Branches whipped my face as I crashed through the trees.
Leaves slapped against my cheeks, twigs clawed at my arms, damp earth slid under my shoes. My breath came in ragged, desperate gasps that tore at my throat. Every inhale burned; every exhale felt like it scratched my lungs raw.
Behind me, something enormous plowed through the forest.
Thud.
The ground trembled.
Thud.
Bark exploded as a trunk snapped, the crack so loud it might as well have been right next to my ear. A hail of splinters rattled through the undergrowth, a few sharp enough to sting where they cut my skin.
The monster roared again.
Up close, it sounded worse. The first roar in the clearing had been a distant thunderclap. This one was right on my heels—deeper, wetter, a sound with weight. It rumbled through the air, through the soil, through my bones, shaking something primitive loose inside my chest.
Run.
My legs pumped harder. My vision tunneled. The forest became a smear of brown and green and shadow, broken only by the flashes of exposed roots and rocks threatening to trip me.
Wind rushed past my ears, filled with the scent of crushed plants and that heavy, rotting stink rolling off the creature like heat.
I had no weapon. No armor. Just a thin convenience store uniform and a pair of cheap sneakers already sliding in the dirt.
"What kind of tutorial is this?" I rasped between breaths, the words ripping at my throat.
The System didn't answer.
My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. Each step jostled it against my ribs like it was trying to break free. My calves screamed. A dull ache started in my right side, sharpening with every desperate inhale until it felt like a knife twisting just under my ribs.
I didn't dare look back.
I could feel it there. The way the trunk behind me snapped a fraction of a second after I passed it. The way the ground shook a heartbeat later. The guttural huff of its breath, closer with every stride.
I needed cover. Distance. Anything.
The trees broke for a moment ahead, revealing a slight dip in the terrain—a shallow gully choked with ferns and low bushes. To the left, the ground sloped upward toward a cluster of thicker, older trees with tangled roots.
Left.
Higher ground meant a chance to dodge. To maybe get behind something the monster couldn't simply crush.
I angled toward the slope.
My foot hit a patch of loose soil.
For one awful, weightless instant, there was no grip under my shoe—only sliding earth.
I skidded sideways. My ankle twisted with a white-hot flare of pain. My shoulder slammed into a tree trunk hard enough to make my teeth clack together. The world lurched.
Pain screamed up my leg, sharp and electric.
I barely managed to catch myself on the rough bark, fingers scraping against the ridges. My vision blurred for a second, stars swimming at the edges.
Don't fall. Don't fall.
I pushed off the trunk and stumbled forward, half-running, half-limping up the slope. Every step sent another bolt of agony up from my ankle. The gully to my right fell away, promising twisted bones if I slipped.
Behind me, the monster crashed through another line of trees.
Thud. Thud. THUD.
The ground heaved like a drumhead under a pounding fist.
A broken branch whipped across my back, tearing a line of fire through my shirt. I hissed, more out of shock than pain, and forced my legs to move faster.
A flicker of red flashed at the edge of my vision.
A translucent bar had appeared in the corner of my sight, filling and emptying in rapid jerks—each exhale shaved off a chunk of green-yellow color.
[STAMINA: 23%]
Only now?
Dark spots danced in my vision. My lungs burned, every breath a knife.
Ahead, the slope leveled briefly before dipping into another cluster of trees. One of them had fallen, creating a low, angled trunk between two still-standing giants. For a crazy second, the idea hit me:
Climb.
Get up. Get out of reach. Make it go around. Buy time.
Behind me, the monster roared again, so close I could feel the vibration on my spine.
No time to think.
I veered toward the fallen trunk and grabbed at the rough surface, fingers digging into damp moss and splintered wood. My abused ankle howled as I pushed off the ground, dragging myself up.
My chest scraped against the bark. The trunk groaned under my weight. For a heartbeat, balanced on my elbows and knees, I felt almost above it all. Leaves rustled under me like waves.
Then the monster hit the tree.
Not the fallen one I was on.
The one holding it up.
A tidal wave of force slammed into the forest. Bark screamed. A deafening crack split the air as the supporting tree exploded into splinters.
The trunk beneath me lurched, then dropped.
I had just enough time to think—Oh—
Then the world flipped.
I crashed down with the tree. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs again in a ragged grunt. The air filled with dust and pulverized wood. A branch stabbed into my side like a spear; another clipped my cheek, hot blood spraying across my face.
Something else hit the ground a heartbeat later.
A massive paw slammed down where my legs had been a moment before, claws gouging furrows through the fallen trunk and deep into the soil. The sound was a sickening mix of tearing wood and tearing earth.
The creature's breath gusted over me, hot and wet and thick with that rancid meat smell. It was close enough that I could feel the heat of its body radiating through the shattered wood.
I tried to roll away.
My ankle screamed. My ribs protested. Every part of me felt slow, heavy, useless.
Fear had eaten my strength faster than running ever could.
The monster's head swung down.
Up close, its eyes weren't just pale—they were almost colorless, milky pools with a pinprick of hateful light in the center. Its jaw opened, strings of saliva stretching between those jagged teeth. A low growl vibrated the air as it focused on me, like a predator savoring the end of a chase.
I threw my arms up on instinct, as if my bare forearms could somehow block that mouth.
A tiny line of text appeared in front of me, absurdly calm.
[HP: 100 → 57]
"Wh—"
The teeth hit.
White-hot agony exploded through my world as those jaws clamped down on my torso. For a split second, my bones held. Then they didn't.
I heard it.
A wet, muffled crunch, like someone stepping on a bag of broken glass soaked in mud.
