Talia pushed herself upright one slow, painful breath at a time. Every muscle protested. Her calves twitched. Her back felt like someone had taken a rolling pin to it. She flexed her fingers and winced.
"Fantastic," she muttered. "My body has filed an official complaint."
She pulled her first-aid kit from her space and crouched beside a patch of moss. Clean first. Bleed less later. She washed the worst cuts with cool water, biting back curses when the sting hit. Antiseptic wiped across her forearm made her suck air through her teeth. The shallow scalp cut stung even worse.
Finally, she pressed gauze, wrapped, taped, and secured everything with the speed of someone practiced, and she was practiced. Enough falling from high points, for sport and being pounded on by your military older brother, in the name of training, and you get to learn the fine art of first aid.
"Good enough," she huffed, wiping sweat off her forehead. "Let's see what my hunting punchcard got me."
She flicked open her status.
[Kill Count: #31]
Rewards Available: 3
"Alright, System. Please don't give me more novels."
The first reward shimmered into reality.
A spear dropped into her hands.
Not a cheap one. This thing practically hummed, the head gleamed in a faint blue tint, wickedly sharp, the shaft light but solid.
Talia blinked at it. "Oh… hello."
She gave it an experimental spin. Too long for her usual footwork, but she could adjust.
"Dav is going to lose his mind," she muttered. "He's been preaching about mid-range advantages since I was twelve."
The next reward was a ripple in her space pocket.
2m² of space expansion, now she has a full 4m² space pocket.
"Oh thank god," she whispered. "I was running out of emotional support storage."
Then came the third.
A dress. A frilly, faintly shimmering E-Rank dress.
She stared.
"…Why."
She tossed it into her space like it offended her ancestry. "Brielle or Mum can have that. If the world is ending, at least someone should feel pretty."
She took a long drink of water, chewed half a ration bar that tasted like compressed sawdust, and set off deeper into the woods.
As she walked, the tracks grew denser, gouged earth, crushed ferns, cloven hoof prints that overlapped too many times to count. Something large had passed through recently. Something alone.
Stag. Talia guessed.
She crouched beside a set of heavy prints. Deep. Fresh. Desperate.
"Mini-boss vibes," she murmured. "Great. Can't wait."
She followed the tracks at a jog. Her spear thumped lightly against her thigh with each step.
The forest opened into a narrow stretch of old trail, and the stag was there, waiting.
A huge creature, almost majestic before corruption hollowed it out. Its antlers were jagged and blackened like burnt bone. Its ribs rose and fell in a slow, unnatural motion. Its eyes were void-dark, drifting with a glassy emptiness that made her skin crawl.
The stag didn't snort. Didn't stomp. Didn't breathe right.
It simply stared at her.
Talia's grip tightened on her spear. "Nope. Absolutely nope. You are cursed. Stay over there."
She drifted right. The stag mirrored her.
Left. It mirrored again, hooves clicking softly.
"So that's a no on walking around you, huh."
She pulled rope from her space and began weaving trip-lines between the roots and brush. Loop here. Tension there. A snare angled behind a fallen trunk. She stayed inside the stag's invisible perimeter, never crossing whatever line would make it charge.
When she stepped back onto the path, the forest floor behind her looked like a spiderweb of traps.
"Come on then. Let's see if you think in battle."
The stag took a single step.
Snap.
Its hoof caught a loop. It lurched sideways. She drove her spear toward its ribs—only for the creature to jerk unnaturally, like strings pulled it in reverse. It was fast. Too fast. Too stiff.
She slashed its shoulder. It staggered.
No anger. No instinct. Nothing.
Just a puppet following programmed movement.
It collapsed only when her fifth trap yanked its back legs out from under it. The final blow to its spine made the whole body convulse once before dissolving.
Talia exhaled. "That was… disappointing. And unsettling. Mostly unsettling."
She recovered what traps she could—maybe half—and continued.
A rustle above her made her tilt her head.
Three possums dropped from a cluster of branches.
She killed them in under fifteen seconds.
Her movements were sharper now. Tighter. The spear gave her reach she hadn't realized she'd been missing.
