Day 2
Turns out, surviving one night in Shadowfen doesn't mean the swamp suddenly decides you're cool. If anything, it doubles down.
I woke with my entire body screaming in protest, muscles I didn't know I had were staging a revolt against muscles I definitely remembered having. My new demon body was stronger than my human one had been, sure, but that didn't mean it appreciated being wedged into a tree hollow for eight hours.
"Note to self," I groaned, extracting myself with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, "find actual shelter. Something horizontal. Maybe with a roof that isn't actively rotting."
The System cheerfully pinged:
[DAILY QUEST: DON'T DIE TODAY EITHER]
[BONUS OBJECTIVE: FIND FOOD THAT WON'T KILL YOU]
[REWARD: CONTINUED EXISTENCE]
"Your motivational skills need work," I told it.
The morning was thick with mist that clung to everything, turning the world into a watercolor nightmare. I could barely see ten feet in any direction, which my newly acquired Survival Instinct informed me was "suboptimal for not being ambushed."
Helpful. Terrifying. Accurate.
I started moving, trying to remember everything I'd absorbed from those survival shows I'd binged during my year of aggressive avoidance. Water, I needed clean water. Food, something that wouldn't immediately poison me. Shelter, something better than a tree corpse.
The first two hours were an education in humility.
I tried to climb a tree to get my bearings. Made it about six feet before my claws lost their grip and I fell directly into a puddle of something that was definitely not water. The System identified it as "Corruption Residue - Mildly Toxic." My HP dropped by 10 points, and I spent the next twenty minutes coughing up what tasted like battery acid and regret.
I attempted to fashion a spear from a fallen branch. Broke three branches. Nearly stabbed myself in the foot. Eventually created something that looked less like a weapon and more like a very aggressive stick.
I found berries. Bright purple, clustered on a bush that seemed normal enough. Survival Instinct pinged a warning half a second before I ate one. The System informed me they were "Duskberries - Edible for Demons, Causes Explosive Diarrhea in Humans."
"Good to know my new digestive system comes with exciting features," I muttered, eating a handful anyway because I was starving.
They tasted like blackberries mixed with pennies. Not great. Not fatal. I'd take it.
Day 3
Found water. Or rather, found a stream that looked less immediately deadly than the glowing purple swamp water.
I knelt at the edge, cupped my hands, careful of the claws, and drank. It was cold, slightly mineral-tasting, and after a few minutes of not immediately dying, I decided it was probably safe.
The System agreed:
[RESOURCE IDENTIFIED: FRESHWATER STREAM] [QUALITY: ACCEPTABLE] [SURVIVAL INSTINCT +1]
"Look at me, leveling up by not poisoning myself. Living the dream."
I spent the rest of the day following the stream, figuring it would eventually lead somewhere useful. Or at least somewhere different. The swamp all looked the same: twisted trees, standing water, sounds of things dying in the undergrowth.
My Survival Instinct kept pinging warnings: Dangerous territory ahead. Predator nearby. That plant will eat you.
I was starting to understand why my survival probability had been 12%. This place didn't just want to kill you; it wanted you to know it could kill you, slowly, in creative ways, whenever it felt like it.
Around midday, I found my first authentic meal.
A Marshfang Serpent, about four feet long, sunning itself on a rock. Level 3, according to the System. Venomous. Aggressive when threatened.
My stomach growled loud enough to echo.
"Sorry, buddy," I said, gripping my terrible spear. "It's you or me, and I've already died once this week."
The fight was ugly, graceless, and way too close. The serpent was fast, way faster than I expected. It lunged, I dodged badly, it bit my arm (HP -25), I screamed and stabbed wildly with the spear, missed, stabbed again, missed again, finally caught it through the body on the third try.
It thrashed. I held on. My claws dug into the rock. The serpent's tail whipped around and caught me across the face (HP -15), and I tasted blood, my own, salty and wrong.
Finally, finally, it stopped moving.
[COMBAT COMPLETE: MARSHFANG SERPENT DEFEATED]
[+85 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 3]
I collapsed next to the corpse, panting, bleeding, and absolutely disgusting.
"This is the worst hunting trip ever," I gasped.
But I had food. Real food. Meat.
I'd watched enough survival shows to know you could eat snake. I'd never actually done it, but desperate times and all that.
I used my claws to skin it, messy, inefficient, but functional. Cut the meat into strips. Found two rocks that looked flat enough to use as a makeshift cooking surface.
