Everything was black. For what felt like an eternity, Rays mind was simply swimming in nothingness.

[You have died… Respawn token supplied. Respawn Zone: Earth is no longer a valid zone… Please Wait…]

[Respawn zone not found... scanning individual… Ray Atton… Data Not Found…]

Wait? What the fuck? Ray Atton not found. I’ve been around for 28 years, this is bullshit, am I doomed to be here for the rest of my life? Ray clearly couldn’t voice his thoughts, was this hell?

[Error… Individual not ready for deployment…. Attempting Override… Successful]

[Ray Atton – Data Collection Complete….. Zone Respawn: 1,167,950,221; World: Arkus]

Ray had no idea what was going on. Arkus? What was that? Errors?

[Welcome.. You have been chosen by The System as a respawn candidate.. Unfortunately World: Earth has been destroyed.]

[You will respawn on World: Arkus… As you are not registered on the system, you will start at Town: Data not Found.]

[You will respawn as… Race: Human-Error… Class: Error… Level: 1… Good luck.]

Ray woke up and… Immediately threw up. Ray bashed his hands on the ground in frustration.. BANG! The sound of a small explosion, no not an explosion, a gunshot. Ray looked at his hand, where he had felt a recoil, he was holding a small pistol.

“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, what the shit is this?” Rays first thought was to throw the gun away but before he could, he heard a chittering sound behind him. Ray turned, about 15 metres away through a line of trees he could see one of his worst nightmares; a giant spider.

The spider was pitch black with 8 fist sized eyes and almost as tall as he was. It looked like the spider had recently been in some kind of scuffle as it was bleeding on one of its legs. No, he managed to get a closer look as it was running towards him. The bullet from Rays gun had hit it clean in the leg.

The spider had clearly spotted him as it was charging straight at him. Only one thing for it, Ray jumped onto his feet, lifted the gun, aimed in the general direction and squeezed the trigger… He missed. The spider suddenly jumped towards him, Ray fired another 2 shots, these landed. 1 in the abdomen, 1 directly in the head.

Unfortunately for Ray, the momentum of the spiders leap still pressed onwards. It knocked Ray over and landed right on top of him. One of the legs scraped his shoulder, leaving a small gash. Scared for his life, Ray tried to scuttle under, only to realise the spider wasn’t moving. He slowly lifted himself out from under it, then proceeded to inspect it. The spider was clearly still alive, however, Ray must have hit some vital point as it could no longer move. For good measure, Ray put the pistol right up to the spider’s head and shot.

As soon as he confirmed the spider was dead, Ray felt a warm tingle run up his body. He didn’t know what it was and panicked. Had he been bitten? Was he Poisoned? Ray inspected his wound and himself. Thankfully, the wound was superficial. Ray was covered in blood but most of it wasn’t his own. During the inspection, Ray noted that he wasn’t wearing the same clothes he last remembered. He was in a black cotton shirt and dark Gray trousers. For some reason, he felt like there was some DeJa’Vu but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Upon looking at the spider again, Ray gagged. Whilst the sight itself wasn’t that gruesome, the smell was. He hadn’t noticed it during the fight, but this beast reeked. It smelled of rot and acid at the same time. Ray decided not to touch the monster but instead try and get as far away as possible. He was afraid that if there was one spider, there could be a hell of a lot more.

Since Ray wasn’t good with directions and had no clue where he was, he did a quick survey of the woods and simply picked a direction that looked like it the flora was thinning out, hoping it would be easy to navigate and lead to an exit, he began walking.

While Ray was walking, he attempted to take stock of the situation. The last thing he remembered was coming out of the System Tech building to horrific scenes, then, he woke up, in completely different clothes, with a pistol. Was it just him, or did he seem to be lighter too? He still had his stomach, but it seemed slightly smaller, slightly more toned. Nah, he must just be imagining it.

As Ray kept walking, he could see in the extremities of his peripheral vision a blinking up arrow. He had not clue what it was, and it wouldn’t go away. It kept distracting him as he constantly thought there was something moving towards his right, only to realise it was the damn blinking arrow.

As Ray could do nothing about it, he kept walking. He was alone and scared. He had never really been in a situation like this before. The only real camping he had done were school camps back in Year 9 and 10, otherwise, Ray was mostly an indoors person, he enjoyed his games like Dota 2 and dabbled in FPS games, but he wasn’t the best at those. He wanted to yell out, for someone to find him but was sure no one was coming.

He tried to think of scenarios on how he came to this situation. Had he been kidnapped and drugged? He thought this was the most likely scenario. If he was kidnapped, maybe the whole mushroom cloud experience was simply him coming down from a high. Maybe he had just been dropped off in the middle of nowhere and he could find his way back to civilisation. He hoped this was the case, any alternatives didn’t seem as good.

After about an hour of walking Ray was getting tired. He had no food or water, was not the fittest person in the world and was just trying his best to avoid getting any more scrapes and bruises. Ray was acutely aware that if he did something stupid, with no one around, that could be the end of him. He kept a reasonably steady pace but with no end in sight, he was starting to think about the night ahead, he needed shelter, water and food if he were to survive the long term. Thus far, he had none of those.

Even after travelling for as long as he had, he had no sense of the time of day, he hoped it was around noon but he couldn’t really tell. Ray kept walking, eventually becoming tired. He decided the moment that he found a decent spot to stop, he would. He needed time to plan. After about 30 more minutes of walking, he started to hear a faint trickling sound.

“Water!” Ray yelled and began running towards the sound. Ray had completely forgotten about trying to stay quiet as he couldn’t resist the sounds. He didn’t have to go far. Ray came across the stream in a small clearing, after splashing his hands in the small stream and taking a sip, he realised his mistake a second time. Hadn’t this already happened?

Ray collapsed.