The turtle encounter happened around midday when Eren was heading east toward a berry patch he’d been raiding for the last week.

He spotted them from about two hundred meters away thanks to his boosted Perception. Three shapes moving slowly through the underbrush. At first he thought they were rocks. Then the rocks moved.

They were turtles. Sort of. Each one was about the size of a large dog but the shells on their backs were massive, easily three times the size of the animal underneath. The shells didn’t look like normal turtle shells either. They looked like chunks of underwater coral reef had been transplanted onto land, covered in tiny growths and mineral deposits that glimmered with blue and green light. Patches of dried algae and what might have been barnacles clung to the edges like they’d spent years submerged in an ocean.

Where the hell did these things come from? There’s no ocean anywhere near here. At least I don’t think there is.

Two of them were large and one was smaller, maybe a juvenile. They moved in a tight formation with the small one between the adults. A family.

What made Eren stop running and start watching from a tree was simple. Nothing was bothering them. Wolves, birds, even the territorial lizards that attacked anything within ten meters of their sunning rocks were all giving the turtles a wide berth. He could see three different predators in the surrounding area actively moving away from the turtle family’s path.

What’s so scary about three turtles?

He followed them through the trees for about ten minutes, keeping at least a hundred meters of distance. His Tracking skill was pulsing steadily which meant it was absorbing data from the observation.

Then the shadow-foxes appeared.

They materialized out of the dark patches between trees like someone had poured liquid darkness into fox-shaped molds. Five of them. Their bodies weren’t quite solid, the edges flickered and blurred like a TV signal cutting in and out. They circled the turtle family with coordinated movements, closing in from multiple directions.

Eren had seen something similar in a horror game he used to play in college. Except in the game the shadow creatures were scripted to be killable and these ones looked like they could eat his face before he could even swing his stick.

Here we go. Three slow turtles vs five shadow-teleporting foxes. Easy prediction. The foxes win this in about ten sec-

He didn’t finish the thought.

The ground underneath the foxes erupted with water. Not dirt, not rocks but pressurized water. A spike the width of Eren’s arm shot straight up from underground and punched through the chest of the closest fox. The fox didn’t even have time to yelp before its body jerked once and went rigid.

Four more water spikes exploded upward in the same instant. One for each fox. The two flanking from the east were impaled through their midsections. The one approaching from behind took a spike through the throat.

The fifth fox panicked and dove into a shadow between two tree roots, dissolving into darkness the way Eren had seen the ghost-deer disappear.

The water followed it.

Eren watched with his mouth open as the water spike bent at an impossible angle, turned sideways and burrowed into the shadow like a guided missile tracking a heat signature. The shadow pulsed once and then the fox’s body tumbled out of the dark patch with a water spike lodged through its skull, the darkness in its fur fading to ordinary grey.

The turtles hadn’t stopped walking.

The five dead foxes hung in the air, suspended by the water spikes still piercing their bodies. Then something else happened that made Eren grab his branch so hard his knuckles went white.

The blood started moving. Not dripping or pooling like normal blood but actively flowing out of the foxes’ wounds and into the water spikes like being sucked through a straw. The water turned from clear to dark red as it absorbed everything, blood, fluids, whatever moisture was left in the foxes’ bodies. Then the red water retracted into the ground and disappeared.

What was left of the foxes dropped to the forest floor. Five husks that looked like jerky. Completely desiccated. Not a drop of liquid left in any of them.

The turtles continued on their path without ever looking back.

The five dead foxes hung in the air, suspended by the water spikes still piercing their bodies. Then something else happened that made Eren grab his branch so hard his knuckles went white.

The blood started moving. Not dripping or pooling like normal blood but actively flowing out of the foxes’ wounds and into the water spikes like being sucked through a straw. The water turned from clear to dark red as it absorbed everything, blood, fluids, whatever moisture was left in the foxes’ bodies. Then the red water retracted into the ground and disappeared.

What was left of the foxes dropped to the forest floor. Five husks that looked like jerky. Completely desiccated. Not a drop of liquid left in any of them.

The turtles continued on their path without ever looking back.

Eren sat frozen on his branch for at least two full minutes after the turtles had moved out of visual range. He was shaking. Actually shaking. His hands, his legs, his jaw. He couldn’t stop clenching his teeth.

Those shadow foxes could teleport through darkness. They were probably Level 40 or higher. And those turtles killed all five of them without slowing down or even looking at them.

The water came from underground. The turtles never moved. They just kept walking and their... defense system or whatever it was did everything.

He tried to use Observe on the turtles from this distance. The skill flickered and then gave him an error he’d never seen before.

[Observe failed: Target power differential exceeds current skill threshold. Approximate level cannot be determined]

His Observe had worked on that rainbow bird near the ant battlefield two days ago. Barely, giving him just a feeling of overwhelming power instead of a number but it worked. These turtles were beyond even that.

The bird gave me a feeling of "too high." These things don’t even register. They’re so far above me that my skill can’t process they exist.

He thought about his Invisibility skill for a brief moment. Five seconds of being invisible against something that could track a fox through a shadow dimension and drain its blood through pressurized water from underground.

Yeah no. Invisibility wouldn’t save me from that. Nothing I have would save me from that.

He climbed down from the tree very slowly, checked three times that the turtles were gone and walked in the opposite direction.

..

The rest of the afternoon was about doing things he could actually survive.

He focused on targets he understood. Creatures he’d been studying for weeks. Things with predictable behaviors and levels he could read with Observe.

