Chapter 1 Transported into Middle of Forest

  Date: Unknown (First day of Journey)

  In the heart of an unknown forest, a man stood alone and utterly out of pce. He wore jeans and a faded university hoodie. In his early twenties and of Japanese descent, he stood tall at nearly one hundred eighty-five centimeters, his frame packed with a condensed strength.

  Around him, the forest rose in towering trees with massive bark stretched toward a dense leaves that filtered the sunlight into dappled sun rays. Beneath his feet, the ground was soft and uneven, yered in moss that glowed with a faint, blue light.

  And then the man, Hyoren Enjo, opened his eyes.

  The scent of damp earth and crushed pine needles filled Hyoren’s lungs, a stark contrast to the air of the lecture hall. One moment he was tracing the frantic scrawl of organic chemistry on a holographic dispy, the next, the world dissolved into a towering green and brown.

  "What in the world?"

  He blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dappled sun rays piercing leaves above. He struggled to stand, his hands and feet sinking into the ground beneath him. It was soft and uneven, covered in moss that glowed. Hyoren looked around.

  "Where am I? I just listened to Professor Aki’s voice which made me sleepy. Is this a dream?"

  He asked the empty air, but the forest didn't answer. A silence, broken only by the sounds of rustling leaves, pressed in on him, a stark contrast to the low drone of the professor's voice that still echoed faintly in his memory.

  Hyoren pinched his cheek. It hurt. This wasn't a dream.

  He realized his situation. The biting chill of the morning air and the rough texture of bark against his back were far too real. He started to sweat profusely, his heart beating faster.

  "I am in the middle of a forest? Is this it… is this really it?"

  His confused voice echoed into the silent forest. He had often read fiction about being transported into a different world, but experiencing it himself was truly a different feeling. He didn't feel exhiration or excitement.

  "I got transported into another world?"

  Then came the panic attack. His breath stopped. He couldn't see clearly. He can hear his own heart beating on his chest. Sweat drenched his back.

  “No… No way.”

  He looked around, grabbed handfuls of dirt, pressed his palm against the bark—anything to confirm this was real.

  After few minutes which feels like eternity. He suddenly heard his deceased father voice in his mind. His father was a veteran soldier, he had forced Hyoren to train under the assumption that war would knock on their door the next day.

  “You fool son! I trained you for years not to panic on this situation!”

  Hyoren gasped, he remember the training instilled by his father, a lifetime of discipline drilled into him kicked in.

  "Breathe. Take a deep breath. Calm down."

  The training with his father was actually a lifeline for Hyoren in this situation. He forced a breath, then another, slowing the frantic rhythm of his heart. The panic receded, not vanishing, but becoming manageable.

  He pushed himself to his feet onto the soft ground of the forest. His eyes scanned around looking at every detail around him.

  Hyoren began a methodical self-assessment. He thought back to his dad. His father figure appeared again in his mind.

  “Integrity check sons! Check what you have and what you don’t have!”

  He patted himself down. His jeans and university hoodie were intact, though slightly damp. His shoes were not made for trekking into a deep forest like this, but they would have to do. His phone was a useless, bck brick of gss and metal in his pocket, its screen forever dark. The wallet in his back pocket contained nothing but useless pstic cards and a few thousand Yen.

  “Damn, nothing can really help me in this situation. No pocket knives. No Survival knife my dad used to force me to carry.”

  He managed to form a wry smile.

  “Should have listened more to my Dad.”

  Hyoren’s gaze then fell upon the trees and flora around him, and a new chill settled in. The trees around him were not like any oak or pine he knew.

  “This blue flower, is glowing a bit? And this tree, the bark is almost metallic. Like made from iron… Ironwood…”

  Then came the confirmation that shattered the st vestiges of his denial. Looking up at the sky, he saw not one, but two suns. One golden, like Earth’s Sun, but the other, silver.

  “Two suns? I don’t remember astrologist announce we got another Suns. So this wasn't Earth. This is really another world.”

  As the finality of his situation settled, a new sensation prickled at his senses, something beyond the strange sights and sounds.

  Hyoren took a deep breath, the air taste normal. But he felt it. Not in his lungs. Not in his skins. It’s like he feel it with his whole body, with a new sense.

  “Radiation? No. You need Geiger’s counter to actually feel it. Electromagnetic field? No. This feel in the air feels alien. But it’s not sickening feeling. It’s actually feels warm, and alive.”

  He close his eyes, move his arm around. Then his eyes snapped open, realizing something.

  "Haha. I don’t know if I’m right. But I’m convinced. This is definitely... magic."

