Chương 4: Predator

For what feels like nearly an hour, I sit perched on my branch like a smug woodland gremlin, staring up at the night sky. The stars chatter endlessly—loudly debating the philosophy of bikini armor, casually discussing cosmic horrors that could erase planets by sneezing, and then— deeply —arguing whether turkey or ham is superior on a sandwich. (Obviously turkey. Some things require neither debate nor hesitation.) Their voices overlap in chaotic harmony, each one alien yet… familiar.

Family, even if they aren't mine —not the old ones, not the ones I left behind. The thought stings. My ears soften downward for a heartbeat—then snap back up, just a bit too late. The sky explodes with panic.

"She's sad! Emergency plan! Somebody do something cute!"

"Sparkle formation alpha—GO!!"

"Does anyone know jokes? Tell her a joke! QUICK!" A constellation rearranges itself into what might be a starry velociraptor wearing sunglasses and flexing. A tiny voice tries very hard to sound intimidating:"I'll headbutt reality on your behalf." Despite myself, a small laugh slips out—quiet, uneven, but real. That only encourages them. It takes another solid fifteen minutes to calm them down, soothe their nonsense, and promise I am not dying, broken, or emotionally collapsing (again).

I have long since become immune to such silly things, after all. Only once the sky settles back into its usual level of chaos do I finally open my status window. My eyes widen. Mana: gone. Wisdom and Intelligence: gone. Trait: fully visible. I read. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Starborn] An unfathomably rare soul, born with the ability to commune with the stars and wield their power. Astral Energy suffuses the body, beginning in the eyes and replacing all external energy sources.

Stamina becomes the vessel through which star power is wielded. Effects: • +100% Stamina regeneration while beneath the night sky • +100% Health regeneration while beneath the night sky • +25% effectiveness to Star-Aspected skills while beneath the night sky • Permanently applies the Star Aspect to Stamina • Influences future Evolution and Class Advancements ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I nod slowly, pleased. Very pleased. A dangerous sort of pleased.

The kind of pleased that makes me want to hunt down the nearest creature, point at it dramatically, and shout something heroic like:"BEHOLD— WRATH OF THE STARS!" … except I currently know exactly one attack. Slash. Not exactly awe-inspiring. Also, it's nighttime. I glance around. … And I can see perfectly. Better than daylight, actually—every shadow is sharp, every leaf etched in silver light. Starlight clings to everything like dew. I grin. There may never again be a reason to hunt during the day.

A dirty little laugh escapes me—absolutely villain-coded and I refuse to apologize—and I hop down from my branch, brushing off my clothes before setting off into the night.

"Alright," I whisper to the sky, tail swaying like a metronome to my mood.

"Point me toward something squishy to murder." The stars respond. Not with directions. But with:"Dig straight down and fight the mole-people!"

"No no no—ride a deer into battle."

"Seduce the monsters."

"Do NOT seduce the monsters."

"CHILI DOGS." I puff out my cheeks, pouting.

"Useless. Every single one of you." Their collective amusement is palpable—like laughter made of light. So I ignore them. Temporarily. Out of principle. Humming a cheerful little tune, I skip down the grassy path—purely because walking normally is boring—and delight sparks through the sky at the sight, even if I am not listening to them. Obviously. Then— There. A faint wet wobbling noise off in the trees. The sound of something gelatinous, stupid, and perfect. A slime. I brighten.

Before thought can catch up to instinct, I'm already moving—feet silent, breath steady, body low. I dart through the trees, closing the distance in seconds. And without slowing, without hesitation— I attack.

"Slash!" My voice briefly rings out through the forest, and the slime slumps to the ground, cut clean in half, its assailant never breaking pace for an instant. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Green Forest Slime (Level 1 | Tier 0) You have gained 1 Tutorial Point ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I twirl once—purely for flair—then hop back onto the path and resume hunting. In the next hour and a half, I cut down four more slimes and two rats so diseased I briefly considered putting on gloves.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Then another notification appears. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Heavily Diseased Rat (Level 1 | Tier 0) You have gained 1 Tutorial Points Your race has leveled up to level 2 Your class has leveled up to level 2 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Finally. With barely restrained excitement, I pull up my status window and immediately dump all available points into Dexterity because—priorities.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Stats Vitality: 10 Strength: 14 Dexterity: 22 Perception: 14 Charisma: 10 Free Points: 0 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I nod approvingly. Dexterity 22. Beautiful. Graceful. Deadly. Possibly capable of doing a front flip without dying—although testing that can wait until I feel less fragile.

