something important from the Wolf encounter, though perhaps not the
lesson the forest intended. He'd learned that elite mobs gave massive
rewards. He'd learned that eating their cores granted incredible
abilities. And he'd learned that he'd been chosen for something
special.
That's the
difference between me and casual players. They see a hard fight and
run. I push through and get rewarded for it. That's how you dominate
a game.
He conveniently
ignored the fact that he'd nearly died, that his victory had depended
entirely on the regen skill he'd bought, and that luck had played as
much a role as skill.
The changes were
undeniable now. His vision had transformed—the grey forest had
depth and clarity it had never possessed before. He could see in the
darkness between the trees, could pick out details in shadows that
should have been impenetrable. Night vision, the system had called
it, and Vincent called it "broken OP bullshit in the best way."
But it was the smells
that truly changed everything.
The forest had
exploded into a symphony of scents. Every creature left a trail, a
chemical signature that hung in the air like colored smoke. He'd
discovered it by accident when hunting his first creature after the
Wolf—a shambling thing with too many eyes. As he'd stalked it, thin
trails of reddish mist had appeared in his vision, emanating from the
creature's body, marking its path through the undergrowth.
[Olfaction:
Active]
[Scent
tracking: Hostile entity detected]
[Threat
level: Low]
The creature had been
easy prey. His new senses told him everything—where it had been,
where it was going, how afraid it was, how injured. The kill had been
trivial.
He'd killed three more
creatures over the next few hours, testing his new abilities,
cataloging the patterns. Each creature produced a different colored
mist-trail:
Red trails for
aggressive creatures—thick, acrid, speaking of violence and
territory.
Blue trails for
passive ones—faint, meandering, barely worth noticing.
Green trails for
edible plants and resources—not that he needed them anymore.
This is insane.
This is literally wallhacks. Scent-based wallhacks. The devs gave me
an elite ability and now I'm just farming. This is what happens when
you play smart.
Vincent sat on his
boulder, assumed the Watchdog Man pose—easier now, his body more
flexible—and surveyed his territory with new senses. The forest
breathed, and he breathed with it, his olfaction drinking in
information, his night vision piercing the gloom.
I own this zone.
Anything that comes through here, I'll smell it before it sees me.
I'm the apex predator now.
The mask's three black
holes shifted slightly with his attention, tracking scents and
movement simultaneously. His body had changed further—fingers
longer, claws sharper, the black veins spreading up his neck toward
his jaw. The translucent wax of his skin revealed more of his
internal geography now, the dark heart pulsing steadily, the network
of black veins mapping his transformation.
[Level:
4]
[Transformation:
2/10]
[Psyche:
68%]
[HP
Stock: 312]
He'd been farming
creatures methodically, storing HP, preparing for the next big fight.
Each heart he consumed added to his reserves, each kill made him
stronger, faster, more coordinated. The skills from the Wolf—[Beast
Form],
[Pure
Brutality],
[Targeted
Fracture]—sat
unused but ready, waiting for a threat worthy of activation.
I'm not just
surviving anymore. I'm thriving. This is what optimization looks
like.
The Hunger gnawed at
him constantly now, a persistent itch that never quite went away even
after feeding. But Vincent had learned to interpret it as "aggressive
metabolism" rather than "creeping addiction," because
one sounded like a feature and the other sounded like a problem.
Something else had
changed too, though Vincent didn't consciously notice it. His
thoughts had started to... skip. Not blanking out entirely, but
losing threads mid-sentence, jumping to conclusions without the steps
in between. He'd been thinking about his mother earlier—or had he?
The memory felt slippery, hard to hold. What did she look like again?
The details wouldn't come.
What came easily were
other things: the exact location of the three creatures he'd killed
that morning. The taste profile of their hearts. The optimal bite
angle for severing a spine. The chemical composition of fear-scent
versus pain-scent.
That's just game
knowledge. That's just me getting better at the mechanics.
He moved through the
forest with confidence that wasn't entirely unjustified anymore. His
new senses made ambushes nearly impossible, his improved physical
stats made most fights manageable, and his HP Stock meant he could
tank damage and regenerate during combat.
A thought occurred to
him, unbidden: When
did I last think about logging out?
The question hung
there, unanswered, because he couldn't remember. Hours ago? Minutes?
Had he thought about it at all since the Wolf?
Doesn't matter.
Still got four hours left in the session. Plenty of time to level.
Plenty of time to—
The thought derailed.
Lost its momentum. What had he been thinking about? Something about
time. Something about... something.
He shook his head,
felt the mask shift slightly with the motion, and refocused on what
mattered: hunting, feeding, storing HP.
I'm fine. Just
focused. Just in the zone. That's what happens when you're
optimizing.
But the Hunger
returned. Always. And this time, it brought something new.
Vincent found himself
back at the clearing with the [Agent],
though he didn't remember consciously deciding to return. His feet
had simply carried him there, drawn by some instinct he couldn't
name.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
The grey figure stood
exactly as before, motionless, the split mask reflecting nothing.
— Your echo is still
tolerated, — the [Agent]
declared without preamble. — You are progressing. Slowly. But
functionally. Your integration into the ecosystem is proceeding
within acceptable parameters.
Vincent exhaled,
crossing his arms—a defensive gesture. The muscles pulled under his
skin, denser now, more compact.
— And the hunger? —
he asked, trying to maintain a detached tone. — This constant...
sensation in the throat. Is it a bug?
— No.
Pause.
— It is a price.
Vincent frowned behind
his mask.
— That wasn't in the
contract. I read the conditions. Well... I scrolled. There was
nothing about permanent hunger. Nothing about side effects.
