The tree line appeared like salvation until he got closer and realized the trees were wrong too. Trunks wider than buildings twisted up into a canopy so thick it created false midnight. The bark had patterns that looked almost like faces—faces with expressions suggesting trees had opinions about trespassers, and those opinions were uniformly negative.
But behind him, the purple mist crept closer, and those flying phase-lizards had started making sounds like glass trying to remember how to break.
FromSoft difficulty forest, or purple death fog. Choices, choices.
He crossed the threshold and the temperature dropped twenty degrees instantly. Not gradually—binary cold, like someone had flipped the 'hypothermia' switch. His breath misted in air that tasted of copper and crushed dreams.
The silence hit harder than the cold. Not quiet—silent. The kind that made you painfully aware of your heartbeat, your breathing, the wet sound of blinking. Even his footsteps seemed muffled, absorbed by something hungry for sound.
Great. Murder forest with a silence fetish. This keeps getting better.
Something crunched under his foot. He looked down and immediately wished he hadn't. Bones, but from nothing that had ever lived on Earth. Too many joints, arranged in patterns that suggested their owner had strong opinions about conventional anatomy.
"Don't look at the bones," he muttered. "Don't think about the bones. Don't wonder what killed the bones' owner. Just walk. Find water. Find shelter. Find a nice place for a complete mental breakdown."
A branch snapped somewhere to his left. Then his right. Then directly above, which was concerning since branches shouldn't snap up.
I'm being hunted by the forest itself. 10/10 immersion, 0/10 survival prospects.
The arrow sprouted from his shoulder before he heard the bowstring.
Pain bloomed like a flower made of fire and regret. Black fletching, shaft of wood so dark it seemed to eat light. The head—barely visible where it punched through muscle—gleamed with purple oil that definitely wasn't standard ammunition.
"Poison," he gasped, already feeling the wrongness spreading from the wound. "Because regular arrows are for casuals who want their victims to survive."
His legs gave up their employment contract. The forest floor rushed up to introduce itself to his face. Through the gathering darkness, he saw them—shapes flowing between trees with liquid grace, eyes glowing with colors that didn't belong in any spectrum.
Elves. It's always elves. Why couldn't it be friendly merchant caravans or convenient healing springs?
His last coherent thought before unconsciousness claimed him was that dying twice in one day had to be some kind of record.
Grandpa would be so proud.
Darkness ate the world, and Ren's isekai adventure scored its first critical failure.