‘Huh? What is this wet sensation … did I pee myself?’ Gathering his strength and coming to his senses, his eyelids trembled and opened. What hit his mental state, was the vision that blew his mind.

…

Ling Ru used to be a Chinese university student, he could have graduated if he had not failed his tests every time. What had taken his attention, is a question everyone wondered, and the answer was although very simple, but problematic.

Role-Playing Games, RPG’s, whether it was a single player RPG or an MMO, Ling Ru loved to play, and he was fairly good at it. His family and nearest kin always told him he should study more, and stop wasting time on such stuff.

The problem was, he liked it. When someone tells you to stop something you like doing, especially when that part does not understand the adrenaline and joy, hatred begins bubbling. After Ling Ru woke up a moment ago, his grieving let him admit that hatred is stupid. It was, after all, what led him to this bizarre scenario.

Due to having been corrected and judged, looked down on for his gaming habits, for a very long time, he had gone mad. He shouted at his mom, dad and aunt before rushing out the door. It was raining, he had quickly grabbed a blouse, but forgot his jacket.

It is not like he had much to do, without his computer or laptop, he really did not like studying either. Going for a walk in the rain, he saw a cat on the road, it was quite dark so it was hard to notice, it seemed the road lights had a power outage or something.

Actually, it had been unusually dark for being inside a town, there was no light at all. Ling Ru did not really consider this aspect because the cat was too entertaining for him. Desperate to have a companion to talk to, he stood on the sidewalk in a shitting position while watching the cat. Similarly, the cat sat on the road and licked its paw while interestingly watching Ling Ru.

For many minutes time passed, Ling Ru just spoke to the cat, and the cat did not leave. For Ling Ru this was a sign that the cat liked him, in view of the pouring rain, the cat really did have some kind of talent for being still for so long.

It was only at the last few seconds, that Ling Ru noticed something weird. After the cat had licked its paw, the cat had not moved at all. It was as if frozen in place. Ling Ru made a lot of noise and had tried to get the cat to move, but nothing proved to work.

A last ditch effort was to go near it and hope for a reaction, as such he did. But the moment he was around twenty centimetres away from the cat, a sudden light had blinded him, and a sound like a truck honking entered his ears. Beyond that, he did not remember.

It was his last memories.

Hence when he saw that he awoke in a forest, it was quite scary. Even scarier, is the fact that the trees were not normal, they were purple and thorns were protruding everywhere. The leaves were more than half a meter long!

Ling Ru’s panicking eyes looked everywhere, the whole forest was a complete visual mess. He could not seek shelter and protection from the trees due to the thorns, and he had a massive headache.

As he stood up, he noticed how wobbly his body was, it was almost as if he was smaller? Looking down at himself, he was scared shitless by the sight. He could not help but scream out.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!” his scream bellowed through a big part of the forest and raised a lot of attention from the creatures and what else existed there.

But how could he have known, that he was inviting tragedy with his scream? He had a very reliable guess, that he was drugged and was actually in a very heavy dream, or was hallucinating. Sadly, sometimes such a guess is right, this time it was not.

Ling Ru started running, but his small and insecure feet led him to fall every time he stood up. His body was all red and slimy as if he was a foster. The panic overtook him, he had never played a game or seen something like this. Despite his depressive state, the notion popped into his head.

‘Could this be real?’

But more than that, he did not get to think further. A huge horned half lion half snake suddenly stood in front of him, it's howling mouth clearly had space for the current him. Being in an already weak state, he fainted.

…

His eyelids fluttered as he woke up a second time. This time it was not as bad a trauma, he was lying on something, it was not soft but neither was it something hard like a stone floor. It was more like a floor rug place one a few pillows.

The first thing he saw this time, was him being in some kind of cave. The cave was dimly lit by a primal bonfire. He quickly dismissed this and kept observing. After his near-death-in-his-dream experience, he chose to be an optimist at the moment.

Beyond the bonfire, there was nearly nothing in the cave, the bed he had slept in was made of unknown grass, purple in colour. This sent shivers down his spine, apparently, he was not dreaming, this grass was identical to the one in his supposed dream.

Actually, he did not sleep on the grass, but rather on some other form of grass, that had been woven and placed above the grass as a kind of cover. He could see the cave tunnel, and as he was in a dead end, it could only mean that the tunnel would lead him out.

Ling Ru could not help but contemplate what would be outside the cave, or if he could even traverse in his current condition. He was red, completely red. His current body was very small and very red, maybe he was reborn in another world as another creature? But if he was just birthed, where were his parents?

It did not really make sense to him, the foreign concept. Travelling worlds is supposed to be something heroic and epic. With thoughts reminding him that he might be the first world traveller, he should be magnanimous towards his surroundings.

It was while contemplating that his eyes suddenly saw something weird, every time he looked around, he would see everything change, except something in the corner of his vision. At first, it looked really weird, primarily because he was not used to focusing his vision and mentality to actually be able to see clearly the ends of his vision.

When he read what it said, he gaped for a long while, stuck breathless.

[Level 0] Demon Seedling

???

That was all it said, that incomprehensible stuff at the corner, was actually a HUD like in games. But as far as Ling Ru was concerned, Virtual Reality was nowhere near this kind of technology, until now everything kept getting weirder.