Hyun Joo stayed by the stream until the light began to tilt toward late afternoon. Water
meant a lot—hydration, noise cover, a place animals would pass through—but it also
meant insects and the chance of something bigger coming to drink while he slept. He kept
thinking about that, the way he'd seen it go in shows: the host crouched, explaining in a
calm voice how water was life, then the camera cutting to fresh paw prints in the mud.
He didn't have a camera crew. He didn't have a knife. He didn't even have a map.
But he had something else—years of watching other people survive.
He used to call it wasting time. Now it felt like a savings account he'd forgotten he had.
"Thank you," he muttered under his breath, and he wasn't sure who he meant—producers,
authors, animators, the obsessive part of himself that kept collecting these scenes like
they were useful.
He needed shelter before he needed answers.
A place to sleep without dying
The first thing he did was pick a site the way he remembered people doing it: not right next
to the water, not at the bottom of a depression that would turn into a cold sink at night, not
under dead limbs that could fall and crack his skull.
He walked along the stream for a while and found a small rise—more of a rounded hill than
a cliff, with a slope that broke the wind and an area where the ground leveled out. It wasn't
perfect, but it had advantages:
The hill would act like a wall on one side.
Water was close enough to reach without wasting energy.
He could see a decent distance between trees—no immediate feeling of being trapped.
He tested the ground with his stick, then his boot. Firm. Not swampy.
He stood still and listened. The forest had its normal noises, but nothing sounded large
nearby. If something came in the night, he wanted enough space to hear it before it was on
him.
He imagined a checklist the way a survival instructor would say it: shelter, water, fire,
food—and in his head, shelter was flashing red.
Fire came with problems. No lighter. No ferro rod. No guarantee he could make it before
dark. Shelter, at least, was just work.
Work he could do.
Two days of building
The first day was mostly gathering. He learned quickly that "gathering materials" in shows
was compressed by editing. In real life, it meant bending and lifting until his hands
cramped and his shoulders felt like they'd been sanded.
He started with a simple lean-to idea because it made sense with the hill: one solid surface
behind him, something slanted in front to block wind and trap warmth. He didn't need a big
structure—big meant more gaps, more labor, more failure points. He needed a tight space
he could crawl into.
He collected long branches first—thumb-thick to wrist-thick—testing them by flexing.
Some snapped with a dry crack. Those were useful too, just not as "beams."
He built a basic frame: two sturdy branches angled from the ground up to rest against the
hill, then a ridge branch laid across to hold shape. He tried to lash them like he'd seen—
vines, thin flexible roots, strips of bark.
The first vine he tried snapped. The second held better. He twisted it, doubled it, wrapped it
again. It wasn't pretty, but when he pushed on the frame, it didn't collapse.
"This is… actually working," he whispered, surprised.
He added more ribs—branches laid close together like a crude skeleton. The closer they
were, the less his roof would sag.
Then came insulation and waterproofing, even if the sky looked fair.
He gathered broad leaves and armfuls of fern fronds, layering them like shingles—bottom
layers first, each new layer overlapping the one below. The idea, he remembered, was to
encourage water to run off rather than leak through. Even without rain, it would cut wind
and help with warmth.
For sealing, he went to the stream and dug at the bank with a flat rock until he found sticky
clay. It clung to his fingers, heavy and cold. He smeared it into the bigger gaps along the
lower edge of the shelter, then pressed leaves into it like reinforcement.
It was messy. It made him look like a child playing in mud. But when he finished, the shelter
felt… more solid. Less like a pile and more like a place.
On the second day he improved it, because he'd slept one night without a proper bed and
realized the ground wanted to take heat from him like it was hungry.
He also realized insects existed here with enthusiasm.
The bed came from another memory—something about getting off the ground, creating an
air layer, and keeping moisture from soaking you. He didn't have rope or nails, so he did
what he could: two longer branches for sides, laid parallel, wedged against rocks and
braced by forked sticks. Then he placed smaller branches across them, perpendicular,
close together like a crude lattice.
It shifted the first time he sat on it.
Hyun Joo adjusted it, jammed a forked stick deeper, and tried again. Better.
For padding, he gathered moss—soft, springy clumps from shaded areas—and piled it
thick. He topped it with dry leaves to keep the moss from clinging to his clothes.
When he finally lay down, he expected discomfort. Instead, it surprised him. The branch
lattice gave a little, the moss cradled his shoulders, and the chill of the earth didn't
immediately seep into him.
He stared at the roof of leaves and clay and listened to the stream.
He wasn't safe.
But he wasn't exposed.
That was something.
Hunger becomes a voice
By the morning of the third day, hunger stopped being a dull ache and turned into a
constant voice in his head.
He'd gone too long without food. He knew that from common sense and from the shows—
energy mattered. Mistakes happened when you were weak. Injuries happened when you
got clumsy.
He'd seen fish in the stream, quick shadows flicking between stones, but fishing meant
time, patience, and some kind of tool. A spear made from a sharpened stick looked simple
until you remembered you had to actually hit a moving target underwater.
He told himself he'd fish later, once he had something in his stomach.
Foraging felt more immediate. Less of a gamble in terms of effort. Find, gather, eat.
Except he didn't know this world.
