The forest wanted him dead.
That much was clear.
Leaves hissed overhead as if whispering threats, roots tried to grab his boots, and somewhere behind him the wet slither of something large crept closer. Eli darted between the glowing trunks of the Nyrad Grove, gasping, sweat mixing with digital mist. The low hum of his half-broken sword vibrated weakly in his hand like it was laughing at him.
"No, no, no, no—don't you dare freeze now!"
The blade flickered and went dark.
Of course it did.
A screech echoed — that awful, insectile cry of a Forest Nyrad. A tangle of vines surged toward him, glistening with sap and malice. Eli stumbled backward, tripped over a log, and landed flat on his back in the mud. His HUD blinked bright red.
[HEALTH: 12%]
[WARNING: CRITICAL CONDITION]
"Yeah, I noticed," he muttered, smearing dirt from his cheek. "Thanks for the moral support."
A faint blue light shimmered beside his vision, flickering into a vague humanoid shape.
The SYSTEM.
It always appeared like this — a sterile hologram made of static and faint blue lines, hovering just at the edge of focus. Its voice, when it came, was devoid of tone.
[SYSTEM: SURVEILLANCE AND INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM – STATUS: ACTIVE]
[RECOMMENDATION: RETREAT IMMEDIATELY.]
"Great idea," Eli wheezed, pushing himself up. "If I had stamina, legs, or self-respect left, I'd totally do that."
The hologram blinked, as if processing sarcasm. Then it vanished.
Eli stumbled through the undergrowth, hearing another Nyrad drop from the branches above. He swung his sword weakly — it bounced off the creature's hide with the satisfying power of a wet noodle.
"God, why am I even—"
He dove aside as a vine lashed across his arm, slicing his HP down again.
[HEALTH: 7%]
The world dimmed around the edges.
In the distance, he saw two other players standing on a ridge, perfectly geared, watching him flail.
"Dude, that noob's still stuck on Forest Tier One?" one of them laughed through party chat.
Eli heard it echo through the public channel.
He didn't even look their way. Just grit his teeth and muttered,
"Yup. Laugh it up, leaderboard legends. One of us has permanent death mode on."
They couldn't hear the second part.
No one ever could.
The vines slithered forward again, forming a cage. Eli ducked, rolled, stabbed upward — missed. His sword wedged into the bark of a glowing tree and got stuck.
He yanked at it desperately. It wouldn't budge.
The Nyrad hissed, closing in.
[SYSTEM: WEAPON INTEGRITY—37%]
The blue hologram flickered back to life beside him, calm as ever.
[SYSTEM: RECOMMENDATION—ACCEPTABLE OUTCOME PROBABILITY: 0.004%.]
Eli coughed out a laugh. "So you're saying there's a chance?"
The hologram didn't answer.
It pulsed once — a faint blue heartbeat in the dark — then faded again.
Something slammed into his side. He hit the dirt hard, HP blinking red.
[HEALTH: 2%]
The Nyrad reared back, its vine-like limbs quivering for the finishing strike.
And that was when Eli's luck — that ridiculous, statistically impossible trait that kept him alive when he had no right to be — decided to flex.
The ground beneath the Nyrad cracked open with a creaking groan. One of the ancient root tendrils that had been hanging loose finally gave way, collapsing directly onto the monster. It shrieked, tangled itself in its own vines, and thrashed violently.
Eli blinked up at it from the mud. "Oh. Sure. That's fair."
The system chimed softly.
[SYSTEM: SURVIVAL EVENT REGISTERED.]
[ANOMALY DETECTED.]
Eli dragged himself backward, coughing. His vision blurred at the edges. The monster's glowing sap splashed across his face — warm, sticky, slightly too real.
"Okay… okay, maybe I should just—"
He tripped again, landing beside his broken sword.
Every nerve screamed. His limbs felt heavy. The SYSTEM flickered once more.
[SYSTEM: NEURAL LOAD CRITICAL.]
[USER VITALS—UNSTABLE.]
"Yeah," he whispered hoarsely. "I figured that out around the time I stopped feeling my legs."
The world dimmed.
The air turned syrup-thick, his breathing slow and shallow. The hologram hovered closer, a faint flicker of blue above his chest.
He thought — or maybe imagined — that it almost looked concerned.