Status closed, I return to skipping—because walking normally is for emotionally stable people—humming the three songs I know until I run out and am forced to invent new ones about swords, supremacy, and hypothetical violence. The stars, of course, have opinions. First they help brainstorm dramatic skill names. Then we discuss potential one-liners.

Then—for reasons unknown—the conversation devolves into a heated argument about whether a mole people civilization absolutely exists beneath us right now plotting global supremacy. It lasts… longer than I'm proud of. In the middle of the chaos, I slice down another slime, only half listening. Then— ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Green Forest Slime (Level 2 | Tier 0) You have gained 2 Tutorial Points ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I freeze. Slowly… I bury my face in my palm.

"Of course. Of course I didn't check the level. Brilliant. Truly a genius move." I vow then and there—solemn, dignified, majestic: I will identify things before stabbing them. Because dying to a slime one level higher than expected wouldn't just be tragic—it would be humiliating enough that I'd probably perish again in the afterlife from residual shame. I check the timer. Eight hours have passed. So now there are three working theories: One: level scaling happens at midnight. Two: monsters scale along with me.

Three: I've wandered into a higher level section of the forest. No way to test yet, so they remain acceptable guesses. A wave of fatigue crashes through me. My stamina bar is entirely full, but I feel like my phone after an entire day of scrolling memes and making questionable life choices. Pathetic. Fine. Rest time. I will graciously allow my body to not fall over.

I locate another one of those weirdly deliberate "convenient trees," unsheathe my sword, and train for another hour under the violet moonlight—practicing footwork, refining angles, building repetition until yawns start interrupting my slashes. Finally, I sheathe my sword and climb to the waiting branch. The leaves are cool. The night is calm. The sky hums above me—distant and familiar. For the first time in a long, long while… I'm actually looking forward to waking up.

With a small, content smile, I close my eyes, tail curling around me— —and drift into sleep beneath the watching stars. ✦⋆✦⋆✦ Jack stalked through the forest with the swagger of someone who believed the world—old or new—now belonged to him. Leaves and branches crunched quietly beneath the boots of his group, but stealth hardly mattered. Monsters were weak, people were terrified, and the forest was already theirs. Tyler's grating voice chimed beside him.

"Got that right—bunch of losers who exist just to farm points before dying for someone useful." Jack's jaw twitched, having been half-listening to the conversation behind him. Tyler—now an elf, courtesy of absurd cosmic lottery—had become even more insufferable than usual. The pointed ears and extra stats hadn't improved his personality, only inflated it. Technically, he's the second strongest of their group by virtue of elves getting a ridiculous 10 points per race level, half of which are free points.

Too bad he invested all of them into Vitality, making himself nearly useless in a battle due to a lack of Dexterity. Jack fantasized briefly about attacking him anyway, race advantage or not, but forced the thought aside. Not worth the argument. Yet. Instead, he shifted his gaze to Damian—a thickset warrior with brawler shoulders and a grin that showed too many teeth.

"So," Jack asked, voice lazy and edged with anticipation, "what do you think we'll kill next? Monster or person?" Damian considered, tapping the hilt of his sword with rhythmic excitement before that same feral grin stretched across his face.

"I'm hoping it's a person." Jack chuckled—sharp and humorless. People gave more points. People begged. People broke. And nothing in his entire life—Earth or Asteria— felt as good as the moment when someone realized screaming wouldn't help. Power. Absolute power. This world was paradise. His thoughts broke when Ryan raised a hand—a silent command the group instantly obeyed. Ryan didn't need to be loud. He didn't need to posture.

His perception skill told him everything before anyone else even noticed something was wrong.

"There's someone ahead," Ryan murmured.

"Not moving. Could be dead. Could be asleep." Jack grinned. Perfect. He motioned the group forward, and they slipped into the undergrowth. After only a short walk, they saw her—and all four of them went still. A small girl lay quietly on a wide branch overlooking the center of a clearing, sleeping as though the forest itself were a bed and the world beyond it simply didn't exist. The clearing was small and unnatural—grass worn thin in places, moss clinging stubbornly near the roots of surrounding trees.

Shrubs and low branches ringed it tightly, forming a green wall. The girl herself looked almost… unreal. For a moment, none of them spoke. She slept curled loosely on her side, posture soft, almost childlike. One hand rested near the sword she'd brought to bed, fingers barely touching the hilt as if she had forgotten it was even there. The blade wasn't gripped or guarded. It simply existed within reach.

