"Don't breathe. Don't cough. Don't die."
Kanos whispered to his own hands, which were already as pale as a corpse's. His voice trembled violently, nearly drowned out by the sound of wet dirt being trampled by something right above him.
"It can't smell you if you stay still," he muttered again, sounding more like a desperate prayer than logical thinking. "Stay still. Hold it."
But a blast of hot, rotting air slammed into the back of his neck from the gaps in the roots above. The stench of rust, decaying meat, and wet earth. Something impossibly massive was sniffing around right over his head. The width of the tree roots hiding him was the size of a van, yet this creature made the thick wood tremble just by shifting its weight.
"Damn. Damn it," Kanos hissed. He felt a warm, sticky liquid run down his temple, past his cheek, and drip into the mud. "It smells my blood."
Kanos opened his eyes slowly. His vision was blurry from the flying dirt and the darkness of the hole he was lying flat in. He forced himself to peek through the cracked roots. His eyes, used to staring at monitors for hours on end, were now forced to register the anatomy of the deadly monster above him.
"This monster is ugly as shit," he whispered automatically. His artist instincts suddenly overtook his fear. "The front legs are way too long. The joints bend three times? And it has a shell for skin? What kind of psycho client approved a design this garbage?"
GRRRRHHHHH.
The low growl sent vibrations straight into Kanos's ribs. The creature's deformed snout pushed deeper, forcing its way down through the gap in the roots.
"Okay, it heard me." Kanos backed up slowly, but his back immediately hit the cold dirt wall. A dead end. "Go away. Find some other prey with more meat. I'm just bones and yesterday's leftover coffee."
The deformed wolf pulled back its lips, baring a row of jagged teeth that overlapped like broken glass. Its massive claws began frantically tearing at the tree bark. Sharp wooden splinters rained down on Kanos's head and shoulders.
"Shit, it's getting in."
Kanos's mind raced, looking for a way out. The last thing he remembered, he was in his studio. Three in the morning. Two hours away from a cover illustration deadline for a French publisher. He was drinking coffee, mixing watercolors, and then... a splitting headache, and the world suddenly went dark.
And now? He was in a mud pit, waiting to be chewed up by some failed art piece from hell.
The tree roots above him began to crack under the giant's weight. The wood shrieked, on the verge of snapping.
Kanos had no choice. If he ran out, the long-legged freak would catch him in three strides. If he stayed still, that snout would tear his throat out any second now.
His right hand blindly scrambled across the dirt around him. The instinct of a guy who always needed to hold a pen or brush when stressed. His fingers brushed against something hard. A thick branch, fairly pointed at the end.
"Got it," he hissed. But the moment he lifted it, the branch was light and brittle. "Rotten wood. That won't pierce a shell. Damn it, think Kanos, think!"
The creature's snout finally pushed through the gap. Its murky yellow eyes locked onto Kanos. They were only a hand's breadth apart now. Kanos could see the red veins in the monster's eyeballs.
Suddenly, his vision flickered. A transparent blue box abruptly hovered in front of his face, momentarily blocking the monster's snout. Text popped up incredibly fast, accompanied by a soft hum in his head.
[ PHYSICAL STATUS: CRITICAL. ACTIVATING EMERGENCY SYSTEM ]
[ CLASS: ERROR ]
[ ANOMALY DETECTED... ]
[ UNIQUE SKILL ACTIVATED: ART TO REALITY (TIER 1 - SKETCHING) ]
Kanos blinked rapidly. His panicked brain tried to grasp the words. Art to reality?
He glanced at the rotten branch in his hand, then down at the wet dirt beneath him. The texture looked exactly like the clay he used back in college sculpture classes. His artistic instincts flared up as if doused in gasoline.
His index finger and thumb reflexively gripped the branch tight, shifting into the perfect grip—the exact same way he held a fine-tipped brush.
"I need a weapon," Kanos whispered, channeling all his remaining strength into his wrist to use this weird ability. "A knife. A dagger."
He started carving into the clay in front of him. His artist brain was short-circuiting, but his hand moved on its own, pushing past normal limits. He wasn't just drawing a random triangle for a knife.
"Get the angle right," he muttered quickly, as if giving himself a tutorial to chase away the fear. "Trench knife. Short. Thick. Add a groove in the middle to make it lighter but strong enough for stabbing."
He pulled the lines fast and firm. Finished in just two seconds without a single drop of hesitation.
Something bizarre happened the moment he finished the final stroke.
