The warmth around him faded in a slow exhale, like the cave itself relaxed.
Soren's knees buckled, not dramatically, just honestly, because the adrenaline that had carried him here suddenly realised his body had been running on fumes for hours.
He collapsed onto the grassy mound, back hitting the soft incline, then rolled enough to lean against the little glowing tree, his shoulders slumping as if someone had cut a cord inside him.
"Hehe… heh."
A laugh bubbled out, weak, tired, but real.
It was more relief than joy, because after weeks of struggling just to stay afloat, to finally gain something tangible, even a small stat boost, felt like proof that he wasn't trapped at the bottom forever.
In all the time since transmigrating, he had only raised one stat by a single decimal point.
Now, with one miserable afternoon and a fight that almost got him killed, he' had gained far more than that.
"「Status」."
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden
◈ Titles
- Transmigrator (Year 1)
- Hunter of Secrets
◈ Stats
Stamina - 0.2 (F) → 0.5 (F+)
Strength - 0.3 (F) → 0.6 (F+)
Agility - 0.4 (F) → 0.7 (F+)
Mana - 0.4 (F) → 0.7 (F+)
Divine Power - 0.0 (F) → 0.3 (F)
Charm - 8.4 (A+) → 8.7 (S-)
.
Now, all but one of his stats bar one had passed into the F+ rank, and his Charm had climbed further into absurdity.
Soren stared at the number and felt an immediate, petty irritation.
'If even half of those Charm points could go to anything useful, I'd actually have a decent build.'
Then, unhelpfully, his own reflection flashed in his mind, that impossible face, the white hair and scarlet eyes, and he had to admit the world was at least consistent in its cruelty.
He swiped the status window away and rummaged through his bag.
The movement made his arms wobble.
Only now, sitting still, did he notice how badly his hands were trembling, the minor cuts on his knuckles throbbing in time with his pulse, his forearms sore from holding concentration, his legs aching like they had been beaten.
He pulled out bread anyway, because hunger had been waiting politely in the background and was now demanding attention.
He took a bite, chewed slowly, then lifted his canteen to drink, expecting the cool relief to ground him.
Nothing came out.
He frowned.
'Empty…'
Of course it was.
He had been sweating for hours.
Fortunately, there was an easy solution.
"「Aqua」."
A thin stream of water filled the canteen, the spell so simple it barely required thought, and Soren drank like a man crawling out of a desert, swallowing until his throat stopped feeling like sandpaper.
"Hahhhh…" he sighed, and it was almost blissful. "Magic really is the best."
He meant it.
Then his body, finally given permission, sagged harder.
His shoulders drooped.
His head tipped back against the tree.
He stared at the glowing leaves above him and tried to stand, because he should stand, he should leave, the sun was already…
His legs refused.
Not in the dramatic sense, not collapsing, but in the quiet, humiliating truth that when he pushed, his thighs shook violently and his knees wobbled as if they couldn't remember how to hold weight.
Soren tried again, jaw tightening.
His vision swam slightly, edges blurring, and he realised his body wasn't just tired, it was completely spent.
Drained from the hike, the fear, the magic, the fight, the constant tension that had kept him upright.
His hands still trembled.
His chest still felt tight.
If he left now and stumbled, if he got into another fight, if he had to cast under pressure again…
He forced himself to breathe slowly, then let his head rest back.
'Just a minute,' he told himself.
A minute became five.
Five became ten.
The cave's warmth, now gentle rather than oppressive, wrapped around him like a blanket, and the title's effect was already doing something subtle, not a dramatic surge, but a steady easing in his limbs, as if his body was finally allowed to recover instead of just endure.
He hated it, because it meant he was going to be late.
He also couldn't deny that without it, he might not have been able to walk at all.
Soren closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, the light in the chamber looked different, slightly dimmer, as if the outside sun had shifted.
A cold spike of worry slid under his ribs.
He sat up too quickly and regretted it immediately, dizziness washing over him.
'No. No, don't do that.'