And just before his mind slipped into the void, it happened.
The hum.
That same vibration he'd felt four days ago — deep in his skull, like someone flicked a tuning fork inside his brain. The one that started all this.
His vision blurred completely. The glowing trees melted into streaks of light.
And as darkness swallowed him, he remembered the smell of instant noodles and the faint electric buzz of his gaming chair.
⸻
The same forest, but smaller — pixelated, flat, bright. He wasn't in it yet.
Just watching from a monitor, chopsticks dangling from his mouth.
"Alright," he'd said back then, slurping the noodles, "last login before I uninstall. Let's see what all the hype's about."
He was sitting cross-legged in his cluttered apartment, empty bottles and snack wrappers everywhere. A sleek VR headset rested on his lap, pulsing faintly blue. The company had promised "full sensory calibration." The forums said it was "insane immersion."
He'd laughed. "Yeah, sure. Another hyper-scan gimmick. Like my brain needs more bugs."
But he'd tried it anyway — mostly because of a dare. His online friends told him he wouldn't last a week in the "RealFeel" beta of Etherveil Online.
They were right, of course.
He was awful at it.
First death: falling off a tutorial cliff.
Second: burned himself while cooking.
Third: drowned while fishing.
Fourth: got eaten by slimes.
He'd treated each one like a comedy routine.
Until that last reboot.
Something had glitched.
He'd felt the jolt. The neural sync spiked. His screen had gone pure white.
Then he woke up here — inside the world, not the menu.
The SYSTEM had spoken then too, calm as a heartbeat monitor:
[SYSTEM: SURVEILLANCE AND INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM – CALIBRATING.]
After that, he couldn't log out.
⸻
The memory burned bright for a moment, then shattered like glass.
Eli's senses snapped back. The forest was real again — wet, loud, hostile. His health bar blinked a single, desperate pixel of red.
He was dying.
And somewhere in the glitching static of his vision, the blue hologram reappeared.
[SYSTEM: OVERRIDE DETECTED.]
[SYSTEM: INITIALIZING EMERGENCY PROTOCOL—LEVEL 0 ACCESS.]
Light spilled through the trees, sharp and cold.
And then — everything froze.
Vines hung motionless midair. Even his ragged breathing stopped echoing.
Only the voice of the SYSTEM remained, emotionless and terrible in its stillness.
⸻————————————
⸻
The world had stopped breathing.
The vines that had been seconds from skewering him now hovered in the air, frozen like glass threads. Sap droplets hung mid-fall, glinting with impossible light. The trees stood utterly still — even the distant hum of the digital wind had died.
Eli blinked. The sound of his own pulse filled the void.
Then the blue light returned.
The SYSTEM stood before him — not as a flicker, but as a full projection, a column of shimmering code woven into the outline of a human silhouette. The glow reflected off the wet leaves, turning the forest into a cathedral of blue light.
It didn't look alive. It didn't even move. But when it spoke, the air vibrated.
[SYSTEM: SURVEILLANCE AND INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM — CORE ACCESS UNLOCKED.]
[USER: ELI VERNE. STATUS: ANOMALOUS.]
[PROTOCOL: SURVIVAL PRIORITY OVERRIDE INITIATED.]
The voice wasn't human. It had no pitch, no emotion — and yet it carried the weight of something absolute.
Eli's throat was dry. "Survival priority… override? What does that even mean?"
No answer. Only a faint flicker through the hologram, like static crawling across the surface of his vision.
Then came another pulse.
[DETECTED: NEURAL DETERIORATION 89%. SYSTEM INTERVENTION REQUIRED.]
[PROVIDE CONSENT.]
He tried to move, but his limbs didn't respond. He felt pinned — not by force, but by the sheer weight of the frozen moment.
"Consent to what?" he croaked.
[SYSTEM: UNKNOWN GLITCH PRESENT. PARAMETERS EXCEED USER CAPABILITY.]
[TO PRESERVE FUNCTIONALITY, TEMPORARY PROTOCOL ACCESS REQUIRED.]
The light around him brightened, edges fracturing like crystalline circuits.
It didn't feel like a request.
He swallowed hard. "Fine. Sure. Do your… thing."
The blue hologram rippled outward, fragments of light embedding themselves into his surroundings — each shard pulsing faintly, creating a ring of geometric symbols around his collapsed body.
