I wake face down on a slab of broken concrete. My head pounds like someone is beating a drum inside my skull. Dust coats my tongue, blood drips from my ear, and every breath scrapes my throat raw. I groan and press my palms against the stone but my arms shake so hard I almost collapse. The world blurs until I count slowly to ten. On the eleventh breath the spinning slows. I push again, haul myself into a sitting position, and blink sweat from my eyes. That is when I notice the bright square floating in front of me.
The square glows as white as a welding flash. In the center simple letters hang, steady and bold: Initialization complete. I read the words out loud. The moment the last syllable leaves my mouth the square fades. Nothing else happens. No sound, no shock, just hot air heavy with moisture. I finally look past the place where the screen hovered. The prison corridor is split open to bright sky. Ferns burst through cracked floor plates, vines coil around twisted bars, and beyond the gap a green jungle stretches in every direction.
I haul myself upright and run a quick check. The floor tilts and bodies lie everywhere. Hunting for any sound of life, I step out of the cell and move along the broken walkway. Five bodies in ten steps. No knife cuts, only flesh ripped wide open. The smell is metal mixed with rot. This was no riot. At the end of the row Cedric sprawls on his back, eyes going dull, chest slashed by four deep grooves as wide as my hand. No person makes wounds like that.
I look at Cedric one last time. He was the only guard who treated us fair, always talking about his wife and two kids. Now he is never going home. I grab his baton and stick it through my belt. Ruined bars and cracked stone surround me, but I spot a hole where the wall broke. I need to get out and see what happened. Something shredded the prison, flashed a weird screen, and called it a Trial. If Earth is part of some game, I have to learn the rules fast.
I crawl through the cracked wall and drop onto warm grass. Each step sinks a little, damp under my feet. I shove vines aside and move clear of the rubble. A bush shivers ahead. A chunky reptile-boar creature waddles out, skin mottled green and black, claws dripping clear slime that eats the grass. A faint box floats above its snout: Swamp Leech Gator - Level 1. The words fade, but the beast keeps staring. I lift Cedric's baton, knees bent, heart thumping. First lesson of this Trial starts now.
The beast springs. I swing the baton across its snout. Metal cracks hide, but the impact numbs my hand. Claws rake my ribs and rip the prison shirt wide. Hot pain spikes through my side. I grunt, stumble, then plant my feet. The creature wheels around, jaws open for another bite. I jab forward to block, but the baton slides off slick teeth. A claw hooks my arm, tearing skin and spattering red across the grass. My grip nearly fails.
Anger steadies me. While it shakes off the first hit, I dart in, jam the baton deep into its eye. Cartilage pops under the thrust. The monster thrashes, head jerking. I keep pressure, shove harder until the tip bursts through soft brain. The body shudders and drops. A thin message blinks in front of me:
[System Notification]
Kill confirmed – Swamp Leech Gator.
Reward: +2 Shards.
I crouch beside the body, still breathing hard, baton loose in my fingers. I reach for one of its claws, but before I touch it, the corpse starts to break apart. Skin, muscle, bone. Everything crumbles into shards of pale light. They hover for half a second, then shoot straight into my chest. I flinch, but there's no pain. Just a tight pressure behind my ribs.
Then I see it.
A thin bar appears on the left side of my vision.
EXP
It starts to fill. Slowly, but steady.
So that's what the Level meant. The System tracks kills. Tracks me.
I stare at it for a few seconds, thinking. If this really works like some kind of MMO, maybe there's more. Maybe I can trigger something else.
"Profile," I say out loud.
Nothing.
I try again. "Status."
A screen pops up floating in front of me.
[System Notification]
Name: Charles Mercer
Level: 1
Class: N/A
Titles:Sealed Case
Shards: 2
Stats:
Vitality: 1.0
Strength: 1.0
Dexterity: 1.0
Luck: 1.0
I stare at the numbers, trying to make sense of them. One point in everything. No class, no skills, no hints. Just a name, a title, and something called Shards. My eyes linger on that last one. Two Shards. That's what I got for killing that thing. Not meat, not hide, not even bones. Just… points. Currency, maybe? Or fuel?
"Inventory," I say, but nothing comes up. "Map?" Still nothing. Whatever this system is, it's not going to hand me answers. Maybe it unlocks more later. Maybe I'm just a bug in its code.
