that conclusion as his vision took on a scotopic state due to the variation of brightness with his previous location and his latest one.

There was no doubt that the beast was going to break out of that room sooner or later, even though it was still groveling underneath the hospital bed it had been buried beneath for now. And when it did it would hunt him down—smartly, this time.

Rain’s initial plan had been to just cage it there and find a new place to make his base, but now he thought against that. And as he pushed forward within the darkness of the hospital’s hallway without a specific location in mind, he made a decision:

That Jaguar has to die.