Day Three
He woke later than usual — the sun no longer pierced the roots with thin beams, but flooded the shelter with an even, diffused light. That meant it was nearing noon. Arthur didn't head out to hunt right away. Instead, he lit a tiny cookfire in its hollow, roasted the rabbit left over from yesterday, and sat down, leaning his back against the warm, springy wall.
He had no appetite. He chewed mechanically, staring at the charcoal marks on the wall — three of them. Today would make four.
"It's still strange and unfamiliar... feeling emotions. For me."
He said it aloud, just to hear his own voice in the shelter's silence. The sound was muffled — the tree swallowed it, as always.
"But right now it's more of a hindrance than a pleasure. Still... it's nice to feel. Even fear."
He chuckled — without humor, more with bitter irony. Before, emotions had been different. Muffled, distant, as if reaching him through thick glass. He remembered what he had felt, but he hadn't truly felt it. Now... now every little thing resonated inside him: the warmth of the wood, the smell of smoke, hunger, anxiety, rare flickers of calm. It was as if he were living for the first time. An eighteen-year-old with the memories of someone far older and colder. An agent who had screwed up? Or fate?
"It's absurd. I remember how I used to think, but I can't think that way now. Maybe it's meant to be."
He pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the system. The two blueprints still hung before his inner eye — blurry, filled to about forty percent. What were they? Weapons? Tools? He had no idea. And he wouldn't know until he gathered enough resources or figured out how to force their activation.
"Fine. We'll see after they unlock. Survival first."
He finished the rabbit, washed it down with water from the clay bowl, and climbed outside.
---
The Hunt and the Offering
The day followed yesterday's pattern. He moved silently, set snares, waited. He caught three rabbits — fewer than before, but enough. No slimes appeared. The forest felt... tense. Even the birds sang quieter than usual, and the wind kept carrying a scent of rot — not the familiar forest decay, but something sharper, chemical. Arthur chalked it up to the proximity of swamps he had yet to find.
Back at the tree, he dressed the carcasses, roasted one, and ate it. The remaining two, as usual, he tossed onto the branch across from the hollow. He no longer expected to see what took them. He just did it — like a ritual, a way to convince himself he had some control.
"If it takes the food and doesn't attack, I'm useful to it. And useful things don't get killed."
He didn't fully believe that logic, but it helped him sleep.
---
Night. The Incursion
He woke to a sound he had never heard before. Not footsteps, not howling, not the whistle of a falling star. A wet, squelching flutter, as if something huge and soft were crawling through the air.
Arthur cautiously peered outside.
Above the clearing, a dozen meters from the tree, they hovered.
Demon Eyes.
In the game, they were just sprites — annoying but predictable. Here... here they were revolting. Huge, the size of a human head, eyeballs with ragged remnants of vessels dangling beneath them. A thick, dark fluid oozed from them — blood or some kind of lymph. Tentacles, thin and numerous, writhed in the air like blind worms seeking food. The pupils — vertical, feline — darted ceaselessly, focusing on everything and nothing at once.
There were many of them. At least fifteen. They floated silently, save for that wet squelching, and the silence was more terrifying than any roar.
Arthur stared, paralyzed by disgust and fear. He had seen them hundreds of times in the game. But in the flesh...
One of the eyes turned. Its pupil narrowed, focused. On him.
And the eye moved toward the tree.
Not like the other monsters — those had skirted the trunk, as if repelled by an invisible wall. This one didn't care. It crossed the boundary of safety without slowing, and behind it, as if on command, the others surged forward.
Arthur stumbled back into the shelter and grabbed his axe.
"Shit. Shit. SHIT."
He had been wrong. The tree wasn't absolute protection. It merely repelled some monsters. These things, apparently, were either too stupid or too hungry to be afraid.
"Running's not an option. It's night, the forest is crawling with other things. Fighting is the best choice."
He scrambled outside, put his back to the trunk so nothing could flank him, and took his stance — feet shoulder-width apart, axe ready, blade up for a quick swing.
