Time in the Night Shed Forest was a strange, fluid concept. The bioluminescent canopy offered no true sunrise or sunset, just a perpetual cycle of dim, ethereal green and deep, suffocating violet. But the System's internal clock was absolute.
Twenty-eight days had passed.
It had been a cruel, grueling month. The Cataclysmic threat level of the zone wasn't just a fancy title; it was a promise. As the days ticked by, the monsters grew bolder, larger, and significantly more lethal. They had faced packs of Iron-Bristle Wolves, fought off swarms of Cataclysmic bugs, and barely survived another encounter with the gargantuan bird when they ventured too close to the stream.
Through the blood, the sweat, and the constant adrenaline, they had adapted. Sam was no longer the soft, average boy from the Academy. His body had leaned out, his muscles hardening under the constant strain of survival.
And Lumi… Lumi had changed, too.
Her unyielding stubbornness had slowly eroded, ground down by the harsh reality of their existence. Her aristocratic pride was wearing dangerously thin. She still complained—she was Lumielle Silverwyn, after all—but the complaints lacked their old venom. She didn't even complain about the dirt anymore, having fully accepted her ruined, mud-stained dress.
But one thing hadn't changed at all. Her sleeping habits. She still clung to him every single night like a lifesaver in a frozen ocean, completely ignoring his daily complaints about his dead arm.
Now, only two days remained until the trial concluded.
They were sitting near the cave entrance, gnawing on a piece of tough dried meat.
'Something feels wrong,' Sam thought, his sharp gray eyes scanning the quiet, violet-tinted forest.
He chewed the meat slowly, a deep sense of unease pooling in his gut. The Principal's speech echoed in his mind. The First Trial was supposed to be a brutal forge, meant to test the limits of human potential. But despite the danger of the monsters, Sam hadn't felt truly pushed to the brink. His mission was simple: survive.
But it felt too simple. The DreamScape wasn't known for being simple. It was known for shattering perceptions of reality. Was this it? Just hiding in a cave?
'There must be some catch,' Sam frowned, resting his chin on his hand. 'Or is there something else that's going to happen?'
As if the world itself had heard his internal conflict and decided to answer his question, a low, terrifying rumble vibrated through the air.
*Rumble...*
It wasn't the sound of thunder. It wasn't the roar of a Cataclysmic beast. It felt like the very tectonic plates beneath the Night Shed Forest were grinding together.
Sam froze. Lumi stopped chewing, her amber eye widening.
The rumble intensified, transforming into an earth-shattering tremor. The ground beneath them began to heave.
"Get out!" Sam yelled, dropping his food.
He grabbed Lumi's hand and hauled her to her feet.
They scrambled out of the narrow entrance, bursting into the dense brush just as the entire rock face collapsed in on itself, burying their makeshift camp beneath tons of rubble.
But their relief was brutally short-lived.
The earthquake wasn't localized to the cave. The entire forest was shaking. The colossal trees, which had stood for millennia, were swaying violently. Their massive roots tore out of the ground with deafening snaps.
Sam and Lumi stumbled, losing their balance as the ground cracked beneath them. They fell to their knees in the damp moss, desperately trying to stay upright.
And then, Sam looked up.
The reason behind the earthquake wasn't a natural disaster. It was standing right in front of them, miles away, yet taking up the entire horizon.
It was a monster. But calling it a monster felt like a profound insult to the word.
Sam's jaw went completely slack. The breath was stolen right out of his lungs.
Its lower body was as massive as a mountain range, covered in impossibly thick, shifting scales that glowed with a sickening, pulsating red light. Its tail alone, sweeping lazily behind it, looked to be hundreds of kilometers long, carving massive, jagged canyons into the earth with every movement.
But that wasn't the terrifying part.
The terrifying part was that Sam couldn't see its head.
The monster's upper body stretched impossibly high into the sky, tearing right through the dense canopy and vanishing into the thick cloud cover above. It was so colossal that it might have literally breached the planet's atmosphere.
For the first time since he had crossed the threshold of the DreamScape, Sam finally, truly understood the meaning of the word 'Cataclysm'.
This wasn't an animal. It was a walking extinction event. It was an Executioner, summoned into the world to wipe the slate clean.
*Whoosh!~*
The monster took a single, slow step forward.
The air pressure displaced by the movement was devastating. A physical wall of force slammed into the forest. The giant trees were flattened instantly, snapping like dry twigs under the invisible weight of the beast's presence.
[Ding!]
[WARNING! WARNING!]
[Entity Identified: The World-Serpent, Jörmungandr (Fragment)]
[Threat Level: APOCALYPTIC]
[Survival Probability: 0.00001%]
Sam stared at the interface. His mind blanked. APOCALYPTIC. The System didn't even bother giving it a Cataclysmic rating. The survival probability wasn't even a full percent.
Suddenly, he felt a frantic, trembling grip on his arm.
He snapped his head to the side. Lumi was staring up at the impossible titan, her face completely drained of blood. Her glowing amber eye was blown wide with pure, unfiltered terror.
She looked at him. She didn't say a word. She didn't issue a command. Her grip on his arm was just a desperate, silent plea.
Sam's survival instinct, honed over the last month, kicked in, overriding his shock.
There was no strategy here. There was no weak point to hit with a knife. There was absolutely no way the current them could fight something that used mountains as stepping stones.
"Run," Sam choked out.
He tightened his grip on her hand, pulled her to her feet, and they ran.
They didn't run tactically. They didn't care about noise or leaving tracks. They sprinted with everything they had, plunging blindly into the shaking, collapsing forest, desperately trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the end of the world.
They didn't waste time in thinking, they didn't even have enough time to waste, the apocalypse was already behinds them, If they waste a single second in thinking, then they will just have to brace themselves to be Crushed just by the pressure created from the Apocalyptic Monster.