Chương 41: Chapter 40: SURVIVAL - Daytime in the Artificial Forest

The door to Floor Four slid open with a short, indifferent hiss. Not dramatic. Not threatening. Almost bored. As if the Tower had grown tired of trying to impress Z-69 and decided the next room could speak for itself. He stepped through. No battlefield waited beyond the threshold. No pressure chamber. No killing corridor. No puzzle dressed as execution. Only a box.

The waiting room was barely larger than a freight container, with metal walls, a low ceiling, and an empty floor stripped of furniture, controls, and visible cameras, while the air felt slightly compressed, as though someone had tried to fold an entire atmosphere into a space too small to hold it. A hologram flickered to life. White text rolled across the air. FLOOR FOUR WILL ACTIVATE WHEN THE TEAM HAS THREE CONTESTANTS. Z-69 stared at one word. Team.

Elise had warned him about this floor before the Tower opened, but warnings remained theories until reality gave them walls. He did not like teams. Teams meant variables. Variables meant risk. Humans meant weakness, panic, noise, unpredictable morality, and the constant possibility that, at the exact moment teamwork became necessary, the survival logic inside his chest would reduce every voice, plan, promise, and frightened heartbeat around him to the same simple category: available fuel.

Still, the rule was the rule. If Floor Four demanded three bodies, Floor Four would receive three bodies. Z-69 exhaled out of habit and used the brief pause for inventory. The Heaven-Sundering Short Blade remained intact. Its black-purple metal settled into his palm with the familiar balance of a weapon his body trusted more than his memory. His sidearm remained secured at his right hip.

A compact standard micro-cell pistol from John's younger years, the same weapon John had placed in Z-69's hand during Ten's training session, ordered him not to lose, and then repeatedly described as a temporary loan after Z-69 attached it to his belt and refused to return it. The weapon was smaller and cleaner than the worn low-output pistol John had lent Ten.

Its frame was scratched, its sights old, and its remaining cell sat just below half charge, the condition in which John had surrendered it, minus one painfully average practice shot. Z-69 checked the safety and reseated the weapon in its holster. He had not suddenly become a gunner. That did not make a ranged option worthless. Six sealed packets of John's high-energy dried meat remained. The torn third packet from Floor Three still held one compressed strip, flattened against the wrapper but technically edible.

He counted it separately. One slender vial of suppressant rested inside the inner armor pocket. Z-69 held it beneath the hologram's light. The liquid shifted slowly, thick and reluctant, as though it resented being useful. John's voice returned from memory. This is all I have left. Don't waste it. If you go feral again, I'm not cleaning up the mess. That warning had referred to the suppressant. The Hunger had already proven what happened when the vial stayed unused. Z-69 tucked it away. He did not answer memories.

The door behind him hissed open. He turned, expecting another contestant, but the Tower delivered a stretcher instead: two medical drones carrying a human body wrapped from shoulder to ankle in enough bandages to make the patient look less treated than packaged, as though Floor Four had requested a teammate and the medical system had responded by shipping whatever remained. Ten. The drones lowered the stretcher. Then released it several centimeters above the floor. It struck metal with a flat impact.

Ten groaned like someone trying to cough underwater while losing an argument with gravity, and the medical drones immediately turned away without offering a diagnosis, prognosis, or confirmation that the person they had deposited could still remain upright long enough to qualify as part of a team. Delivery completed. The door sealed behind them. Ten attempted to sit up. His arms shook beneath his weight, and his legs contributed nothing beyond remaining attached. Z-69 watched for one second.

Then he stepped forward, caught Ten by the collar, and pulled him upright with one hand. Ten swayed. His face was gray with exhaustion. His lips were cracked, his visible skin bruised, and his red-rimmed eyes struggled to focus. The military dagger John had lent him remained sheathed at his waist. The worn low-output Flux-cell pistol sat in a separate holster on his opposite side. Different weapon. Different history. Both still present.

"You're alive," Z-69 said. Ten forced his mouth into the remains of a smile.

"I… think so."

"How?" There was no mockery in the question. Only honest confusion. Floor One had erased sight. Floor Two had tried to throw bodies into cyclones. Floor Three had crushed Z-69 until his spine broke and The Hunger took control. Ten looked as though a particularly aggressive sneeze could fracture him. Yet he had reached Floor Four. Barely. Ten scratched weakly at the back of his head.

