CHAPTER 2 – THE UNKNOWN
White. Piercing.
The light was intrusive. It forced its way through my eyelids, pulling my consciousness from the void.
I took a deep breath. The air felt heavy, damp, and thick with the scent of overly fertile soil—a mix of fresh moss and the cloying sweetness of rotting fruit.
I sat up.
The ground beneath my palms was cold and soft. It wasn't just damp earth; it held a faint pulse, as if I were sitting on the skin of a slumbering giant.
Trees towered around me, colossal wooden pillars with bark that resembled dried flesh. The canopy above was suffocatingly dense, choking the sky until only distant, pale blue fragments remained.
Silence.
No sound of engines. No hum of electricity. No trace of civilization.
I dug my fingers into the earth, pressing my nails down until it hurt.
This reality was solid. Coarse. Indifferent.
I reached into my pocket. My fingers brushed the familiar surface of a cardboard box. Cigarettes. A lighter. Small trinkets from a past life that now felt like sacred artifacts.
Flick. Shhh.
A flame sparked. Small, orange, steady.
I brought the tip of the cigarette to it and took a deep drag.
Hot smoke filled my lungs, burning my throat with a familiar ache. I exhaled slowly. The grey haze drifted, a stark contrast against the painfully vibrant green of the forest.
Here, in the middle of nowhere, nicotine was the only thing that made sense.
Location: Unknown.
Status: Alive.
Objective: Survive.
I stood up. My joints felt stiff, but functional.
The forest was too quiet. It wasn't a peaceful silence; it was the silence of a predator holding its breath. I began to walk. My sneakers sank slightly into the humus with every step.
The flora here was malformed. Flowers with barbed petals, fungi exuding faint vapor, insects crawling with far too many legs.
I kept walking. Without direction. Without hope. Driven only by a primal instinct to not remain in one place.
Suddenly, the frantic flapping of wings broke the stillness. A flock of birds—or something with wings—fled in a panic from my left.
I stopped.
What was the date again? My biological clock suggested it was morning. If my math wasn't off, back in the old world, today was my birthday.
"God, or whatever threw me here, your sense of humor is terrible."
Slither... squelch.
A sound approached. A wet friction. Like raw meat being dragged across stone.
My body reacted before my brain could process it. I crouched behind a giant fern, holding my breath.
There. Fifteen meters ahead.
A transparent mass refracting the forest light. A slime.
It wasn't a cute creature from a video game. It was a walking sac of acid. The size of an adult dog, it quivered, searching for prey. Inside its clear body, the remains of squirrel bones were slowly dissolving.
Grotesque.
Squelch. Squelch.
It stopped. Its body condensed, as if sniffing the air, despite lacking a nose. Then, it turned. Straight toward me.
Whoosh!
It launched itself. Fast. Far faster than gravity should allow.
I threw myself to the side.
Splat!
The fluid struck the tree I had just used as cover. The bark hissed, white steam billowing with the stench of sulfur. If that had been my skin... I would have melted.
The creature landed, rebounded, and readied another leap.
No time to think. Running was suicide.
My eyes caught something in the center of its gelatinous mass. A solid core. A dimly glowing crystal the size of a golf ball.
Its heart. Or its brain.
As it lunged at my face, I didn't dodge.
I thrust forward.
My right hand shot straight out, plunging through its mucous membrane.
"Ghh!"
Heat.
It was like dipping my hand into boiling water. My skin blistered instantly. But my fingers kept pushing deeper, searching, grasping...
Got it.
I gripped the crystal.
Thump.
My world stopped for a fraction of a second.
As my blistered skin touched the cold surface of the crystal, the pain didn't vanish, but it... shifted. Something flowed into me.
Not electricity. Not magic.
It felt like an injection of pure glucose straight into the bloodstream. Faint, subtle, but enough to dilate my pupils. My heart beat once, stronger than before.
I wrenched my arm out.
Splat.
The slime lost its cohesion, collapsing to the ground as a puddle of murky, foul-smelling liquid.
I panted, staring at my hand. Red, blistered, trembling.
The crystal remained in my grasp. Its glow faded, as if I had just siphoned its life away.
The stinging in my skin was excruciating, yet beneath the pain, there was a strange sensation. The muscles in my arm felt denser. The fatigue from my earlier walk had partially evaporated.
Evolution? Adaptation? Or was I just becoming a parasite?
Crack. Snap.
Slither... slither...
The forest around me came alive.
Not one. Not two.
They emerged from behind roots, from atop branches, from behind rocks. Dozens of them.
Starving.
"Damn it."
I ran.
My feet pounded the earth; my lungs pumped the humid air.
They pursued. The sound of transparent bodies launching through the air resembled a soft meteor shower behind me.
Crash!
A tree to my left was hollowed out by a splash of acid.
I slipped, tumbling down a small incline and crashing into a muddy puddle.
At the bottom lay a dead end. A limestone cliff face.
And in front of me, a giant slime—an amalgamation of three or four individual ones—was already waiting. Its body undulated, firing off a liquid tentacle.
There was no time to dodge.