The first eye drifted too close. Arthur brought the axe down in an overhead chop. The blade sank into the slimy flesh with a sickening squelch; the eye burst, splattering him with dark ichor. The tentacles convulsed and went limp.
A second. A third. They came on regardless of losses. Each dead eye fell to the ground, twitched, and stilled, while another already floated forward to take its place. Arthur chopped, dodged, chopped again. At some point, he stopped counting. The world narrowed to a rhythm: swing — strike — sidestep — swing again. His muscles burned, his breath came in ragged gasps, but he couldn't stop.
He didn't remember when dawn finally came. He simply realized at some point that there was nothing left in front of him. Only a pile of dead eyes at the base of the tree, leaking viscous fluid, and his own body, trembling with exhaustion and revulsion.
He collapsed to his knees, then onto his side, right onto the slimy remains. He didn't even have the strength to crawl back into the shelter. He closed his eyes and plunged into a black, bottomless pit of sleep.
---
Veridis. The Night of the Incursion
She smelled them before she saw them.
The stench was foul — rotten, chemical, alien. It seeped into the hollow, making her scales stand on end. Then she heard the sound. A wet, squelching flutter. Many bodies moving through the air.
She peered out just enough to see them. Enormous eyes, hovering in the night. They were disgusting. And they were moving toward the tree. Toward her.
Veridis pressed herself against the far wall of the hollow, curling into the tightest ball her body could manage. Her tail wrapped around her snout. Her wings flattened against her sides. She tried to breathe only every other breath, so as not to make a sound.
From outside came thuds, crunches, wet tearing. The human was fighting. She heard his cries — not words, just furious, frightened exhalations. She heard bodies falling.
She did not go out. She did not help. She just lay there, trembling, and prayed — not to gods she didn't believe in, but simply into the void — that they would not reach her. That the human would prevail. That She would not come to the noise.
When the sounds finally ceased, she still did not dare move for a long time. Only as the sky began to pale did she cautiously look out.
The human lay amidst a heap of dead eyes. Motionless. She sniffed. Breathing. Alive.
She watched him for a long time. He hadn't run. He had fought. For himself, of course. Not for her. But he had fought down there and kept them from climbing higher.
She didn't understand what she felt. But something inside her — that old, nearly forgotten thing — stirred once more.
When the human stirred and began to rise, she flinched back into the shadow of the hollow, but she did not retreat further. She left only her eyes — two glowing emerald sparks in the darkness.
---
Day Four. Awakening
He came to with the sun baking his face. His body ached as if it had been run through a meat grinder. Arthur pried his eyes open with difficulty and saw the canopy above him, drenched in midday light.
He was lying on a pile of dead Demon Eyes. Some had already begun to rot, giving off an unbearable stench. He crawled away in disgust, brushing off scraps of tentacles and dried slime. He hauled himself to his feet, swaying, and first looked out at the clearing.
Something was wrong.
The grass around was trampled — not evenly, but in long, winding strips. He recognized those tracks: the moist, gleaming trails that dried quickly in the sun. Slimes. They had been crawling here while he slept. But there were other tracks — impressions of rough, gnarled feet, pressed deep into the earth. Zombies. The same creatures he had seen on his first day. They had been here too.
He walked the clearing, frowning at the tracks. The slimes and zombies had moved chaotically but purposefully — as if searching for something. Or someone. In one spot, the grass was especially flattened and the earth disturbed, as if something had been dragged away. What exactly, he couldn't tell. The trail vanished into the underbrush.
Arthur stood for a while longer, trying to piece together what had happened. But his body demanded rest and food, and his head was pounding. He waved it off and trudged slowly toward the shelter. At the entrance, he paused and lifted his gaze to the hollow.
Two eyes stared at him from the darkness.
They glowed — a soft, emerald light. Alive. Watchful. And they did not look away.
Arthur froze. His heart skipped a beat.
