The fog over Stonedale that morning was especially thick and damp, clinging to the thatched roofs and muffling the familiar sounds of the waking village. But the silence was shattered not by a rooster or the creak of a cart wheel, but by the alarming toll of the large communal bell. The dull, gut-deep sound made hearts clench.
Seito, who had already returned from his morning run and was pretending to have just woken up, saw his mother's face turn white. Ayame rushed to the window and then grabbed him, holding him so tightly he could barely breathe.
All the villagers had gathered in the central square. The village elder, the gray-haired and wise Orric, stood on the steps of the barn with a grim face. Next to him were two guards, their chainmail filthy, their eyes reflecting weariness and something more—fear.
"Hear me, everyone!" Orric's voice was hoarse but loud, cutting through the misty veil. "Yesterday, a patrol stumbled upon a nest of bristleboars in the Old Forest! The beasts are aggressive, they attacked without fear! One of ours was wounded, we barely fought them off!"
A frightened murmur swept through the crowd. Bristleboars were not uncommon in those parts, but they usually avoided people. Something had spooked them, made them meaner and bolder.
"Until the guards and hired hunters sweep the forest and destroy the nest," the elder continued, "all children are forbidden to go beyond the palisade! Adults—be on your guard, do not go into the thicket alone! Especially near the stream by the Rocky Ledge!"
Seito's heart skipped a beat. The Rocky Ledge. His favorite training spot, the very place where the magical spring was. That's where he was planning to go this morning.
Back home, he saw fear take root within the walls of their house. Kenshi sharpened his large carpenter's axe with a grim look, and Ayame endlessly rearranged pots on the shelf, unable to sit still.
"Mom, they're just pigs," Seito tried to reassure her, not believing his own words.
"A bristleboar is the size of a calf, son," she replied quietly. "It has tusks like daggers and a foul temper. If it's with its young, it will charge a bear. No, you will stay home."
A prohibition. An order. A restriction. These words burned inside him hotter than any training session. His plans were crumbling. His source of strength, his place of power was now forbidden. And all because of some pigs?
All day he felt like a caged animal. He saw the other children missing their games on the green, but obediently staying inside the palisade. But their boredom was not his boredom. They weren't driven forward by a secret goal. They weren't propelled by the need to grow stronger every day.
A thought matured in his head, dark and tempting. What if he went? Not far. Just to the stream. He was faster and stronger now. He could run away if anything happened. The System had raised his [Observation] and [World Sense]—he would notice danger in advance. They're just pigs, not a dragon.
It was foolishness. Pure, reckless foolishness. But it wasn't just driven by a thirst for training. It was driven by a desire to prove. To prove to the System that he wasn't just a child. To prove to himself that his growth wasn't an illusion. That he could stand up for himself in this dangerous world.
The next morning, when the fog had not yet lifted, he broke the prohibition.
His heart pounded wildly as he sneakily crawled through a hole in the palisade, known only to him and the local cats. The forest greeted him with an ominous silence. There was no birdsong, no chirping of crickets. There was only an oppressive, wary silence, broken by the rustle of leaves under his own feet.
He moved on tiptoe, using all his skills. His [Observation] was active at its limit, scanning every bush, every shadow. His [World Sense] picked up something… unsettling. In the familiar, calm flow of the forest thicket's magic, there was an admixture of something alien, aggressive. But the desire to prove his independence was stronger than the instinct of self-preservation.
He was almost at the stream, could already see the familiar rocky ledge through the trees, when his [World Sense] contracted into an icy lump. Right in front of him, in the fern thickets, the magic distorted—condensed into a lump of blind, hungry rage.
He froze. But it was too late.
It jumped out of the thickets with a low, ferocious growl. Not a pig. Not a wolf.
It was a worg. A worg cub.
The creature was the size of a large dog, but it resembled a dog in no way. Bald, wrinkled gray-green skin, long clawed paws, a mouth full of needle-like teeth, and small, hate-filled red eyes. It wasn't an adult worg—those were the size of a horse and far more terrifying. But this cub was more than enough to tear a child apart.
[Threat detected: Young Worg. Threat level: Medium. Recommendation: Flee.]
The System issued a cool warning, but Seito's feet were rooted to the ground in terror. He didn't move. He couldn't breathe. Before him was darkness again, pain, the smell of gasoline, and cruel laughter. His body remembered death.
The worg cub, sensing his fear, growled and lunged.
Instinct overcame paralysis. Seito jumped aside, feeling the beast's claws slice the air a centimeter from his face. He fell on his back, hitting a root painfully. The creature turned with incredible agility and rushed at him again, now with clear intent to sink its teeth into his throat.
At that moment, the world for Seito narrowed to a mouth full of teeth and the wild terror in his own chest. He cried out, covering his face with his hands—a pitiful, helpless child's gesture.
And then the System exploded in his head.
