Lizzy's sense that something was wrong continued the farther she went into the forest. She was surprised that Phantom let her go out on her own, but she wondered briefly if the male could sense her growing anxiety at being cooped up in the den. Look at me, using terms from this world. She smiled softly to herself as she trapsed over fallen trees and through dense foliage.
The identify skill being upgraded was proving to be a great benefit. Now, all she had to do was identify an object and she could get more information from it than she had previously. "Thank you, Hera." She mumbled softly. It was strange to her to be thanking a god that to her had been just a member of a pantheon she had thought was fake. Finding out that gods were real and could very much interact with her and the world around her had not been the greatest shock to her system, but one that she had yet to fully process.
Lizzy's eyes peered through the brush around here, occasionally picking up on an item that she needed to pick up and add to her inventory.
[Beast Shard]
[Grade: Low]
[A red beast shard that seems to have dropped from a squirrel after it died from old age. This beast shard is not very powerful and only has a few points of fire energy stored within the crystal. This item can be traded or used to raise the potential and training of a fire aligned subject.]
The additional information was far more useful than it had any right to be. Lizzy could now see the grade and general description of an item. The ability to use this on other items was causing excitement to rush through her. She was about to step forward towards another section when something shifted in her awareness.
The forest should have been alive.
Lizzy felt the absence of it the moment she stepped over the fallen tree before her. Her boots sank slightly into the damp earth as she stepped beneath the canopy, but the familiar hum of life that normally accompanied wild places never came. No insects buzzed in the shadows. No birds called from the branches. Even the wind seemed reluctant to move between the trees.
Instead, the air tasted wrong.
Her system flickered faintly in the corner of her vision, the notification window sputtering like a candle struggling against a draft.
{Ding}
{Environmental Instability Detected.}
{Scanning for source and resolution.}
The message dissolved before it could finish, the box flickering in waves of blue until it blacked out.
Lizzy frowned.
"That's new," she muttered.
Lizzy hated the place. She had grown used to the constant presence of the system and thrum of noise around her. Here, though, it felt as if everything was inverted. Maybe it was some hidden skill of her class, but she could almost feel a lack of energy seeping into the place around her. It was as if her skill kept reaching for something that wasn't there, fingers brushing empty air.
This place felt like a wound was scratched deep into the earth.
She crouched beside a cluster of ferns and brushed her fingers gently across the leaves. Despite recognizing it as something that she could gather, no identification box popped up over it. Instead, the moment that she touched the leaves, they crumbled into a gray dust that coated the plants around it.
Her stomach tightened in dread.
"This is not natural. Not at all." Lizzy paled, her fingers hastily brushing the dust from them. "This can't be a poison but without my system..." Without her system, what could she do? She had no idea how to use her class aside from with the prompts that the system gave her. She paused, taking a deep steadying breath as she realized that now she would have to learn.
She closed her eyes and reached down into her core. She tried to recall the way her class felt when she used it, the way it stretched and moved through the air like a wave. Lizzy struggled with this step, her class being tied more to relationships and having children than it had been tied to anything physical.
Just as she was growing used to the way the power rippled around her like a current, it stopped. It was as if she had hit a wall or a force that she didn't understand. Her eyes snapped open at the sensation, a shudder passing through her.
A blue flickering filled her vision and she glanced over to see her system attempting to give her an alert.
{Ding}
{Warning: Fertility Flow Disruption Detected. Environmental failure imminent.}
Then the box vanished.
Lizzy exhaled slowly, trying to prevent the fear from over riding her senses. She was on a strange planet, in a strange forest, with her system acting...well...strange.
"Okay, this is all new. Definitely new." She murmured to herself. "Okay, I have to go further into the forest to figure this out. That much is clear."
The deeper she went into the forest, the worse the forest became. The tree trunks that surrounded her twisted unnaturally, bark splitting in long dark scars that were beginning to pulse faintly with a sick purple tint. Lizzy could feel everything now, the pressure beneath the ground as if something larger than she could ever hope to be were screaming in pain.
She stopped suddenly, freezing in place as she heard a soft and hollow sound echoing through the trees.
