# Scene 1
[Quest Complete: Survive the Night. Reward: 5 Experience Points.]
The System's notification punches into Corin's vision, overlaying a field of razor-edged scree. He blinks, but the words burn on, refusing to be dismissed by eyelids or attitude.
The terrain is a battlefield, and he is losing. Every step hammers pain up from the soles of his feet; his right ankle throbs where he rolled it on the run, and both knees are stippled with scabs and purple-yellow bruises. His hands are raw, skin puffy and scored from clawing through bark and brush. The back of his skull is a low, constant drumbeat of ache—last night's wound opening up anew with each stumble. In his mouth, copper and dust form a paste, thick enough to nearly choke.
Beyond his own misery, the world itself is no friendlier. The dual suns have returned—one a searing white, the other a slumped, rusty red—pushing their shadows sideways and stacking them up in weird, overlapping grids. Corin squints, wishing for sunglasses or, failing that, a head worth more than a few barely functioning neurons. Sweat slicks his neck and soaks into the shredded remains of his shirt, crusting the old blood and dirt into a second, less comfortable skin.
The ground here is more rock than dirt, pitted and cracked into shapes that defy mapping. The only things growing are spires of crystal, some no bigger than a finger, others as thick as tombstones, all shot through with veins of blue or green light that pulse faintly with the regularity of a dying heart. The air stinks of ozone and a sweet, rotting musk, each breath like huffing an overheated car battery spiked with syrup.
The System's menu is more aggressive this morning, shoving new panes and updates into his sightline with the persistence of an overeager billboard. Corin flips through them by sheer willpower, half-wondering if he can develop a callus on his brain. The first is the status sheet, updated and smug:
[Corin Faelwyn – Level 1]
[Race: Human]
[Class: None]
[Experience: 5 / 10]
[Attributes:]
[Strength: 3]
[Agility: 4]
[Intelligence: 6]
[Wisdom: 3]
[Charisma: 2]
He snorts, almost pleased. "Figures you'd put all the points into the only stat that matters for reading instructions." The System does not dignify this with a response. Still, the Intelligence score is a surprise, not because he considers himself a genius but because he is so utterly average. That six feels like a secret gift, or maybe an insult, depending on the curve.
The next window is Skills—now unlocked, but as bare as a supermarket shelf before a hurricane.
[Available Skill Points: 1]
[Skill Unlock: Choose 1 Basic Skill]
[Options:]
[1. Survival Instinct – Increased resistance to environmental hazards, minor boost to sense dangerous flora/fauna.]
[2. Basic Weapon Proficiency – Slightly improves accuracy and damage with improvised weapons.]
[3. Efficient Metabolism – Reduces resource consumption, delays effects of hunger/thirst/fatigue.]
Below the options, a line blinks: [Selection required for continued progress.]
"Because nothing says free will like a forced choice," Corin mutters. His tongue is a desiccated plank, but he works it against his teeth, trying to think.
The sensible part of him—the part that's delivered packages through urban warzones and Christmas Eve in blizzards—wants to snatch Efficient Metabolism. Even now, hunger is eating away at him, a gnawing in the belly that turns sharp with every movement. His mouth is so dry that the inside of his lips have started to stick together. If he sits still too long, his eyes glaze over, and the System's words blur into squiggles. Efficient Metabolism is the easy button, the logic pill, and the best shot at staying upright another day.
But the night is still in his bones. The memory of wet-fanged monsters, the smell of their breath, the rhythm of their hunt—if he had a weapon, even a club or a sharpened rock, maybe he'd have had a fighting chance. Basic Weapon Proficiency is tempting, not because it turns him into a soldier, but because right now, the only thing between him and the next nightmare is his own two fists.
Then there's Survival Instinct. The label is so on the nose it almost offends him. Who the hell wouldn't want a sixth sense for death traps and poison? But he also knows his luck—just enough to get into trouble, never enough to get out of it unscathed. He has a gut feeling, and it says: nothing here is safe, and if he can't anticipate a threat, he's already dead.
Corin reviews the options again, this time trying to picture the next twelve hours, not just the next twelve minutes. The double suns are climbing, and already the heat is rising off the rocks in waves. He needs water, soon. He needs food, even sooner. But more than anything, he needs a plan. Sitting on his ass and waiting for help is how you end up a cautionary tale.
