The forest had changed.
Or perhaps, Aryan had.
Before entering the fissure, the Planet-404 jungle had felt like a chaotic, hungry beast. Now, as he stepped out into the humid night, it felt... calculated.
The bioluminescent ferns didn't just glow; they formed paths. The howls in the distance didn't sound random; they sounded like herds being moved.
Aryan gripped the hilt of his broken machete. His ribs ached with a dull, manageable throb—a constant reminder of the raw Beast Core he had consumed.
[ Control Stability: 89% ]
The number hovered in the corner of his vision, a constant red warning. The vertigo was gone, but the feeling of being watched remained. It was as if a second set of eyes was overlapping with his own.
He moved silently, using the mud to mask his scent. His destination was Outpost-9, the nearest Human Safe Zone.
According to the map in his head, it was two kilometers north. A beacon of hope for any survivor.
But the leather-bound book burning a hole in his pocket called it something else.
A Farm.
"Let's see who's lying," Aryan whispered.
He didn't walk on the main trail. He stuck to the shadows, moving through the thick undergrowth, ignoring the stinging nettles that brushed against his arms.
Thirty minutes later, he saw the lights.
Huge, halogen floodlight towers cut through the purple fog, creating a dome of artificial safety. The walls were made of reinforced steel, salvaged from colony ships, standing twenty feet high. From a distance, it looked like paradise.
Aryan crouched behind a thick, twisted root, observing the North Gate.
A group of survivors—about ten of them—were huddled before the massive steel doors. They looked worse than Aryan. Bloody, starving, terrified. Some were missing limbs.
"Please!" one man shouted, holding a limp woman in his arms. Her skin was turning green from neurotoxin. "She's poisoned! We have credits! We have raw materials!"
The guards on the wall didn't move. They were wearing standard-issue Colony Armor, clean and polished, shimmering with faint mana barriers.
One of them, a man with a jagged scar running down his cheek, stepped forward to the railing. He didn't look at the dying woman. He looked at the scanner in his hand.
"Entry Fee has been updated," the guard announced, his voice amplified by the helmet speakers. "50 Beast Cores. Or equivalent value in undistributed loot."
"Fifty?!" the survivor screamed, his voice cracking. "Last week it was ten! This is extortion!"
The guard shrugged. "Supply and demand. The swarm is active tonight. Safety is expensive."
"We don't have fifty," the man wept, falling to his knees. "Please. She's dying. Just let her in!"
The guard signaled to the tower.
Click.
The floodlights shifted away from the group. One second, they were bathed in light; the next, they were plunged into absolute darkness.
"Then die outside," the guard said coldly. "Strict orders. No parasites allowed inside the silo."
The heavy steel gates groaned but didn't open.
The survivors banged on the metal, screaming, begging. But then, the screaming changed pitch.
From the treeline behind them, shadows moved.
Snarl.
Scavenger Hyenas.
They hadn't been hunting. They had been waiting. They knew the routine. When the lights went out, dinner was served.
The guards on the wall watched. They had rifles. They had mana spells. They could have wiped out the hyenas in seconds.
They didn't.
One of the guards on the wall lit a cigarette, the orange ember glowing in the dark as he leaned over the railing to watch the slaughter below.
"Looks like a fresh batch tonight," the guard muttered to his colleague, his voice carrying over the wind. "Let the Hyenas eat. We'll collect the leftover cores in the morning."
Aryan, hidden in the bushes fifty meters away, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the rain.
Entry 2: "The Safe Zone is not safe. It is a farm. And we... we are the crops."
The Codex wasn't poetic. It was literal.
The guards weren't protecting people. They were filtering them.
Those who could pay were customers.
Those who couldn't were fertilizer for the beasts—which the guards would then hunt later for easy profit.
It was an ecosystem. And humans were just another link in the food chain.
'Beautiful, isn'tit?'
The King's voice slithered into Aryan's ear, dripping with dark amusement.
'They feed the weak to the beasts. The beasts grow stronger. Then they kill the beasts. Efficient. Brutal. This is how empires are built, boy. Not with charity. With corpses.'
Aryan watched the massacre. He watched the man with the dying woman get torn apart by jaws that snapped bone like twigs.
He didn't look away.
He didn't try to save them.
He felt sick, yes. But he also felt a cold clarity settling in his chest.
If he went down there now, begging for entry, he would be dead in ten seconds.
He was F-Rank. Broken weapon. No credits.
He wasn't a survivor to them. He was feed.
"I can't go in through the front gate," Aryan realized.
He looked at the towering walls. Then, his eyes drifted down to the river that ran alongside the outpost. Large drainage pipes jutted out from the side of the base, spewing filth and waste into the forest water.
It was filthy. It was dangerous. It was likely trapped.
But it was a blind spot.
'The sewer?' The King scoffed, his tone shifting from amusement to disgust. 'How undignified. A King does not crawl through human filth.'
Aryan touched the hilt of his machete, his eyes locking onto the dark, sludge-filled pipe.
"A King doesn't," Aryan whispered back. "But a monster will."
He turned away from the dying screams at the gate and slipped into the black water of the river. The cold sludge hit him immediately, smelling of chemicals and rot.
He wasn't going to pay the entrance fee.
He was going to break in.
And once he was inside... he was going to burn their "Farm" down.
A blue window flickered in the darkness.
[ SYSTEM ALERT ]
[ New Objective: INFILTRATION ]
[ Location: Outpost-9 Drainage System ]
[ Success Reward: Access to Outpost-9 Black Market ]
[ Failure Consequence: Death ]
Aryan smirked, wiping mud from his face.
"Fair trade."
He took a deep breath and submerged himself into the pipe.