After stepping out of the city's sphere of influence and beyond the protection range of New Detroit, Alex stood still.
For a long moment, he didn't move, his eyes locked on the twisted horizon ahead. A cold, dry wind swept over the barren land, carrying with it the foul scent of rot and blood. The sky overhead was a dirty grey, the sun a dull blur through a haze of pollution and smoke.
This wasn't the world of people.
This was the world of death.
Though this wasn't Alex's first time outside the city's walls, it felt different now. Unlike before, he wasn't with a group of scavengers. He wasn't under orders. He wasn't equipped with backup or even the faint promise of safety.
This time, he was alone.
Completely and terrifyingly alone.
And he wasn't here to scavenge.
He was here to gamble his life.
At eighteen, Alex was already hardened beyond his years. While the youth of the inner city spent their days in school or under their parents' care, and slum dwellers of his age fought to survive, Alex had been risking his life since sixteen as a scavenger on the outer edges of humanity's frontlines. No training. No guidance. Just raw grit and a stubborn refusal to die.
He wasn't the strongest, but he had survived where others hadn't.
He kept moving with steady steps, his boots crunching broken glass and cracked concrete beneath him. He passed the ruins of a once-bustling district — a shattered cityscape of collapsed buildings, melted steel, and faded signs. Twisted rebar jutted from the ground like rusted bones. The roads were broken, scattered with old corpses of vehicles and... other things.
Old graffiti smeared over shattered walls told the stories of people long gone. One spray-painted in large red letters read: "WE FOUGHT. WE BLED. WHERE WERE YOU?"
Another showed a crude mural of a Terra Being, standing defiant against a sea of shadows.
A collapsed school bus, blackened by fire, still had toys and backpacks strewn inside. A half-crushed propaganda screen flickered faintly with the last government broadcast:
"New Detroit is secure. Stay calm. Stay inside."
No birds. No people. Just silence and the distant groan of wind through broken buildings.
It was a graveyard.
Alex didn't mind the silence. In fact, he preferred it. In the wild, people were sometimes worse than the monsters. Trust was poison. Solitude was survival.
As he passed a crumbled parking tower, his eyes paused on a dented vending machine. A long-dead scavenger's skeletal hand rested on it, still clutching a melted can.
He remembered someone from his scavenger crew, Miguel, who once joked about how he'd die with a cold soda in hand.
Miguel died the next week. A mutant got him when the team split up.
Alex clenched his fists and kept walking.
After nearly two hours of trekking through debris and skeletal structures, Alex reached the edge of the forest.
The transition was sudden: cracked pavement gave way to dirt, then grass, then thick, dark trees that towered above like ancient sentinels. This was the true wild. The territory of mutants.
The forest felt alive in a way the ruins didn't.
The trees creaked softly, the leaves rustled with a hidden breath, and the underbrush was thick and damp. The air here was heavier, tinged with the earthy scent of moss, mud, and something metallic.
Every few steps, Alex heard unsettling sounds: a low growl far in the distance, a flapping of large wings overhead that vanished into the canopy, and soft cracking like bones snapping under unseen weight.
Alex crouched near the base of a massive tree. The bark was twisted, like scorched flesh, and it pulsed faintly. He placed a hand on the trunk and immediately pulled away. A jolt of raw Geo Energy had surged through it.
"The land's alive," he whispered. "It's leaking power."
This was where death hunted.
He took a deep breath and stepped in.
Alex's plan was straightforward, but insane.
He would find a Terra Spark-ranked mutant and fight it. Not to win. Not to kill. But to awaken. To survive long enough to force his body, his spirit, his very soul to reach into the flow of Geo Energy and become a Terra Being.
That was his only shot.
Hours passed. His clothes clung to him with sweat. His breathing was quiet, controlled. Every few steps, he paused to listen.
Once, he spotted a Terra Spark mutant wildbore, its tusks covered in dried blood, sniffing the air as it wandered. He hid beneath thick roots and held his breath until it passed.
He found the remains of a battle site. A dead Terra Being lay slumped against a tree, body torn open by massive bite marks. Alex stared for a while. The armor was shredded. The man had died hard. But the twin daggers on his belt were untouched.
Alex moved quickly, removing the gear with care. He stripped the man of his weapons and a dented combat armor chest piece. It fit, barely. After strapping the daggers to his thighs and adjusting the weight of the spear he'd bought in the black market, he muttered under his breath:
"Sorry, man. I need this more than you now."
He bowed his head once, then moved on.
Eventually, deep in the thickets of moss and vine, he spotted his target.
A mutant earthworm.
It was nothing like the ones from textbooks.
This one was over three meters long, its surface a dark maroon shade, thick with segmented muscles that flexed as it moved. It had no eyes, just a sharp maw that opened like a flower, lined with rotating teeth.
It didn't wander. Instead, it circled a single spot.
That spot held something strange — a small glowing flower, radiant green and softly pulsing. Strange circular runes hovered faintly above the petals, as if etched into light itself.
Alex remained high up in a tree, hidden in the canopy as he observed it.
Two hours passed. The worm barely moved from the flower. It was guarding it.
But why?
He whispered to himself.
"That thing can't be smart enough to guard something. But it's not moving. Whatever that flower is... it's important."
He watched the earthworm settle again, curling itself loosely around the glowing plant.
"I don't have much time," he thought. "Once the sun sets, I'm as good as dead. I can't survive out here at night."
Alex gripped his spear tighter. The twin daggers were strapped to his hips. He checked the straps on his chest armor and flexed his fingers.
This was it.
The plan was stupid: dive from above, spear-first, aim for the creature's exposed midsection, and hope to cause enough pain to keep it distracted.
After that, it would be a dance of dodging, stabbing, and survival.
But he had no better options.
He crouched on the branch, legs trembling slightly from tension. Sweat dripped from his brow. He could hear his own heart pounding.
His body didn't want to move.
It screamed at him to run, to turn back, to survive.
But he remembered Sofia's voice. Her soft scolding. Her worried eyes. The way she always kissed his forehead before work even when she pretended to be mad.
He remembered the mutant wolf tearing through the scavenger team like paper.
He remembered his helplessness.
His fear twisted into something sharper. Something colder.
He forced himself to breathe.
In.
Out.
He bent his knees.
He leapt.