"I don't really know. I just did what my body told me. Then somehow I wasn't dead." Z-69 remembered Ten's previous explanation. An opponent slipped. A pit. An accidental victory no rational battle planner could use.

"You may be the unluckiest lucky brat I have met since waking." Ten blinked.

"Is that a compliment?"

"No."

"Oh." Ten looked toward the hologram. His tired eyes widened.

"We're already at Floor Four?"

"The entrance." Z-69 glanced toward the sealed forward door.

"Six floors remain." Fear passed through Ten's expression. Not the raw panic Z-69 had seen before. Repeated terror had burned the edges from it, leaving behind a duller and more durable response in which fear no longer stopped Ten from moving, speaking, or noticing danger, but simply accompanied every action like pain he had learned not to wait for. Resolve. Or numbness. Survival rarely cared about the difference. The rear door opened again. Footsteps entered. Light on the heel. Heavy on the ball of the foot.

A runner's stride. Jin stepped into the waiting room looking like he had lost several arguments with death and refused to sign the paperwork afterward. His combat suit was shredded along the arms and ribs. Scorch marks crossed one shoulder, dried blood ran down his neck, and sweat had pasted dark hair against his forehead. His eyes remained sharp. The moment they found Z-69, his posture changed.

"We meet again, silverhead." His voice was hoarse. The arrogance survived.

"This time, I won't lose." One foot slid behind the other. His shoulders angled naturally into a fighting stance, even though exhaustion had left a faint tremor in his leading leg. Z-69 did not move.

"You are still impulsive." Jin's eyes narrowed.

"Scared I'll kick your ass before the floor starts?"

"Our rematch will have wait." Z-69 tilted his chin toward the hologram.

"Read." Jin looked. TEAM OF THREE REQUIRED. SURVIVAL FORMAT. His jaw tightened. For several seconds, the only sound in the room was Ten breathing too hard. Then Jin clicked his tongue and relaxed his stance. Barely.

"This isn't over." Z-69's mouth curved faintly.

"I'm always ready." Ten stepped between them like a terrified referee hired for the wrong sport.

"H-hey. Team, remember? We're a team now. Same side. Floor Four. Survival. Not the time to punch each other." Both ignored him. The ceiling lights flickered. Then the Tower spoke.

"FLOOR FOUR: SURVIVAL." Static crawled across the room.

"Assessment focus: survival skills, teamwork, group coordination."

"Environment: Artificial Forest. One hundred and twenty square kilometers."

"Objective: survive for twenty-four hours and locate the exit to Floor Five." Artificial Forest. Z-69 looked toward the forward door. A forest inside the Tower. Inside Crimeria. Inside a city that had forgotten the sun. Jin scoffed.

"A forest? Underground? They expect us to believe this place has trees?" Ten swallowed.

"If they call it a forest…" His voice dropped.

"It's probably the kind that eats people." The forward door opened. Blackness waited beyond. No. Not blackness. Transition. The three contestants stepped through. The world shifted. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Smell arrived first. Wet earth. Cold metal. Ozone. Chemical residue. Something green trying very hard not to be natural. Z-69 opened his eyes. A sky stretched above them. Or a simulation pretending to understand one.

An ashen expanse covered the dome, crowded with dense energy-clouds whose edges pulsed weakly and glitched whenever they moved, exposing the hard ceiling for a fraction of a second before the simulation resumed its performance of weather. No sun. No stars. Only pale gray light diffused across the forest. Trees extended in every direction. Hundreds. Thousands.

Their trunks were as thick as support pillars and covered in dull gray bark that resembled metal forced to remember wood, while branches spread overhead like skeletal arms carrying metallic-blue leaves whose sharpened edges overlapped into a canopy capable of turning any careless climb into a slow industrial dissection. Someone had reconstructed a forest from incomplete records, industrial scrap, and hostile assumptions. Ten turned in a slow circle. Awe and horror shared his face.

"This is actually…" He hesitated.

"Kind of beautiful." Jin walked to the nearest tree and kicked it. The trunk rang like a bell.

"Breathtaking," he said.

"If you like iron lungs and knife leaves." Z-69 placed one palm against the bark. Cold. Then warm. Something beneath the surface twitched. Muscle under metal. He withdrew his hand. The touched area warped, then pale blue moss unfolded from the bark in a perfect ring and extended thin filaments toward the place his hand had been, not growing randomly but following the fading heat, bioelectric trace, and pressure pattern left by contact. Ten flinched.

"Don't let it touch you!" Z-69 was already clear of it.