All the familiar blue glow of the interface vanished, replaced by a pulsating, blood-red screen. A loud, piercing alarm sound, heard only by him, pierced his consciousness, burning away all fear, all panic, leaving only a pure, animal desire to survive.
[EMERGENCY QUEST: "SURVIVE!"]
[GOAL: REMAIN ALIVE.]
[REWARD: EXPERIENCE, LEVEL UP, UNLOCKING OF NEW SYSTEM FUNCTIONS.]
[WARNING: DEATH IN THIS WORLD IS FINAL.]
The screaming letters blazed before his eyes. And with them came something else. Time seemed to slow down. His panic, his cry, his terror—it all collapsed, compressed into a tiny, incredibly dense point in his chest. And then the point exploded.
Not with rage. Not with anger. With cold, ruthless clarity.
He wasn't a child. He was a mechanic. And this worg cub—it wasn't a monster. It was a malfunction. A breakdown. A threat to the system. And it needed to be eliminated.
His body moved on its own, obeying a new, alien instinct. He didn't jump back. He did a forward roll, right under the creature's lunge. Sharp claws left long, burning scratches on his back, but he slipped through.
The worg cub landed where Seito had just been and froze for a moment, stunned by the unexpected maneuver.
That second was enough. Seito looked around. A rock. He needed something heavy. His gaze fell on a nearby chunk of rock, the size of his head. He couldn't lift it. But he didn't need to.
"System!" he mentally screamed. "All my strength! All my stamina! Everything—into one blow!"
He didn't know if it would work. He just desperately believed.
And the System responded. He felt a current surge through his entire body. Muscles burned, bones creaked under unaccustomed strain. Before his eyes, the numbers for the [Strength] and [Dexterity] parameters on the red screen slid downward, depleting, turning into fuel for one single action.
With a cry that held more pain than fury, he lifted the rock and threw it with all his might not at the monster, but at the cliff face above it.
He couldn't miss. His [Dexterity], even if temporarily enhanced by the System, was directed at this calculation. The rock hit a protruding edge of the cliff with a dull thud.
A crack sounded. A small but heavy stone fragment, knocked loose from below, broke off and crashed down.
The worg cub, mesmerized by the child's movements, looked up just as the several-kilogram stone fragment crashed down onto its skull with its full mass.
A disgusting, crunching sound echoed. The creature howled—short, piercing, and then fell silent immediately. Its body twitched and went still, spreading a dark puddle on the ground.
The red screen went dark. Time returned to its normal flow.
Seito stood, breathing heavily. All his temporary strength was gone, leaving behind emptiness and trembling knees. His back burned from the scratches. Before him lay a dead creature. He had killed it.
The realization made him vomit.
He knelt, shaking, and the System coldly recorded his condition.
[Quest "Survive!" completed.]
[Experience gained. Level up available.]
[New Level: 2.]
[All parameters increased.]
[Function unlocked: "Emergency Mode" (temporarily enhances parameters at the cost of subsequent depletion).]
[Function unlocked: Bestiary. Information on monsters will be added automatically upon encounter.]
[Title obtained: "Worg Hunter" (slight increase in damage against worgs).]
He struggled to his feet, not looking at the carcass. He felt no triumph. Only emptiness, nausea, and an icy cold inside. He had almost died. For the second time in his life. And this time, he had killed to survive.
He looked at his hands—small, childlike, covered in scratches and blood. Not his blood. He was a mechanic. He fixed things, didn't break them. But this world… this world broke everything. And to survive, he had had to break something in return.
As if in a fog, he stumbled away from that place, back towards the village. His secret training no longer seemed like a game to him. The System wasn't a fun cheat. It was a tool for survival in a world where beyond the palisade, monsters waited to tear children apart.
He crawled back through the hole in the palisade and trudged home. He was dirty, bloody, pale as a sheet.
Ayame, seeing him, screamed in horror.
"Seito! Good heavens, what happened to you?!"
He couldn't answer. He just stood and trembled. Kenshi, running to his wife's cry, grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Son! Where have you been? What happened?"
Seito looked up at him, his eyes full of an unchildlike pain and weariness.
"In the forest…" he whispered. "There… a worg…"
Kenshi paled even more than his son. He sharply turned Seito around and saw the bloody streaks on his back.
"Ayame, prepare water and herbs!" he commanded in a voice Seito had never heard before. "Run for Tobas! Immediately!"
As his mother fussed around him in tears and his father grimly clenched and unclenched his fists, Seito sat motionless. He didn't feel the pain from his wounds. He felt a weight on his soul. The weight of his first kill. And a cold understanding: his childhood was over. It had ended the moment the stone crushed the worg cub's skull.
He closed his eyes and saw not the red screen of the System, but an empty line. His True Name. Now he understood. To reach it, he would have to go through blood and pain. And he was ready. Because the alternative was worse.
He was ready to become a hunter.