The first thing Clyde felt was not fear, but a profound, vibrating stillness.It wasn't the silence of an empty room, nor the quiet of a library. It was the heavy, pressurized silence of a cathedral, or the breathless moment before a thunderstorm breaks. He lay on his back, his fingers digging into moss that felt less like vegetation and more like velvet-covered memory foam. The air tasted sweet, cloyingly so, thick with the scent of ozone, crushed pine needles, and something ancient—like the smell of old books opened after centuries.
Clyde opened his eyes.Above him, the sky did not exist. In its place was a canopy of such impossible magnitude that his brain struggled to render the perspective. Leaves the size of billboards, shimmering with veins of bioluminescent gold, interlocked to form a ceiling that blotted out the heavens. Between them, beams of filtered light danced like solid pillars, illuminating dust motes that drifted with lazy purpose.
"Okay" Clyde croaked. His voice sounded small, swallowed instantly by the vastness.
"Okay. Not the subway."
He sat up, a wave of vertigo washing over him. He had been on the subway, heading to his meaningless IT job in downtown Chicago. There had been a lurch, a screech of metal, a flash of white, and now... this.
He looked behind him.The breath left his lungs in a sharp hiss. He was sitting at the base of a tree, but calling it a "tree" felt like an insult to the English language. It was a mountain of bark and wood. The trunk curved away into the distance, a wall of gray-brown timber so wide he couldn't see the curvature. Enormous roots, thick as highway overpasses, snaked out from the base, creating valleys and ridges that stretched for hundreds of yards before burying themselves in the earth.
Clyde stood up, his legs shaking. He was wearing his business casual slacks and a light blue button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up. His loafers sank slightly into the moss. He checked his pockets. Wallet. Phone (no signal, obviously). Keys to an apartment that might not even exist anymore.
"Hello?" he called out.
The sound died instantly.He took a step away from the trunk, walking down the length of a massive root. As he moved, he noticed a sensation—a hum. It was a low-frequency vibration that seemed to resonate in his teeth. It felt safe. Warm. Like standing near a campfire on a snowy night.
He walked for ten minutes, just following the ridge of the root, before he saw the edge.
The mossy ground beneath the tree ended abruptly in a perfect circle, perhaps a mile in diameter around the trunk. Beyond that line, the world changed. Clyde stopped five feet from the transition point. Inside the circle, the light was golden and calm. The air was warm. Outside, the forest was a nightmare of shadows and violence.
The trees out there were huge by Earth standards—redwoods and sequoias—but they looked twisted, their bark black and jagged like obsidian shards. Vines as thick as pythons strangled the trunks. The undergrowth was a tangle of thorns and purple, toxic-looking ferns. And the air...The air outside the circle shimmered with a heat haze, though it looked cold.
*Snap!*
Clyde froze. He crouched low against the root he was standing on.
Fifty yards past the boundary line, the undergrowth exploded. A creature burst from the ferns, skidding across the dark earth.
It looked like a boar, but scaled up to the size of a minivan. Its hide was plated with iron-gray chitin, and four tusks, glowing with a faint red heat, jutted from its lower jaw. It was squealing—not in anger, but in terror.
It scrambled to its feet, trying to run, but a shadow fell over it. From the canopy above the dark forest, something descended. It didn't fall; it flowed, like spilled ink.
It was a spider, or at least, it shared a spider's geometry. It was easily two stories tall. Its legs ended not in points, but in scythe-like blades that shimmered with a wet, violet poison.
There was no battle. There was only an execution. The spider moved with a speed that blurred the eye. One leg descended.
*Thwack.*
The sound was wet and heavy. The armored boar was pinned to the ground, its plating shattered like porcelain. The spider descended, its multiple eyes glowing a malevolent yellow. Mandibles clicked, a sound like cracking stones, and then silence returned to the forest as the predator dragged its prey up into the darkness of the trees.
Clyde realized he had stopped breathing. He scrambled backward, crab-walking until his back hit the wood of the massive root. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"What is this place?" he whispered, his hands trembling violently.
"What the hell is this place?"
He looked back at the Great Tree behind him. He could feel the warmth radiating from it. The spider hadn't even looked in his direction. It had hunted right on the edge of the boundary but hadn't crossed it.
Safe zone, his gamer brain supplied, desperate to categorize the horror into something manageable. The Tree is a safe zone.