He stares out over the crystal fields. The formations get denser as they approach the horizon, clusters merging into dense, thorny hedges that sparkle and refract in the ugly daylight. Here and there, a shape moves—fast, skittering, low to the ground. He can't tell if it's a predator or prey, and that uncertainty gnaws at him more than the hunger.
[Selection required.]
The System pulses it this time, turning the words an urgent orange. Corin wipes the sweat from his brow, squinting at the horizon, then back at the skill list.
"I pick Efficient Metabolism," he says, then catches himself. "Wait. Wait. No. I want to see the other options again." He flexes his jaw, bites back the panic. "Survival Instinct. That's my pick."
[Skill unlocked: Survival Instinct.]
He feels it instantly—a tingling at the base of his skull, like he's just shotgunned six espressos and the caffeine hasn't settled yet. The world goes sharper at the edges, shadows more distinct, the air's taste clearer and meaner. The System throws up a quick summary:
[Survival Instinct – Passive. You are 12% less likely to die from environmental hazards or sudden predatory threats.]
"Twelve percent, huh?" Corin says. "That's not even a good tip." But already, the doubts are gone. Something in his lizard brain is pleased.
A growl bubbles up in his stomach, loud enough to startle a cluster of crystal lizards off a nearby rock. He watches them flee, the motion almost beautiful—their translucent skins shimmering with each stride, light bending around them like water. They disappear between two stone pillars, leaving only a faint trail of musky ammonia in their wake.
Corin rolls his shoulders, stretches, and limps forward. Every step is an audition for pain, but the new skill gives him an edge: he senses, before he reaches it, that a patch of soil ahead is unstable. He veers around it and, when he tests the spot with a loose stone, the ground gives way into a meter-deep pit lined with jagged spikes of crystal. The sight would have taken his breath away, if he had any to spare.
"That's what I'm talking about," he says, voice hoarse but triumphant. He picks his way along the safer path, pausing every few meters to scan for more traps. Twice, the Survival Instinct lights up a warning—once for a faint, chemical odor in the air (he backs off, and sees the edge of a stone melted by some kind of acid), and once when a shadow flickers overhead (he flattens to the ground as a bird-shaped thing with blade-like wings slices past, leaving a bloody groove in the rock where his head would have been).
The skill isn't perfect, but it's enough to make him feel almost competent. He even starts to enjoy it, the way the System makes every life-or-death decision a little gamey, like he's beta testing a simulation built just for him.
Of course, none of this solves the water problem.
The landscape here is dry as bone, and there are no rivers, no streams, not even a suggestion of damp. The only liquid is the slow ooze from certain cracked crystals, some kind of resin or sap that looks toxic and probably is. Corin considers wringing his shirt out and sucking the sweat from the fabric, but he's not quite that desperate. Yet.
[Hydration Level: 12% – CRITICAL]
He waves the alert away and keeps going, hoping for a miracle. The crystals grow thicker, more like a forest now, the spires sometimes arching over his head and forming makeshift tunnels. The light here is blue and gold, refracted a thousand ways, dizzying and pretty in the way a migraine aura is pretty.
He ducks through a low arch and nearly faceplants into another System notification, hovering midair and blinking like a warning light.
[Attribute Increase: Intelligence +1]
He stops short, blinking. "What did I do, solve a puzzle?" The System remains silent, but he feels the upgrade—a slight sharpening of thought, as if the world's static has been turned down a notch. He grins, which hurts his split lip, but he doesn't care. "Keep the points coming."
His progress slows when the path narrows into a bottleneck, with the ground sloping down into a funnel-shaped depression. At the bottom, a basin of what looks like liquid mercury glimmers, covered with a scum of floating debris. Corin's mouth waters at the sight, even as his new skill triggers a wave of dread.
He crouches at the edge, eyes scanning for movement. The Survival Instinct whispers: not safe, not safe, not safe.
But the thirst is louder.
He scans the liquid. There's a line of darker color around the basin's lip, and a few splashes of dried mud where something—or someone—must have tried to drink. No bones, though. That's promising.
Corin tears a strip of fabric from his shirt, wraps it around a stick, and dips it in the liquid. The stuff clings, viscous and slow, but it doesn't hiss or sizzle. He sniffs it, recoils from the metallic tang. "Not ideal," he says, "but I've had worse."
He braces himself and squeezes the fabric into his mouth. The taste is worse than advertised: tin and spoiled sugar, with a back note of antiseptic. He spits most of it, but enough gets down to ease the burning in his throat. He waits, counting heartbeats. Nothing happens. No sudden paralysis, no hallucinations, no foaming at the mouth.
