The night was a long, shuddering crawl through cold and terror. Ali drifted in a haze between shallow sleep and heart-pounding alertness, every rustle, snap, and distant cry jolting him back to a frozen awareness. The leaf-litter insulation was a joke; the damp cold seeped into his marrow. He clutched the flint shard until his fingers went numb.
When the first gray light finally filtered through the canopy, it felt less like a sunrise and more like a reprieve from a sentence. He was stiff, aching, colder than he'd ever been, and his hunger was a sharp, snarling animal in his gut. But he was alive. The 67% had held.
He uncurled slowly, leaves cascading from his hoodie. Every joint protested. He didn't stand, not yet. First, he lay still and listened. The forest's night chorus had faded to a morning murmur—birds, but not the strange, fluting ones from before. These sounded almost normal.
"System," he croaked, his voice raw. "Status. And... the progress on Hiking?"
[Survival Threshold Crossed: Night 1.]
User Status: Alive. Severe fatigue (compounded). Caloric deficit: critical. Hydration: low (morning dew can be licked from leaves). Mild hypothermic symptoms (shivering, sluggish cognition). No new physical injuries.
Skill - Hiking: Current: Level 2, Tier 0 / Rank F- | Lesser. Progress to Level 3: 42%.
Note: Progress slowed significantly due to prolonged immobility and energy conservation mode. Skill growth is tied to active, effective use.
42%. It felt insultingly low after the ordeal. But the System was right—hiding in a hole wasn't hiking.
"If we're moving today," Ali said, forcing his mind to work through the fog, "priorities are: one, find water. Two, find something, anything, I can eat. Three, keep moving toward civilization. Can you... I don't know, scan for edible plants? You have my basic biology knowledge, right?"
[Query: Foraging Protocol.]
Capability: I can cross-reference visual data with your knowledge of Earth flora (berries, nuts, fungi). Warning: This is a different world. Biochemical compatibility is unknown. Probability of identifying truly safe, caloric-dense food without [Botany] or [Local Lore] skills is <10%. Risk of poisoning: high.
Recommendation: Prioritize universal signs: flowing water for drink. For food, look for simple, abundant resources—grubs under logs, bird eggs if a nest is found and abandoned. These carry lower identification risk but higher acquisition difficulty.
Grubs. Eggs. His stomach turned, but the hunger overruled the disgust. "Noted. Next question. The skills. They... make sense, right? They won't just randomly evolve into something useless or weird? A running skill won't suddenly turn into basket weaving?"
[Skill Evolution Clarification.]
Evolution is a response to context, need, and profound change in understanding or capability. [Sprinting] will not become [Basket Weaving]. It may evolve into [Phased Sprint] if you learn to ignore pain barriers, or [Terrain Sprint] if you master running on specific surfaces. It is a branching path rooted in the skill's core function. Random, nonsensical evolution is a corruption, not a progression. Data on corruption triggers is insufficient.
"Okay. Good." He needed things to make sense. The System was the only thing that did. "Next. Magic."
He said the word with a mix of hope and dread.
"Surely this world has magic. And if it does, I should be able to use it, right? You can detect my... mana pool or whatever? My potential? Can you measure that? I get you don't have stat numbers, but you can give me a relative assessment, can't you? Strength compared to an average human back home. Magic capacity. Control. Something."
[Query: Metaphysical Assessment & Quantitative Analysis.]
1. Metaphysical Sensitivity: Scanning... No innate energy matrix (mana core, chi network, etc.) detected within your body beyond baseline bio-electrical activity. This does not mean you cannot use magic; it may mean your 'engine' for it is external (ritual, artifact, pact) or dormant.
2. 'Stat' Approximation (Qualitative):
Physical Strength: Significantly below average untrained human adult. Below average for your age and gender due to chronic lack of conditioning.
Endurance: Very poor. Limited by respiratory and muscular efficiency.
Dexterity: Average. Hand-eye coordination from gaming is a factor, but untrained for physical tasks.
Cognitive Processing (Int/Wis): Pattern recognition is high. Practical wisdom/survival instinct is low. Stress negatively impacts both.
Magical Affinity/Potential: Unknown. No data. You have never attempted magic, and no external source is currently interfacing with you.
Mana Control/Efficiency: N/A. No mana to control.
Conclusion: You possess no exceptional innate attributes. Your advantages are your adaptive mind and my support. Magic is not a current variable in your survival equation.
The assessment was brutally honest. He was weak. He had no magic. He was, in every measurable way, less than average. The truth was a colder shock than the morning air.
"Right," he breathed out, the hope deflating. "Just a guy. With a rock."
A final, nagging inconsistency prickled at him. "One more thing. You keep naming things. 'Oak,' 'beech,' 'flint.' Those are names from my world. There's no way that's what they actually are here, right? Are you just... translating? Using the closest equivalent?"
[Query: Taxonomic Reference.]
Answer: Yes. I am using analogous references from your database for efficient communication. The tree with lobed leaves and rough bark is 'analogous to Quercus (oak).' The stone with conchoidal fracture is 'analogous to flint.' The biological and physical laws appear similar enough for the analogy to hold practical utility. They are not the same species or minerals. This is a functional translation, not an identification. It is a shorthand for 'tree that behaves like X, stone that fractures like Y.'
It made perfect sense. It was another reminder that nothing here was his. Not the trees, not the stones, not the ground he slept on. The System was building a bridge of familiar concepts over a terrifying unknown.
Ali finally pushed himself up onto his knees, then to his feet. The world swam for a moment. He leaned against the great root of his not-oak tree.
"Okay," he said to the gray morning, to the System, to the hollow ache inside him. "New day. Priorities: water, grubs, movement. No magic. No strength. Just... forward."
He pulled the flint shard from his pocket, its edge feeling a little more familiar in his grip. It wasn't a weapon. It wasn't a key. It was a tool for a weak person in a hard world.
He took a first, stiff step out of his root den, leaving the nest of leaves behind. The forest awaited, vast and indifferent. But he had survived the night. That was the first statistic he had beaten.
Now he had to beat the next one.