The ant colonies near the anteater’s territory were still in chaos from this week’s destruction cycle. Scouts from three different colonies were wandering the perimeter looking for resources and stragglers. These were the one-meter armored ants he’d watched fight two days ago.

He picked off the isolated scouts one by one. Sprint in, Calculated Arc a sharpened stick at the head from thirty meters, confirm the kill with Observe and move on. The Kinetic Flux Runner let him attack while running so the ants never had a chance to call for reinforcements.

The first two gave him decent experience. The third one fought back harder than expected and caught his forearm with a mandible before he killed it with a follow-up stab. The mandible cut through his skin and the pain was sharp and immediate but he kept fighting through it. The wound burned like acid for about thirty seconds after the ant died.

[Congratulations! You have learned a new skill]

[Pain Resistance (Uncommon) - First Evolution League]

-Reduces the mental impact of physical pain. Does not reduce actual damage

-Level 1 Effect: 8% Pain Resistance

Eight percent less pain from getting my arm chewed on. The system rewards suffering. Wonderful.

He killed two more scouts after that. Same levels as the others, all sitting around Level 18 to 20. His experience bar was climbing steadily.

Then three ants came at him together from a side tunnel he hadn’t noticed. They were faster than the scouts and their mandibles dripped with something that smelled like the acid blood from those tree-creatures he’d fought yesterday. Different colony, different abilities. These ones had chemical weapons.

The fight lasted almost a full minute. He took a hit to his thigh that burned through his shorts and left a red welt on his skin. His Pain Resistance skill pulsed as the acid ate into his flesh and the pain that should have made him stumble only made him wince.

Eight percent reduction. It’s not much but it’s the difference between flinching and staying on my feet.

He killed all three with a combination of thrown rocks and close-range stabbing. The last one he impaled through the head while its mandible was still clamped on his forearm and he had to pry the dead jaws off with his other hand.

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 25]

-All stats increased by 1

-You gained 1 Stat Point to distribute

Level 25. He’d been 24 for almost a week. The moment the notification hit him something in his body felt... off. Not painful exactly but like a low hum spreading through his muscles. A numbness that started in his chest and expanded outward to his fingertips.

What the hell is that? Level ups don’t usually feel like anything.

He shook his hands and the numbness faded after a few seconds. Probably nothing.

..

The evening routine was slower than usual. His forearm and thigh were raw from the ant acid and climbing the tree with wounded limbs was its own special kind of misery. He settled onto his platform and pulled out the second electric cat leg from his leaf wrapping.

Two legs left after this one. The main body was still too electrically charged to eat safely. Arcs of blue-white lightning still danced across the torso every few minutes like the thing had a battery inside it that refused to die.

He roasted the leg meat over a small fire and ate slowly. The pork flavor was getting familiar now. Almost comforting. His mother would’ve probably figured out how to season it with something. She could make anything taste good with just salt and red pepper flakes. Even the leftover rice and beans that his father complained about every other night.

She’s probably worried sick about me right now. It’s been... what? A month? More?

He pushed the thought away. He always pushed it away.

The numbness from the level-up came back while he was tying his sleep rope around his waist. Stronger this time. His eyelids felt heavy in a way that wasn’t normal tiredness. He’d been tired plenty of times in the last twenty-six days but this was different. His body was telling him to sleep and it wasn’t asking politely.

Something’s happening. This isn’t normal fatigue.

He barely managed to secure the rope before his vision started blurring. The fire birds in the outer branches were doing their usual evening noise, a few last ugly squawks before they’d shut up for the night. But even their grating sounds were fading like someone was turning down the volume on the whole forest.

His back hit the bark platform and his eyes closed against his will.

Not now. I need to stay awa-

He was already asleep in the middle of the sentence..

The dream was a dream but also wasn’t a dream.

It was one of the most fuc*ed up things he felt even after coming to this magical forest!

He was floating in a dark space with no ground and no sky. The system interface was everywhere, blue screens layered on top of each other in a chaotic mess of text and symbols he couldn’t read.

Some of the characters looked like they belonged to an alphabet that didn’t exist. Others were numbers but arranged in patterns that made his brain itch just trying to follow them.

Two screens pushed forward through the chaos and stabilized in front of him.

The first one was almost unreadable. Garbled symbols and broken text with fragments of words poking through the noise. He caught "Mon-" and "-arch" and something that might have been "Blood" or "Bound" but the rest was static.

The second one was slightly clearer. Still messy but he could make out two words through the distortion: "Lightning" and "Speed."

What the hell is this? A class upgrade? A skill choice? Why can’t I read any of it?

The system was waiting. He could feel it watching him. Patient and silent like it had all the time in the world.

The first option had Monarch in it. That word had been sitting in his status panel since day one under "Genetic Heritage" locked behind a wall of [---Locked---] responses. Whatever it was the system had never let him interact with it before.

The second option was about lightning and speed. Two things he desperately needed in a forest where being slow meant being dead and everything tried to electrocute him.

His gut told him the first option was bigger. More important in some way he couldn’t articulate. But he also couldn’t read what it actually did and picking something he couldn’t understand in a magical system that had already screwed him once with the Love class felt like a terrible idea.

The second option was clear. Lightning. Speed. Two words he understood. Two things that would keep him alive tomorrow.

He reached for the second screen.

The moment his fingers touched it the dark space cracked like glass and white light flooded everything. The last thing he felt before the dream dissolved was a current of electricity racing up his arm and wrapping around his spine like a living wire.

Then nothing.

The twenty-seventh scratch mark would go on the trunk tomorrow morning.

But the hand that carved it would be different from the one that carved the twenty-sixth.