He takes another sip. This one stays down.
[Hydration Level: 19% – Improving]
He sags with relief, then immediately feels the ache of hunger return, sharper than before.
"Fine. Let's find breakfast."
Corin shuffles onward, energy flickering but not out. With every step, the Survival Instinct maps hazards in the corners of his eyes—a spike here, a loose rock there, the flick of a serpent's tail vanishing under a ledge. He dodges them all, growing in confidence.
After what might be an hour or a day—time here is a suggestion, not a law—he crests a rise and sees something new: a cluster of low, bone-white shapes in a ring, surrounded by the densest crystal growth yet. They look like stones at first, but as he draws closer, he realizes they're skulls. Human, or near enough. Some are cracked open, others gnawed clean. A few still have fragments of flesh or dried scalp clinging on.
He doesn't flinch, but the sight puts a new edge on his need to find food. Whatever did this is probably not gone, and if he waits too long, he'll end up as another cautionary tale.
He edges around the ring, keeping low, until a faint sound draws his attention. It's a mewling, soft and high-pitched, coming from between two skulls.
He peers closer and sees movement—a small, furred animal, no bigger than a cat, wedged between the bones and trembling. It has six limbs, each ending in a set of delicate claws, and its face is dominated by two huge, liquid eyes. The thing is obviously injured; one hind leg sticks out at a wrong angle, and there's a splash of purple-black blood on its chest.
Corin's first instinct is to back away. This is bait. Has to be. But the Survival Instinct doesn't tingle, and the System remains impassive.
He kneels and stretches out a hand. The animal flinches, then collapses, too weak to move further.
His stomach twists. He's not a monster. But he's not in the mood to starve, either.
He scoops up the creature, careful not to aggravate its wounds. The fur is soft, like rabbit or mink, and its body is warm despite the blood loss. He cradles it in his arms, staring down at its fragile ribs and labored breathing.
"Sorry, buddy," he says. "It's me or you."
He glances at the horizon, half-expecting to see another predator watching. Nothing. The only witness is the System, and it's already passing judgment.
He tightens his grip, steeling himself for what comes next.
[Skill Unlock: Novice Hunting – Available for future upgrade.]
He doesn't know if that's a mercy or a curse, but it's too late to turn back.
# Scene 2
Corin cups the animal in his palms, its six legs splayed and trembling, fur matted with crystal dust and a slow trickle of purple blood. Its enormous eyes blink twice, then fix on his face searching, beseeching, utterly without comprehension.
The System overlay hovers beside the thing's head like a digital halo:
[Species: Aelith Kit]
[Venom: None]
[Edible: Yes]
[Risk of Parasite: Low]
[Nutritional Value: Moderate (Protein, trace minerals)]
The words are cold, clinical, but his stomach doesn't care. It craves protein, trace minerals, anything to stop the gnawing, acid bite hollowing him out. His mouth fills with sour saliva at the thought of eating raw flesh, but he's past the point where dignity is worth dying for.
He strokes the animal's back, expecting it to bite or struggle, but it only shivers, mewling softly. Its body is a bundle of twitch and heat, fragile bones covered in silk-soft hair. The break in its leg is obvious—a sharp angle, bone nearly piercing the skin. If he were a better person, he'd set the limb and let it go. If he were a worse one, he'd snap its neck and move on without a flicker.
He hesitates, thumb pressed against the creature's throat. Its pulse hammers frantically. The System offers no guidance, only a blinking cursor as if waiting to record his moral failure for posterity.
He almost laughs at the absurdity. He's killed rats before, back home, but never with this level of intent. They were invaders, parasites, not something that gazed at him with human fear. His hands shake—not from pity, but from the deep, mammalian terror of what comes next.
The hunger wins.
He pins the kit's shoulders with one hand and curls the other around its neck. It squirms, a last surge of energy, legs scraping his wrists with baby-claws that barely scratch. He tightens his grip. The animal's mouth opens, tongue flickering over tiny, translucent teeth.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," he mutters. "You'd eat me if you could."
He twists. The neck resists, then gives with a muted pop. The body convulses, once, then lies still.
He expects to feel relief, but there's only exhaustion. His stomach churns, equal parts anticipation and disgust.