The forest — still frozen — began to distort. Vines twisted into fractal loops, trees bent at impossible angles, pixels bleeding into real bark.
And then everything shifted.
He was standing upright. Somehow.
His body still ached, but the pain had dulled into numb awareness. His sword, which had been shattered, reappeared at his side, reconstructed from blue motes.
The SYSTEM spoke again.
[SYSTEM: ACCESS GRANTED.]
[INITIALIZING EMERGENCY LOADOUT.]
Three faint windows appeared before him, glowing faintly in midair.
Each was written in sterile white font over a transparent holographic screen.
[SELECT PRIMARY SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT:]
1. Basic Fire Spear [Elemental Variant — Tier F]
Lightweight, close-range. Burns fuel at accelerated rate.
2. Basic Bow and Arrow [Precision Variant — Tier F]
Long-range, adaptable. Damage depends on accuracy.
Eli stared, chest rising and falling shallowly.
"…Wait. Now you're giving me starter weapons? After all that?"
The SYSTEM remained silent, the options glowing patiently in front of him.
He laughed — dry, incredulous. "Of course. I nearly die, and then you pop up like a vending machine."
His voice echoed against the still air. The trees didn't move. The vines around him were still locked in mid-motion, waiting for him to decide.
The longer he stared at the glowing panels, the heavier the silence became.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's think this through, genius."
He reached up — his hand passed through the holographic spear description, making it flicker slightly. Warm air brushed against his fingertips, like the faint heat of a candle. The weapon's outline shimmered: a long, ornate shaft tipped with flickering orange light.
Then he tried the bow. The moment he brushed the edge, the world seemed to cool. He felt tension ripple through invisible strings, a whisper of potential energy humming in the air.
Both looked weak. Temporary. Like training wheels for someone still at the tutorial stage.
And he hated that.
He was supposed to be past this part. He'd done the tutorials. He'd failed them gloriously, but still — he'd earned his humiliations.
"System," he said quietly. "Why these two?"
The hologram pulsed once, faintly — its voice a whisper through static.
[SYSTEM: PARAMETERS LIMITED. USER TRAITS: LOW VITALITY, LOW AGILITY, LOW STRENGTH.]
[LUCK ATTRIBUTE—UNDEFINED.]
[AVAILABLE LOADOUTS CALCULATED BASED ON MINIMUM SURVIVAL INDEX.]
He felt his lips twitch.
"Translation: everything about me sucks."
No response.
"Figures."
He stepped closer to the glowing options. His reflection warped in their light — a young man with messy dark hair plastered to his forehead, half his face smeared with mud and monster sap. His eyes looked too tired for someone who'd only been awake a few minutes.
"Alright," he murmured, "think… rationally. Fire spear means close-range, I get roasted. Bow means distance, I miss every shot."
He closed his eyes. In the frozen silence, the weight of the situation pressed down on him again. The still air. The halted time. The eerie stillness of the forest that was supposed to be alive.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
This wasn't a respawn timer. This was reality.
He opened his eyes again. The SYSTEM's blue light glowed brighter, almost urging him forward.
And then something strange happened.
The spear option flickered — once, twice — before stabilizing.
Then the bow did the same.
A third option — faint, half-formed — flashed between them, almost invisible.
A single word.
[GLITCH]
Eli blinked. "Wait… what?"
It vanished as quickly as it appeared. The other two options glowed brighter, as if hiding the anomaly.
He reached out, but the air solidified around his hand. The SYSTEM's tone deepened, the sound of static almost like a heartbeat.
[SYSTEM: USER INPUT REQUIRED.]
[CHOOSE NOW.]
Eli's pulse thundered in his ears. His fingertips hovered between the two holographic choices, heat from one and chill from the other brushing his skin.
He hesitated for a single breath.
Then — the world began to move again.
The vines trembled.
Sap drops resumed their fall.
Time lurched forward.
And Eli had to choose.
His hand shot out — the blue light swallowed everything.
The last thing he saw before the world exploded back into motion was the SYSTEM's text burning bright across his vision:
[SELECTION CONFIRMED.]
[INITIALIZING ARMAMENT INTERFACE.]
[WELCOME TO HARDCORE MODE.]
Then — light.