Character Roulette

A medium sized, old-fashioned room. Thick carpet on the floor. No windows. An unlit fireplace and armchair in front of it. A queen-sized bed in a corner. Everything looked like a standard cottage room, apart for the lack of windows, and a wall opposite of fireplace sporting nine wooden doors lined next to one another.

Clang!

“That was a close call.” Merry noted. “Oh, you’ve returned to normal.”

“What do you-“ I looked down on myself, noticing lack of absurdly large muscles. The ability’s effect had ended without my prompt. “Oh. How?”

Damn, I needed a rest. And maybe some time to process this.

Beneath me lay the steel axe that was lodged into Morgan’s arm, alongside the steel jaw. The cape was still draped over my shoulders. The conjured clothes hadn’t disappeared either. I had kept the equipment.

“I didn’t know that was going to happen. The manifestation got dispelled automatically from activating the second ability.” Merry explained, seemingly puzzled by something. “It seems not every detail of the ability is known to me.”

“Shame. There seems to be lot of conditions in play.” I mused. Then again, maybe that was the point. “Though, if limiting the versatility results in more potent effect, it could be worth a trouble.”

“That should be the idea behind it. More restrictions result in stronger application when it comes to nen.” Merry nodded. “When it comes to ability this absurd, you would need tremendous amount of aura to make it work without any caveats. I don’t think that’s a feat that Meruem himself could accomplish with no restrictions.”

“And yet, it’s still seems insane of an ability.” I said. “It makes me wonder what its limits are.”

I took my time taking in the interior, searching for anything special that I might have missed. But aside from the doors, nothing was really out of the ordinary in the room.

“So, this is my very own pocket dimension?” I whistled. “I quite like this place.”

“Well, your subconsciousness was the one that build it, after all.” Merry said as he too observe the place.

“Is that so?” I asked.

“It’s more of an assumption. But seems most likely.”

That would be great. It was much better than possibility of some higher being dropping me in this place for God knows what reason. I guess I would find out sooner or later. Or maybe not. That would be just fine by me.

“Hey, does this place has time limit or something?” I asked Merry.

“No. But time does pass normally, here and as well as outside. And you have no food nor water. As long as you don’t starve to death, you’ll be fine.”

That was all I needed to hear before throwing off the cape and oversized boots before plunging into the bed. “Great. I’ll be dozing off for a bit. Wake me up in a hour or so.”

“David, hey David.” I heard Merry’s voice as I was being shaken awake. “Wake up already.”

I stood up, taking a minute or two to wash away the grogginess. “How long was I asleep?”

“Not too long. But we better get going.” Merry said and pointed at the row of doors. “We need supplies.”

“Yeah, I’m parched.” I said as I looked down at the mark, bringing up the stat window to check something. “Like you said, the cooldown’s frozen.”

It was showing [00:00:00/24:00:00], and not budging a second. I couldn’t just wait for the timer to run out, step into the door and come back immediately. If I decided to go through, I had to spend a whole day in the unknown territory before I could go back to safety.

Walking the one of the doors, located leftmost and only a few inches away from the corner, I asked. “So, what’s behind them? How does this world travel work?”

Merry floated right next to me. “Now isn’t that a million dollar question. I have no idea which one leads where aside from the one you’re standing in front of.”

“Back to HunterxHunter world?” I asked.

“Yep. Right back into the small island in the Lake Mobius. Exact same spot we crossed to here from.” Merry nodded.

“If the time’s passing like normal, the centaur is probably still holed up in that cave he’s treating like his royal palace. I've recovered enough for the transformation to last enough time. But will Zoro that can’t yet cut through the steel be enough to defeat the squadron leader?”

It was not easy to calculate the outcome from the hazy recollection of what I could remember those characters’ limits were. Fortunately, Merry was here to refresh my memory.

Zoro could cut through the stone easily from the very start of the series, but not steel until reaching Alabasta Arc. The centaur guy hadn’t really shown much of anything, but I’d rather not underestimate an enemy poke that.

Merry and I went over what we could remember. Kite had decided to take care of the centaur chimera ant himself while leaving Mosquito and Centipede to Killua and Gon. The centaur was a squadron leader. Despite the varying strengths between each leader, they should be stronger than those bellow. The rabbit chimera ant Gon and Killua fought was Colt’s subordinate, yet took Gon’s strike and received no lasting damage. Much weaker Gon, during the Heaven’s arena, upturned the stone tile bigger than him and shattered it without much trouble. The rabbit didn’t have nen then, though neither does the centaur right now. How much damage can he absorb? Was there anything I was missing? Not to mention, speed was most problematic stat to compare.

“I don’t like our chances.” I said.

“He doesn’t have nen.” Merry said. “I might be able to reach some hypothesis if I could calculate his aura. But there’s no such thing. Just our guesswork.”

