The wind in the forest had changed.
Not the kind that ruffled hair or whispered through branches. No, this was the kind of wind that stopped. The kind that waited, uneasy. The kind that said: something is watching, and it's not the trees.
And somewhere beneath a twisted canopy of roots and tangled leaves, Zane Kingslay, Level 5 misfit and freelance squirrel eradicator, was quietly chewing dried rodent meat while digging a shallow trap with a sharpened rock.
It had been four days since the second trial began—seven days of survival in a monster-infested subdimension where rules were simple: kill, avoid being killed, gain points. Anything goes.
Zane? He had taken that last part very, very seriously.
He had not fought wolves. He had not joined teams. He had not even interacted with another human.
Instead, he'd turned into a ghost.
A quiet butcher of beasts barely larger than cats. A one-man extinction event.
> ●●● [System Notification]
Mutant Forest Squirrel defeated.
EXP Gained: +4
Total: 12 / 250
●●●
Zane sighed. "Four points. That's it?"
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: You're grinding field rats. What did you expect? A boss drop and a standing ovation?
His stick-spear was stained dark at the tip. The vine binding it to the handle had started fraying, but it still did the job—especially when paired with traps, bait, and Zane's now uncomfortably good patience.
He hadn't even noticed it, but sometime during the third day, his body had begun changing. His muscles didn't ache the way they used to. His reaction time had sharpened. His breath came easier even after a chase.
And this morning, the System had confirmed it.
> 🔸 [System Notification]
LEVEL UP! You are now Level 5.
Mana flow normalized. Stat points auto-allocated.
[Current Allocation]
Strength: Above-average (human baseline exceeded)
Agility: Above-average (trained athlete level)
Mana: Unused. No spells acquired.
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: Congrats! You now qualify to lose in slightly more dramatic ways. Progress!
Zane had grinned. A genuine one.
He was strong now. Not amazing—but strong enough that the average magic student probably wouldn't one-shot him in a panic anymore.
He was still hiding. Still hunting small prey. Still eating things that tasted like depression and rubber. But now, at least, he wasn't weak.
---
Elsewhere in the Trial Grounds...
The forest's silence had become eerie.
The kind of quiet that didn't soothe but pressed down on the students like a warning. The trees whispered rumors, and the bushes offered nothing but thorns.
More than 300 students had entered this realm. Divided into various factions, elements, and classes. Many had magic. Some had swords. A few even had teams.
But none had meat.
"Nothing. Not even a rabbit track," muttered a knight student, crouched by a dry stream bed. His stomach growled, as if to second the report.
"Don't tell me the monsters are migrating..." his teammate whispered, chewing bitter berries like a man sentenced to herbal death.
"No," said a third student, looking around nervously. "They're gone. Just... gone."
They weren't wrong.
The population of small monsters had crashed. Beasts that once hopped, scurried, or prowled the underbrush had seemingly vanished. All that remained were occasional scraps of bone and claw marks.
Mutant rodents. Mana-snakes. Armored hedgehogs. Mana horn toads.
Wiped out. Silently. Systematically.
And no one knew why.
Theories emerged. Maybe the monsters had gone deeper into the forest. Maybe larger predators had scared them off. Maybe the dungeon was evolving. No one dared suggest that one person could've done it.
After all, who'd believe someone would target the small monsters?
Certainly not the mages now nibbling on sour leaves and choking on wild apples. Most students weren't survivalists. They didn't know which plants were safe. They didn't know which roots were edible.
A few tried boiling bark for soup. One alchemy student attempted to eat glowing moss. He vomited blue for five hours.
The trial was turning into a nutritional horror movie.
---
Back at Camp Zane (Population: 1)
Zane lounged under a root archway, slowly rotating a mutant rabbit over a fire made from dried moss and twigs.
His stomach didn't hurt. His head didn't spin. He wasn't dizzy from starvation. In fact, he'd recently started doing squats in the mornings.
He wasn't thriving—but he wasn't dying either.
He was surviving.
Smartly. Quietly. Like a man who understood the real test wasn't combat—it was patience. Resource control. Efficiency.
The world thought heroes were forged in battle.
Zane knew they were forged in hunger. And he had dodged that forge entirely.
"Yo, S.A.S.S.," he said mid-bite. "You think I'm gonna get kicked for exploiting the forest economy?"
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: Absolutely not. If anything, I should report the rest of them for poor resource management.
You're the only one playing this trial like a stock market. Buy low. Kill low. Eat well. No risk.
He wiped his mouth with a leaf. "Damn straight."
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: At this rate, you'll hit Level 6 in… another 57 squirrels.
Assuming you can find 57 more squirrels before extinction claims them.
Zane paused.
That... was a problem.
His current prey pool was vanishing. Even now, it had taken two hours to locate the last mutant squirrel. He might've overdone it. Just a bit.
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: Consider this an ironic lesson in overfarming. You've created a meat desert.
The prey has either migrated or realized they live in a horror movie and fled the script.
"…So what you're saying is, I broke the ecosystem."
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: Congratulations. You're now an invasive species.
---
That night, as the cold mist rolled in, Zane stared up at the dim sky. The stars here flickered in odd colors—more like embers than light.
The wind carried whispers from far-off students—complaints, groans, even distant arguments over stolen berries.
He heard none of it clearly. But he felt it.
They were suffering.
He wasn't.
He should've felt guilty.
He didn't.
"Guess being the villain does come with perks," he murmured.
> 🔹 [S.A.S.S.]: You're not a villain. Villains have plans. You just have squirrel guts and a lawn chair made of regret.
"Same difference."
He leaned back.
Four days down. Three to go.
The forest was starving.
He was stronger.
And no one suspected a thing.