— Survival is not
free, — the [Agent]
replied, imperturbable. — Your adaptation was achieved through
organic absorption. Through the integration of living matter. The
system has modified your basal metabolism. You no longer eat to live.
You live to eat. That is the very definition of the Wìdjigò-Phase
class.
Vincent wanted to
protest, to argue, to demand a patch. But a low growl rose from his
belly, cutting off any speech. A hollow, hungry sound that didn't
come from the stomach but from deeper—from the gut, the marrow,
from something installed at a cellular level.
The [Agent]
finished, as if none of this really mattered:
— You are still
resisting. Your psyche maintains minimal coherence. Statistically,
this will not last. The psychic survival rate after the [2/10
Threshold]
is 11%. Good luck.
Vincent turned and
left without another word. The [Agent]
watched him go with its expressionless split mask, already
calculating the probability of his survival past the next threshold.
Eleven percent.
Whatever. I'm in the 0.3% who survived spawn. I'm in the 0.02% who
got this class. I'll be in the 11% who make it past 2/10. Statistics
don't apply to people like me.
The forest had other
opinions about Vincent's exceptionalism, but it kept them to itself.
Vincent moved through
his territory, hunting, feeding, storing HP. The new senses made
everything easier—he could track prey from hundreds of meters away,
could ambush creatures before they knew he existed, could optimize
his farming routes with precision.
He'd just killed two
creatures without even really needing to focus. An automatic leap, a
precise bite, a satisfying crack. The red mist-trails had led him
straight to them, and [Targeted
Fracture]
had made the kills almost trivial.
He bragged about it
internally, constructing entire speeches for an invisible audience.
— Level 4, and I'm
already farming like a pro. Most players are probably stuck at level
1, crying about the difficulty. But I figured out the meta. Elite
cores, skill absorption, scent tracking. I'm basically speedrunning
optimal build paths.
The forest breathed
around him, patient, waiting.
Vincent stopped
walking. Not because he'd found prey, not because he'd sensed danger.
He stopped because, for the first time since spawning, he had a
moment of genuine quiet.
No Hunger screaming at
him. No creatures attacking. No Agent dispensing cryptic warnings.
Just him, the forest, and the weight of what he'd become.
He looked at his hands
in the grey light. The black claws, the translucent wax skin, the
dark veins pulsing beneath. He flexed his fingers and watched the
veins shift, watched the claws extend and retract with a thought.
When did that
happen? When did I stop needing to think about moving them?
He raised his hand to
his face—to where his face used to be—and felt only the smooth,
cold wax of the mask. No cheeks. No nose. No lips. Just three holes
and a void where his mouth should have been.
He tried to remember
what he'd looked like before. Brown hair, maybe? Or was it dark
blond? He couldn't recall. The memory felt distant, like something
that had happened to someone else.
Six hours. I've
been in this game for six hours and I can't remember my own face.
A thought occurred to
him, unbidden and unwelcome: What
if I log out right now? What if I go back to the real world? Will I
still be... me?
The question hung in
the air, unanswered. He didn't want to find out. Because if the
answer was no, if the changes were permanent, then everything he'd
been telling himself—it's
just a game, it's just mechanics, it's just temporary—would
collapse.
And if the answer was
yes, if he could go back to normal, then he'd have to confront what
he'd done. What he'd eaten. What he'd become. And he'd have to admit
that he'd made choices, that the system hadn't forced him, that
somewhere along the way he'd stopped resisting and started enjoying
it.
So he didn't think
about it. He pushed the thought down, buried it beneath layers of
rationalization and denial, and kept moving.
I'm almost at
level 5. Just need a bit more exp. Then level 10. Then 15. Then 100.
Then a million dollars. Then everything goes back to normal. That's
the plan. That's the only thing that matters.
He repeated it like a
mantra, like a prayer, like a drowning man clutching at driftwood.
But deep down, in a
place he refused to acknowledge, a small voice whispered: You
know that's not true. You know you're lying to yourself. You know—
He growled, a low,
involuntary sound that rattled through his mask, and the voice went
silent.
Shut up. Just shut
up. I'm fine. I'm adapting. I'm winning.
The forest said
nothing. It had heard these lies before, from others like him, and it
knew how they all ended.
Vincent stood there
for a moment longer, alone with thoughts he refused to finish, then
started walking again. Hunting. Feeding. Storing HP. Because that's
what winners did. That's what survivors did.
That's what he had to
keep telling himself, or the alternative—the truth—would break
him.
And then, he saw
someone.
A real player.
[Username:
Mirv]
[Class:
Archer]
[Level:
3]
A scrawny guy, almost
skeletal, in light gear—a rudimentary bow on his back, a half-empty
quiver, and torn cloth clothes that had probably been white but were
now grey with filth and dried blood.
He was crouched near a
creature's corpse, looting methodically, rummaging through the
entrails with his bare hands. He was humming softly—some stupid pop
song, completely jarring against the surrounding horror. He seemed
peaceful, relaxed even.
Vincent stopped dead,
hidden behind a skin-tree. He didn't know why he had stopped—not
right away. Not consciously.
Then he understood.
The smell.
Not that of the corpse
Mirv was scavenging. Not that of the rotting forest. But the smell of
living blood. Blood still circulating, warm, oxygenated, pulsing.
And the trail it
produced.
Not red like the
aggressive creatures. Not blue like the passive ones. Not green like
resources.
Golden.
A luminous,
honey-thick mist that radiated from Mirv's body like an aura, like a
beacon, like a siren call written in chemical language. It filled the
air, saturated Vincent's senses, erased everything else. It had
nothing to do with the beasts, nothing to do with the monsters,
nothing to do with anything he had eaten so far.
It was better.
Incomparably better.