A lion was eating his guts. A lion was eating his guts. While he was still alive! Dominic’s eyes fell on his phone. It had clearly been knocked out of his hand when the lion had jumped him from behind and knocked his head against a rock. The cracked, black screen was rather symbolic of his life right now: without hope. 

If he’d thought it would help at all, he’d grab the thing, but the battery had been completely dead even before all of this. That, plus breaking down in a remote part of the Kruger Game Reserve were the main reasons he was currently being eaten alive by a lion.  

Still more than half-dazed, Dominic was barely managing to get his head around the situation. Deliriously, he was distracted by the thought of what the headline would be when his half-eaten corpse was found: Trapped Tourist becomes Roadkill BBQ for Kruger denizens. Maybe he shouldn’t have done exactly what everyone had told him not to do: leave his car in a game reserve full of wild animals.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, though, he moaned to himself as excruciating pain ripped through him. Rubbish rental car broken down, no phone, no water, no food… Following the only car he’d seen in hours had seemed like the best decision he could make in a bad situation. Well. He’d skimped on costs in not paying for a guided tour; shame it seemed like he’d be paying more than an arm and leg in the final reckoning. 

Things seemed bleak, Dominic admitted, but he’d never been a quitter and made a valiant effort to fight back, somehow summoning up the strength to half-pull, half-push himself upwards to a seated position and grab onto the lion’s head. He attempted to wrestle it, to no avail. 

It might have been a young male, its mane looking uncommonly like the beard that grows on teenage boys when they first start needing to shave, but it was a good two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He might as well have tried to wrestle with a bear.

All his efforts got him was a sudden lunge from the lion towards his throat, the massive feline snarling in threat at its prey’s misbehaviour. The lion’s choking jaws gripped mercilessly around his neck, crushing his windpipe and cutting off his air. 

Dominic scrabbled at the lion’s face, his fingers searching for anything he could use to avoid his seemingly inevitable death. To no avail – he couldn’t seem to find its eyes, and putting pressure on its jaw didn’t appear to help. As his vision started fading from lack of air, he started hallucinating.

The world became black all around, yet there were white words floating in front of him. Dominic looked around, but the words just followed him, remaining stubbornly in front of his vision regardless of what he did. Deciding to humour the hallucination, he read the text.

<Congratulations new user!>

<You have been given the marvellous opportunity of joining the multiverse as a participating citizen. Your planet has been absorbed into the body of the System and vaporised into particles.>

Good thing this is a hallucination, Dominic thought. Otherwise we’d all be screwed.

<Never fear! It will be reconstituted again shortly, with the additional particles of four other planets added in to expand land mass, number of available biomes, and species that you will encounter. This will additionally allow your new planet to absorb more Mana and play a useful part in the System. While this reconstitution takes place, you will remain in this space.>

Wait, Dominic said to himself as trepidation started clawing at his belly. Which, incidentally, appeared to be intact. Not that he cared too much about that in the face of this new information. Does that mean this isn’t a hallucination? Or am I hallucinating something telling me it’s not a hallucination? Does that happen? Unable to answer the question, he continued reading.

<We thank you for your patience and will play an appropriate tune from your planets records to help you pass the time in a calm manner.>

Shortly after, Dominic realised that he could indeed hear music. As he focused, he became increasingly incredulous.

“Elevator music?” he demanded from no one in particular. “How is that the best tune to play at a time like this?”

No one responded. He’d hardly expected them to, though it would have been nice. Now he’d read the text, it didn’t appear to be inclined to follow his eyes around the room, and Dominic was able to get a better view of where he was. Or rather, where he wasn’t. And the answer to that was...anywhere.

Pure darkness surrounded him. He’d have felt a swoop in his stomach, much like standing on a glass floor several stories up, if he’d been able to see anything beneath his feet. As it was, he appeared to be standing on nothing, with nothing below that, and nothing as far as he could see.

It was disorientating to the extreme – he didn’t know how far anything was away from him. Sure, when he looked at himself he could see his whole body, intact and unstained by blood – a tick in the ‘hallucination’ column for sure, that. When he looked anywhere else except for at the words, he couldn’t tell whether he could see a long way into the distance, or whether the darkness was a hair’s breadth from his face. As for the words, they were legible but cast no light, appeared to be floating amid the blackness, and were either very small and right in front of his eyes or massive and far away from him. Or maybe somewhere in the middle.

Dominic warily tried waving his arms in the space in front of him, but he couldn’t seem to touch the text no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t touch anything. Giving up on making sense of the space made him focus on the words and their implications if this wasn’t a hallucination.