He rubbed his face with both hands, grimacing when the cuts stung, then pushed himself to his feet slowly, carefully, waiting for the tremor in his legs to settle enough that he could trust them.
He grabbed his cloak from his bag, hesitated, then put it on anyway, because whatever was waiting outside would be worse than discomfort.
He took one last look at the little tree, the grass, the empty branch where the Starfruit had hung, and then he turned toward the cave mouth, because the forest wasn't going to care that he was tired.
And he wasn't going to forgive himself if he died after succeeding.
By the time he squeezed back out through the hidden seam in the rock face, pushing aside hanging ferns and wet vines, the sky hit him like a slap.
Orange.
Not sunset yet, but close enough that the light had weight, stretching shadows long between the trees, making the forest look deeper, thicker, like it was already preparing for night.
Soren froze, stomach dropping so hard it felt hollow.
"Shit, shit, fuck, shit, fuck!"
He wanted to yell at his past self, for resting, for spacing out, for letting his body win, but his body had needed it, and there was no time to argue with himself now.
'I need to hurry back.'
He started moving immediately, steps hurried at first, then forced into something more careful when his foot caught on a root and his ankle jolted with pain.
The forest had not become easier just because he was panicking.
If anything, panic made it worse, because it made him careless, and carelessness out here meant blood.
He checked his map with shaking hands, confirmed the route, then shoved it away and pushed forward, breath already too fast.
The title's recovery effect helped, it did, he could feel his stamina creeping back in small steady increments rather than the dead weight it had been earlier, but it wasn't enough to erase what he had done to himself today, and the moment he tried to run properly, his lungs protested like they might tear.
So he walked fast instead, swallowing fear with every step, praying he wouldn't meet anything else, praying he wouldn't hear another rustle.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
An hour later, night fell anyway.
Not all at once, but in a quiet betrayal, the light thinning between the branches until the forest became a layered darkness, and the sounds changed.
Daytime Rena Forest had been damp and annoying.
Night-time Rena Forest was alive.
Whispers of movement threaded through the undergrowth, rustles that were too deliberate, the faint glint of eyes that vanished the moment he tried to focus, and somewhere deeper, far enough away to make it worse, something let out a low, guttural call that made Soren's spine go cold.
Thanks to his lacklustre preparations, thinking this trip would only take an afternoon, he lacked everything needed for travelling at night.
No light source.
No flares.
No emergency whistle.
Nothing.
And even if he did have light, he knew enough to understand what it would do.
It would make him visible.
It would make him prey.
His only consolation was the thin hope that the guards would have noticed his absence by now, that someone would have reported it, that the academy would send a search party, torches cutting through the woods, knights or professors who could actually fight.
So all Soren had to do was survive long enough to be found.
In theory.
In practice, every step felt like it might be his last.
His body screamed for rest again.
His legs trembled, his lungs ached, and his stomach felt tight with a mixture of hunger and fear.
He couldn't stop.
Even getting a little closer to the academy might make the difference between life and death, and the title's recovery effect gave him just enough to keep going, a slow drip-feed of stamina that stopped his knees from buckling completely.
'Just a bit further... I can rest when they find me.'
He repeated it like a prayer, because the alternative was admitting he had made a mistake big enough to kill him.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
He didn't know exactly how much time passed on the return trip, because the forest made time meaningless, but eventually he noticed something that made his heart lurch.
Torchlight.
Flickers in the distance, moving between trunks, sometimes disappearing entirely behind hills and dense shrubs, then reappearing.
A search party.
Relief hit so hard it nearly made him cry.
Then fear immediately followed, because relief made him sloppy, and he couldn't afford sloppy, not out here, not at night.
At this point, Soren gave up on speed entirely, crouch-walking instead, lowering his profile, stepping carefully, placing his boots down slowly to avoid snapping twigs, because if something found him now, if something attacked between him and those torches, he didn't know if he could hold a spell again.