"This place is alive."

"Alive and unfriendly," Jin said.

"Good. At least the decor is honest." They moved carefully. The deeper they entered, the more the forest changed: the false sky dimmed beneath overlapping metallic leaves, shadows braided themselves between the trunks, and the ground shifted from wet soil to rust-colored roots and half-buried plates that hummed beneath their boots as though recording every step. The soundscape was wrong. No insects. No birds. No small creatures disturbing brush.

Only a low vibration beneath everything, as though the entire forest shared one slow mechanical pulse. After several minutes, Jin's impatience surfaced.

"If this is a survival test, we'll need food and water." He looked between the trees.

"And I don't see any vending machines." Ten sniffed the air. His expression tightened.

"There's… something." Z-69 smelled it too. Moisture. Cool. Chemically sharp.

"Left." They followed the scent until the trunks opened around a narrow stream. At first glance, it looked peaceful. Clear liquid flowed through a shallow channel and reflected the gray sky and metallic leaves like a dead postcard of Earth. Jin crouched.

"Wait," Ten said. Too late. Jin touched the water. For one second, nothing happened. Then his fingertips reddened. Blistered. Began dissolving.

"Shit!" He jerked backward, clutching his hand. The liquid hissed where it clung to him and continued eating into the skin. Z-69 seized his wrist and scraped the fluid away with the flat of the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade, taking the contaminated surface layer with it. Jin sucked air through his teeth.

"Acid," Z-69 said. Jin glared at the stream as though it had insulted his family.

"Who installs an acid river in a forest?"

"Someone consistent. Everything here exists to kill us." Ten looked at the water.

"Then what do we drink?" The Hunger shifted behind Z-69's sternum. Not awake. Not speaking. Only orienting toward something. Energy. There. He moved toward a large tree near the bank. Its trunk was darker than the others, and faint green veins glowed beneath the bark like buried circuitry. Z-69 cut a shallow line into it. Sap seeped out. Pale green. Warm. Faintly luminous. Viscous enough to cling to his fingers like living gel. Ten's eyes widened.

"You're not going to—" Z-69 touched a minimal amount to his tongue. Bitter. Metallic. Chemical enough to sting. Beneath the disgust was crude energy and a weak Bio-Flux pattern that did not immediately behave like poison. He waited. The crystal processed the trace without rejection. No Corruption response. No Hunger spike. No damage. Z-69 swallowed a slightly larger amount.

"Better than acid." Jin's face twisted.

"You cannot drink glowing tree fluid and declare the survival problem solved." Ten's stomach growled. Loudly. He looked at the acid stream. Then the sap. Then Z-69. Certain death and disgusting survival presented different arguments. Ten cupped a small amount and swallowed. His face almost collapsed from the taste. The sap burned his throat, but not like acid. More like condensed energy dragged through a dirty battery. His fingertips tingled. His living heartbeat accelerated. He did not die. That was sufficient.

Jin resisted longer. Pride fought thirst. Thirst won. He spat a curse, collected a handful, and swallowed.

"If I mutate into a tree, I'm blaming both of you." They continued. The forest grew colder. The ground hardened beneath their boots, then softened again as though testing their reactions. Metallic leaves whispered despite the absence of wind. Ten stopped. His gaze dropped to the soil.

"Something…" Z-69 turned. Ten crouched and pressed both palms against the ground.

"Under us." Jin's hand moved toward his weapon.

"Explain," Z-69 said. Ten closed his eyes.

"Small things. Fast. Moving in groups. Six… eight. Nine." His brows tightened.

"One just left the pattern." A pause.

"They don't move like animals."

"What do they move like?"

"Blades."

"Good. Keep tracking them." Ten opened his eyes.

"I wasn't trying to—" The forest floor bulged. Then broke. Metal shards erupted upward, followed by beetle-sized constructs with segmented shells and knife-edged legs. Their compact bodies moved too smoothly and too precisely to be mistaken for wildlife. Swarm Scarabs. Low frames. Ground-hugging bodies. Vibration-based hunting systems. They did not see or smell.

They interpreted motion through the soil, compared every impact against a shared vibration map, and predicted where prey would place its weight before the step had fully committed; then the swarm surged, Jin vanished, and one instant after standing beside Ten he reappeared three meters away with a Scarab dying beneath his heel. The next, he reappeared three meters away with a Scarab's severed body twitching under his heel.

"Tch. Bugs now?" A second blade-leg cut toward his ankle. Jin jumped.

