Year 2040, March 29.
It was roughly around 9 a.m. when a soul-piercing sound echoed in everyone's ears.
[Earth has met the criteria to undergo the Ascension Trial. The humans of the earth are selected. Teleportation will start in 5...4…3...2…1...0]
This was the last thing heard on Earth.
--
Keshab Thapa was an eleventh-grade student living in the country of the mountains — Nepal.
He lived in the hilly region of the country where the climate was neither hot nor cold. The town he lived in was called Gorkha.
He was 18 years old, standing at a height of 5 ft 9 inches with a moderate, lean build. His hair was short and slightly untidy, as if he had never bothered much with styling it. He had black-brownish eyes — nothing out of the ordinary. His face carried a complexion that blended both Asian and Aryan features.
Overall, he looked like any normal young man from Nepal.
It was Sunday morning.
Keshab came from a ranching family, so his daily routine included delivering cow milk to local houses in the early morning. From 5 o'clock to 7 o'clock, he would ride his bicycle through the various streets of the town making his rounds. After finishing the deliveries, he would eat, get ready, and head to college — the same routine, every day.
College started at sharp 9:30 a.m., roughly a half-hour walks from his house. It was already 9:15 and he was still at home. Even so, Keshab did not look the least bit rushed. He simply hopped on his bicycle and set off. At full speed, it would take him only 7 minutes to reach college. He had more than enough time.
He rode casually down the road, enjoying the morning wind as it passed through his hair.
Ah! What a beautiful day!
He could not help but think.
That was when —
A piercing voice rang out inside his ears.
[Earth has met the criteria to undergo the Ascension Trial. The humans of the earth are selected. Teleportation will start in 5...4…]
The voice was loud and clear, as if someone had screamed directly inside his skull. Keshab, who had been riding at a decent pace, lost control from the sudden shock.
Oh.. Shit!
He fell off.
Just as he was about to hit the ground, he disappeared.
And just like that, alongside Keshab, every human on Earth vanished.
<< Keshab's POV >>
His eyes were shut tight. His hands were locked over his head, his muscles braced and waiting for the impact. 1, 2, 3, 4… Even after 5 seconds, nothing came.
What the hell?
He opened his eyes.
An unfamiliar sight greeted him.
It was all green.
He looked left, then right, then behind him, then up. Everything around him was green.
What the—… Why am I in a forest? What is happening?
The sudden change startled him.
As if responding to his thought, a screen popped up before his eyes — light blue, hovering in the air.
[Host does not have the authority to know this.]
Huh?
Keshab stared at it, unsure how to react. How could he? He just got isekaied. A dream come true for boys his age. Yet, the situation did not excite him. Everything was going fine for once in his life and now this happened.
Keshab was sharp from a young age. His family had seen rough times and he knew what poverty felt like. His family did not have any asset to rely on and even after the division of property after his grandfather's death, his family merely got two cows. Regardless, after years of struggle, his family was now faring well. He even got into a college.
A person's past makes the person. This statement could not be truer. For Keshab who had faced challenges and countless hurdles daily in the past, the current situation though it startled him, did not faze him in the slightest.
After a moment of thought, he managed to piece together what had probably happened.
So basically, I was teleported into this weird forest by somethi—
ZZZT! ZZZT!
A sudden noise snapped him out of his thoughts. Keshab's head whipped toward it, body tense.
Sounds like an insect.
A cricket landed near his foot.
He exhaled slowly.
His heart had nearly leapt out of his chest. The thought of it being a wild animal instead sent a chill down his spine.
This is not the time to just stand here.
Though he thought this, fear was slowly brewing in his heart. The fear of unknown. He needed to act fast and fear had no place here. He knew this and looked around for any sign of danger.
The forest was not too dense. Short grass covered the ground, with a few bushes and shrubs scattered in between. Tall trees rose upward, their canopies stretching across the sky. Fortunately, the leaves did not block the sunlight entirely. The trees stood roughly two arm-spans apart, keeping the forest open enough that he could see through it for nearly 100 meters.