But as he looked at the dark forest, at the shadows moving in the periphery of his vision, he realized the terrifying implication. He was safe as long as he stayed under the Tree. But there was no water under the Tree. There was no food. And eventually, he would have to leave.
The first few hours were spent in a state of paralysis. Clyde huddled in a hollow between two massive roots, watching the boundary line like a soldier in a trench.
He saw things. He saw a bird with a wingspan of thirty feet, its feathers gleaming like polished chrome, swoop down and snatch a wolf-like creature that was breathing fire. He saw a pack of monkeys, small but with four arms each, tearing apart a tree trunk to eat the glowing grubs inside.
Everything out there was High Level. That was the only terminology that fit. In a video game, this would be the endgame zone, the place you went when you were level 99 with god-tier gear. Clyde was Level 1. He was worse than Level 1; he was an NPC. A villager. One hit, one bite, one accidental step, and he was paste.
By mid-afternoon, the adrenaline began to fade, replaced by a dull, throbbing headache. Dehydration.Clyde licked his cracked lips.
"Think," he muttered, forcing himself to stand.
"Panic kills. You read the books. You played the games. Panic kills." He surveyed his sanctuary.
The Great Tree—he decided to call it the Titanwood—provided shelter, but seemingly nothing else. The moss was damp, but you couldn't wring water from it. There were no fruits falling from the golden canopy high above.He needed to scout the perimeter.
Clyde began to walk the circumference of the safe zone. He stayed twenty feet back from the edge, moving carefully. He noted that the "Aura" of the tree was visible if you squinted. It was a faint, translucent gold dome that curved upward.
As he walked, he noticed something near the northern edge of the circle. The terrain dipped slightly. The dark forest outside sloped downward into a ravine. And from that ravine, he heard the undeniable sound of rushing water.Clyde crept closer. He lay on his stomach and peered over the edge of a root.
About thirty seven meters away—twenty seven meters outside the safety of the Titanwood's aura—there was a stream. The water was crystal clear, rushing over smooth, dark stones. It looked impossibly cold and refreshing.
Thirty seven meters. It might as well have been thirty seven kilimeters.
Between the edge of the safe zone and the water was a patch of open ground covered in blue flowers. They looked beautiful. They also looked suspicious.
Above the stream, the trees grew thick, their branches intertwining to form a dark tunnel. Clyde pulled back and sat against the root.
He checked his watch. 4:30 PM.
The light was changing. The golden hue of the Titanwood was dimming, and the shadows in the dark forest were lengthening, stretching out like grasping fingers.
"I can't go today," he reasoned.
"It's getting dark. Humans are diurnal. Those things out there... they probably hunt at night."
But the thirst was becoming a physical weight. His throat felt like it was filled with sand. He decided to test the boundary. He found a loose rock, a chunk of gray stone dislodged from the earth. He walked to the edge of the moss. He could feel the barrier—a gentle resistance, like walking through a spiderweb. He pushed his hand through.
The air on the other side was freezing. He pulled his hand back instantly.
He threw the rock. It sailed through the air, crossing the invisible line.
*Hisss.*
The moment the rock landed among the blue flowers, the petals snapped shut. The flowers weren't flowers; they were mouths. They clamped down on the stone, acid sizzling audibly.
Clyde paled. "Carnivorous flora. Fantastic."
He looked at the stream again. The flowers didn't cover the whole path. There was a rocky spine, a ridge of slate, that cut through the flower patch and led down to the water. If he walked on the rocks, he could avoid the plants.
But not today.
Clyde retreated to the base of the Titanwood. He found a deep crevice between two roots, a natural cave formed by the wood. It was dry and shielded from the wind. He gathered armfuls of the velvet moss and piled it inside to make a bed.
As twilight settled, the world transformed.The Titanwood began to glow. The golden veins in the leaves flared brighter, casting a soft, amber light over the sanctuary. It was beautiful, a lighthouse in a sea of darkness.
But the forest outside...The forest woke up. Howls erupted—sounds that grated on the soul. Some sounded like wolves, others like screaming women, others like metal grinding on metal. Bioluminescent eyes opened in the darkness beyond the barrier. Hundreds of them.
Clyde curled up in his root-cave, clutching a heavy stick he had found, knowing it was useless. He watched the boundary line.
