The trees were immense. Trunks ten to twenty meters thick were commonplace, with some colossal specimens exceeding thirty meters. They stood like moss-covered towers, their scale making Logan question the very nature of their wood.
This can't be Earth. Even giant sequoias never got this big.
A flicker of his old life surfaced—a craftsman's appreciation for such perfect timber. Shipbuilders from my old world would have killed for wood like this.
The thought was quickly smothered by his current reality. He was a lizard. A very small, very edible lizard.
Shaking his head, he refocused. Regret was useless. Survival was everything, and survival required food.
Right. Lizards eat bugs. Can't tackle beetles yet… but flies and mosquitoes should be on the menu.
He decided to scout beyond his thorny refuge. As he turned, something massive and amber-gold filled his vision. It was a vertical pool of liquid light, centered by a deep, dark fissure.
Then, a great translucent curtain swept down over it and lifted.
It wasn't a pool.
It was an eye. An eye larger than his entire body.
What the—?!
Every muscle in Logan's tiny frame locked. He pressed himself flat against the vine, a desperate, silent prayer running through his mind: Don't see me. Don't see me.
Whether his prayer was answered or he was simply too insignificant, the eye began to recede. The crunch of heavy feet on dry leaves echoed as the creature turned away.
Logan finally saw it in full.
It was a textbook theropod, nearly five meters long, covered in sleek blue scales striped with black. A yellow, beak-like snout full of serrated teeth. A raised crest. A long, balancing tail and a sinuous neck that promised agility. Powerful hind legs built for sprinting.
And the foreclaws—each hand bore six long, slender fingers ending in razor-sharp, blade-like nails.
A Velociprey.
The identification hit him like a physical shock. He'd fought these things—or rather, his avatar had—countless times in another life, through a digital screen.
They dropped me in the Monster Hunter world?
This changed everything, and not for the better. This world was defined by its colossal beasts and rampant, near-magical ecology. At his size, even the periphery of a monster's skirmish would reduce him to paste.
The ground is a death trap. I need a new home. Now.
As soon as the Velociprey's form vanished into the undergrowth, Logan moved. He scrambled down the thicket and shot across the forest floor, his little legs a blur, aiming for the base of a colossal broadleaf tree.
His sharp, semi-translucent claws found purchase in the bark. He began to climb, a slow, arduous ascent of over a hundred meters. Ten minutes later, breathless, he hauled himself into the dense canopy and wedged his body into a deep fissure in the trunk.
From this vantage point, his thorny birthplace was just a dark speck far below. Here, he was beyond the reach of ninety percent of the forest's predators.
He would have stayed hidden, but the relentless gnawing in his stomach demanded action. Food was the priority.
Fortuntately, luck was with him. Peering from his crevice, his eyes soon locked onto a fresh, tender shoot sprouting from a nearby branch. Spring sap pulsed within it, making it a magnet for insects.
A cluster of plump, green aphids clung to the shoot, their bodies glistening with moisture.
Logan's tongue flicked out. After a final, cautious scan of his surroundings, he darted forward.
He descended upon the aphid buffet with gusto. One by one, the plump insects vanished until his formerly flat belly was satisfyingly distended. Sated and sluggish, he retreated to his fissure.
Eat, sleep, grow. For now, it was the totality of his existence.
His enhanced metabolism and potent stomach acids worked in overdrive, converting the nutrients into rapid growth. Days passed. His body lengthened from ten to twenty centimeters.
This time, when the system granted its daily point, he did not invest it in growth. Size was a liability here. What good was being a one-meter lizard to a creature ten times that size?
Speed, however… speed meant evasion. Speed meant survival.
He focused his will. The point vanished.
Familiar warmth flooded his limbs, concentrating in his shoulders, hips, and legs. Subtle shifts occurred in his skeletal structure. His sprawling, reptilian gait began to reform, his limbs rotating subtly to plant more directly beneath his body.
Bones thickened and lengthened to anchor new muscle. His claws shortened slightly as the pads beneath them toughened, improving both shock absorption and traction.
The changes pulled him into a deep, restorative sleep.
ROOOAAAAARRR!
A thunderous roar shattered the peace.
Logan jolted awake. He looked up just as a massive, shadowy form wreathed in flames crashed through the canopy above him.
CRACK-BOOM-SNAP!
A rain of shattered branches and leaves followed the plummeting behemoth. It struck the forest floor with a ground-shaking THUMP, cratering the soft humus, then clambered to its feet with a dazed shake of its head.
It glared skyward, revealing itself in full: the classic winged dragon frame, armored in forest-green plates. Powerful legs, wing membranes patterned like raging fire, a line of sharp spines from head to tail, and the telltale glow of building flame behind its teeth.
Logan's mind went cold with recognition.
Damn it. A Rathian.
Now I'm really in trouble.
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