"I knew it. There's some kind of predator up there."
He didn't move. The creature didn't either. It just watched.
"But it didn't eat me. When I was asleep. Helpless. So... either it's full, or it doesn't eat people. Second option's unlikely. Or... my efforts weren't in vain. It sees me as a potential free meal and doesn't want to lose its food source."
Slowly, very slowly, he began backing toward the roots. The eyes in the hollow tracked him, but the creature didn't move. Arthur climbed into the shelter and, first thing, drew a fourth charcoal mark on the wall.
"Four days. Feels like a month."
---
The Hunt and the Experiment
He went hunting with apprehension. After the previous night, his body obeyed poorly, his reactions slowed. He caught no rabbits — they sensed him before he could get close. He had to return empty-handed.
But he still wanted to run an experiment.
Grabbing a couple of relatively intact Demon Eye carcasses, he climbed to his usual perch below the hollow and tossed them onto the branch.
"Maybe it eats this kind of thing too. Better than nothing."
He climbed down and waited.
The answer came faster than he expected. From above came a low, vibrating growl, full of disgust. Then both eyes came flying back down, landing with a wet smack at the base of the tree. The creature clearly did not appreciate the offering.
Arthur picked them up and snorted.
"So, this thing doesn't like eyes. Maybe it doesn't like anything connected to... Moon Lord?"
He spoke the name aloud without thinking.
The world stopped.
In broad daylight, in the middle of the day, the moon appeared in the sky. Enormous, pale, unnaturally sharp. It hung directly above the tree, and Arthur physically felt something staring at him. Not eyes — he couldn't see any. But the gaze was there. Heavy, crushing, filled with such indifferent, all-consuming horror that his legs nearly buckled.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. He just stood there, head hunched into his shoulders, and mentally prayed to every god he knew and didn't know for it to end.
The moon watched him for a long time. A very long time. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished. The sky returned to normal, ordinary daylight.
Arthur collapsed to his knees, gasping for air.
"..."
"Phew... I thought I was dead."
He understood immediately. The name was taboo. Moon Lord. He could not speak it aloud. Probably the other boss names too. Better not to risk it.
---
The Safe Zone
He spent the rest of the day recovering. When evening began to fall, he decided to act.
He gathered the dead Demon Eyes left from the night's slaughter and dragged them beyond the invisible boundary that monsters had previously avoided. He arranged them in piles, marking a perimeter.
"If the creatures already avoid this place, maybe the smell of dead eyes will strengthen the effect? Or maybe it'll attract them. Better to try than just sit and wait."
He walked in a circle, sticking branches into the ground, stringing vine fibers between them, and hanging chunks of rotting flesh. The work took several hours. By the time he finished, it was already dark, and the nocturnal creatures were beginning to stir.
The Demon Eyes appeared again. But this time, they did not cross the boundary. They floated along it, bumping blindly against the invisible wall but not daring to move further. The smell of their dead kin? Something else? Arthur didn't know. The important thing was that it worked.
He returned to the shelter, drew a fifth mark on the wall, and lay down to sleep.
For the first time that night — without a fight.
---
Veridis. The Night After the Fourth Day
She watched as the human walked around the tree, laying out the dead eyes. He was doing something with sticks and vines. She did not understand why. But when the night creatures appeared again and could go no further, she understood.
He was protecting the tree. Protecting... her?
No. Foolish. He was protecting himself. Their shelters had simply ended up in the same place.
But he had fought for this place again. And he had left food on the branch again. Even if it was those revolting eyes she would not eat.
She lay in the hollow, watching the tiny fire below, and felt something inside her slowly, reluctantly, begin to shift.
She was still afraid. She still did not trust. She still remembered that humans had killed her family.
But this human... he was different. Small. Weak. Frightened too.
And he had not tried to kill her.
She curled into a ball, pressed her nose against her own tail, and closed her eyes. Tonight, once again, she did not dream of vines. She dreamed of the little fire between the roots.