The impact was unlike anything she'd felt. Her passive cut the damage—it had to—but the remaining force still lifted her off her feet. She flew backward, arms flailing, the world a spinning blur of green and gray and sky.
She hit the ground. Rolled. Came up in a crouch, blood streaming from her nose, vision swimming.
The monkey was already there.
The club came down. She dodged left—barely—and the bone shattered the earth where she'd been. She swung a fist at its knee. Connected. The monkey grunted, but didn't fall. Didn't even stagger.
It looked down at her. Something like amusement crossed its face.
Then it hit her again.
This time she saw it coming. Didn't matter. The club caught her in the ribs, lifted her, sent her crashing into a tree trunk. Bark exploded. She fell forward, gasping, feeling bones knit even as they broke.
She pushed up. The monkey was waiting, club resting on its shoulder, head tilted.
Watching.
Jess charged. Screamed. Threw a punch with everything she had.
The monkey stepped aside like it was bored. The club came around again—her back this time. She hit the dirt face-first. Tasted blood and soil.
"Come on," she snarled, pushing up again.
The monkey hit her again.
And again.
Each blow was measured. Precise. Not trying to kill—trying to see how much she could take. The club across her shoulders. The back of her head. Her legs as she tried to stand.
Jess kept getting up. Her regeneration knitted. Her passive blunted. But she couldn't touch it. Couldn't land. Couldn't do anything but absorb and rise, absorb and rise, a sandbag with green skin and stubbornness.
At some point, she realized the monkey had stopped hitting her.
It was standing a few meters away, club lowered, watching her struggle to her knees. Its face wasn't angry. It wasn't even interested anymore.
It yawned.
Then it turned and walked back toward its boulder, dragging the club behind it.
Jess stared after it, chest heaving, blood dripping from a dozen wounds. She tried to stand. Made it halfway before her legs gave out.
The monkey didn't look back.
She lay there in the trampled dirt, staring at the sky through broken trees, and listened to the sound of bone on bone resume in the distance.
THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.
It had gotten bored. She was still alive because it got bored of her being a green sturdy cockroach.
Jess closed her eyes.
"Okay," she whispered to no one. "Okay. Noted."
"Designated threat level as A. Phantom, I recommend caution."
"I will try. You know me."
"Verifying with log and mission database. 5% chance of risk avoidance."
She lay there for a long time. The THWACKing continued in the distance, rhythmic and maddening. Eventually, it stopped. Then started again. The monkey was still playing.
Jess pushed herself up. Her arms shook. Her legs felt like wet rope. But she could move.
She crawled first. Then walked, hunched over, one hand braced against trees. The dragon skeleton loomed ahead, a cathedral of bone. She stumbled inside, between two massive ribs, and collapsed against a vertebra the size of a barrel.
The carapace creaked as she moved. She looked down at her chest plate—a deep dent over her sternum, hairline cracks radiating outward. Even as she watched, the cracks began to seal, the dent slowly pushing outward.
"Recovering," she murmured.
"Estimated full restoration in six hours," Miri confirmed.
Jess nodded. Closed her eyes. The THWACKing drifted through the bones, distant now.
"Phantom. You are exhibiting elevated cortisol and diminished emotional regulation. Would you like me to play soothing music from your archived library?"
"No."
"A meditation exercise?"
"No."
"A reminder that you have survived worse odds and have a documented pattern of adaptive growth following setbacks?"
Jess opened one eye. "Are you trying to cheer me up, Miri?"
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Negative. I am providing data-relevant morale support based on your psychological profile."
"That's the same thing."
"Acknowledged. Is it working?"
Jess thought about it. Looked at her hands. The dents in her armor. The distant sound of a monster playing with a bone.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "Maybe it is."
She closed her eyes again. The THWACKing continued. But farther now. Or maybe she just cared less.
She breathed in. Breathed out. Let the rhythm of her own body replace the rhythm of the club. Drifted.
Miri would warn her if anything approached.
No dreams. Just healing and darkness.
She woke to silence.
No THWACKing. Just the rustle of wind through bone and the distant call of something avian. The dragon's ribs arched above her like the frame of a broken ship.
Jess pushed herself up. Her armor was whole again—the dents smoothed, the cracks sealed. She knocked a fist against her chest plate. Solid.
Six hours. Maybe seven. She'd slept hard.
She crawled out from between the ribs and stood, testing her weight. Legs held. Arms moved. Regeneration had done its work.
"Status," she said.
"All biological systems nominal. Armor integrity restored. No lasting damage detected."
"Good." She looked toward the cliff, toward where the monkey had been. No sign of it. Maybe it was sleeping. Maybe it didn't care anymore.
Either way, she wasn't going back there. Not yet.
She walked.
The forest swallowed her again—greens and browns and the occasional shock of bioluminescence. She moved without direction at first, just putting distance between herself and that clearing. The river was somewhere ahead. She remembered it from before. The boundary. The Blue Zone.
Her steps were heavy. Not from exhaustion—from something else. From the memory of that yawn.
She tasted blood. Old, metallic, lingering on her gums. She spat. The glob landed on a fern and slid off into the undergrowth.