But it has to be, right? He remembered the lion, the sensation of having his belly dug into. The agony of being eaten alive. He recalled fighting back and being choked out by the lion’s powerful grip with its jaws. So, either this was a hallucination or there really was an afterlife. Heck, maybe I’m going to isekai’d or something, Dominic thought with a little excitement, remembering some of his favourite storylines. Just as long as I’m not reincarnated as a rock or a sword or something. That would suck.

The time seemed to stretch like honey from a spoon and he found himself resorting to pacing back and forth, his mind going over and over what ifs and maybes. When the text once more affixed itself in his vision, he was relieved. Until he read it, that was.

<Reconstitution almost complete.

<Prepare to enter the world in 5

4

3

2

1

…>

Dominic braced himself for something that didn’t come. He opened his eyes, somehow having automatically closed them, to see that the previous message had been replaced. The new one was even more concerning than the previous.

<Error>

That doesn’t sound good, he thought to himself warily even as the text was wiped away to once more be replaced. It almost felt like someone – or some computer – was having a debate or something similar with itself or someone else. Each line was wiped away only to be replaced by another.

<Lifeform unable to reconstitute>

Because I died? Or something else? Dominic wondered. Or maybe he hadn’t died. If this was the afterlife, that could be the problem.

<Attempt to reconstitute lifeform discovered to be convergent to another lifeform reconstitution>

OK, not what I was guessing, he admitted to himself.

<Solution: combine lifeforms>

What?

<Solution accepted>

What?! Dominic barely had enough time to process the words before the world erupted in light and sound.

After the blackness of the void, even the faintest light seemed overwhelming. At least the elevator music had stopped, finally. Dominic was unable to process anything more before another stubborn block of text shoved itself in his face.

<Congratulations User2546312547895632, you have joined the multiverse as a Humanoid Beast.>

<You have two options one option to grow stronger: craft, or kill.>

<Evolve as you grow in power, and claim your destiny.>

<Think ‘status’ at any point to access your status and see your progress towards your next Evolution.>

With the last sentence read, the text faded away, leaving Dominic staring at the thin air in front of him in shock. So...it wasn’t a hallucination. Or maybe it was and he was still suffering from it. But...if it wasn’t a hallucination, treating it as if it was one could get him killed. Again. And if it was a hallucination, then treating it like it was real couldn’t hurt. Could it? He shook his head in confusion, suddenly realising as he moved that his body didn’t feel like his. What was that about reconstituting lifeforms?

Looking down at his hands, he realised with a shock that they weren’t hands any more: they were paws. And as he twisted to look over his shoulder, he realised that the movement was far more fluid and sinuous than he’d ever experienced before. The tawny body stretching behind him and the snake-like tail with a tuft of hair lying limply beyond it told a very particular story.

“Oh no,” he said, or tried to at least, his words coming out as a low growl instead. “Oh no!” Thinking hard, he focused on ‘status’ until more text appeared in front of him.

<As a result of your unusual circumstances, User2546312547895632, you have been granted a personal message from the System:>

<Due to your particles and those of User2546312547895633 being located in the same place on retrieval, it proved impossible to separate them. Consequently, your particles have been combined. However, in alignment with the System’s driving objectives, your particles have been arranged in the way most likely to allow you to progress as a complete combination of both sets of particles was calculated to be inefficient for progress. Notably, the mind from User2546312547895632 was considered to be the superior and has therefore been identified as the primary mind; the body from User2546312547895633 was considered to be the superior and has therefore been identified as the primary body.>

<The System appreciates that this solution may be an inconvenience to you. Consequently, an addition has been made to your evolutionary capacities. In addition to the usual bonuses offered by killing beings, you also may gain access to perks that they enjoyed. The more beings you kill with a certain perk, the more likely it is that you will gain it on your next Evolution.>

<The System wishes you a pleasant welcome to the multiverse.>

Under Dominic’s disbelieving eyes, the text faded away to reveal his status. Well, he thought with slightly hysterical humour. At least I’m not a rock. Or dead. Actually…inhabiting the body of one of nature’s apex predators might not be the worst thing if this is anything like the apocalypse stories I read… Then again, he wished he hadn’t lost access to his human form to gain it. 

Or had he? The message had talked about a primary body, not the only one, hadn’t it? And as a growl echoed in his mind, Dominic realised that the distinction might prove to be rather important in a somewhat immediate fashion.