“Guess I’m choosing the unknown, then.” I said, moving forward to open the second door, determining that it would be better to risk exploring a new world. “We’re not gonna get dropped right into the active volcano, I hope.”

Behind the door was nothing but dark void. I pressed the hand onto it, and it passed right through without resistance. Aside from ominous feel it had, there seemed nothing dangerous about the portal itself. I stepped inside.

My environment changed in a blink, from a cozy, warm room to a forest with numerous tall trees. A cold breeze passed through me. It was morning, sun had yet to reach the peak. I looked around, observing the area. I expected something more familiar. Some signs of one of the worlds from various media I had consumed. But there was nothing unique about this place as far as my eyes could see. Then again, I hadn’t seen much yet.

That was when I felt it. The vibrations passed through the earth. The deep sound of thud, and then a giant humanoid creature, well over half-dozen meters, appearing among the wood.

“Is that a goddamn titan?!” Merry exclaimed. “Wow, that thing’s massive. You need to transform, David, like right now. It’s heading towards us.”

My eyes stared widely at the towering creature moving towards me. Quickly willing the ability to activate, I selected Alvida’s mark. Wasting Zoro here would be such a… waste. And a bad idea. Zoro could easily deal with the titans, but his form had a stricter time limit precisely because he was strong. And then what? I would be out off steam in not long after, and if I came across another titan, I would be defenseless. I needed that reassurance to pull me out of a really shitty situation. One titan wasn’t that, no matter how scary it looked.

“It’s picking up speed, David. Do something about it!”

The titan began to move faster when it noticed us. But it’s movements were simplistic. Thankfully it wasn’t an abnormal. I didn’t want that in my plate right now.

My body grew, slightly in height and bit more generous in the width department. An iron mace appeared in my hand. While not comparable to Morgan, my strength stepped past the limits of human capability. I could sense it simply with the strength flowing through my body.

There were now several meters between me and the titan. The creature towered over me, casting a shadow that loomed over us. Were we regular humans, no doubt that would be a sign of death, with no chance of escape.

I could try to run. But that would simply put me in worse situation. Without knowledge of where exactly I was, or how many titans were in the area, reaching the safety was a pipe dream. That simply left me with an obvious choice.

Before the titan could fully cross the distance between us, I pocked up a sizeable rock nearby, with surprising ease, and threw at the giant's leg to test out what I was dealing with. The rock tore off a chunk of flesh from the creature, but it barely halted it’s advance.

I drew back, creating distance between me and the titan, while looking for the suitable target. The mace had too short of a reach for me to comfortably swing it around.

There!

It was a tree that was relatively small than others, yet still half the width of my torso. Thick enough to do the job. I charged at it, swinging the mace at it. The tree snapped, and after the second swing, it began falling just as the titan was upon me.

Before the tree could fall, I dropped the mace and grabbed its end with both of my hand and swung around with all the force I could muster, hooking it from behind the titan’s feet.

In a comical display, the titan fell on its back, granted without much damage. But that wouldn’t matter anyway. I had to target it’s weak point, and now I didn’t need to go through all the trouble of climbing the tall bastard.

It obviously tried to stand, and continuously swinging this tree wasn’t something I could easily do either. Instead, I threw the tree on top of the titan, grabbed the mace, and run towards its neck, my target in sight. The creature was clumsy, simply acting on an instinct. It awkwardly tried to push the tree off, and slowly began to rise its torso. I had to move fast. If it stood up, I had to repeat this all over again. One titan might be doable, but if the noise attracted more, the odds would be staked against me.

The titan pushed the tree off of him and began to stand, but I was already upon its neck. I jumped, grabbing back of its head as I was lifted in the air. I tightened my left grip around handful of hair to steady myself, and began pummeling the titan’s neck, rapidly swinging the mace at it with my right.

The titan roared, tried to grab me in most inefficient way possible while dumbly spinning around the place.

Before I realized, the titan’s neck snapped, and soon after, it began to fall, and me alongside with it. It fell headfirst to the ground, its body cushioning my fall. To my surprise, the fall barely hurt.

I regained my footing, looking down at the massive pile of flesh in front of me. I couldn’t believe that I had killed that. It was less of a challenge than mosquito chimera ant, yet the feeling was completely different. The size of the creature made it painfully clear that this was a world different from mine.

Despite my being mostly physically unharmed, looking at me might leave a different impression. The clothes I wore were mess after that maneuver. My body was covered in blood rapidly evaporating off of me. Thank god for that. Having to clean off that mess would be a pain in the ass.

“You might want to absorb the body before it’s too late.” Merry said, “It’s evaporating.”

Right. There was steam rising from the corpse, and it’s muscles were beginning to slowly shrink. I placed my hand on the titan’s head.

“Also, more are coming.”

Fuck.