The tentacle wrapped around my waist. A searing heat burned through the fabric of my pants. I was hoisted into the air, suspended helplessly, drifting toward a gaping 'mouth.'
Dark. Green. Searing.
I was swallowed.
The world fell silent, save for the hissing of the fluid trying to digest my flesh. I squeezed my eyes shut against the sting. I held my breath.
Was this the end? A ridiculous death, dissolving in the stomach of a jelly monster?
No.
My hand moved through the viscous liquid. My skin screamed in agony, but my bloodstream ran hot. The 'medicinal' rush from that first crystal kept me lucid.
I groped blindly. Searching for anything solid within this lethal soup.
One.
I grabbed it.
Zing.
Another surge of energy flooded in. Much clearer this time. The pain was momentarily dulled by a wave of chemical euphoria in my brain. My stamina replenished.
Two.
Zing.
My heart pumped blood faster. My lungs, starved for air, felt hardier. My body wasn't giving up; it was eating back.
Three. Four.
I ripped the cores free, tearing its structure apart from the inside. The slime began to lose cohesion. The fluid pressure around me weakened.
With my remaining strength—and the newly stolen energy—I kicked against its outer membrane.
Splash!
I spilled onto the ground. Drenched in mucus and acid.
Cough. Cough.
I choked, spitting out bitter slime.
My entire body stung. My skin was violently red, as if I had roasted in the sun all day without protection. My clothes were in tatters, smoking faintly.
But I stood up.
My legs didn't wobble. Instead, they felt... light.
Around me, the remains of the giant slime seeped into the earth, leaving behind over a dozen scattered crystals.
I picked them up, one by one.
Every touch offered a small pulse. Thump. Thump.
The burns on my arm hadn't healed, but the pain no longer bothered me. It was as if my nervous system had been rewired to ignore agony in favor of efficiency.
Eleven crystals in my pocket.
I slumped against the stone cliff. My trembling hand reached into my inner pocket, which was, miraculously, still dry.
Another cigarette.
This time, it took two flicks of the lighter before the flame caught.
I took a drag. The smoke mingled with the faint, charred scent of my own flesh.
The nicotine seeped in, slightly easing the tremors in my fingers.
Strange.
Medically speaking, I should have been in hypovolemic shock, or at least unconscious from neuropathic pain. But my breathing leveled out rapidly. My racing heart slowed, settling into a heavy, powerful rhythm. It was as though this body hadn't just brushed with death, but had simply finished a meal.
I looked at the palm of my hand.
Beneath the layers of dust and dried blood, the creases looked different. The life line appeared thicker, as if it had been re-carved with a sharp blade.
This body was adapting. Or, more accurately... mutating.
I stood up. The pain remained—a lingering sting of acid on my skin—but my brain processed it only as data, not as suffering.
I needed a weapon.
Not far from where I stood, the skeleton of a large animal lay in the dirt. Pure white, the remains of the slimes' feast. I approached it.
Snap.
I broke off one of its ribs. The sound was dry and sharp. I ground the tip against a river rock until it came to a point. A heavy femur served as a makeshift club.
Primitive. Crude. But it was the universal language of killing.
The sun began to set. The forest shifted into colossal silhouettes, swallowing what little light remained.
I climbed a massive tree—an ancient trunk with rough, scaled bark. On the highest branch, I found a bird's nest. Inside rested three eggs, speckled pale blue.
Without a second thought, I cracked the shells. The contents slid down my throat. Gamey, thick, and cold. The taste was repulsive, but my starved stomach welcomed it eagerly.
I sat on that high branch, my legs dangling over the dark abyss of the forest floor.
In the distance, a mountain pierced the clouds, its peak blanketed in eternal snow. There had to be clean water there. That was my destination.
I lit a cigarette. White smoke drifted into the night air—the sole remaining fragment of my highly ordered world.
Back there, in the world I left behind, morning was probably just beginning. People leaving for work, engines humming, clocks ticking to dictate a repetitive existence.
I exhaled a long plume of smoke, letting it vanish into the sap-scented forest wind.
"I hope my presence there fades as easily as this smoke."
There would be no funeral. No tears. No one to mourn the loss. Let me vanish from their memories, as though I had never existed at all. If I could just erase my existence there, perhaps the weight on my shoulders would finally lift.
I didn't sleep that night.
I merely closed my eyes, listening to the orchestra of death below. The shrieks of ambushed animals, the snap of breaking branches, the hissing of predators.
And from within my pocket, the energy of the slime crystals continued to pulse faintly. It was warm. It kept my eyes open.
Day Four.
I followed the path of the riverbed.
My body felt light. Too light. My eyes tracked the slightest movements in the underbrush—a crawling beetle, a leaf falling three meters to my left. My hearing had sharpened, effortlessly filtering the rustle of the wind from the subtle crunch of footsteps.
I was no longer a lost tourist. I was a newborn predator, just learning how to walk.
The roar of rushing water. The river.
I slowed my pace. Not out of fatigue, but instinct.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It wasn't fear, but a warning signal from nerves that had grown far too sensitive.
The wind shifted direction. It carried a foreign scent. Musty, metallic, laced with ozone.
I stopped completely. I held my breath.