I wipe sweat from my forehead, then wince. My side's still bleeding. The ragged edge of my shirt is soaked and sticky, but I'm out of clean cloth. I sit on a warm rock and breathe slow. The jungle around me clicks and chirps. Everything's alive. The kind of alive that hunts. If that lizard-thing was level one, I don't want to meet level five. Not like this.
I focus back on the screen. "Titles," I say.
The words shift.
[Titles]
Sealed Case – No one knows your full story. Not even the System.
Description: This title marks you as a narrative irregularity. Certain mechanics may behave unpredictably around you.
I stare at the words a second longer. "Narrative irregularity." That's one way to put it.
I'm done sitting.
I head downhill, moving between twisted trees and roots the size of my thighs. This place isn't Earth. Not the one I knew. It's hotter, denser, too green. Half the plants look like they want to grab something.
Ferns open as I pass. Somewhere behind me, something howls.
A flicker appears in the air ahead. White and transparent, like static in midair. A rectangle. Same size as the Status screen, but thinner. I take a slow step toward it.
It pulses.
[System Alert]
Zone Sync in progress.
Biome: Jungle Lowlands
Status: Unstable
Warning: Trial balance fluctuating. Expect abnormal encounters.
The screen snaps away.
I push forward, parting vines with the baton. Every leaf glistens, every root tries to trip me. A twig cracks to my right. I stop, heart ticking loud. Nothing.
I take one more step. Something explodes from the brush, a lizard the size of a terrier with mantis claws clicking. It moves too fast. Before I swing, it hooks my thigh. Fire shoots down to my knee. I curse, swing the baton, catch its ribs, feel bone give.
The thing flips, lands, surges in again. I jam the baton straight into its mouth. Crunch. It shivers, legs kick, then falls still.
[System Notification]
Kill confirmed - Razorback Skitter
Reward: +1 Shard
Blood spills through the rip in my pants. A fresh alert flares.
[System Alert]
Health below 50%.
I tear cloth from my sleeve, knot it above the wound, and pull until the flow slows. Head swims. The dead skitter crumbles into shards of light that dart into me.
A new screen slams into place before I even finish knotting the bandage. White letters cut through the green blur of the jungle.
[System Notification]
Level Up!
Current Level: 2
All core stats increased by 0.5
Unused Attribute Points: 1
Warmth rolls out from my chest the moment the screen fades. It spreads through my arms, into my ribs, and down the length of my hurt leg. The raw fire at the slash quiets to a steady throb. I peel back the bandage in disbelief. Fresh skin pulls tight where the gash was open seconds ago. The cut is still red, but the meat has closed and the bleeding has almost stopped.
I flex my knee. It answers without the stabbing jolt from before. The System didn't just hand me numbers; it poured them straight into muscle and bone. Level two feels like stepping out of a cast you never knew you wore.
"Not bad,"
[System Notification]
Trial code: 399D.
Dungeons to be cleared: 118 467.
World goal: clear all dungeons, unlock the Superdungeon at the Central Island, survive.
The text holds for a single heartbeat, then melts into the jungle glare.
New ink settles in the edge of my sight, small and steady.
Quest
Clear all dungeons
Progress: 0%
Zero. A fat round nothing. I let the number sit in my head for a breath, then shrug it off. One dungeon at a time. Same rule as chess in the yard. Win the pawn first.
"Status."
The panel snaps up. Each stat ticks at one point five and wears a tiny blue plus.
Vitality 1.5 +
Strength 1.5 +
Dexterity 1.5 +
Luck 1.5 +
One free point blinks at the bottom. I think the word Strength. The plus beside it flashes and fades.
[System Update]
Strength raised to 2.5
Heat slides through my shoulders. The baton feels lighter, swing faster. Good.
The jungle falls quiet, like someone pressed mute. Leaves ahead quiver. A trunk splits as something huge shoves through. First I see claws, each the length of my forearm. Then fur plastered with swamp muck. A skull broad as a desk pushes past vines. Text burns above it in angry red.
Bogroot Grizzly
Level 5
It snorts, sucking air, eyes fixed on the blood drying down my leg. Every muscle under that hide flexes like knotted rope.
I roll my grip on the baton, set my feet, and pull one long breath. The beast lowers its head and starts to charge.