"Huff… huff…"
His breath sounded loud in his own ears, and he hated it, tried to swallow it down, tried to breathe through his nose instead, but his lungs wouldn't cooperate.
He wanted to collapse.
Every muscle begged him to stop, his vision swimming with exhaustion, and there was a terrifying moment where he realised if he stayed still for more than a few seconds, his body might just… refuse to start again.
But he couldn't stop.
He couldn't.
'How stupid would it be, to get transmigrated into your favourite game only to die before the first act had even ended?' he thought, bitter even now.
Spite kept him moving.
Pride kept him moving.
The thin thread of wanting to live kept him moving.
Each step felt heavier than the last, his knees wobbling on every uneven patch of ground, his hands numb with cold and fatigue.
'I'm fine,' he told himself. 'I'll make it.'
He repeated the words, not because he believed them, but because he needed something to anchor to, something to stop his mind from snapping in half.
Snap!
His blood ran cold so fast it felt like ice poured through his veins.
'Please no…'
He froze, every muscle locking, then slowly lowered himself to the ground, pressing into mud and wet leaves, trying to make himself small, trying to become part of the forest.
[Keuuurk?]
Rustle, rustle.
[Keraak?]
Sniff, sniff.
Soren didn't move.
He barely breathed, lungs held tight until his chest hurt.
Silence stretched.
Then… slow footsteps.
Not human.
Too light in some places, too heavy in others, uneven like something dragging claws through soil.
Soren waited for what felt like an eternity, eyes wide, staring into darkness he couldn't properly see, ears straining for anything that sounded like armour, like boots, like a human voice calling his name.
The footsteps slowed.
The rustling softened.
For a heartbeat, he thought it was leaving, and the relief made his body twitch like it wanted to bolt toward the torches, to run straight into safety and never stop.
Then he lifted his head just enough to glance around, and locked eyes with something.
A pair of glowing yellow irises stared back at him from less than a few metres away, suspended in the dark like two coins held to a flame.
"…"
His mouth went dry.
[...Keuk?]
It tilted its head, and the motion made the shape behind the eyes shift, goblin-like but bigger, broader, something that understood the forest better than he ever could.
Soren froze for a fraction of a second too long, then panic hit, sharp and mindless, and his hands moved before his brain could stop them.
He began forming a magic circle.
The brown circuit flared into existence with a low hum.
Wooooonggg—
The light spread out, gentle at first, then bright enough to illuminate the mud, the wet leaves, the creature's grin, and the fact that he had just announced his location to every predator within eyesight.
Soren's stomach dropped into freefall.
'No. No, no, no—'
He desperately shattered the magic circle, forcing the mana to collapse, but the afterimage of light lingered, and the creature's eyes didn't blink.
It had seen him.
Worse, it had understood what he had done.
[Keuurk!!]
More movement answered the call, branching from the darkness like rot spreading through wood.
[Kekurk.]
Soren's heart hammered so hard it hurt.
He lurched to his feet, mud sucking at his boots, and turned to run toward the distant torches, because they were his only chance, because he didn't have time to hide again, because…
As he moved, the torchlight flickered between trunks, closer than it should have been, low to the ground, bobbing in a strange, uneven rhythm, and something in his exhausted brain finally clicked into place.
Those weren't steady human torches.
They were too scattered, too jittery, too… wrong, like fire held by hands that didn't know how to hold it properly.
A shape darted past one flame, green skin catching the glow for a split second, and Soren's breath caught.
His eyes widened, horror blooming slow and undeniable as the "search party" resolved into reality, not knights, not professors, not salvation, but goblins with stolen torches, prowling in packs, the light he had been chasing nothing more than bait.
For a moment, the realisation was so absurd it hollowed him out.
A thin, broken sound slipped from his throat, halfway between disbelief and despair.
"Heh…"
A hollow laugh, empty of humour, the kind you make when the world has already decided you're a joke.
And then the chime cut through the chaos, crisp and familiar, stealing his attention for a fatal second.
Ting-♪
.
▶ Quest Received! ◀
————「❤︎」————