Were those...hoofbeats? They were slow, measured, and deliberate. The kind of sound you would expect from a horse casually going for a walk through the forest. Lizzy turned towards the sound, alarmed as she realized that a fog had begun to thicken between the trees. The pale mist curled along the floor, swirling around the tree trunks and she felt her heart leap into her throat as she realized that she was in the middle of the woods with no protection and no idea what she was doing without her system.
A shape slowly emerged from the forest, an outline of a horse. But as the light brightened around her, she realized that it wasn't a horse that stood before her.
The stallion was enormous, its coat white as fresh snowfall and gleaming faintly despite the gloom. Muscles shifted beneath its skin with fluid strength, every movement graceful and powerful. And from its brow rose a single spiraled horn.
Lizzy inhaled sharply. "A unicorn?"
The creature's eyes fixed on her.
They were not the gentle eyes of the legends she had read about. They burned with a fierce, ancient intelligence—and something darker beneath it.
Pain.
Then Lizzy noticed the cracks.
The unicorn's horn was fractured, thin black lines running along its elegant spiral like spreading rot. The same dark energy pulsed faintly within those cracks, each flicker sending a ripple of distortion through the surrounding air.
A violently flickering blue screen tried to enter her field of vision.
{Ding}
{Unknown Entity Detected. Cannot Identify.}
"Uhoh." Lizzy said quietly. She did not like the way the blue screen collapsed as if it couldn't stay open. Her system had become almost a motherly figure for her, providing helpful information when it could and guiding her when it couldn't.
The unicorn snorted softly, a plume of silver breath rising into the quickly chilling air. Then the unicorn moved, light exploding around it as its body twisted and shifted. Bone and muscle folded inward, reshaping with a fluid motion that should have been impossible. When the glow faded, a man stood where the stallion had been.
He was tall—easily taller than Lizzy's mate—and built with the same powerful grace she had seen in the unicorn's form. Long silver hair spilled down his back, catching faint glimmers of light as he stepped forward. The horn remained. It curved elegantly from his forehead, though the same dark fractures marred its surface.
His eyes locked onto Lizzy. And the hatred within them was unmistakable.
"So," he said, voice low and rough as gravel. "Another one."
Lizzy blinked. "Another… what?"
"A parasite."
The word struck harder than she expected. "I think we might be starting this conversation on the wrong foot," Lizzy said carefully.
The man laughed bitterly. "You walk through a dying forest and you still pretend ignorance?" Before she could respond, he raised a hand. Power erupted outward.
Lizzy felt it slam into her system like a hammer. Her vision filled with static, a blue screen flickering frantically. It tried to warn her of something as it flashed before it faded, leaving her fully and completely in the dark.
"What did you—" She didn't finish the sentence.
Because he was already moving. The unicorn shifter crossed the clearing in an instant, his speed blurring the air around him. Lizzy barely had time to register the attack before she felt her power react instinctively. She dropped to her knees, barely avoiding the collision as the stallion rushed forward. She didn't have a lot of skills. Many of them were passive and she cursed her luck as she realized that the system had crippled her so that she had to rely on her mates. Her only one being busy with her newborns back at the den.
"Your stolen power fails you here," he said coldly.
"Stolen?" Lizzy snapped.
"You and the others like you." His gaze burned with quiet fury. "Contestants. Breeders. You drain the world and call it strength."
Her heart hammered.
Okay.
So.
Unicorn shifter.
Angry.
Extremely powerful.
And apparently capable of shutting down her system.
Great.
"Look," she said quickly, raising both hands. "I don't know what you think I did—"
"You exist," he interrupted.
But before she could say anything else, her system flickered weakly.
A single broken notification appeared.
{Environmental Instability Escalating}
Then it vanished again.
The unicorn shifter's expression hardened.
"Leave," he said quietly.
His power surged once more, the air around him distorting under its weight.
"Before this forest devours you as well."
Lizzy hesitated.
Because now she was absolutely certain of one thing.
This place wasn't dying naturally.
And the unicorn guardian standing in front of her wasn't the cause.
He was the only thing keeping it alive.