The clay he drew on suddenly glowed faintly. A pale blue, like a dying neon sign. Kanos held his breath as the two-dimensional outline he'd just scratched into the dirt literally lifted into the air. The surrounding clay and dust got sucked into the glowing lines, filling up the empty space, forming a real, solid object.
"What the hell..."
Kanos didn't have time to be shocked. The roots above finally caved in. The shelled wolf crashed into the narrow hole, jaws wide open, aiming straight for Kanos's neck.
Without a second thought, Kanos snatched the hilt of the clay dagger that had materialized in mid-air. It felt heavy. Solid.
"Die!"
Kanos twisted his body to the side, utilizing the incredibly tight space. He had already found the creature's weak point. The hard shell covered its entire back and head, but underneath its neck—right between those weirdly shaped collarbones—there was a fist-sized patch of exposed flesh.
He shoved the dagger into that gap with his entire body weight.
CRACK.
The dagger's tip pierced wet flesh. The monster shrieked wildly. A broken sound, like rusty metal grinding against asphalt.
"Get down!" Kanos yelled, holding the hilt with all his might as the giant beast thrashed in a panic. Black blood sprayed, coating Kanos's face, hair, and shirt. It was hot. The metallic stench made him want to puke.
The wolf violently backed away, slamming into the remaining roots and forcibly pulling the dagger out of its own neck. But Kanos's dagger was only clay held together by bizarre energy lines. The moment it left the monster's neck and hit the remaining tree trunk...
Shatter.
The dagger broke apart. Turning back into ordinary dirt. Completely brittle.
"Fuck," Kanos cursed, instinctively covering his face. "Single-use only."
But one stab was enough. The beast staggered back from the root gap. Black blood poured out, soaking the ground. The wolf tried to stand upright, but its inherently unbalanced body only wobbled worse. A few steps back, and its legs buckled. The massive creature collapsed into the muddy earth. It convulsed a few times, let out a final frothy breath, and went dead silent.
Silence. Nothing but the sound of Kanos's ragged breathing.
Kanos stayed put for several minutes. His hand was still frozen in mid-air, gripping a dagger hilt that was no longer there. Cold sweat mixed with the black blood on his face, dripping from his chin.
He dropped the rotten branch. His fingers were shaking so violently he had to clench his fist to make it stop.
"Okay," he whispered hoarsely. "I'm alive. Somehow, I'm alive."
Kanos crawled out from under the broken roots with great difficulty. His ribs screamed in pain from being crushed under his own weight and the impact. He stood up slowly, leaned against the giant tree trunk nearby, and finally got a clear look at his surroundings.
This forest was insane.
The trees were as tall as twenty-story buildings. The leaves weren't green; they were a bizarre mix of dark purple and moss blue. The colors completely clashed with everything he knew about nature. The air felt heavy, carrying a slight static charge that kept his arm hairs standing up. The sky up above—barely visible through the massive canopy—was a reddish-orange, even though the sun was clearly high up.
"Where am I?" Kanos talked to himself. His voice was incredibly raspy, his throat dry. "This definitely isn't Jakarta. Central Park doesn't have purple trees."
He walked slowly toward the shelled wolf's carcass. His foot bumped into something soft. Mud. Kanos stopped. He looked at his own hand. The right hand he'd just used to draw the dagger. There was still leftover clay stuck to his fingertips.
"That earlier... wasn't a hallucination, right?" he muttered.
He crouched, touching a flat patch of dirt in front of him with a dirty index finger. He tried to picture something incredibly simple. A small box. He drew its outline on the ground.
This time, without blind panic clouding his mind, he was much more aware of the process. He could feel something being pulled from inside his head. It felt exactly like pulling an all-nighter for three days straight and then being forced to solve complex math. A dull throb pulsed in his head, a sudden wave of exhaustion hitting the base of his neck.
Along with the pain, the pale blue dust appeared again out of thin air. The light gathered into the lines he drew. The dirt slowly rose, forming a perfectly sized box. A solid clay cube.
Kanos picked it up. Hard. He squeezed it as tight as he could, and... the box crumbled back into ordinary dirt.
"The system actually reads what I draw," Kanos murmured, narrowing his eyes at the dust in his hand. His fear was slowly being replaced by curiosity. "No wonder I got that Art to Reality skill. It can be shaped, but breaks easily if pressure is applied wrong. This isn't just magic appearing from nowhere. The lines I made act as the wireframe."
