The woods were silent that morning, the kind of silence you only notice once you've lived in cities long enough to forget it exists. Every step of my boots crunched against last year's leaves, breaking the calm like glass.
Most folks came out here for hikes, for campfires and marshmallows. For me, it was something else. A proving ground.
The system had given me warnings, progress bars, a damn bandage that felt cleaner than anything a pharmacy could stock. But there was one thing it hadn't given me yet. Proof. Proof that when things went wrong when blood spilled and panic hit it could actually save me.
And I wasn't the type to take promises on faith.
I'd chosen a clearing about three miles out, far enough nobody wandered by. Brought a small kit: water, knife, some rations, the system-crafted bandage, and my sidearm. Not because I expected trouble. Because trouble never cared what you expected.
I sat on a fallen log, knife balanced across my knee. The air smelled of damp bark and iron-rich earth. I'd rehearsed this moment in my head a hundred times, and it still felt insane.
Hurting yourself on purpose wasn't survival. It was the opposite. Every instinct screamed against it.
But I couldn't shake the thought when the outbreak came, hesitation would kill faster than infection.
I needed certainty now, before it counted.
I rolled up my sleeve, flexed my arm. A shallow cut, nothing fatal. Just enough to bleed. Just enough to see.
"Alright," I muttered, knife blade catching a flash of cold morning light. "Moment of truth."
Steel bit skin.
It wasn't deep, but it was clean. Red welled up fast, sliding down my forearm in thin rivers. Pain flared sharp, familiar, grounding me in the moment.
The system chimed instantly.
> [Condition Detected: Minor Laceration.]
[Suggested Response: Apply Improvised Bandage.]
I pulled the crafted bandage from my pouch, heart thudding harder than I wanted to admit. The strip of cloth looked ordinary, but as I wrapped it around the wound, the glow pulsed faintly beneath my fingers, like heat from a coal.
Tight. Secure.
The system responded again:
> [Item Applied.]
[Bleeding Stopped.]
[Recovery Accelerated: +15%.]
I froze, staring at my arm. The bleeding slowed almost instantly, clotting in a way that wasn't natural. The pain dulled too, sharper edges fading like someone had turned a dial.
It worked.
God help me, it actually worked.
I leaned back on the log, staring up at the canopy. Leaves rustled overhead, a hawk cried in the distance, and the whole damn forest seemed too peaceful for what I'd just proved.
This wasn't a game. This wasn't some hallucination from old wounds rattling around in my skull.
The system could change outcomes.
Change fate.
And if that was true, then the five-year countdown wasn't just a warning. It was a contract.
I sat there for a long while, listening to the steady rhythm of my breathing. A part of me wanted to laugh here I was, a grown man cutting himself in the woods to test the voice in his head. But the laughter never came.
All I felt was the weight of it.
The weight of responsibility.
Because if this worked for me… what else could it do?
The walk back into town was slower, more deliberate. I kept scanning treelines, not for threats but for opportunities. Herbs. Water sources. Wood quality. Every detail mattered now, because every detail could be turned into something more with the right blueprint.
I passed a jogger on the trail, middle-aged guy in neon shorts, earbuds in. He nodded without slowing down. Just another normal day for him.
For me, normal was already gone.
By the time I got home, the bandage had done its work. I unwrapped it carefully. The cut had already sealed into a thin red line, almost two days ahead of what nature could've managed.
I washed it, dressed it again out of habit. The system had proven itself, but I wasn't about to stop being careful.
As I tossed the used strip into the trash, the system whispered once more:
> [New Blueprint Available: Basic Antiseptic.]
Required: Alcohol x1, Herbs x1, Container x1.
I froze, staring at the glowing words.
It wasn't just responding to my injury.
It was learning.
Growing with me.
That night, I sat on the porch with a beer, watching the street. Sarah laughed somewhere down the block, kicking her soccer ball under the glow of a streetlamp. Joel leaned against his truck, arms crossed, relaxed in that way fathers tried to look even when worry ate them alive.
I envied the simplicity of that moment. A father and daughter under the stars, not knowing the world was already cracking at the edges.
Five years. That's what the system had said.
But after today, I couldn't shake the thought: maybe it wouldn't wait that long.
Maybe the world would start breaking tomorrow.
And when it did, only one man in this neighborhood would be ready.
I slept fitfully. Dreams tangled between fire and fungus, men screaming in languages I hadn't heard in years.
When I woke, sweat clung to my skin and the system was waiting.
> [Daily Alert.]
Progress insufficient.
Recommendation: Expand Safehouse. Acquire Additional Resources.
I groaned, rubbing my eyes.
"Yeah," I muttered. "I figured as much."
But beneath the frustration, I felt something else. A strange clarity.
The bandage had proven the system wasn't lying. Which meant everything else — the safehouse quests, the resource demands, the five-year warning had teeth.
And teeth cut both ways.
If I wasn't prepared, they'd tear me apart.
But if I was… maybe I could do more than just survive.
Maybe I could save others, too.
Maybe even Joel. Maybe even Sarah.
The thought stuck with me as I geared up again, ready to take another step into the future no one else could see coming.
Because for the first time in years, I wasn't just drifting.
I had a mission again.
And missions were the only thing that ever gave me peace.