A creature approached. It was humanoid, lanky and pale, with arms that dragged on the ground. It had no face, just a vertical slit of a mouth filled with needle-teeth. It walked up to the edge of the golden light.
It raised a hand and pressed it against the barrier.
*ZZZT.* Gold sparks flew.
The creature shrieked, recoiling as its hand smoked. It hissed at Clyde—it knew he was there—and then scampered back into the dark.
"It's a literal forcefield." Clyde whispered, a tear of relief leaking from his eye.
"Thank you, big tree. Thank you."
He didn't sleep. He drifted in a fugue state of exhaustion and terror, listening to the monsters of the deep woods kill each other just a mile away.
Day 2
Hunger was a gnawing ache, but thirst was a scream.Clyde woke up—or rather, stopped lying down—when the ambient light brightened. His mouth was so dry his tongue felt swollen. He had to move.
Today. Now.
He stood up, his joints popping. He looked at his business casual attire. It was ruined. Mud-stained, wrinkled. He took off his tie and wrapped it around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. He rolled his sleeves past his elbows.
"Objective: Water," he said, his voice raspy.
"Method: don't die."
He made his way back to the northern edge, overlooking the ravine. The blue flowers were open again, waving gently in a breeze Clyde couldn't feel inside the barrier. The stream was still there, mocking him.
He surveyed the area for ten minutes. Nothing large was moving. The massive predators seemed to be nocturnal, or at least resting during the peak of the day.
"Okay. The rocky ridge. Step on the stones. Don't touch the flowers. Get to the water. Drink. Fill... what?"
He realized he had no container. He couldn't bring water back. He had to drink his fill there and then retreat. That increased the time he would be exposed.
He searched the safe zone frantically. He found a large, cup-shaped piece of bark that had flaked off the Titanwood. It was as hard as iron and curved like a bowl. It would hold maybe a liter. It wasn't much, but it was something.He returned to the edge. He took a deep breath.
"On three. One. Two. Three." Clyde stepped out of the sanctuary.
The cold hit him instantly. It wasn't just temperature; it was a spiritual chill. The air felt heavy, oppressive. It was hard to breathe, as if the oxygen content was lower, or the gravity was higher. Mana pressure, he thought distantly. The monsters radiate it.
He moved.
He stepped onto the first slate rock. He balanced carefully. The blue flowers on either side swiveled toward him, sensing the vibration.
He froze.
They quivered, then settled.
He took another step. Then another.
He was halfway there. About eighteen meters from safety. Eighteen meters to the water.
"Slowly but surely." He chanted.
Bit by bit he moved.
*NGRRR.*
A sound reached him. A low, clicking purr.
Clyde froze mid-step. He slowly turned his head.
On a branch overhanging the stream, camouflaged perfectly against the black bark, was a lizard. It was small compared to the monsters from yesterday—maybe the size of a Great Dane. It had chameleon-like skin that shifted colors, and a tail that ended in a serrated bone spike.
Its eyes were locked on him. Clyde's heart stopped.
Don't run.
Predators chase things that run.
The lizard cocked its head. It didn't seem to perceive him as a threat. It perceived him as a snack.
Clyde looked at the water. Four meters away.
He looked at the lizard. It was tensing its hind legs.
"Screw it!" Clyde yelled.
He bolted.
He leaped off the rocks, landing in the mud next to the stream. The blue flowers snapped at his ankles, tearing his trousers, but missing his flesh. He scooped the bark bowl into the water, ignoring the freezing bite on his hands. He brought it to his lips and gulped.
The water was shockingly cold, sweet, and energized. It felt like drinking liquid electricity.
*SCREE!*
The lizard launched itself.
Clyde didn't look. He threw himself backward, rolling over his shoulder. The lizard slammed into the mud where he had been standing a second ago, its bone-spike tail cracking the slate rock in half.Clyde scrambled to his feet. He had the bowl clutched to his chest, water sloshing everywhere.
"Run! Run, you idiot!"He sprinted back up the rocky spine.
The lizard was fast. Terrifyingly fast. He could hear its claws tearing up the earth behind him. He heard the snap-snap-snap of the blue flowers trying to bite the lizard, but the beast just trampled them.
Nine meters to the barrier.
He could feel the lizard's breath—hot and smelling of rotten meat—on his neck.