  Countless novels he had read and games he had pyed gave him the knowledge needed to identify this strange feeling. He had dreamed of it whenever he read novels about magic. But he needed to shelve it for now. He was in the middle of an unknown forest.

  “I would love to use magic. But I’m alone, in the middle of forest. I need to do something. And fast. What should I do in this situation?”

  Hyoren tried to remember his father. The survival lesson his father keep forcing him to do. In any unknown situation, the rule of threes applies. Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.

  Hyoren breathed deeply, checking the state of air.

  “Air is good. It’s full of alien feeling, full of Magic. But it’s good. I don’t feel suffocation. Okay then, water is next."

  His eyes scanned the forest floor, his strategic mind overriding the lingering dread. He needed high ground. A vantage point would not only help him locate a water source but also allow him to get the y of the forest.

  Hyoren began searching for the tallest and most climbable tree, his gaze tracing the sheen luster of bark up into the dense canopy of leaves. Finding a path was secondary to finding water and a defensible position, and the best way to find both was to see everything.

  His eyes settled on a very big tree, its trunk wider than a car and its bark forming natural, hand-like holds leading up into the canopy. It was a perfect dder.

  "This is it. I can climb this. And scan the area. Map the surrounding area. Look for water."

  He tested the first few footholds, the bark surprisingly solid. The climb was arduous, his unused muscles burning with protest, but the discipline of his training pushed him upward. He didn't look down, focusing only on the next handhold, the next foothold.

  Finally, breathless and sweating, he hauled himself onto a thick branch near the top, the world spreading out before him like a map.

  "Wow. This forest is… massive. I never saw rain forest myself. But this definitely looks like those forest I saw in books and internet."

  The forest was vast, an endless ocean of strange trees stretching to the horizon in every direction. But to the east, he assumed from the direction of the dual suns, barely visible through a gap in the mountains. A thin, stream of water snaked its way through the greenery.

  “Good, that was river. A water. Now I wont die because of dehydration.”

  It was his ndmark, his destination. He checked the dual suns position.

  "I need to go there. I don’t know if this world suns work the same way as earth suns. But for now I’m going to believe that direction is east."

  He kept talking, not to get an answer, but to make himself less restless. It will help him alleviate loneliness, and stopped his mind to become crazy.

  The descent was slow and deliberate. He nded on the forest floor with a soft thud, his knees buckling slightly.

  "My muscles are strained. I'm so tired. But I need to move."

  He took a moment to catch his breath, the image of the silver river burned into his mind as his singur objective.

  "Wait a minute. I can't go around in the middle of the forest unarmed. Even on Earth, we still need to arm ourselves with some kind of weapon when we stranded. The wilds are unforgiving. And especially here, in another world. What if there are monsters walking around? A goblin? An Orc?"

  He looked around and found a suitable straight stick, about one point five meters in length, with one end pointed. Hyoren nodded, satisfied. A makeshift spear. Or well a stick, but still, a weapon, gripped in his hand.

  "At least I can poke things with this."

  With a newfound resolve, he began to move. He walked with a purpose, his steps deliberate and quiet, his gaze constantly sweeping the ground ahead and the shadows to his side.

  ***

  And then, after walking for a few minutes, a dread feeling came over him.

  Hyoren froze mid-stride, every nerve ending alight with a sudden arm. The feeling of being watched was no longer a vague paranoia. It was a palpable pressure, a physical weight on his skin. His eyes darted through the glowing undergrowth, and then he saw it.

  It stood in a patch of glowing moss, still as a statue.

  "What in the world is that?"

  At first gnce, it was a rabbit, but its proportions were grotesquely wrong. It was the size of a dog, its fur a matted dark grey. From its head sprouted single long horn, about thirty centimeters, and curved upwards. It wasn't just looking at him; it was evaluating him.

  Every instinct Hyoren had, honed by a lifetime of consuming fantasy and horror, screamed a single, urgent word: monster.

  His knuckles whitened around his stick, the crude piece of wood suddenly feeling terribly inadequate.

  "Rabbit monster? But the size. And the horns. Damn, they look sharp and powerful. I don’t want to be stabbed by it."

  But before he could process the absurd monster in front of him, he saw the rabbit moved quickly. It was a blur of grey fur and a powerful hind legs against the soft earth. The horned rabbit closed the distance between them in a quick motion.

  Hyoren's perception seemed to slow down. His mind focused.

  He remembered the countless drills with his father, and the instinct, honed by years of practice, took over. His panic receded. He pivoted on his back foot, his body twisting to present the smallest possible target. He gripped the stick with both hands, swinging it in a desperate, horizontal arc aimed at the creature's head.

