It stood there, glowing faintly at the far end of the platform where the Trial Guardian had once waited. A warped archway of stone and smoke, pulsing with soft, unnatural light.
An invitation.
A promise.
An escape.
But he didn't move.
He sat at the edge of the arena for what felt like hours, knees pulled up to his chest, staring at his own hands. His knuckles were still bruised from where he'd bashed them into iron. Blood crusted his sleeves. The broken dagger rested beside him in silence.
> [HP: 4/20]
> [Status: Minor Fractures | Blood Loss Stabilized]
> [No Hostiles Detected]
> [Exit Available]
He should have left.
But he didn't.
He was afraid of what came next.
That door wasn't safety. It was a new stage. A new hell. He knew that. from the rhythm of this world, from the silence of the system, from the fact that he was still level 1 after everything he'd done.
No experience.
No rewards.
Not even an acknowledgment.
"What kind of world treats effort like that?" he muttered.
He looked around the ruins of the arena.
All the traps he'd laid were gone now.
Reset.
Like none of it had mattered.
Eventually, he stood.
But he didn't approach the door.
Instead, he turned and walked into the forest behind the platform — deeper into the tutorial zone.
Back into the wild.
### Day 1 After the Guardian:
He found a cave. Shallow. Damp. Dry enough to lie in.
He built a fire.
Not because he needed it — there were no monsters nearby — but because he hated the dark.
He sat with his knees drawn up and tried not to sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that blade. Felt his ribs crack again. Heard the wet sound his own lungs had made when they gave out.
He didn't sleep that night.
### Day 2:
He hunted slimes.
Not for experience — he didn't get any — but for food.
Their cores were bitter, but edible. The outer membrane could be boiled into a thick paste.
He made a spear from a stripped branch and a sharpened bone.
His sword was too damaged to use anymore.
He didn't repair it.
He didn't want to.
### Day 3:
A new monster. Larger than anything prior — a six-limbed reptilian brute with obsidian fangs.
He killed it.
Just barely.
His arm shattered from a tail swipe, but he stabbed it through the eye with a spearhead he'd carved from broken armor fragments.
### Day 4
Another.
This one fast.
A thin, hunched beast that moved like water and screamed in his ears — not with sound, but memory.
He parried once, twice—then died.
> [HP: 0/20]
> [You Have Died.]
> [Respawning…]
### Day 5:
He rebuilt the shelter twice.
A storm took it down the first time. Wild animals the second.
He laughed both times.
Not because it was funny.
Because he couldn't cry anymore.
Each day blurred into the next.
He fought.
He bled.
He healed.
But he never leveled.
Not once.
Not after dozens of fights.
He knew this world had swordsmanship. Magic. People stronger than gods.
And he was stuck at level 1, living in the dirt.
He found a training dummy deep in a forest clearing — rotten, forgotten.
He began practicing again.
Form 1: diagonal slash.
Form 2: reverse upward cut.
Form 3: centerline thrust.
The forms came back slowly.
Rusty. But there.
> [Sword Proficiency +0.3%]
> [New Skill Fragment: Centerline Flow]
The system didn't praise him.
But it still recorded him.
That was enough.
A lesser beast attacked his camp.
A boar-type thing. Big tusks. Big teeth.
He tried to kill it with traps. Failed.
Ended up driving a spear through its jaw.
But it tore apart the cave.
Everything he'd built.
Again.
He sat on the ruin and stared at the sky.
Then he laughed.
Then he wept.
Then he screamed into the wind.
No one answered.
He stood.
Rebuilt.
Again.
Somewhere between day 17 and 20, he started to forget how long he'd been there.
He hunted.
He trained.
He healed.
He killed.
He lived.
All on instinct.
Until one day, while cleaning his knife in the stream, he saw his reflection.
And didn't recognize himself.
His hair was longer now, tangled in places. His eyes had dark rings around them. The scar on his neck from the wolf bite still hadn't faded. He looked older. Wilder. Less like a boy and more like an animal pretending to be human.
He didn't flinch at the sight.
He stared.
And for the first time, wondered if he was becoming something else entirely.
Not a hero.
Not a player.
Just a thing that wouldn't die.
### Day 3??
More monsters.
Smarter. Deadlier. Each one learning from his previous fights.
He started setting traps. Creating ambush points. Luring them into dead zones.
Sometimes it worked.
Other times, he died anyway.
> [Death Count: 178]
> [System Note: Passive Combat Memory Expanding…]
> [Emotion Echo Registered – DREAD: 42%]
> [Vow Echo "Refusal to Die" Strengthening]
His mind unraveled slowly.
He stopped naming the days.
His kills became mechanical.
He didn't rest. He didn't eat unless forced.
Every time he saw the door, glowing faintly in the distance, he told himself, "One more kill. Just one more. Then I'll go."
But he didn't.
The system changed again.
> [New Questline: "Proving of the Unbound" – Phase Two]
> [Objective: Defeat Final Tutorial Boss – "The Bound Warden"]
> [Warning: Recommended Level – 20]
> [Your Level: 1]
He laughed when he saw it.
A long, slow laugh that didn't sound right in his throat.
Then he sharpened his blade.
### Day ???
He tracked the Warden for three days before finding its lair.
A cathedral-like ruin built into the mountain, overgrown with vines and silence.
He stepped inside, sword trembling.
The temperature dropped.
Chains lined the walls.
He felt it before he saw it — the overwhelming pressure of a thing that wasn't meant to be bound by any system.
The Warden stepped from the shadows.
Tall as a house. Veiled in armor made of runes and bone. It carried no weapon.
It was the weapon.
Its chains writhed like serpents.
He charged anyway.
He died.
Immediately.
Crushed by one chain before he could move.
He respawned and tried again.
Parried twice. Landed one blow.
Died again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He stopped counting.
He began to see things in the dark.
Started hearing whispers in his own heartbeat.
His body fought before his mind could think.
> [Death Count: 35]
> [Emotion Echo: DREAD 89%]
> [Passive Skill Unlocked – "Instinct Chain Lv. 1"]
> [Title Earned: "Blood Looped"]
> [AUTO-BATTLE: Dormant State Proximity Reached]
Finally, after dozens, hundreds maybe thousands of deaths, he saw the opening.
A flicker of its step.
A falter in its chain pattern.
And he didn't hesitate.
He moved on pure instinct, sliding beneath the chain swipe, climbing the Warden's side like a spider, and driving the shattered remains of his blade between the gaps of its neck armor.
It roared.
And died.
The ruins shook.
Chains cracked and fell away.
The light returned to the sky.
> [Final Boss Defeated – "The Bound Warden"]
> [Tutorial Completion: 100%]
> [New Skill Registered – "Feral Flow Lv. 1 (Passive – Combat Instinct)"]
> [AUTO-BATTLE – Partial Awakening Achieved]
> [System Award: ??? – Deferred Until World Entry]
He stumbled out of the ruin.
Not because he was tired.
But because his body didn't know how to move without fighting anymore.
He returned to the door.
It pulsed.
He stood in front of it.
And this time, he whispered, "Now."
The door opened.
And the world changed.