"They track ground vibration!" Ten shouted.

"If you run straight, they predict you!"

"I know!" Z-69's hand moved toward the compact pistol at his hip. Then stopped. A kinetic bolt striking the ground would create a clean vibration source, but firing repeatedly would also give the swarm a readable rhythm—and the half-spent micro-cell belonged to situations where distance mattered more than deception. He left the weapon holstered. Instead, he stamped once against a buried metal plate. The plate rang beneath the soil. Three Scarabs changed course toward the false impact.

Z-69 seized a nearby tree at the base and forced it sideways until roots tore from the ground and the entire trunk crashed across the advancing swarm, producing enough overlapping vibration through soil, metal plates, and exposed root systems to collapse the Scarabs' predictive pattern for three-tenths of a second. That was enough. Z-69 stepped forward. The Heaven-Sundering Short Blade flashed. One Scarab split. Then another. Then a third. Short arcs. No wasted motion. Jin used the fallen tree as a ramp.

He sprinted up the trunk, launched from the upper curve, and drove his heel into the underside of another Scarab. Its core burst into sparks. Ten stayed behind them, pale and breathless, but his eyes remained fixed on the ground.

"Five left!" Z-69 adjusted mid-swing.

"Two behind Jin!" Jin changed direction without looking.

"No—wait! They're redirecting. The ground shifted!" Z-69 and Jin moved around one another without discussion. The arrangement should not have worked. Z-69 fought like a blade given thought. Jin fought like motion given teeth. Ten did not attack. He read the battlefield and turned invisible movement into usable warnings. Thirty seconds later, shattered shells and smoking cores covered the ground. Jin landed and brushed dirt from his suit. His breathing had deepened.

"That was clean." Ten blinked.

"I only said what I felt. You two did everything." Z-69 picked up a broken Scarab, weighed it, and dropped it.

"Not bad." Ten brightened slightly.

"But this was bait." The brightness died. Jin stared at Z-69.

"You really know how to ruin a moment." The forest trembled. Not at one point. Everywhere. A rolling vibration moved through soil, roots, and metal plates, like something enormous had shifted beneath the floor of the world. Leaves shook. The false sky dimmed. Ten's face lost color.

"That…" His voice thinned.

"That's big."

"How big?" Jin asked. Ten swallowed.

"Really big. Deep too. I can't feel all of it at once." Z-69 listened through the ground.

"About sixteen meters." Jin turned toward him.

"Next time, start with that." The ground exploded. Soil, roots, stone, and bark rose in a violent column as something vast tore itself into the forest. A worm. No. A train wearing the idea of a worm. Its body consisted of armored metal rings grinding together with industrial force. The head opened into a circular maw lined with concentric rows of steel teeth, each rotating in the opposite direction from the row beside it.

The creature inhaled, drawing air, loose soil, and fist-sized rocks toward its circular mouth until the forest howled around them and debris vanished between the spinning teeth in sprays of sparks. Jin dug his boots into the soil.

"That is not a worm. That is a whole damn train!"

"Run!" Ten shouted. They tried. The suction caught them immediately. Jin's speed distorted under the pull. Every step fought against force dragging his limbs toward the rotating maw. Z-69 drove the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade into the ground and seized Ten by the collar with his free hand. Jin slid backward until he kicked both feet against a tree trunk and hooked himself around it like a human anchor. The worm roared again. Its mouth widened. Z-69 calculated the distance. The armor. The exposed sensor clusters.

The movement of each ring. The compact pistol at his hip could not penetrate armor built from interlocking industrial rings, and spending the remaining micro-cell charge against the head would achieve less than the blade already anchored in the ground, especially when every missed kinetic bolt risked becoming another projectile drawn into the creature's mouth. He pulled the short blade free.

"Cover him." Jin shouted over the suction.

"For what?" Z-69 ran toward the monster. The force pulled him forward faster. He allowed it. Rows of rotating teeth screamed toward him. At the mouth's edge, Z-69 caught two metal rings with his bare hands. Friction stripped corpse-gray flesh from his palms. Sparks tore across his fingers. He pulled. Metal screamed. Teeth bent. Warped. Buckled under the strength passing through his arms. The worm thrashed, striking trees and shaking the forest. Jin launched from his anchor point.

He appeared beside the head in a burst of speed and drove a full-force kick into one sensor cluster. Metal cracked. The creature spasmed. Ten slammed both hands onto the ground.

"The third segment!" His voice came raw.