Purple blood oozes over his fingers, sticky and almost iridescent. He wipes it on the inside of his shirt, leaving streaks that shimmer in the refracted light. The System chimes:
[Novice Hunting Unlocked.]
[Skill: You are slightly better at tracking, trapping, and dispatching small prey. Efficiency increases with use.]
He stares at the notification, bile rising in his throat. "Congratulations, you've leveled up in murder," he says, but the irony is flat, the taste of victory as bitter as the air.
He lays the body out on a flat stone, hands trembling as he tries to recall how to dress a carcass. Youtube memories surface: bushcraft videos, survival guides, all those clickbait thumbnails he clicked out of boredom. He'd never paid attention to the actual process.
With a sharp stone flake, he slices through the kit's fur, exposing muscle and a row of tiny, quivering organs. The smell is wrong, like burnt sugar and cold pennies. He tries not to gag as he works, hands growing surer with each cut.
The fur peels away in a single mat, easier than he thought. The meat underneath is pale blue, marbled with darker veins. It doesn't bleed much, and what does comes out thick, clotting on contact with air. He carves off a strip, barely thicker than jerky, and holds it up to the light.
The animal's eyes stare past him, glassy, reflecting the twin suns in pinprick halos.
He looks away, muttering another apology, and forces the first bite down.
It tastes like nothing. Like biting into a damp sponge, or the memory of chicken filtered through a dream. The texture is rubbery, the aftertaste metallic, but it doesn't come back up. The second bite is easier.
[Hunger: -10%]
He eats quickly, not letting his mind catch up with his mouth. When he's done, there's nothing left but bones and a patch of fur, already starting to curl and dry in the heat. His hands are slick, nails packed with gore, but he feels stronger. Less hollow. More real.
He wipes the worst of the mess on the stone and stands, waiting for shame or grief to catch up. They don't. Only the System, offering the next breadcrumb.
[Quest Progress: 80%]
[Prepare for next encounter: Hostile entities in area.]
He scans the perimeter, senses sharpened. For the first time, the landscape doesn't look like a deathtrap. It looks like opportunity—food in the crevices, water in the cracks, shelter wherever the crystal grows thick enough to form a roof.
He doesn't feel proud, but he doesn't feel weak, either. That's enough.
He leaves the carcass behind, a gift for whatever comes next.
The System window follows, and now, instead of an accusation, it reads like a promise.
[Novice Hunting: +1 Experience]
[Next skill unlock at Level 2.]
He snorts, not quite a laugh, and moves on. The taste of meat lingers, and he is already hungry for more.
# Scene 3
The meat is colder now, the fur already crawling with pale, translucent mites that scatter when Corin picks over the bones. He ignores them. He's eaten worse. He tears off another strip, chewing until the rubber texture gives and the flavor seeps onto his tongue—iron, rot, the sweet-bitter tang of unidentifiable fat.
Each bite is a war between nausea and instinct. He dry-heaves once, but clamps his jaw and swallows anyway. After the first few swallows, the resistance in his gut fades, replaced by a surge of animal satisfaction. The System watches, ever eager:
[Digestion: In Progress]
[Caloric Intake: +400]
[Protein Synthesis: Accelerated]
[Stamina: Restored (Temporary Bonus +1)]
It is, Corin thinks, like being the world's most depressing Tamagotchi. He keeps eating, eyes half-closed, letting the System's numbers run in the background of his mind. Gradually, the shakes in his hands subside. The ache in his head recedes, from full migraine to a manageable throb. Even the burn in his knees dulls as the nutrients hit bloodstream and cell.
He catches his reflection in a pool of mercury water, not expecting it, and nearly recoils. His face is thinner, sharper, skin splotched with dried blood and bruises. His teeth, when he bares them, are stained blue at the gums. The eyes, though, are the same—narrow, suspicious, refusing to yield.
He swipes his lips, more habit than hygiene, and checks the System for injuries. The list is long: [Minor lacerations – healing], [Bruising – resolving], [Mild dehydration], [Unknown pathogen exposure – monitoring].
Corin grunts. "If I die from space rabies, I'm haunting whoever wrote your code."
A warning flickers in his sightline, abrupt enough to bring him to his feet:
[WARNING: Local fauna can sense Outsider Status.]
[WARNING: Proximity to Human Settlement increases risk of detection.]
He glances around, but the only things watching are the scavenger mites and a lizard the size of a shoelace, perched on a crystal. He doesn't see any camera drones or spotter birds—doesn't even know if this world has them—but the implication is clear. In Astrayis, he's a beacon, marked as not-from-here, and now that he's eaten the local wildlife, maybe something higher on the food chain will come to collect.