Four point five meters.
Clyde didn't just run; he dove. He launched himself into the air, arms outstretched, aiming for the moss.
He hit the ground and rolled.
*THUD.*
A heavy impact shook the ground inches behind him.
Clyde lay on his back, gasping, staring upward.
The lizard was pacing right at the edge of the barrier. It hissed, lashing its tail back and forth. Its snout was pressed against the invisible wall, drool sizzling as it made contact with the holy aura of the Titanwood. It glared at him with reptilian malice, let out a frustrated shriek, and then turned and vanished into the undergrowth.
Clyde lay there for a long time. He laughed. It was a hysterical, broken sound.He looked at the bark bowl. He had spilled most of it, but there was a few mouthfuls left. He drank it reverently.
"Level 1 Human: 1. Level 20 Chameleon: 0." he panted.
He had survived his first sortie. But as the adrenaline faded, a sobering realization settled in. That was a small lizard. A scavenger. And it had almost killed him effortlessly.
If he wanted to survive this, he couldn't just be a scavenger too. He had to evolve.
Day 5
Routine was the anchor of sanity.
Clyde had established a rhythm. The Titanwood was his base, his castle. He had explored every inch of the safe zone. It was roughly three square miles of circular safety.
He had found a few things of interest. First, the sap of the Titanwood. Where the bark had cracked near the ground, a thick, golden amber leaked out. He tasted it cautiously on Day 3. It was sweet like honey but carried a potent kick of energy. It curbed his hunger. It wasn't a steak dinner, but it kept him alive.
Second, he found "The Nursery." On the south side of the tree, high up in the root system, he found a cluster of massive, acorn-like nuts. They were the size of watermelons. He managed to crack one open using a sharp rock. The meat inside was bitter, but edible.
So, he had water (if he risked the run), and he had food (acorns and sap).
But he was still trapped.
Clyde sat cross-legged near his sleeping hollow, holding a sharp piece of slate he had recovered from the stream run. He was whittling a branch of the Titanwood that had fallen.
The wood was incredibly hard. It had taken him two days just to sharpen the point. But now, he had a spear. It was a crude, four-foot-long stake, but the wood itself seemed to carry a trace of the tree's aura. When he held it, he felt slightly stronger.
"Analysis." he muttered to himself.
He did this often to keep his language centers active.
"The monsters avoid the aura. Why? Is it holy damage? Is it just too bright? Or is the Tree an apex predator that they don't want to mess with?"
He looked up at the canopy. The Titanwood didn't seem predatory. It seemed indifferent.
He needed to understand the rules of this world.He stood up and walked to the edge. He saw a 'Shadowstalker'—his name for the six-legged panther beasts—pacing the perimeter.
Clyde raised his spear. "Hey! Ugly!"
The beast stopped. It turned its triangular head toward him. Its eyes were burning coals.
Clyde stepped right up to the line. The beast tensed.
"Come on," Clyde taunted, adrenaline spiking.
"Try it!"
The beast lunged. It hit the barrier.
*CRACK.*
The sound was louder this time. A bolt of golden lightning arced from the barrier, striking the beast in the nose. The monster yelped—a high-pitched, pathetic sound—and scrambled back, shaking its head.
"Okay," Clyde noted.
"Active defense mechanism. It strikes back if the intent is hostile enough."
He looked at the spear in his hand.
"If the wood retains that property... maybe I can make traps."
Day 12
Clyde was changing.The business casual clothes were gone, replaced by a loincloth-style garment he'd woven from the fibrous inner bark of the giant acorns and dried moss. He looked ridiculous, like a castaway accountant, but he could move silently now.
His body was changing too. The sap and the acorn meat were doing something to him. His muscles felt denser. His eyesight was sharper; he could track the movements of the hummingbirds that lived in the upper canopy. The mana—or whatever the energy was—was permeating his system.
He wasn't leveling up in a game sense—no blue boxes appeared—but he was adapting.
He was currently lying flat on a high branch of a regular tree that grew just inside the safe zone, overlooking a game trail.
He had a plan.
He couldn't fight the monsters. But the monsters fought each other constantly.
Below him, just outside the barrier, a corpse lay rotting. It was one of the giant boars. It had been killed by a Shadowstalker earlier that morning, but the predator had been chased off by a larger, wyvern-like creature before it could finish the meal.