Her boot found a mud patch. She didn't avoid it. Cold seeped through the seals, squelching with each step. She left deep prints behind her. Didn't care.
A branch caught her across the chest. She pushed through instead of around. It snapped loud—a sharp crack that echoed for a moment. Something small scurried away in the distance.
Nothing came. No challenge. No response.
She was beneath notice now. That was the worst part.
The river appeared through the trees—broad, dark, the same one she'd crossed before. She stopped at the bank and just... stood there. Looked at the water.
Her reflection stared back. Green skin. Dark circles under her eyes. A few shallow cuts still healing on her cheek. The tusks. The scars.
"Get it together, Jess."
The words were quiet. Rough. Her own voice, speaking to herself like she was someone else.
She sat down on a fallen log. Let her shoulders drop. Listened to the water move.
Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. She didn't count.
Then something moved in the corner of her eye.
A centipede. The size of her arm. It coiled around a phosphorescent mushroom, its segments glowing faintly as it squeezed. The mushroom's cap cracked. Pale spores puffed into the air.
Jess watched it work. Methodical. Patient. Squeeze. Wait. Squeeze again. The mushroom didn't fight back. It just broke.
She understood.
When the centipede finished and slithered away into the undergrowth, Jess stood.
Her shoulders straightened. Her breathing slowed. When she moved again, it wasn't the aimless shuffle of someone still processing defeat.
It was soldier movement.
Step. Pause. Eyes moving—trees first, scanning branches and trunks for threats, for movement, for anything watching. Then the ground ahead. Then the trees again.
Wait. Listen. Step.
She crossed the bank without sound, her weight distributed, her feet finding solid ground instead of twigs and leaves. The lesson from the monkey wasn't forgotten. It was absorbed. Filed.
You don't challenge what you can't beat. You learn it first. Then you beat it.
She moved through the undergrowth like she'd never left it. Like she'd never been careless.
The centipede's trail was easy to follow—a disturbed line through the moss, the occasional glisten of slime. She followed it for fifty meters, then let it go. Not her target. Just a reminder.
The river bent north. She followed.
And then she heard it.
Clacking.
Not one source. Multiple. A rhythm traveling through the ground, through the air, through the trees. Vibration. Communication.
Jess froze mid-step. Listened.
The clacking continued. Steady. Unconcerned. Whatever was making it hadn't noticed her.
She moved toward it.
The terrain changed. The trees grew thicker, older, their trunks scarred with strange markings—parallel gouges, like something had scraped against them repeatedly. The ground became uneven, pockmarked with depressions. Some were old, filled with debris. Others were fresh, the soil still damp.
She found a high spot—a fallen tree propped against a boulder—and climbed.
The zone spread out below her like a ruined city. Burrows pocked the earth, some small, some large enough to drive a vehicle through. Beetles moved between them in steady streams—scouts, workers, whatever they called themselves. They followed paths, patterns, a rhythm she couldn't quite grasp. The clacking was constant now, a background hum of chitin and earth.
She watched.
Three hours.
The lone ones at the edges. The scouts moving out in radial patterns, circling back, disappearing into different holes. The way they responded to disturbance—a falling branch drew three of them to investigate, then nothing. The way they ignored the smaller creatures that skittered between their paths.
They had a system. A structure. And at the center, somewhere deeper, something that all the paths led to.
Jess slid down from her perch.
"They send scouts out," she murmured. "Radial movement. Miri, I want to test them one-on-one first. Before I go deeper."
Clack clack clack. The sound vibrated through her boots.
"Were they the origin of the vibrations you detected?"
"Tentative analysis of resonance and vibration. Confidence 80% that they communicate this way underground."
She thought about the monkey. The club. The yawn. The way it had walked away because she wasn't worth the effort.
"If you got stuck in a zone with too powerful enemies," she said, "what do you do, Miri?"
"You call for reinforcement. Prepare better scout reports. Call in orbital strikes or evacuate."
"No." Jess shook her head. "You go to a lower-leveled zone and bully the weak until you're strong enough. Basic game design."
"User query error. This is reality, not Myriad Expanse Online, Phantom."
She rolled her shoulders. The armor creaked.
"It just might work as one. Let's go test it."
The lone scout was at the edge, just like she'd seen. It moved slowly, methodically, its mandibles working at the base of a dead tree. Oblivious.
She approached from downwind. Silent. The lesson stuck.
It turned at the last second—too late.
Her fist connected with the side of its head. The carapace cracked. Ichor sprayed—thick, pale, smelling of nothing she could name. The beetle's legs kicked, once, twice, and then it was still.
Jess stood over it, breathing hard.
It worked.
She fed Terry a strip of the white meat. He swallowed. "Coo!"
Another scout. Same approach. Same result.
The third one saw her coming. It clacked—a sharp, warning sound—and charged. She met it head-on. Her fist found the joint between head and thorax. The legs kept moving for a few seconds after it died.
She stood on the bodies now. Three of them. Ichor pooling at her feet. Carapace fragments scattered in the dirt.
More clacking. Approaching. Responding to the disturbance.
Jess grinned. It wasn't a nice grin.
"Let's show the monkey the concept of power leveling." She cracked her knuckles. "Come to mommy, sweet EXP."