He licks his thumb, wipes a dot of dried blood from the kit's skull, and stands to survey the horizon. The twin suns have arced higher, making the crystal forest blaze with electric fire. But further off, across the flats, something dark breaks the symmetry—a line of upright shapes, not quite natural, not quite random.
He narrows his eyes. There is a settlement there, or the remains of one. Human, or close enough to pass. He can almost make out vertical struts, crossbeams, a faint haze of smoke. The System confirms:
[Objective: Reach Graymist Village]
[Subquest: Avoid detection by settlement guards.]
[Reward: System Points, Local Map Access, Upgraded Camouflage Skill.]
He reads it twice, then once backward, and laughs—the sound stripped and ugly in the cold air. "Stealth mission," he says. "All I ever wanted."
He checks his clothing. The shirt is beyond hope, but the jeans are mostly intact. He tears the sleeves off the shirt, wraps one around his arm to staunch the worst cuts, and uses the other to tie up the remains of the kit for later. The taste of the meat is already fading, replaced by the metallic aftershock of adrenaline and purpose.
He looks to the path, picks his way through the crystal with slow, measured steps. Survival Instinct throws up a caution when a blade-winged bird coasts overhead, and he ducks under a ledge, heartbeat slamming in his ears until the threat passes.
He presses on. With every stride, the System feeds him more data: angles of approach, possible patrol routes, even a probability matrix for detection based on cover, time of day, and current blood scent. He wishes, briefly, that he could turn the notifications off, but then another warning hits and he's grateful for the nagging.
The village gets closer, features resolving. There are walls, built from scavenged timber and slabs of crystal. The smoke is real, curling up from fire pits or maybe chimneys. Shapes move along the perimeter—people, armed and armored, their silhouettes distorted by the shimmer of heat and mana. He wonders if they'll look anything like him, or if he'll have to fight his way in just to beg for water.
He slows, crouching in the shadow of a crystal outcrop. He watches the guards for several minutes, mapping their walk cycles, their alertness, the way they point and gesture when something seems off. The System overlays their positions, even tags likely blind spots. With every second, the animal fear in his chest calms, replaced by a professional detachment he recognizes from night shifts and long drives: the ability to become a ghost, to move unnoticed even when all eyes are watching.
The moment comes. He times it with the passing of a wagon along the far road, uses the dust cloud to mask his run. He's up and over the next rise in seconds, ducking low, heart in his throat but hands steady.
Halfway there, he freezes. A new System alert stabs his brain:
[WARNING: Unknown magic field detected.]
[Potential for involuntary transformation.]
He's about to backpedal when the ground quivers—just a tremor, barely enough to shift the gravel underfoot, but enough to send a ripple through the crystals. He drops to his knees, feeling the vibration pass up his spine.
After a second, it's gone.
He looks up and, for a brief, hallucinatory instant, the world is divided: half in his own colors, half in a spectrum he's never seen before. There are lines drawn in the air, grids and arcs and spinning orbs. He knows, somehow, that this is the magic—visible, tangible, a predator just as real as the six-eyed hounds.
He crawls forward, hugging the ground, praying that whatever field is out there, it ignores him. The village is only a few hundred yards away now.
The System pulses, urgent:
[Magic field exposure: 30%]
[Maintain cover or risk detection.]
He slides under the last ridge of crystal, belly to the dirt, and waits for the patrol to pass. When they do, he moves again—silent, breath held, ignoring the ache in his chest and the low, sour burn of panic.
He makes the wall. There's a gap, just wide enough for a desperate man. He squeezes through, tearing his jeans and ripping open a new scratch on his thigh. He doesn't stop. Inside, it's chaos—a market, maybe, or a holding pen. People shout in a language he doesn't know, children run in packs, and everywhere there is the stink of mana and sweat and desperation.
He keeps to the shadows, eyes scanning for threat or opportunity. No one notices him, not yet, but the System is insistent:
[New Objective: Obtain shelter, food, and local information]
[Optional: Blend with local population]
He wipes the worst of the blood from his hands, slicks back his hair, and does what he does best: disappears into the crowd.
He is no longer just a delivery driver, a casualty of random chance. He is a hunter, a thief, an Outsider with nothing to lose and a world to learn.
Let them come.
He is ready.