Now, scavengers were gathering.
Wolf-sized rats. The chameleon lizards.
Clyde held a heavy rock in his hand. He wasn't aiming for the monsters.
He waited until a group of the rats were frantically tearing at the carcass. They were distracted.
Clyde threw the rock. Not at them, but at a cluster of 'Screamer Pods'—orange, bulbous fungi that grew on a tree trunk about twenty feet away from the carcass. The rock hit the pod.
*REEEEEEEEEEEEE!*
The pod exploded with a sonic shriek that was deafening. The rats froze. From the deep woods, the ground shook.
Clyde grinned. "Dinner bell."
A massive shape tore through the trees. It was an 'Armored Behemoth'—a turtle-bear hybrid thing he'd seen on Day 4. It was blind but hunted by sound. The shriek had drawn it.
The Behemoth charged into the clearing, smashing the rats. The rats fought back, biting at its soft underbelly. It was chaos.
In the confusion, a large chunk of the boar's leg was torn loose and flung... toward the barrier.
It landed 150 centimeters outside the safety line.
Clyde scrambled down from his perch. He ran to the edge.
The Behemoth was busy crushing a rat. The other scavengers were scattering.
Clyde pulled out a long pole he had made by lashing two branches together with vine. On the end was a hook made of sharpened root.
He thrust the pole through the barrier. He hooked the chunk of boar meat. It was heavy, maybe fifty pounds.
He pulled.
"Come on, come on..."
The meat dragged through the dirt.
A rat saw him. It hissed and leaped toward him.
Clyde didn't flinch. He yanked the meat across the line just as the rat hit the barrier. ZAP. The rat convulsed and fell back.
Clyde dragged his prize into the sanctuary. He fell back onto the moss, panting, staring at the raw, bloody hunk of meat.
"Protein," he whispered. "Actual protein."
He roasted it over a fire he made using friction and dried moss. The smoke drifted up into the Titanwood's canopy. The meat was gamey and tough, but to Clyde, it tasted like the finest steakhouse dinner in Chicago.
As he ate, he felt a surge of heat in his stomach. The energy from the meat rushed into his limbs.
He looked at his hands. They were calloused, scarred, and dirty.
"I can survive this," he said to the silent, golden woods. "I can actually survive this."
Day 30
A month.
Clyde had stopped counting the days by hours and started counting them by "Events." The Great Storm. The Night of the Red Moon. The Migration of the Sky-Whales.
He had built a proper shelter now—a small hut woven between the roots, elevated off the ground. He had a stockpile of dried meat, acorn flour, and several gourds full of water.
He was stronger. Much stronger. He could jump ten feet in the air. He could run for hours without tiring. The Titanwood's diet had fundamentally altered his biology.
But he was lonely. The silence of the sanctuary, once comforting, was now deafening.
He sat by his small fire, sharpening a new weapon. It was a spear tipped with the serrated bone-spike of a chameleon lizard he had managed to trap and kill (a risky maneuver involving a pit trap just inside the barrier).
He looked at the dark forest.
He needed to know if there were others.
He had seen ruins.
Two days ago, during a clear dawn, he had climbed higher into the Titanwood than ever before. From a vantage point a thousand feet up, he had used a crude telescope made from a hollow tube and a piece of polished crystal he'd found in the stream.
He had seen stone structures in the distance. Towers. Toppled walls. They were overgrown, but they were artificial.
They were about sixteen kilometers to the East.
Sixteen kilometers through the "Zone of Death."
Clyde stood up. He extinguished his fire.
He walked to the eastern edge of the barrier. The sun was rising, casting long shadows through the twisted, black trees.
He wasn't ready to leave yet. He knew that. He was maybe Level 5 in a Level 99 zone. But he had a goal now. He wasn't just surviving; he was preparing.
He planted his spear in the ground.
"I'm coming," he whispered to the ruins in the distance. "Just give me time."
Clyde turned back to his training. He began to do pull-ups on a low hanging branch, his muscles rippling under his toughened skin.
The Titanwood hummed above him, a silent guardian, watching its guest evolve from a frightened prey into a hunter. The forest was vast, and the monsters were high level, but Clyde had something they didn't.
He had a sanctuary. And he had hope.
The survival of Clyde had only just begun.