Jake sat with his back pressed against the rough, dark brown bark of a towering tree, chest rising and falling as he tried to steady his breathing. Sweat clung to his skin, and his eyes darted constantly, tracing the shadows between the turquoise leaves overhead. Every sound felt too close. Every rustle felt deliberate.
After a moment, he swallowed and spoke quietly.
"Status window."
Nothing happened.
No glowing blue interface. No translucent panels. No reassuring numbers hovering in his vision.
Jake waited a few more seconds, then let his head fall back against the tree with a dull thud.
"…Yeah. Figures."
He dragged a hand down his face and sighed. "It's one of those."
The kind of story where you were dropped into a foreign world with nothing but your own skin and whatever instincts you had managed to scrape together. No system. No classes. No divine cheat that turned you into a walking catastrophe for everyone else. No heavenly demon nonsense. No shadow monarch waiting to awaken.
"This isn't good," Jake muttered. "I'm not getting carried here."
If anything, that realization made everything feel heavier. This was not a halfhearted power fantasy. This was the kind of world that would happily kill him for being weak, ignorant, or unlucky.
Jake pushed himself up from the tree and slowly turned in place, scanning his surroundings again. There were no roads. No broken paths. No distant smoke or signs of civilization. Just endless forest stretching in every direction.
Surely whoever dragged him here had not dropped him into a world completely devoid of people.
Right?
The longer he stood there, the stranger everything felt. It was not just the environment. It was him.
Jake realized that despite everything, he was calm. Too calm. His heart was steady. His thoughts were sharp. He was not panicking the way he should have been.
That was when he noticed the change.
His mind felt different. Clearer. Analytical in a way it had never been before. Information surfaced easily, fragments of things he had once found boring or pointless now slotting together effortlessly. Physics concepts. Biology terms. Random facts he had skimmed past in textbooks years ago.
It was unsettling.
With no better option, Jake started walking.
The forest was alive in a way Earth's forests never were. The air felt thick, charged. The plant life, in particular, made his skin crawl. Vines coiled with purpose. Leaves twitched when shadows passed over them.
He stopped when something caught his eye.
A small plant, no more than six inches tall, slowly wrapped itself around another stem nearby. Jake watched, frozen, as a thin needle extended from the first plant and pierced the second. Through the translucent vein, he could see liquid flowing. Water. Nutrients. Life itself being drained.
Within moments, the second plant wilted and collapsed into brittle nothing.
"That's freaky," Jake whispered, backing away.
He kept moving.
Hours passed.
His stomach growled. His feet burned. His pace slowed despite his efforts to push forward. The forest did not change. No landmarks. No breaks. Just endless alien greenery.
"Okay," Jake muttered, forcing his thoughts to stay focused. "Two moons. One visible star. If this world has different tidal forces, then the oceans must be insane. If I'm on an island, I'm screwed."
The thought had barely settled when a shrill scream tore through the forest.
Jake nearly jumped out of his skin.
He spun toward the sound and froze.
A girl stood several meters away, staring at her hands in disbelief. She was well built, tall, with olive skin and shoulder length brown hair that gleamed faintly in the strange light. Her clothes were unmistakably Earth born. A loose black zip up hoodie left open, a graphic T-shirt underneath depicting a character from some game Jake vaguely recognized, and dark blue sweatpants that were far too big for her.
She looked utterly out of place.
"No way," she said, her voice trembling with excitement. "Did I just get transmigrated? This is a dream come true."
Jake cleared his throat. "Uh. Hello?"
The girl recoiled and spun toward him.
"AHH!"
She screamed at full volume, nearly deafening him.
"Relax," Jake said quickly, raising both hands. "I'm from Earth too. I've been here a couple hours."
Her panic vanished instantly.
"Oh thank God," she said, breathing hard. Then her eyes lit up. "Wait. Do you have a system? Did you pick a class? Did you get a secret one like Necromancer?"
Jake grimaced. "No system. And as far as I can tell, we're the only two people in this forest."
Her excitement faltered, concern replacing it.
"So… it's one of those isekais?"
"Yeah," Jake replied. "The kind where the author hates the main character."
She hesitated, then shrugged. "Well, who says we're the main characters?"
Jake paused. "…Fair point."
He scratched the back of his head. "I haven't learned your name yet."
"Oh. Luna."
"Jake."
They stood in awkward silence for a moment before Jake glanced at the sky. The light was already shifting.
"We should move," he said. "If we're going to find anything, now's the time. Food and water become problems fast."
Luna nodded.
Then her expression changed.
Horrified.
Jake frowned. "What?"
She was staring past him.
More importantly, the sunlight was gone.
Jake threw himself forward instinctively, rolling as something massive landed where he had just been standing. He turned mid fall and felt his stomach drop.
The creature was monstrous. Dark gray, towering, with four thick legs shaped like a chicken's but scaled up to a horrific degree. Its snout was long and filled with sharp, canine teeth. Feathered wings twitched along its sides.
It looked like a wolf and a malformed bird had been fused into something that should not exist.
It was enormous. Jake would barely reach the base of its legs if he stood beside it.
"And it flies," he breathed. "Of course it flies."
Jake and Luna exchanged one glance.
Run.
They bolted.
The forest exploded behind them as the creature charged. Branches snapped. Leaves tore free. Jake did not dare look back. The sound alone told him how close it was.
Think. Think.
Then his foot caught on a massive root.
Jake hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the air from his lungs. Pain flared as he rolled onto his back just in time to see the creature looming over him, head tilted in curiosity.
Luna stopped several meters away, frozen, clearly debating whether saving him was worth dying for.
Neither of them got to decide.
A blur of motion flashed behind the beast.
A man stepped out of the shadows.
He was lean, muscular, and wearing almost nothing. A simple loincloth. In his hands was a single edged blade. On his head sat a large, round clay pot, painted gold brown, with eye holes carefully cut into it.
Without hesitation, he slashed.
The blade bit deep into the base of the creature's neck, stopping at bone. The man followed with a brutal kick that sent the monster crashing sideways. Before it could recover, he drove the blade straight through its skull.
The creature went still.
Jake stared.
Wow. What a badass.
Then his brain caught up.
The pot. The loincloth.
Wow. What a nerd.
Jake sat up slowly, staring at their savior.
It seemed he and Luna were not the only people from Earth who had been dragged into this world.