My scream ripped my throat raw, high and thin and animal. My vision went white, then red, then shattered into a mad kaleidoscope of trees and teeth and the underside of the monster's jaw as it lifted me off the ground.
Pain didn't feel like a signal anymore. It felt like the only thing that existed.
[HP: 57 → 3]
I felt my spine give way. Felt something sharp punch out through my back. My hands scrabbled uselessly at the creature's snout, nails ripping, leaving nothing but faint streaks on its bone plates.
Blood filled my mouth, hot and coppery and thick. I choked on it when I tried to breathe.
For a flicker of time, in between waves of agony, a stupid thought surfaced:
So this is it.
I'd wanted strength. I'd thought picking Hard meant I could have it.
And in the very first minute of my very first "lesson," I was dying in a monster's mouth, miles away from my sister, in a world that wasn't mine.
The System's voice was almost gentle.
[HP: 3 → 0]
[You have died.]
The world snapped off.
No falling. No fading.
One second I was screaming inside a monster's jaws; the next, there was nothing.
No light. No sound. No body. No breath.
Just… awareness. A pinprick of self floating in an endless, suffocating quiet.
I tried to gasp and realized I had no lungs. I tried to move and realized I had no limbs. Panic rose, enormous and formless, battering at the boundaries of my mind.
"—not dead, am I?" I tried to say, but there was nothing to speak with. My thoughts echoed back at me, thin and distant.
The System found me there.
[Hard (Solo) – Infinite Tutorial]
Death Count: 1
Penalty: Pain retention, mental strain. No stat loss.
Resurrection in: 00:00:10
Numbers ticked down somewhere I couldn't point to.
00:00:09
00:00:08
The memory of the teeth, the crunch, the way my ribs had collapsed inward, replayed itself in perfect, brutal detail. The pain didn't fade. There was no shock to numb it, no body to anchor it. It was just a scar burned into my mind, as fresh as the moment it happened.
I wanted to flinch away from it and had nowhere to go.
00:00:03
00:00:02
00:00:01
[Resurrection initiated.]
Heat and cold slammed into my awareness at once, like being plunged into boiling water and ice at the same time. Pressure wrapped around me, compressing, shaping. Sensation flooded back in disjointed fragments—air on skin, grass beneath my fingers, the dull ache of muscles that had just been crushed and were suddenly whole again.
My chest heaved.
I sucked in a breath so sharp it felt like my lungs might tear.
I was lying on my back in the clearing.
The same clearing.
The sky was still that impossible violet, the two moons still watching. The ring of trees stood unbroken, no splintered trunks, no gouges in the earth. The grass around me was undisturbed.
No blood. No fallen tree. No monster.
For a long moment, I stared straight up, every muscle locked.
My heart thudded against my ribs in a slow, heavy rhythm. My hands shook where they lay against the ground. Sweat chilled on my skin despite the mild air.
The taste of blood clung to my tongue. Phantom pain flickered in my ribs whenever I tried to breathe too deeply.
"I… died," I whispered.
Saying it made it real in a way the crunch of breaking bone hadn't.
A familiar blue pane eased into existence above me.
[Welcome to the Tutorial.]
Instance: #000 – Infinite
Mode: Hard+
Time Dilation: 1 : ?
Objective: Survive until Clearance.
[Basic Interface Unlocked.]
Commands available: Status, HP Bar, Stamina Bar.
Infinite.
The word sank in a little deeper this time.
Not just hard. Not just lethal.
Infinite.
"Status," I said, voice hoarse.
The System obeyed.
[STATUS]
Name: Aiden Kwon
Level: 1
Class: None
HP: 100 / 100
Stamina: 100 / 100
Attributes:
Strength: 7
Agility: 8
Endurance: 9
Intelligence: 10
Perception: 9
Willpower: 11
Luck: 5
Skills: None
Titles: [Tutorial Candidate – Hard+]
Special Instance: #000 – Infinite (Calibrating…)
Pathetic.
I'd half-hoped for some hidden bonus, some little "Thanks for dying horribly, here's a gift." But my numbers were barely above what I'd imagine for a normal person.
No sword techniques. No magic. No dodge roll.
Just me.
And a respawn counter that hadn't shown itself yet… because there wasn't one.
No lives remaining. No limit.
Just Death Count: 1, tucked in the corner like an afterthought.
A twig snapped at the edge of the clearing.
The sound was quiet compared to the monster's earlier rampage, but my whole body jolted like someone had fired a gun next to my ear. My heart leapt into my throat.
The trees shivered.
A heavy, familiar rhythm rolled through the soil. Thud. Thud. Thud.
My breath hitched.
It was happening again.
Of course it was. The trees weren't broken. Nothing was disturbed. The tutorial had reset, just like a game level.
But I hadn't.
Every nerve remembered the feel of those teeth crushing my chest. My mind replayed the snapshot of milky eyes and jagged jaw with sickening clarity.
My hands curled into fists in the grass.
Run?
That was what the "lesson" said.
But running blindly had gotten me killed inside a minute.
If this place was truly infinite… if I could die and wake up here forever…
Then I couldn't afford to just run until I collapsed and let it happen again and again and again.
I pushed myself up, legs shaking, and turned toward the treeline where the sound was coming from.
Leaves rustled.
The ground trembled.
Fear clawed up my spine, cold and sharp. My body wanted to bolt, to curl up, to do anything but face what was coming.
I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
"I get it," I whispered, more to convince myself than the watching sky. "Lesson one isn't just run."
I swallowed, my throat clicking.
"It's learn fast… or stay here forever."
The trees at the edge of the clearing shuddered.
And the monster stepped through the shadows once more.