It made sense. Everything had a structural frame. If you understood its true shape, you could build anything out of whatever materials were lying around. In this crazy world, his habit of hyper-analyzing the shape of objects was somehow directly answering to the strange energy in the air.
Let's see that blue box again, Kanos commanded in his head.
Without needing to be told twice, the transparent blue box popped back up in mid-air. He moved his head to the right, the box followed. It stayed dead-center in his vision. But before displaying his stats, the text flickered wildly, flashing a series of golden notifications.
[ ENEMY DEFEATED: MUTATED SHELL-WOLF ]
[ EXPERIENCE GAINED. LEVEL UP! ]
[ LEVEL: 1 -> 2 ]
[ NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS (PASSIVE) ]
Kanos raised an eyebrow. "Level up? Like a game?"
The golden text faded, replaced by his updated status. This time, the info was a lot more detailed.
[ NAME: KANOS ]
[ LEVEL: 2 ]
[ CLASS: ERROR ]
[ HP: 12/60 ]
[ MANA: ??? ]
[ STRENGTH: 4 ]
[ AGILITY: 5 ]
[ ENDURANCE: 3 ]
[ SKILLS: ART TO REALITY (TIER 1), STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS (PASSIVE) ]
[ PHYSICAL STATUS: LIGHT INJURIES, STARVING ]
Kanos blinked a few times. He swiped his hand through the box. It passed right through, like touching a cheap hologram toy.
"Endurance three?" Kanos read the numbers. The corner of his mouth twitched in annoyance. "It went up from leveling and it's still only a three? No wonder it felt like my ribs were snapping just from falling on them. And what the hell is an error class and question mark mana?"
He wiped his face, which was caked in dried blood and mud. "I kill a mutant crab-dog, level up, and the system still calls my existence an error with twelve health points left? Ten out of ten customer service."
He patted down his cargo pants. Empty. Wallet, phone, cigarettes, all gone. He was only wearing a torn black t-shirt, faded cargo pants, and sneakers that were now weighed down by mud.
His stomach growled. Loudly. The headache was getting worse. Drawing that dagger and the small box had apparently drained his physical energy, which was already nonexistent to begin with.
Kanos looked back at the blue panel. There was a small 'X' button in the top right corner.
"Close," Kanos ordered. Nothing happened. "Exit? Shut down? Bullshit."
Kanos focused his mind to 'press' the X button in his head, and finally, the panel vanished without a sound. He didn't need those stupid numbers right now. His body was wrecked; he didn't need a floating blue box to tell him that. He needed clean water. He needed a safe place.
The rustling of leaves in the distance made Kanos flinch. He glanced back at the wolf carcass. The black blood was spreading everywhere. This metallic stench was bound to attract other predators, maybe ones even more terrifying than the last. He had to get the hell out of here. Now.
But he couldn't leave empty-handed. His dagger had shattered easily, and he wasn't about to risk drawing with dirt while getting attacked again. He needed 'art supplies' slightly better than a rotten branch.
"Alright, let's find something," Kanos mumbled, carefully circling the giant tree. "Something that leaves a mark."
He spotted a broken, arm-sized branch near a bush. The end of the branch was heavily charred, looking like it had been struck by lightning. Kanos jogged over, snapped the charred part off, and gave a faint smile when his palm immediately turned black.
Wood charcoal. This was way better than wet clay. Charcoal was easy to sketch with, and the color would stick to almost anything.
He stuffed the two thickest chunks of charcoal into his cargo pockets. He also picked up a few flat river stones from the ground. They could work as an emergency canvas if he needed to whip up a small weapon.
Kanos stood up straight, wiping the remaining cold sweat from his forehead. The forest ahead looked darker, denser, emitting squeaks, creaks, and growls he'd never heard in his life. Every shadow from the giant trees looked like a gaping maw waiting its turn to swallow him.
He wasn't a soldier. He wasn't a boy scout who knew wilderness survival. He was just an antisocial freelance illustrator who rarely left the house and lived off deadlines. Physically, he was just a walking piece of meat in this wild forest.
But Kanos took a deep breath. He adjusted his mud-caked sneakers and stared straight ahead. His eyes began tracing the tree lines, looking for gaps of light that usually indicated a clearing or a water source.
"One by one," Kanos spoke to the empty air, his hand buried in his pocket, his thumb constantly rubbing the rough texture of the charcoal. "Line by line. Just treat this like the most complicated revision you've ever gotten in your life, Kanos."
With slow but steady steps, Kanos began walking into the shadows of the Yomalvara forest. Ready, just in case he had to draw his own life for the second time today.