The crackle of the tiny fire was the only sound on Arthur's small, rocky ledge.
The air was cold, the darkness an oppressive weight, but he had survived.
The scent of the hard, stale biscuit he had thrown had drawn the Shadow Hounds away, and he had used the flint to create a flickering beacon of warmth.
"Just a bit of tinder... just a bit more," he muttered to himself, his low Dexterity making the simple task of adding twigs a desperate ballet of clumsy movements.
He was safe. For now. That thought was a small comfort, a fragile hope in the suffocating black. He could ride out the night here, hidden and warm, until the dawn chased his creations away.
But then, the growls returned. A low, vibrating rumble that seemed to shake the very stone beneath him.
It wasn't the hungry, panicked sound from before. It was a measured, patient sound. "That's not how I wrote this scene to go!" he hissed, his voice a frantic whisper. "The biscuit was supposed to be a satisfying distraction!" The hounds knew exactly where he was.
He pressed himself against the rock wall, his breath catching in his throat. He saw their eyes first—a half-dozen pairs of glowing red coals, fixed on his ledge. Their forms slipped in and out of the shadows, testing the fire, waiting for him to make a mistake. The scent of pine and damp earth was replaced by the acrid musk of a predator on the hunt.
Then, a new set of eyes appeared behind them. Higher up. Faintly violet.
A chilling dread, a cold, clinical fear, seized Arthur's heart. "A Shadow Alpha..." he whispered, his mind a panicked database of his own lore. "A blood moon mini-boss... But there's no blood moon! The system is cheating!" The rules of his own world were breaking, and the violation was trying to kill him.
A new system alert, a deep, unsettling red, flashed before him.
[Hidden Event Triggered: Narrative Instability Detected.]
Enemy Level: UNKNOWN.
[Optional Quest: Survive until Dawn.]
Reward: Random Skill (Tier Unknown).
Failure: Permanent Death.
"A Random Skill?" he spat, the words a disbelieving croak. "At this rate, I'll be lucky to get a skill that helps me trip less. And what's 'Permanent Death' supposed to mean? Like, actually dead? My editor is going to kill me."
This wasn't a game. The system was no longer a faithful narrator of his words; it was an entity with its own terrifying will. It was adapting, trying to kill him, and offering a high-risk, high-reward escape he could not possibly win. His Intelligence of 25 was useless against an UNKNOWN level threat. He was going to die.
He had one last chance. His mind, a panicked database of forgotten lore, frantically searched for a weakness. Anything. He remembered a detail he had cut from the final draft—a plot point deemed too complicated for a simple scene. He had written that Alpha hounds hated the scent of a Moonpetal Fern when burned; the smoke was poisonous to their spectral lungs. It was a detail he had long since forgotten. Until now.
The problem was, he had seen a cluster of those ferns earlier. Across the stream, in the direction of the growls. To get it, he would have to leave his small sanctuary and leap into the heart of the danger he had so desperately tried to avoid.
The pack began to circle tighter, their shapes slipping in and out of the shadows. The Alpha stepped forward, a massive wolf-like silhouette. Its muscles rippled under midnight fur, and its fangs, impossibly long and white, dripped black saliva that sizzled where it hit the ground. The creature raised its head, a low, guttural roar vibrating in its chest. It was preparing to charge.
Arthur's heart hammered against his ribs. He had one shot: leap down, dodge the hounds, grab the fern, and get back before the fire died completely. He took a deep, shaky breath, muttering under his breath, "I'm fighting a mini-boss with a plot hole I didn't even publish." And with a surge of desperate adrenaline, he jumped.
The jump was not the graceful, acrobatic maneuver he had written for Alfred Aether. It was a clumsy, desperate plunge. He landed hard on the forest floor, his low Dexterity betraying him. He stumbled, his ankle twisting with a sharp pain that made him bite back a cry. The hounds were on him instantly, a swirling vortex of red eyes and snapping jaws.
A hound lunged, its teeth grazing the fabric of his tunic. Arthur instinctively threw himself sideways, rolling down a slight incline and narrowly avoiding another set of fangs. He wasn't fighting; he was a terrified pinball, ricocheting off trees and rocks as the pack harried him. He heard the deep, guttural roar of the Alpha, a sound that shook the very air.
"My Dexterity is Pathetic for a reason!" he screamed, scrambling to his feet. "I'm going to die on a broken ankle!"
His high Intelligence, however, was his only weapon.
He wasn't trying to fight; he was trying to navigate. He remembered the specific, difficult terrain he had designed for this area. He dodged behind a fallen, hollow log, a move he knew the Alpha, with its massive bulk, couldn't follow easily. The pack snarled, their red eyes glowing in the darkness.
He scrambled to the stream's edge, his foot slipping on a mossy rock. He fell into the icy water, the shock stealing his breath. The hounds hesitated at the edge, their natural aversion to water giving him a precious moment of reprieve. The Alpha, however, simply leapt over the stream, landing with a bone-jarring thud on the other side.
He saw the Moonpetal Ferns. A cluster of them, their silvery leaves almost shimmering in the faint light. He lunged, his hand snatching at the plants. A claw, tipped with razor sharpness, tore at his arm as the Alpha lunged. He felt a searing pain, but he had the ferns. He had them.
He scrambled back, his mind a whirlwind of panicked instructions. Get back to the fire. Burn the ferns. He threw himself across the stream, soaking wet and bleeding, and began a desperate, clumsy climb back to his ledge. The hounds were a screaming wall of red eyes and snapping fangs behind him.
With a final, agonizing grunt, he pulled himself onto the ledge. He snatched the bundle of tinder, his hands shaking, and threw the Moonpetal Ferns onto the embers of his fire. The leaves shriveled, and a sickly, violet smoke, pungent and sweet, billowed out.
The effect was instantaneous. The Alpha stopped dead in its tracks. A low, pained whine escaped its throat. It snarled at the smoke, its violet eyes losing their focus. The other hounds, completely disoriented by the smell, began to retreat, yelping and snapping at the air. The Alpha let out a final, furious roar of defeat before melting back into the shadows.
Arthur collapsed, his body shaking uncontrollably. His arm was bleeding, his ankle throbbed with a dull ache, and his lungs burned from the adrenaline.
"Did I... did I actually just win?" he whispered, a bitter, exhausted smile on his face. "I won a fight with a plant. I'm a tactical genius!"
A new system notification appeared before him, glowing a triumphant green.
[Optional Quest: Survive until Dawn]
Status: Succeeded.
Reward: Two Random Skills Acquired.
[Skill: Writer's Insight (Passive)] - Allows the user to perceive the underlying narrative structure of the world.
[Skill: Character's Gaze (Active)] - Allows the user to view the stats, skills, and background of a targeted individual. Costs 10 MP per use.
Arthur stared at the new skills, the smile vanishing from his face. "A meta-ability and a character sheet," he said, the words hollow. "The system is literally telling me to write my way out of this hell, and now I can check everyone's backstory too. Unbelievable."