Eren opened his eyes and nothing was trying to eat him.

He sat there for about ten seconds just appreciating that fact. The crack in the tunnel wall was letting in pale morning light and through it he could see the forest spread out below the mountain under a sky that was turning from grey to pale blue.

His back was sore from sleeping against stone and his neck had a crick in it that popped when he turned his head but those were human problems and human problems meant he was alive.

His Primal Senses scanned the area out of habit. Nothing above him in the wyvern tunnels, nothing in the passages around him, nothing on the cliff face outside. The wyverns were either sleeping deeper in the mountain or had gone hunting and either way they weren’t thinking about him anymore.

Good. Yesterday’s paranoia was just paranoia for once.

He stood up and stretched and his joints cracked in about six different places. His body felt different from yesterday, stronger in a way that went past the level-ups, like something fundamental had finished calibrating while he slept. The caloric warning from the system was probably still active but thirty pieces of fruit had given his body enough material to work with for at least a few hours.

Today was day twenty-nine in this forest and for the first time in almost two days he had a plan that didn’t involve running from something. Go down the mountain. Find the way back to his tree. Rebuild whatever needed rebuilding.

He walked around the tunnel area for a few minutes checking the passages he’d come through yesterday. The wyvern feeding hall was somewhere above and behind him and he could feel the faintest thermal signatures far above but they were distant and getting more distant as the morning warmed up. They were leaving to hunt.

Something was missing and it took him a minute to figure out what.

Noise. Specifically the broken car alarm screeching of fire birds that had been his alarm clock for twenty-eight mornings straight. Those ugly loud things had been screaming at sunrise every single day since he arrived and his body had gotten so used to the sound that waking up without it felt wrong like the morning was incomplete somehow.

I actually miss those stupid birds. A month of being woken up by what sounds like a cat being stepped on and now the silence feels weird.

He shook his head and started planning his descent.

..

The orange vine was where he’d left it. He pulled a section of it free from the rock and stripped the remaining fruit off and ate them while working. Eleven more. Not a meal but enough to keep his blood sugar stable for a few hours.

He tore a long strip of the vine itself and wrapped it around his waist twice. Not clothing exactly but it covered enough that he didn’t feel completely exposed anymore. The vine was tough and flexible like a leather belt that happened to be green and slightly sticky with sap.

Being naked hadn’t bothered him during yesterday’s chase because his cat brain had been running the show and cats don’t care about modesty. But now that his human side was back in charge the nakedness was starting to itch at him in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. His shorts had ripped apart during the gorilla chase and everything he owned was back at his tree twenty-something kilometers south.

First thing when I get back. Knitting skill, bark strips, broad leaves, whatever else I can find. I’m making actual pants not a vine belt.

He also thought about the vine itself. If he could transplant a cutting of this plant near his tree and get it to grow then he’d have a permanent food source right next to his sleeping spot. Some of the creatures in the southern forest had figured out basic farming already. The fire gorilla clans maintained fruit groves around their territories. Even the small wolf-like packs he’d seen kept beetle colonies for easy protein. If an animal with no thumbs could manage a food supply then Eren with his human brain and his collector skill should be able to do better.

His new cat side had opinions about this. Strong ones. Something in the back of his awareness was pushing him toward building a proper territory, not just a sleeping spot but a real base with food and water and defensive positions. The feeling was intense and specific and slightly annoying because it wasn’t coming from rational planning but from some deep feline instinct that equated "good territory" with "worthy predator."

Great. Now I have a cat ego that needs a nice house to feel good about itself.

He tucked a section of vine with root nodes into the makeshift belt. If the roots survived the trip home he’d try planting it. If not he’d come back here and get more. He knew the general direction now.

He walked through the tunnels until he found the small opening in the cliff face where he’d looked down at the hundred-meter drop yesterday. The morning sun was hitting the mountain face from the east and the rock was warmer than last night.

He grabbed the edge of the opening and swung his legs out over the drop.

No fear. Absolute Equilibrium had deleted every trace of height anxiety from his nervous system and his brain processed the hundred-meter drop the same way it processed a step off a curb. Just distance and nothing more.

His hands found the first grip on the outer cliff face and he started climbing down.

The rock was rough volcanic stone with plenty of cracks and ledges and his Climbing skill at Level 9 turned every surface into a ladder. His toes dug into crevices that his old feet would’ve slipped off of and his fingers found grip angles that shouldn’t have been possible for human hands. The Feline Enhanced modifier meant his body was finding routes through the rock face instinctively like something in his muscles knew where the next handhold was before his eyes confirmed it.