The plants looked similar to Earth in the lazy way dreams sometimes reuse familiar shapes,
but the details were off. Berries grew in clusters that reminded him of something he'd seen
at a supermarket once, yet the leaves were wrong. Mushrooms sprouted under logs like
little umbrellas, but their gills looked too thick, too… structured.
He walked slowly, scanning the ground and the bushes, using the stick to part grass before
his hands went near anything.
Mushrooms, he remembered, were a common way for desperate people to die.
He gathered anyway—but cautiously. He laid each find on a flat rock near his shelter: a
handful of berries, several mushrooms of different types, some tuber-like roots he dug with
effort, and a few edible-looking greens.
It looked like a meal, if you ignored the part where any of it could be poison.
Hyun Joo crouched by his collection and stared.
A new life. A new body. Twenty-one again.
And he might die because he ate the wrong mushroom like an idiot.
He picked up a small tan mushroom with a smooth cap. It looked harmless. Ordinary.
He held it close, squinting, as if he could force familiarity out of it by staring hard enough.
As he thought that—If only there was a way to know—something flickered at the edge of his
vision.
A tiny window popped into existence above the mushroom in his hand.
It contained a single icon.
An open mouth.
Hyun Joo's breath stopped.
He slowly set the mushroom down and stared at it as though it might explain itself. His
mind raced through every story he'd ever read where a skill awakened at the exact moment
it was needed.
"Is this… telling me to eat it?" he whispered.
He grabbed another mushroom, this one darker, with a faint red tint near the stem. He
stared.
A window appeared.
A skull icon.
He reacted before he even finished processing it—flinging the mushroom away so hard it
tumbled into the ferns.
His heart hammered like he'd almost stepped off a cliff.
"Okay," he said, voice shaking. "Okay. That's… clear."
He didn't trust the relief that washed through him. Relief was dangerous. It made you
careless.
He brought up his status window with a thought, the familiar translucent panel hovering in
front of him.
The numbers were the same. His points still untouched.
But beneath Mag: 5, something flashed softly—like a small button he hadn't noticed
before.
He focused on it.
The symbol expanded into text.
Talent: Appraisal
Hyun Joo stared, then—half hesitant, half desperate—imagined "clicking" it.
A new window unfolded, cleaner and brighter than the others, and for a second he had the
absurd feeling of being welcomed into a theme park.
Welcome to the world of Aetheris!
For joining us as our first inhabitant from Earth, we have given you a random, special Talent.
Please enjoy this world to your heart's content, but always be wary! The world is filled with
much more dangers than your previous world!
He read it twice. Then a third time, slower, like his eyes might have lied the first two times.
Aetheris.
First inhabitant from Earth.
Random special Talent.
His throat tightened. He set the status window aside and put both hands on his knees,
breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth.
A part of him wanted to laugh, because it sounded like a joke. Another part wanted to swear
until his voice broke, because the message was cheerful in the way only something
indifferent could be cheerful. Please enjoy, it said, as if enjoyment were the natural
outcome of being dropped into a wilderness without tools.
"Always be wary," he repeated quietly. "More dangers than Earth."
The words sat in his stomach heavier than hunger.
Appraisal, though…
That would keep him alive.
He looked back at his foraged pile, and now it wasn't a pile of potential death—it was a list
of answers waiting to be asked.
He tested it again, carefully. He picked up a berry and stared.
The mouth icon appeared.
He picked up a different berry—slightly shinier, slightly darker.
Skull.
He dropped it immediately, then scooted back like it might crawl.
"So it's not just 'food' and 'not food,'" he murmured. "It's safe and unsafe."
But how deep did it go? Could it tell him how unsafe? Would it tell him if something was
safe raw versus cooked? Could it identify animals? People? Magic?
And the bigger question—the one that hooked into his nerves—could he improve it? Level it
up? Make it show names, effects, values, anything more than a symbol?
He glanced again at his status screen, at the thirty points like a pile of coins he didn't
understand the currency of.
Before spending any of them, he needed one more thing: to know if this world had a way to
earn more points.
In games, you killed monsters. You leveled up. You completed quests.
In novels, you awakened, trained, suffered, and grew.
In real life… you worked until you broke, and sometimes you still didn't get rewarded.
Hyun Joo looked out through the trees, toward the unknown forest beyond the stream and
his small shelter against the hill. Somewhere out there were the "dangers" the message
mentioned. Somewhere out there might be people, towns, roads, answers.
He looked down at the safe food marked with the mouth icon, and for the first time since
waking up here, he felt something close to cautious optimism—not hope, not yet, but the
ability to see a path.
"I'm not spending points," he decided aloud. "Not until I know if I can get more."
He gathered the safe items into a pile, keeping them separate from anything marked with
the skull. Then he ate slowly, chewing carefully, waiting for his body to reject it.
Nothing happened except warmth spreading in his belly and his hands steadier when he
stood.
He leaned his back against the hill near his shelter and closed his eyes for a moment,
letting the calories turn into clarity.
When he opened them, he looked at the forest like it was a problem he could solve.
He had shelter. He had water. Now he had a Talent that could keep him from poisoning
himself.
Next, he needed to learn the rules of Aetheris—the kind no welcome message would ever
bother to explain.
And if the world wanted him to be wary, then fine.
He would be wary.
He would be patient.
And he would figure out how people here became strong—because he refused to survive by
luck alone.