The first thing Rook noticed was a blue sky and a sun.
When he tried to stand up, he became aware of several other uncomfortable facts in rapid succession. That his entire body ached something sharp and whatever he was lying on was definitely not his bed.
When he looked aside, trees, massive ancient looking trees stretching upwards like pillars holding up green of leaves. Pale light was shining through the leaves and the smell and the shadows of the trees made it beautiful nature. Somewhere nearby, birds were singing like nothing in the world was wrong.
Rook was puzzled and stared at the treetops for a moment.
Then he remembered dying.
It hadn't been dramatic. No truck, no noble sacrifice, no terminal illness with a touching final speech. He'd simply been sitting in his gaming chair at two in the morning, halfway through a bag of potato chips, when his chest had done something it absolutely should not have done. One sharp, crushing pain. His keyboard hitting the floor. His eye went dark.
Twenty-three years old. Death by bad heart and worse sleeping habits. Pathetic.
I was definitely going viral for dying while playing games in there with my history been seen! Social death.
He sat up slowly, wincing, and looked around at the forest surrounding him in every direction. Tall grass, mossy rocks, the distant sound of running water. No roads. No buildings. No sign of anything human at all. What happened? Is this heaven?
"Okay," he said out loud, to no one. His voice came out rough and dry. "Okay. I'm either dead, dreaming, or—"
The air in front of his face shimmered.
A translucent blue panel materialized out of nothing, hovering at eye level like a holographic screen. Clean white text glowed against the blue background, crisp and perfectly readable.
PLAYER SYSTEM
Name: Rook Ashby
Race: Human
Class: Unassigned
Level: 1
EXP: 0 / 100
Health: 100 / 100
Mana: 50 / 50
Stamina: 80 / 80
Attributes:
STR: 5 AGI: 5 INT: 5 VIT: 5 LUK: 4
The Game has begun. Good luck, Player.
Rook stared at the panel.
The panel stared back.
Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face. The kind of grin that had no business being on the face of a man who had just woken up alone in an unknown forest with no food, no water, and no idea where he was.
"No way," he breathed. "No. Way."
He reached out and poked the panel with one finger. It rippled like a disturbed water surface and but my hand passed through. I pinched myself hard but it was there. He pinched himself hard, not dreaming.
He let out a sound that was half laugh, half disbelief, and completely undignified. He'd read hundreds of web novels about this exact moment. He'd watched the anime, played the games, spent entire nights arguing on forums about which fictional RPG system was the most overpowered. And now he was sitting in the dirt with his own glowing status screen floating in front of his face.
"I transmigrated," he said. Hearing it out loud made it more real. He looked down at his hands — same hands, more or less, though his palms were scraped from the fall. He patted his own face, his chest, his legs. Everything present and accounted for. "I actually transmigrated. Into a game world. This is — this is insane. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me." He was excited and jumped there with loud noise as birds flew away due to the noise he made.
He paused.
"I did die though. That part is bad."
He filed that away to feel sad about later and turned his attention back to the status panel, tapping through it with growing excitement. The interface responded to his touch naturally, menus opening and closing like a well-designed mobile game. Inventory tab — empty, unfortunately. Skills tab — also empty. Quest log—
One entry.
QUEST LOG
Hidden Quest: Survive Your First Night
The forest is not as peaceful as it looks. Find shelter, find food, and live to see the morning.
Reward: EXP + ???
Time Limit: Until Dawn
"Hidden quest on day one," Rook muttered, impressed despite himself. "The system's already throwing content at me." He closed the panel with a wave of his hand — it dissolved back into the air cleanly — and stood up, brushing dirt off his clothes. He was wearing what he'd died in: an old band t-shirt, sweatpants, and socks. No shoes, he realized with a wince. The ground was cold and uneven under his feet.
No shoes. No food. No weapons. Level 1 with base stats across the board and not a single skill to his name.
He looked out at the massive, quiet, beautiful, and almost certainly dangerous Mystery forest surrounding him.
"Alright," he said, rolling his neck, trying to channel every protagonist he'd ever rooted for. "Every game starts at level one. That's fine. That's normal. I just need to find something weak to kill, get some EXP, and figure out the rest from there." He paused. "I need shoes too. That's priority two."
He took one step forward into the undergrowth.
The bushes directly to his left exploded with violent rustling.
Rook screamed, stumbled backward, and nearly fell over a root. He grabbed a fallen branch off the ground — thick enough to use as a weapon — and raised it in front of him with both hands, heart beating fast and sweat from hand.
From the bushes, slowly, a small blue blob emerged.
It was about the size of a watermelon. It wobbled. It had two small dark spots that might have been eyes. It made a soft, wet sound — blorp — and sat there looking at him.
CREATURE SCAN
Name: Green Slime
Level: 1
HP: 20 / 20
Threat: Minimal
Weakness: Blunt physical damage
Rook lowered the branch a fraction. His heart was still going at twice its normal speed.
"A slime," he said flatly. "You're a slime. I screamed at a slime."
The slime blorped again.
He pointed the branch at it. "You and I are going to fight now. And I want you to know this is entirely professional. Nothing personal."
The slime wobbled forward.
Rook swung.