The mist had started to thin by morning.What was once a gray wall turned into streaks of white vapor drifting through the trees.The rain had stopped. For the first time in days, sunlight broke through — faint, cold, and heavy.
Myaterous sat near the dying fire, writing on a scrap of bark with a sharpened nail. The ground was littered with broken items, leftover catalysts, and damp ash. His two NPCs were asleep under a tarp, exhausted.
He wasn't tired. His mind rarely allowed it.
He drew circles and lines again — patterns, data, and fragments of formulas from the night before. Every synthesis left traces in the system, invisible to most, but he noticed them. Numbers shifted slightly after each use, like the world itself remembered.
He muttered to himself.
"So the world learns, too."
A faint sound cut through the silence — static.
Then a voice, almost mechanical but carrying a hint of human breath:
"[Region Channel Active – 39C]""[Open Transmission from User: Irelia_72]""To anyone alive out there… please respond."
He froze.For the first time since the game began, he heard another player. Not the voice of an NPC or a system echo — a real person.
He didn't answer immediately. He let the silence hang. He wanted to hear the tone.Desperation. Fatigue. Caution.
He turned the channel on.
"This is Myaterous. Identify yourself."
There was a pause. Then a soft gasp.
"Someone actually replied."
The woman's voice cracked slightly, but steadied after a moment.
"I'm in the eastern ridge. I saw your light during the storm. I thought I was the only one left."
He didn't respond right away. He checked his map. The signal was about six kilometers away — a difficult distance with the terrain still unstable. But manageable.
"You survived the acidic rain?" he asked."Barely. Lost half my camp. The rest… turned."
So she'd seen the same entities. Maybe even created one.
He kept his tone neutral.
"I'll send a ping. Follow the coordinates if you can. Don't bring anyone else."
"I don't have anyone else," she said quietly.
The transmission ended.
He closed his map and stared into the forest. The mist shimmered faintly in the distance, where the sunlight hadn't reached yet.
Lira woke up and rubbed her eyes. "We're moving again?"
"Yes.""To find more people?""To find information," he corrected.
He packed his gear, strapped the sharpened metal rod across his back, and adjusted the crude electrostatic veil emitter. Joren followed behind without a word.
They moved quietly through the forest. The world felt bigger now — not because of size, but because of possibility. Every noise made them pause. Every shadow could be human or something worse.
After two hours, they reached a slope overlooking a shallow valley. In the middle stood a half-collapsed shelter, smoke still rising from a fire pit. A lone figure crouched beside it, wearing a torn jacket and holding a crude spear.
The woman turned as he approached. Her face was pale, smeared with ash, but her eyes were sharp — too calm for someone who'd just survived a storm like that.
"You're Myaterous," she said. "I thought that was just a name in the global log."
He tilted his head slightly.
"And you're Irelia."
They studied each other for a long moment. No words, just silence filled with suspicion.Then she spoke again.
"You're different. The way you talk… you're not panicking.""Panic is just wasted data," he said simply.
She laughed once, short and humorless. "You really talk like the system itself."
He didn't deny it.
The air between them felt heavy but not hostile. Just real. Two people who had already seen too much.
He looked at her shelter, at the burned remains of something inside.
"You failed a synthesis," he said quietly.Her jaw tightened. "Yeah.""And you lived.""Barely. It tried to eat me."
He nodded, then offered a hand. "Come with me. I'm rebuilding a perimeter."
She hesitated. "And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll take your blueprints when you die."
For a second, she thought he was joking. Then she realized he wasn't.
She took his hand.
"You really are as cold as they say.""No," he said. "Just efficient."
As they walked back, the forest around them shifted again. The system's faint hum echoed through the wind — something changing, recalibrating.
A new line of text appeared in the sky like a fading mirage.
[Announcement: Regional Evaluation Imminent.][Top Survivors Will Receive Observation by Higher Entities.]
Irelia looked up, frowning. "Higher entities?"Myaterous didn't answer. He already knew.This world was just a test. The real game hadn't started yet.