By the time Cael slowed down, his lungs were burning like someone had poured fire into them.
He didn't know how long he'd been running.
Minutes? Maybe more.
Time got weird when survival grabbed you by the throat. Everything became short bursts of movement, quick decisions, and prayers you didn't even believe in—because believing was slower than acting.
He leaned both hands against a tree trunk and tried to breathe without sounding too loud.
The bark was damp. Cold. Rough enough to scrape the skin already torn from his palms.
His legs trembled like they were going to give up on him any second.
Pathetic.
The word came uninvited.
It wasn't even an insult anymore. Just a fact.
He could still hear the bandits if he focused hard enough—the memory of their laughter and the casual way they spoke about selling him like he was livestock. That part wasn't fantasy. That part wasn't "game logic."
It was the same kind of ugliness he'd seen on Earth.
Different language, different clothes… same eyes.
Cael wiped at his face and realized his cheeks were wet. Sweat, maybe. Maybe something else. He didn't stop to figure it out.
He couldn't afford softness right now.
He forced himself back into motion, careful this time. No more sprinting blindly. No more panicking. His stamina felt like it was hanging by a thread, and his body didn't have the luxury of heroism.
As he pushed through the tall grass and broken stone, the scenery began to change.
It happened gradually at first.
The trees became thicker. The sunlight dimmed. The air shifted from fresh and open to something… heavier.
Like the world didn't want you breathing too deeply.
Cael slowed.
Ahead, the land dipped into a basin of twisted roots and gnarled trunks, the branches tangled in a way that made the forest look like it was gripping itself in pain.
A signpost stood crooked at the edge of the path.
The wood was old, nearly rotted through, but the warning was still readable.
WITHERING GROVE
NO ENTRY
Cael stared at it for a long moment.
In the game, this place was optional. A "risky early zone" that people entered only when they were greedy, curious, or stupid.
In real life… it didn't look optional.
It looked like the kind of place the world used to erase mistakes.
He swallowed.
His body wanted to turn around. To go back to the village, to hide, to wait for academy. Wait for teachers and training and safe progression.
But he didn't have time for slow progress.
Not with the System's warning hanging over him like a knife.
Not with seven days ticking down.
Not when he had seen those bandits on the road and realized just how weak he truly was.
He stepped forward.
The moment his foot crossed into the grove, the temperature dropped.
Not by a little.
It was sudden enough that his skin prickled.
The air smelled wrong too. Not like rot, exactly. More like wet iron and bitter sap.
His footsteps sounded louder than they should've. Like the forest was listening.
He tried to keep his breathing quiet and steady, but his body wouldn't obey. It was too exhausted, too strained. Every inhale felt jagged.
A dry rustle came from somewhere to his right.
Cael stopped instantly.
His eyes scanned the underbrush.
Nothing.
Then… another sound. A faint scratching, like claws dragging over stone.
He held still, heart thudding so loud it felt like it could give him away.
Don't panic.
He told himself that, but his fingers were already curling into fists.
The game had trained his mind for patterns—enemy spawn points, movement ranges, trap zones.
But real forests didn't follow neat rules.
Real forests hid things.
He took another step.
A twig snapped beneath his foot.
At the same time, something moved.
Fast.
Cael jerked his head toward the sound and barely managed to duck.
A sharp object whipped past where his face had been and struck the tree behind him with a hard thunk.
He froze.
Slowly, he turned his head.
A thin spike—black and glossy like hardened bone—was embedded in the bark.
His mouth went dry.
"…Trap."
In the game, Withering Grove was infamous for this. Not because the monsters were strong, but because the place punished people who didn't pay attention.
Cael looked down.
There—nearly invisible—was a wire half-buried in dirt, connected to a crude launcher hidden in a knot of roots.
If that spike had hit him…
He didn't want to think about it.
He exhaled shakily and crouched, studying the ground more carefully. His eyes moved slower now, scanning for the smallest abnormalities: disturbed soil, unnatural straight lines, leaves arranged too neatly.
He advanced inch by inch.
The deeper he went, the more he saw them.
Traps everywhere.
Some were simple: tripwires, hidden pits.
Others were crueler.
A patch of ground that looked solid but was actually thin bark laid over a hollow.
A vine that wasn't a vine at all, but a living snare waiting to tighten around a leg.
Cael avoided them mostly by instinct, mostly by luck, and partly because he remembered this place like a map burned into his skull.
But memory didn't help with everything.
At one point, he stepped around a tree and found a skeleton sitting against it.
The bones were old, picked clean, but the clothes still clung to it in tatters—an adventurer's outfit. On its finger was a dull ring, cheap metal, rusted through.
The skeleton's skull was tilted slightly upward, as if even in death it had been watching the path ahead.
Cael stared at it longer than he meant to.
A tight feeling grew in his chest.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Because he understood that death.
Not dramatic. Not heroic. Just… abandoned.
He slowly reached out and took the rusted ring off the finger. Not because it was valuable—because it wasn't.
But because leaving it there felt wrong.
He slipped it into his pocket, then stood, jaw clenched.
"Not me," he whispered.
The grove didn't answer.
He kept walking.
Minutes passed. Or hours.
The sunlight above was thinner now, barely breaking through the canopy. The forest seemed to swallow sound. Even the birds were gone. No insects buzzed. No wind moved the leaves.
It felt like stepping into a place outside the world.
And then he saw it.
A clearing.
Small. Hidden between thick, bent trees that curved inward like ribs protecting a heart.
In the middle of the clearing was a stone altar—half sunk into the ground, cracked down the center. Moss clung to it like a wound trying to heal.
And on top of the altar…
Something rested in a shallow indentation.
A small object, no bigger than his thumb.
Dark brown, almost black.
A seed.
Cael's throat tightened.
The moment he saw it, his entire body reacted—like it knew what it meant before his mind caught up.
This was it.
The thing the game had barely acknowledged. The thing most players never reached because they died on the way, got bored, or decided it wasn't worth it.
The Seed of Irregular Growth.
His hands shook.
He took one careful step forward.
Then another.
Halfway to the altar, the System window flashed into existence without him calling it.
[Warning: High-Risk Acquisition Event]
[Probability of Survival: 12%]
Cael stared at the message, then let out a small laugh.
It wasn't a happy sound.
"Twelve percent," he murmured, voice rough. "That's generous."
He continued forward anyway.
As he reached the altar, he could feel something in the air now—an invisible pressure, like a gaze.
Not the System.
Something else.
Something alive.
Cael's fingers hovered over the seed.
And in that exact moment…
A shadow moved at the edge of the clearing.
Silent. Slow. Watching.
Cael didn't look away from the seed, but his spine went rigid.
His instincts screamed one word:
Run.
But his hand didn't move back.
He had come too far.
He had bled for this.
He swallowed hard and whispered, almost like a promise to himself.
"…I'm taking it."
His fingers closed around the seed.
The air turned cold enough to sting.
And something in the trees began to step closer.