[Kill Count: #35]
[Reward #35 Pending → E-Rank Survival Pack: Canvas tent, Herb garden starter pack, Leatherworker set. ]
She stared up at the sky through the dense canopy.
"System, I swear to god. Seeds? And what leather? The beasts frig'n dissolve, where's the leather coming from?"
The forest, unhelpfully, did not respond and no lightning bolt came, so whoever up there wasn't interested in Talia's complaint, there were most likely too many to respond to.
She shoved the items away and kept moving.
Then the pressure hit her skull.
Talia braced herself against a tree, scanning for sounds. Nothing nearby. Safe enough.
She let the vision take her under.
Cael first.
He was in the police station's confiscated weapons storage. His grin was pure chaos. He loaded blades, illegal modded guns, home-forged machetes, even a crossbow into his space like a kid stealing cookies. Talia muttered, "Take the crossbow—yes, thank you."
Then he grabbed two backpacks, strapped them on, and stormed out with a riot shield.
His trusty yellow motorbike 'Apollo' tore through the streets like a one-man cavalry charge.
At the central hospital, hundreds of corrupted beasts surrounded the entrance. Cael didn't hesitate. He fought like a lunatic but with strangely good instincts. Her chest tightened seeing him grin at his girlfriend before, handing her the crossbow and dragging her family through the chaos, and heading off in the direction of the family home.
"Ugh, I'm never letting him forget that dramatic spin," she muttered.
The vision tugged again.
Her Niece and Nephew.
Lira and Jace were barricaded in the school hall with teachers forming defensive rings. Students huddled behind makeshift shields.
Then Grandpa, Mum, and Brielle arrived like a mismatched apocalypse parade.
Grandpa with a tyre iron and hubcap.
Grandma wielding a garden spade like a medieval polearm.
Mum with her bright red nail gun and a signboard shield.
Brielle with her dual-wielding hatchets, must be a new battle favorite.
and reverently handing her children each…
tiny hatchets and plank shields. A parent child matching set.
Talia's eyes stung with equal parts pride and incredulity.
The vision faded.
She opened her eyes to the forest—still quiet, still wrong, still alive with shifting shadows.
"Okay," she whispered. "Keep moving."
She pushed herself forward again, deeper into the thick green. Thirty minutes passed in a blur of footfalls and breath.
Another fight broke out—small but nasty. Two corrupted deer with splintered antlers charged her from opposite angles. She used the spear to vault over the first, kicked the second in the jaw, then dispatched both with swift stabs. Bats followed—screeching, erratic, claws sharp. She swatted them away with her forearm bracer and sliced two mid-flight. A striped corrupted tiger burst from the right, silent and fast, but she caught its forepaw with her spear and rammed it back into a trunk.
Her movements had gained a new cleanness. Brutal efficiency. Her instincts were sharpening with every fight. Although the continued damage was taking a toll on her armour. She has noticed some fine hairline fractures on her vest and bracer.
Reward notifications flickered.
[Reward #40 Pending → E-Rank Basic Leather Boots]
[Reward #45 Pending → E-Rank Survival Pack: Field Medic Pouch, Fishing Set, Woodworker Kit]
She stared at the fishing rod.
"…Why. Why fishing? Why me? Why aren't Grandpa and Dad getting these?"
She put on the boots and shoved everything else into her space with an exasperated grunt.
Finally, the underbrush began thinning. The slope dipped gently downward, and through a break in the trees, she saw it.
The ranger hut.
Her hut.
The place she'd napped to avoid paperwork. The place she'd stored snacks she didn't want to share. The place that had always been safe.
Her shoulders loosened, just a fraction.
"Finally," she breathed. "Civilization. Or at least plumbing."
She approached slowly, spear in hand. The air around the hut felt… strange. Heavy. Disturbed. More footprints than she liked. More claw marks. More churned soil.
Still, she stepped forward.
She reached for the door handle—
A massive THUD slammed into the inner wall.
The entire hut shook.
Dust drifted from the rafters.
Talia froze.
Her spear rose automatically. Her stance shifted.
The relief that had softened her muscles evaporated.
She was no longer alone in the one place she had expected to be safe.
And whatever was inside had already found the door.