"The vibration changes there. That's the core connector!" Z-69 released the damaged maw and jumped onto the armored body. He used one convulsion as momentum, launched upward, then dropped with the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade held point-down. The weapon entered the third segment. For one second, nothing happened. Then the worm convulsed. A violent discharge erupted from the wound. Sparks and shredded alloy sprayed through the trees. The creature's scream was not sound. It was vibration.

Deep enough to ripple the forest floor. Then the worm collapsed. Sixteen meters of armored carcass struck the ground, plowed trenches through the soil, and toppled several trees before becoming still. Silence followed. After that much noise, it felt almost violent. Jin lay flat on his back, chest heaving.

"What the hell," he panted, "is Floor Four supposed to be?" Ten clung to a broken trunk because his legs had stopped pretending they could support him. Z-69 flicked residue from the short blade.

"Survival." No one argued. Time passed. How much, none of them knew. The artificial sky brightened and dimmed through a clumsy imitation of afternoon, moving too evenly to resemble weather and too imperfectly to resemble a clock, as though the Tower had reconstructed daylight from damaged records created by people who remembered schedules better than sunlight. They walked. No real food appeared. No clean water.

Other lifeforms moved in the distance; some they avoided, some they killed, and some merely watched from between the trees with too many eyes and no visible mouths, allowing the group to pass for reasons none of them trusted. Eventually, Ten's stomach growled again. Softer this time. Almost ashamed.

"I'm hungry." Jin frowned.

"You drank more tree puke than either of us."

"My body burns through it quickly. Maybe because I'm always terrified."

"That is not a metabolism. That is a lifestyle problem." Z-69 stopped beside a thick root and began digging through the wet soil. Ten stared.

"What are you doing?" Z-69's fingers sifted through mud until they found movement. He pulled free a cluster of translucent organisms. Small. Tadpole-like. Faintly glowing green. Their bodies pulsed against his palm. Jin recoiled.

"If you say edible, I'm shooting something." Z-69 cleaned one with his thumb and examined its internal glow. The organism carried weak energy, no immediate Corruption signature, and a composition closer to synthetic protein than animal flesh. He bit it. Chewed. Swallowed.

"They're edible."

"According to what planet?" Jin asked.

"Not this one. We are inside a machine simulating death." Z-69 handed one to Ten. The boy looked at it with wet eyes.

"If you don't eat, you die faster." Ten closed his eyes and tossed it into his mouth. His body shuddered. The texture was wrong. Slimy and crunchy at once. Jelly around glass fragments. It tasted of metal, salt, and electricity, but warmth spread from his stomach after he swallowed. Not pleasant. Useful. Jin glared at the remaining organisms, muttered something obscene, then swallowed one whole.

"If I grow extra arms, I'm billing the Tower." They continued. The artificial sky finally began to dim. Metallic leaves changed from blue to blood-tinted red as hidden lines inside their veins activated. The trees did not physically transform, yet their silhouettes became crueler as branches appeared longer, bark looked darker, and the spaces between trunks deepened into passageways that had not seemed present during the day.

The forest no longer resembled an artificial ecosystem, it resembled a killing field that had spent the daylight phase measuring stride length, hunger, fatigue, weapon preference, teamwork, and every mistake the three contestants had generously demonstrated while believing they were merely traveling. Cold wind slipped between the trees. Thin. Precise. It carried new sounds. Metal touching metal. Something dragging in the distance. A whisper resembling speech transmitted through rusted wire. Z-69 stopped.

Ten and Jin halted immediately. That was progress. The daytime forest had contained hazards that reacted when approached, touched, or disturbed. Night carried intention, as though the entire floor had spent the previous hours measuring their hunger, preferred weapons, movement patterns, tolerance for risk, and willingness to protect one another before finally deciding how it wanted to hunt them. Something laughed deep among the trees. Small. Mechanical. Almost playful. Ten shivered. Jin's face tightened.

"Night just started, right?"

"Yes," Z-69 said. The Hunger shifted behind his sternum. Good. Night is when things taste best. Z-69 ignored it. His right hand settled briefly against the compact micro-cell pistol at his hip. His left held the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade. Ten tightened his grip around his own worn Flux-cell pistol. Three survivors. Two guns. One blade that remembered more than its owner. And an artificial forest beginning to hunt with purpose. Z-69 stepped into the deepening dark.

"From here on," he said, "it's real survival." The forest exhaled. Floor Four truly began.