Across the rocky flow of the river, the underbrush violently shook. Not from the wind.
Something massive breached the treeline.
A bear.
But the word 'bear' in my vocabulary fell short of describing this creature. It stood at least three meters tall on all fours. And embedded in the center of its chest was a jagged cluster of ruby-red crystal, pulsing in perfect synchronization with its heavy breaths.
Rapid Analysis:
Distance: 40 meters.
Obstacles: Rushing river, slippery rocks.
Threat level: Lethal.
It turned its head. Its crimson eyes locked onto mine. There was no warning roar. No intimidating growl. Apex predators have no need to bluff.
The muscles in its shoulders tensed.
One second.
My brain processed its attack trajectory. It was going to leap.
Two seconds.
I didn't turn around. Exposing your back to a predator is an invitation to be slaughtered. I backed away slowly, maintaining eye contact, as my hand blindly searched for a fist-sized rock on the ground.
THOOM!
The creature lunged.
The ground beneath my feet trembled. Its sheer speed defied the logic of its massive bulk.
I turned and ran.
It wasn't a panicked sprint. It was a calculated retreat.
My eyes scanned the terrain at high speed. Tree roots. Mossy boulders. Narrow crevices.
My logical mind bypassed my instincts, taking full control of my motor functions.
Left. Vault the roots. Duck beneath the branches.
CRASH!
A tree behind me exploded into splinters. Sharp wooden shrapnel grazed my cheek.
I didn't look back. The sound of its heavy, tearing breaths was enough to gauge the distance. Five meters. Three meters.
Ahead, a herd of forest deer was grazing in a clearing.
An idea formed. Cruel, but logical.
The law of the jungle hinges on energy efficiency. A predator will always opt for prey that is slower and yields more meat. I shifted my trajectory, deliberately cutting upwind to drive my scent toward the herd.
The deer startled, scattering in a blind panic.
I slipped through the chaos, hoping to become invisible white noise amidst a buffet of easier targets.
But the ground continued to quake right on my heels.
I risked a quick glance back.
The bear plowed into a deer, sending it flying with a sickening crunch of shattered bones. Yet, it didn't stop. It entirely ignored the fresh kill left in the dirt.
Its crimson eyes remained dead-locked on me.
An anomaly.
Why?
Was it my foreign scent? Or did the residue of the slime crystals in my bloodstream mark me as a territorial rival rather than prey?
Conclusion: Negotiation via diversion had failed.
Remaining option: Erase my trail.
I spotted a steep ravine to my right, leading straight back to the river.
Without breaking stride, I threw myself over the edge.
My body slammed into the mud, sliding down the incline out of control. I surrendered to gravity, gritting my teeth against the sting of gravel flaying my skin.
SPLASH!
I plunged into the freezing river.
The torrential current immediately dragged me under, battering my body against submerged rocks. I didn't fight it. I let myself be swept away, holding my breath for as long as I could. The water would wash away my scent. The current would displace my location.
A minute passed. My lungs began to burn.
I blindly grabbed a thick root dangling into the water, hauling my body into a narrow crevice beneath an overhanging riverbank.
I broke the surface. Just enough to expose my eyes and nose.
Silence.
High on the cliff above, the massive silhouette paced back and forth. Sniffing the air.
It had lost the trail.
I remained perfectly still. The freezing water bit into my bones, yet my heartbeat rapidly decelerated. Strange. There was no panic. Just a cold, detached observation: I was still alive.
Eventually, the bear left. I decided to move to the bank and haul myself out of the river.
I stopped behind a massive tree with aerial roots and slumped to the ground.
The sky above was a brilliant blue, a stark contrast to the terror I had just evaded. Purely out of habit, my hand reached into my pocket. The pack of cigarettes.
I braced myself to check the contents. It should have been the last one. Soaked and ruined by the water. Honestly, I should have run out this morning.
But when my fingers slipped inside... there was another cigarette.
And next to it, another.
The pack was firm. Completely full.
Infinite ammo? No. Infinite cigarettes.
I let out a low chuckle. A dry, humorless sound. "What kind of miracle is this, God?"
I lit one up. The smoke billowed upward, forming a perfect ring in the still air.
Then, I realized something else.
I stared down at my hand. It was still trembling slightly.
But not from exhaustion. Nor from the cold.
The crystals.
They weren't just sustenance. They were stimulants. Doping.
My body was being forced to operate far beyond normal human limits. Like an old engine flooded with rocket fuel.
It felt incredible.
I felt strong. Hyper-aware. Alive. Unlike anything I had ever felt in my old world.
But beneath that chemical euphoria, a cold dread began to creep in.
An engine pushed past its absolute limits tears itself apart.
How long could my human body endure this feral energy before my blood vessels ruptured? Or worse, before my cells mutated into something completely unrecognizable?
This world was handing me power, but it was slowly corroding my humanity in the process.
"Haa..."
I crushed the cigarette out against the damp earth. The ember hissed faintly before dying.
I stared at my open palm.
The sheer unknown.
I didn't know what my enemies were. I didn't know the rules of this world. And the most terrifying part... I didn't know if I was still a human trying to survive, or just a new monster waiting to be born.