About thirty meters down the rock face changed. The crevices got shallower and the ledges got narrower and for the first time since he started climbing his fingers had to actually work for their grip. He shifted his weight to reach a crack on his left and his right foot slipped off its ledge but his body caught itself instantly with Absolute Equilibrium adjusting his center of gravity mid-slip while his left hand locked down on the crack with enough force to hold his entire body weight on three fingers.

And then the blue screen appeared.

[Congratulations! Your skill Climbing (Basic - Feline Enhanced) is ready to evolve to Evolution League 2. Please select one of the following evolution paths to upgrade your skill] 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Three options materialized in his vision while he hung from a cliff face seventy meters above the ground by one hand.

[Option 1: Endurance Climber - Quality: Basic - Second Evolution League]

-Reduces stamina consumption during extended climbing by 30%. Grip strength degrades 50% slower over time. Ideal for long vertical traversals

[Option 2: Rapid Scaler - Quality: Basic - Second Evolution League]

-Increases vertical climbing speed by 40%. Allows short bursts of accelerated movement on climbable surfaces. Cooldown between bursts: 15 seconds

[Option 3: Extreme Climbing (Feline Enhanced) - Quality: Uncommon - Second Evolution League]

*Requirement Met: Feline Bloodline Integration + Consistent Multi Directional Climbing Under Survival Conditions

-Basic skill will be upgraded to Uncommon Quality

-Enhanced climbing in all directional axes. Lateral and inverted movement on viable surfaces enabled. Directional coordination and spatial orientation improved during all climbing-related actions.

-Retains all Feline Enhanced benefits

Eren didn’t even read the first two options properly. The third one said "lateral and inverted movement" and "all directional axes" and that was enough. He selected it with a smile.

The change hit him mid-hang and his grip on the crack went from holding to something closer to merging with the stone.

The rock face stopped being a vertical wall he was clinging to and turned into a surface he was standing on at a different angle than usual. His brain quietly rearranged its understanding of "up" and "down" into something more flexible that treated direction as a suggestion rather than a rule.

He shifted his weight sideways and his body followed the motion with a smoothness that made no physical sense. His left hand released the crack and found a bump in the rock three meters to the left that he couldn’t have reached before because reaching it required moving sideways across a flat surface with no handholds. But his feet were gripping textures he couldn’t even see and his body was distributing its weight across contact points that his old climbing instincts would’ve dismissed as useless.

He was moving sideways across a sheer cliff face like a spider crossing a wall.

Oh my god! I am spider*an

He pushed it further and found a slight overhang where the rock jutted outward. Instead of going around it he went under it with his hands gripping the underside and his body swinging beneath it while his back faced the ground seventy meters below. No fear and no disorientation, just a different angle on the same surface.

He kept descending but the path he took wasn’t a straight line anymore. He moved diagonally when the rock was better at that angle and sideways when a horizontal crack offered faster progress and occasionally upward for a few meters when that was the shortest route to a better descent line.

His university in Cyprus had a climbing club. Eren had never joined because the membership cost money he didn’t have and also because climbing walls with colored holds looked like the most pointless exercise ever invented. But his classmate Alp from the English prep class had been in the club.

One of those guys who was already jacked before university, always walked around like the hallways were his personal runway and somehow had three different girls waiting for him after every climbing session.

Eren used to watch him from the cafeteria window on Thursday afternoons, reaching for holds with that casual confidence that came from being tall and good-looking and never having to worry about whether anyone was watching.

Alp would’ve shit himself if he could see what Eren was doing right now. The thought made him grin against the warm rock.

Five years since those days. Five years and he still thought about the things he should’ve done differently at university. Should’ve talked to more people, should’ve gone to more parties, should’ve joined at least one club even if it cost money he’d have to borrow. He’d been too worried about grades and rent and his mother’s phone calls asking if he was eating properly to actually live the experience.

I wasted it. Not all of it but enough of it that thinking about it still stings.

He sighed and the sound was lost in the wind. Rosa would’ve told him to stop dwelling. She always said that. "You think too much about things you can’t change, Eren." Usually while burning pancakes and swearing in Italian.

I need to find a way to go back home..

His feet hit flat ground and the mountain was behind him when he started sprinting like a mad man.