Then I stared at the raw meat and had a thought that should've occurred to me earlier.
"Do demons eat raw meat?" I asked the air.
The System, bless its snarky little heart, pinged:
[DEMON PHYSIOLOGY: CAPABLE OF CONSUMING RAW MEAT]
[RECOMMENDED: COOK IT ANYWAY, YOU'RE NOT THAT DESPERATE YET]
"Judgmental much?"
I managed to start a fire using the friction method, took me an hour and cost me most of the skin on my palms (which healed weirdly fast, I noted), but eventually I had flames.
The cooked snake tasted like chicken if chicken had been dipped in swamp water and disappointment. But it was protein, and I was alive, and for the first time since waking up in this nightmare, I felt something almost like accomplishment.
Day 5
I found what would become my base camp almost by accident.
The stream I'd been following opened into a small clearing, maybe thirty feet across, with relatively solid ground and a massive dead tree at the center. Not dead-rotting like the one I'd hidden in the first night, but dead-solid, like it had been petrified by some ancient magic.
The tree had a natural hollow about eight feet up, accessible if you didn't mind some creative climbing. Big enough for me to squeeze into. Defensible. Hidden.
Perfect.
I spent the next two days turning it into something livable. Used my claws to carve handholds in the trunk. Wove branches and broad leaves into a makeshift roof over the hollow's opening. Collected moss, the kind that wasn't actively trying to eat me, to make a sleeping surface that didn't feel like lying on rocks.
It was crude. It was barely functional. It was mine.
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MAKESHIFT HOME]
[SKILL GAINED: BASIC CRAFTING (LV. 1)]
[SURVIVAL INSTINCT +1]
I sat in my new hollow as the sun set, watching the swamp transform from dangerous to absolutely lethal, and felt something I hadn't expected.
Pride.
Pathetic, maybe. But I'd survived five days in a place that had given me a 12% chance. I'd found water, food, shelter. I'd killed something trying to kill me. I'd leveled up twice.
I was still a Level 3 demon in a swamp full of things that could mulch me without trying. But I was alive. Learning. Adapting.
"Not bad for a dead man," I said to the darkness.
The swamp, as always, didn't answer.
But that night, I slept better than I had since Emma died.
Day 7
One week in Shadowfen. Seven days of not dying.
I marked the occasion by nearly dying twice before noon.
The first time was my own fault, I tried to harvest some glowing mushrooms growing on a log and didn't notice the absolutely massive spider hiding underneath until it was crawling up my arm. A "Widow Weaver," Level 6, and absolutely not interested in being friends.
I screamed. Flung it off. Ran.
The spider, demonstrating why it was Level 6, gave chase.
I made it maybe twenty feet before tripping over a root and landing face-first in mud. The spider landed on my back. I felt its legs scrabbling at my shirt, felt something sharp press against my shoulder...
Then something else hit the spider with enough force to send it flying.
I rolled over, gasping, and saw... a goldfish. A goldfish with tiny arms. Floating in midair. Looking extremely pleased with itself.
[CREATURE IDENTIFIED: AERIAL KOI - NEUTRAL]
The goldfish did a little loop-de-loop, blew a bubble at me (which popped and sounded like distant laughter), then drifted away through the trees.
I lay there in the mud, heart hammering, staring at the sky.
"A goldfish," I said to no one. "I was saved by a goldfish with arms. This place makes no sense."
The System pinged:
[WELCOME TO SHADOWFEN]
[WHERE LOGIC COMES TO DIE]
"Yeah. I'm getting that."
The second near-death came an hour later, when I stumbled into what I thought was solid ground and immediately started sinking. Quicksand, or the Shadowfen equivalent, which was somehow worse because it smelled like sulfur and moved.
I only escaped because I managed to grab a low-hanging branch and pull myself out, losing a boot in the process.
By the time I made it back to my hollow, I was covered in mud, minus one boot, and seriously questioning my life choices.
[DAILY QUEST COMPLETE: DIDN'T DIE TODAY]
[BONUS OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: QUESTIONED YOUR EXISTENCE]
[+50 EXP]
"That was a quest objective?"
[SELF-AWARENESS IS IMPORTANT]
Despite everything, the near-deaths, the missing boot, the fact that I'd been saved by a flying goldfish, I found myself laughing as I cleaned the mud off in the stream.
Actually laughing. Not the bitter, hollow sound from the first night, but something real.
I was alive. I was learning. And apparently, Shadowfen had aerial rescue fish.
Things could be worse.