  The wood connected with a sickening thud, but the beast was faster than he thought. It ducked its head, and the club gnced off one of its hard horns, throwing him off bance.

  As he stumbled, the rabbit lunged, its crimson eyes locked onto his leg. A searing, white-hot agony ripped through his leg as its teeth, sharp as daggers, sank into his flesh. A strangled gasp escaped his lips as the rabbit's fangs sank in, but he choked it down.

  "Damn, it hurtssss!"

  But remembering he was still in a life-and-death situation, he focused his mind. Being distracted in this situation would spell his doom.

  Hyoren sucked in a sharp, ragged breath, forcing his racing heart to slow. The beast shook its head, trying to rip a chunk of flesh away, and he used that moment. He smmed the butt of his stick down on its head.

  There was a sharp "yelp," and the creature's grip loosened just enough.

  He wrenched his leg free, stumbling back and putting a tree between them. Blood streamed down his jeans, but his mind was crystal clear.

  "Okay, rabbit. Now you had done it. And I can see your habit already."

  The horned rabbit recovered quickly, shaking its head with a furious snort. It didn't give him much time to take a breath. It pawed at the ground, its crimson eyes burning with renewed malice, and then unched itself forward in the same explosive, ground-eating charge.

  This time, Hyoren was anticipating. He didn't back away. Instead, he took a half-step forward, dropping his center of gravity. As the beast lunged for his legs, he was already moving. He sidestepped, pivoting on the ball of his foot, and swung his stick in a controlled, vertical arc.

  He Aim at the spine. The heavy wood connected with a sharp, wet crack right behind the creature's shoulders. The rabbit's forward momentum was instantly arrested. Its body convulsed, its hind legs giving out from under it, and it colpsed to the ground with a pathetic whimper. It twitched once, then was still.

  He stood over the twitching form, his chest heaving, the adrenaline running in his blood.

  "First monster. Subjugated."

  He knew from biology css that a severed spinal cord didn't always mean instant death. He couldn't risk it. He positioned the wood, holding it like a crude spear, and with a decisive thrust, drove the sharp end down into the creature's thick neck.

  There was a sickening crunch as it punched through vertebrae. The rabbit's body gave one st shudder, then fell utterly still.

  A silence descended upon the clearing, broken only by Hyoren's ragged breaths. He looked down at his blood-soaked jeans, then at the still form of the monster.

  “I did kill a lot of animals during my dad’s training. Especially my first time killing Deer, those antler almost killed me too. And Dad only watching. Laughing at me. I curse him all night after that, but those lessons actually saved me.”

  As the st tremor left the creature's body, a strange warmth bloomed in Hyoren's chest. It was an internal heat seeping into his adrenaline fueled body.

  The alien feeling in the air, which he had forced himself to ignore, now seemed to resonate with this new energy within him.

  "What in the world is this? I feel like I absorbed something from the dead body. It feels like the feeling in the air, but more... condensed?"

  He looked from his body to the cooling corpse of the horned rabbit. This world's magic, this thing he could feel, wasn't just an ambient energy. It was a transferable resource.

  The pieces clicked into pce. The strange energy in the air, the monster, it all pointed to one conclusion. This wasn't just a fantasy world, it operated on fantasy rules.

  His mind, a library built on a foundation of countless novels, games, and movies, supplied the answer instantly. It was a trope so common it was almost a cliché.

  "Is this really it? Experience points? This world rules is game-like, huh? What about the loot? Levels?"

  The warmth flowing through him was power, a tangible essence stolen from the creature he had just killed. He waited for a bit, thinking some notification would come. But nothing came.

  "Hahaha. Of course it's not that simple. No floating blue boxes. No status screen. The monster didn’t drop a loot. No satisfying ding."

  He closed his eyes, focusing on the warmth still spreading through his veins, a tangible proof of his theory. The system wasn't a game; it was a biological process.

  "Okay, so experience points... I don’t even know if its really experience points, so for now, I dub this energy I felt as essence. For now. It exists, but loot, or levels, or notifications, seem not exist. This world's rules are a mess. I need to figure it out more."

  With the realization of the world's rules settling in, he checked the wound on his leg. The teeth marks of the rabbit were not shallow, but they were small wounds, and the blood had already started to stop. He checked his leg, trying to stand. He felt a dull ache, but it wasn't pain that was debilitating.

  "Thankfully the wound is not wide. I definitely couldn't suture it if it was wide. And the rabbit's teeth are sharp, so the wound is a clean cut. I only need to wash this, make sure no infection will happen. But if the rabbit carries diseases... well, what happens will happen."

  He decided to push on toward the silver ribbon of water. He needed it more now to clean the wound.