Her hair was the first thing Jack truly registered—long, absurdly long, spilling down the branch like a white waterfall. Sunlight filtered through the canopy and caught on it, scattering into soft highlights that made it seem faintly luminous, like it didn't quite belong to the same world as everything else. Her skin was pale—not sickly, not fragile—but smooth and even, like porcelain warmed just enough to seem real. Untouched. Unmarred. A pair of fox ears sat atop her head, covered in plush white fur.

They twitched faintly every few breaths, small, unconscious movements that made it clear she wasn't fully still, even in sleep. Curled loosely against her was a matching white tail, drawn close and half-wrapped around her frame, her fingers lightly buried in the fur as if it were something she reached for without thinking. Like a comforting habit rather than a conscious pose. Her face— That was where the silence lingered. Delicate, but not fragile.

Soft lines, perfectly balanced, as if every feature had been placed with deliberate care. Her lips rested in the faintest hint of a neutral expression, not quite a smile, not quite empty. Long lashes cast subtle shadows across her cheeks, and her breathing was slow, even, undisturbed. There was no tension in her brow. No strain. No sign of dreams or discomfort. She looked… Complete. Like a finished piece.

Her clothes were the same as every other player from the tutorial—plain, fitted travel gear— Except hers were clean. Impossibly clean. No dirt pressed into the seams. No tears from brush or bramble. No blood. Either she moved like a ghost— Or she was careful in a way Jack didn't want to think about. She looked young. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Small. Light. Delicate. Not threatening. And yet— Beautiful enough that all four of them stared. Not the kind of beauty that invited admiration.

The kind that made something in the back of your mind go quiet. Still. Untouchable. Jack recovered first. And immediately casted Inspect. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Warrior [Common] (Level 2 | Tier 0) Race: Foxkin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ His grin sharpened into a hungry, malicious thing. Level 2 meant real experience. Real points. A goldmine. He tapped the others. They jolted back to focus, faces flushed from staring. Jack gestured—spread and surround.

Tyler and Damian melted into the foliage, slipping between tree trunks and broad ferns, careful to keep low. Ryan stayed beside Jack, bow already drawn, the string taut and humming faintly under his fingers. Jack waited. Breath slow. Measured. Until he finally spotted both warriors in position, barely visible through leaves and shadow. Then, a simple signal. Advance. They crept closer, easing out of the treeline. Grass whispered under careful steps. Leaves crunched despite their best efforts. Ten meters. Five.

Three— A single fox ear twitched. Her eyes opened. No grogginess. No confusion. Just sudden sharp awareness—like flipping a switch. She sat up in a small jerk of motion, clearly startled—but fast enough that instinct compensated where skill didn't. Her hand fumbled the sword free. Ryan fired. The arrow whistled toward her eye—precise, lethal. She moved just enough. A thin line of red bloomed across her cheek instead of the arrow embedding in her skull.

The warriors surged forward, boots flattening grass as the ambush collapsed into motion. She stood, pivoted, and jumped from the branch—straight toward Tyler. He lunged at her neck, laughing. For a heartbeat it looked over. Then steel flashed. She parried—no hesitation, no wasted motion— and Tyler's sword flew past her, missing her by inches. Her boot slammed upward. Tyler folded with a strangled wheeze and dropped. She sprinted past him.

Jack cursed and chased—only for her to turn with a dancer's spin, grass flattening under her pivot. She tried repositioning her feet like she'd likely seen a swordsman do somewhere—body twisting sideways, blade lifted defensively—but the form was sloppy, borrowed, inconsistent. A stance barely practiced. Yet, wrong all the same. Wrong because it wasn't desperate. Wrong because she was smiling. A placid, harmless smile. Her sword angled toward them, body sideways, eyes and ears fixed—waiting.

Tyler staggered back to his feet, red-faced and furious. The girl finally spoke. Her voice was soft. Polite. Almost apologetic. Laced with the slightest tremble.

"My, that almost got me. A good effort, at least." Then her smile sharpened—lips curling just enough to reveal the faint glint of elongated fangs.

"Now… are you ready for what happens next?" Jack froze—because her face was serene, doll-like— —but her eyes were not. Black. Depthless. Pupilless. Like staring into an event horizon masquerading as a little girl. Tyler growled something crude. Damian raised his sword. Ryan nocked another arrow. And Jack—finally, instinctively—felt it. This wasn't prey. This wasn't a simple girl. This was a storm waiting to happen. And her voice wasn't shaking because she was afraid. It was shaking because she couldn't wait.