Having grown up in the hills, Keshab was no stranger to forests. He knew most of the plants and trees around his town. But this place was something else entirely. Aside from the small ground grass, everything around him — the tall trees, the shrubs, the forest itself — was completely unfamiliar to him.
There was one unspoken rule in the forest: never touch anything you cannot identify. Most things stay unidentified for a reason.
Keshab knew this rule obviously and kept his hands to himself not touching anything but the ground grass beneath his feet.
If one looked at him now, they would probably ask him something like: Why do you look so scared? This was because, everything from his expressions to his movements, radiated caution.
After looking around, he did not find any signs of life except noise of insects echoing from time to time. This made him relax a little.
Though he became a bit relaxed, he main question still remained.
Where the hell am I?
He could not see the end of the forest from where he stood. He looked at the towering trees and decided to climb the tallest one near him.
The tree had a thick, rough trunk and wide branches heavy with dark leaves. It stood about 14 meters tall.
Keshab climbed it quickly and with little effort, reaching the top within a few minutes.
Near the crown, the sky opened up. Sunlight hit his face directly.
He squinted his eyes and looked around.
What the…
The view he saw shock him shitless.
He almost thought he was seeing things — that the sudden light was playing tricks on him.
To his right he saw there stood a mountain range of impossible scale — way larger than The Everest, with no ice or snow despite its sheer enormity.
Strange birds filled the sky on all sides, some large, some small, some so high they were barely visible specks drifting in the blue.
To his left, the forest stretched endlessly. Ahead, the trees gradually thinned until the land opened into a vast, boundless grassland.
Where in the world is this place? I'm in serious trouble.
Clenching his jaw, he turned to look behind him.
Just as he was beginning to lose hope entirely, tears blurred his eyes. Nestled in the middle of the forest, roughly 5 km away, he could make out small houses built from wood and stone.
There is hope…
He estimated it would take about an hour on foot to reach there, assuming he did not run into any wildlife along the way.
He was just about to climb down when a notification blinked into view.
[Memorizing the layout...] [Map has been updated. Would you like to check?]
This screen has a map function. Nice
"Yes."
The screen shifted into a map view.
A green dot marked his position at the center. To his right, the mountains were labelled 'Rocky Mountains.' Ahead, 'Endless Grasslands.' The forest around him was simply called 'Forest,' and behind him, the settlement was marked as 'Unknown Village.'
The map was rough and not very detailed, but it tracked his live location — and right now, that was more than enough.
I need to get to that village.
Responding to his thoughts, a text appeared before the map.
[Would you like to mark the 'Unknown Village'?]
"Yes." Keshab spoke with delight.
A red marker appeared over the village.
[Estimated distance: 4,890 meters.]
Down to the meter. Keshab felt a small but genuine wave of relief. A village was near, this meant the chances of wild animals towards the direction was lower. All he needed to do now was get there.
He climbed down from the tree, pausing to check the ground below before dropping. The immediate area was clear. Further in, however, was a different story. The road was long after all, anything could happen.
There are spoken rules of the forest, just as there are unspoken ones. The most important: never wander alone in unknown territory. The second most important: always carry a weapon.
Keshab had none of the choices to follow.
Though that was that, he wasn't about to walk into an unknown forest unarmed.
On his way down, he had snapped a sturdy branch from the tree. He found a flat rock and spent a few minutes striking the branch's tip against it until it came to a rough, hardened point. It wasn't much — but it was something.
He stuffed his pockets with a handful of stones, gripped the makeshift spear, and began walking toward the red marker.
He had originally planned to climb a tree every kilometer or so to check his direction, but the map had taken care of that. It pointed the way. All he had to do was follow it.
With quiet hope and steady steps, he walked.
For any living creature, the first instinct upon its birth is to breathe. Without breath, there is no life. And beneath that instinct lied something deeper — the desire to survive, engraved into the very soul of every being that has ever drawn breath.
That same desire was alive in Keshab now. The boy who had always followed the same routine — a path quietly laid out by his family — had taken his own very first step down a path of unknown.