For a heartbeat, there was only silence, a heavy quiet that felt louder than all the roaring that came before.
Everyone atop stared, their minds unable to catch up with what their eyes had just seen. The monster was gone, replaced by a pile of ash, and Scott lay unmoving in the middle of it.
Then, a single voice from a high branch broke the stillness. "They did it!"
That was all it took. A wave of sound erupted from the Heartwood Tree.
Cheers spread across the camp, echoing through the branches and down to the roots.
Hundreds of people poured out of their homes, laughing and crying at the same time, their fear washed away by a flood of relief.
The nightmare was over.
The celebration was cut short at the barrier.
Elara was the first one through, scrambling over the mossy stones without a second thought for the danger of any other creatures that got attracted by the loud sounds.
Jorunn and Leo were right behind her, their faces grim.
"Scott!" Elara cried, her voice tight with fear.
She ran to him, falling to her knees in the soft, black ash.
She gently rolled him over. His chest was rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.
He was breathing. Shockingly, there wasn't a single burn mark on him, but he was completely unconscious, lost to the world.
Leo and Jorunn rushed to the other fallen Elders. They were awake, but barely.
Their old faces were pale and lined with pain, their breaths shallow, each of them burned at least dozens of years of life span.
"Bring the stretchers! Now!" Jorunn commanded, although exhausted from the continuous shooting, her voice still cut through the happy noise from the camp.
The villagers' cheers died down as they saw the cost of their safety.
Men and women hurried down from the tree, their faces a mixture of gratitude and sorrow.
They carefully lifted the three old men onto stretchers made of woven vines and wood.
Leo gently helped Elara lift Scott. He was surprisingly light, as if the lightning had burned away some of his weight.
As minutes passed by in front of their eyes Scott's body began to change as it became slightly skinny and looked aged, just like how those old men were when they first came to support him.
This is the price he paid to save the camp.
As they carried him back towards the safety of the Heartwood Tree, everyone around made a path for them, their heads bowed in respect.
"Take them to the healing chambers," Jorunn ordered, her voice heavy. "It's the only chance they have."
Soon, Leo and the others were carrying their four saviors deep into the heart of the tree, past the living areas and down into the warm, damp roots.
They were headed to a special place, a series of small caves where the Heartwood Tree's life energy was at its strongest.
The air grew thick with the smell of rich soil and blooming fungi.
As soon as the bodies were placed down on the soft, mossy beds within the chambers, the very walls seemed to come alive.
From the rich soil and the thick roots of the Heartwood Tree, countless small, white fungal roots, thin as threads of silk, spread out like a living net.
They gently covered the injured bodies of Scott and the three Elders, wrapping them in a soft, breathing cocoon of mycelium.
A moment later, a light green energy began to flow across the roots, a visible pulse of life drawn from the heart of the tree.
This pure life energy, which was many times concentrated then their own, was injected directly into their wounds.
As soon as their bodies started to absorb the life energy, deep gashes began to close, visible to the naked eye.
Bruises faded from purple to yellow to nothing.
The signs of physical trauma were slowly being erased by the gentle, persistent power of the Heartwood Tree.
However, even with the support of the Heartwood Tree, it might take some time to completely heal them.
And there was one thing the tree could not fix: their missing lifespan, that was burned away in the desperate fight, could not be made up.
It was a price that was already paid in full.
Soon, time passed by. The soft green glow of the chambers was the only measure of the hours.
The next morning, Scott slowly opened his eyes.
A splitting headache hammered against his skull, and a deep confusion clouded his thoughts.
"Where am I?"
"What happened? Wasn't I still playing the game?"
In that split second, a flood of memories crashed into him.
Not his own memories, but someone else's. He saw a small boy growing up under the branches of a source tree called Heartwood.
He felt the fear of his first encounter with a spore beast, the pride of successfully becoming a First ordered Sporeborn, the warmth of Elara's hand in his.
A whole life, the life of a man named Scott, played out in his mind in a dizzying, painful rush.
He stood there, wrapped in the mycelium root cocoon, experiencing the memories of Scott that belonged to Sporos.
Who happened to have the same name and looked exactly like him.
Only after the headache began to subside and he came to his senses did the reality of his situation crash down on him.
This body wasn't his. This world wasn't his. He remembered he was playing the game called Sporos, then his character died in the game.
In a fit of anger, he cursed the game designer for making such a shitty game.
He had been playing this game for more than a year, where death was everywhere.
He seemed to have died more than a thousand or more; he had lost count.
Each time he got resurrected, he started at a different place and encountered different dangers and survival difficulties.
However, he liked to challenge difficult things and this game just made him unable to stop playing and he also never gave up.
However, with a world filled with extreme dangers with every step he took, he began to die again and again for no reason, sometimes attacked by sudden spore beasts or creatures of decay.
Sometimes he even died of starvation or being poisoned.
Fed up with such nonsense, he spent some private time and created his own cheat code.
After using the cheat code, his survival rate began to extend every time he played the game, but he still died again and again.
But the last time was different, he was very careful, and it was his longest survival time: three weeks, and he was beginning to explore different civilizations inside the game.
Thanks to the cheat, his strength improved very fast, yet he still died again.
In a fit of anger he started cursing the Game designer again as usual.
Then there was a blinding light of electricity hitting him through the damaged console and then… this.
He ripped the mycelium threads from his face, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and fury.
He looked down at his aged, skinny hands, the proof of a life force spent for a people he didn't even know.
"Fuck it… I've been transported to this damn shitty world," he cursed, his voice a raw, angry whisper in the silence of the chamber.
"Just because of using a cheat code or cursing the designer?"
"The survival rate of this stupid game is so hard, how can anyone play without cheating?" he cursed inwardly.
But it didn't matter anymore. He travelled into a body with the same name as his original.
Ranting wouldn't change the fact that his old life was gone, and he was now trapped in the body of this guy, Scott, in a world designed to kill him or everyone.
So he calmed down and thought about his current situation.
First, he was weak. He could feel it in every bone.
The life force that Scott had burned was gone, leaving the body aged and frail.
The Heartwood Tree was healing the physical damage, but it couldn't give back the lost years. He felt like an old man.
You must know an average first order sporeborn has a lifespan of at least one hundred and fifty years, and he was only in his early twenties.
Second, this world seemed entirely different from the game world, but he still had Scott's memories to integrate smoothly without causing any suspicion.
Although the game world and the current world seem slightly different, he planned to live to his fullest.
As for why he was so sure? Because from his memories there was no race called Spore born in the game world he played.
There's no telling what might be out there, but thanks to old Scott, he also felt the muscle memory of a trained warrior, even if the muscles themselves were currently weak.
Third, he was the Lord of the camp, and Scott sacrificed himself to save everyone.
That meant he had the respect and gratitude of the entire camp.
No one would question him, and they would likely do everything they could to help him recover.
Fourth, he had a lovely and the most beautiful wife to take care of him… hee-hee
He took a slow, shaky breath, the air thick and sweet.
The anger was still there, like a hot coal in his chest, but now it was mixed with a cold, calculating resolve.
He had survived thousands of deaths in the game.
He had learned the patterns, and even written his own rules to stay alive.
This was no longer a game.
This was real. But the goal was the same: survive.
And maybe, just maybe, find a way to get strong enough so that nothing in this godforsaken world could ever kill him again.