The arch rippled behind me as I stepped through.
No flash. No sound cue. Just the quiet hiss of the world changing around me, like the air itself was holding its breath.
The ground shifted from polished stone to coarse dirt and half-frozen moss. The light dimmed, harsher somehow, like a filter had been slapped over the sun. My boots crunched on frostbitten grass. A breeze slid up my spine with the enthusiasm of a prison shiv.
Ahead of me: a fucking mountain.
Not a scenic, Instagram-approved kind. Jagged like a shattered jawbone, dusted in mean snow, with wind already peeling ice off the upper cliffs like it hated the idea of anyone climbing it.
The lowlands around it weren't cozy, but they hadn't tried to kill me yet. Small mercy.
Then came the ping.
Soft. Friendly. The sound a helpful murder drone might use before offering you tea laced with cyanide.
[CHALLENGE ENCOUNTER: LEVEL 5.2 – THE CLIMB] 📘
Scenario Type: Extended Endurance Trial (Solo Path Variant)
Primary Objective: Ascend designated mountain route and reach CHECKPOINT ALPHA.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS 🌡️
— High Altitude
— Low Temperature
— Scarce Resources
POTENTIAL HAZARDS ⚠️
— Hypothermia
— Nutritional Deficit
— Minor to Fatal Falls
— Prolonged Exposure Effects
TIME LIMIT: NONE.
Take your time! Survival is its own reward. 😊
Reminder: Endurance trials assess physical capacity, psychological resilience, and adherence to safety guidelines. Stay focused. Stay moving. Stay alive.
Note: By proceeding, User acknowledges risk of injury, dismemberment, or death and waives all claims under Integration Law 71.2B.
No time limit. Just a mountain, a smile, and a death wish in corporate packaging.
Endurance trial.
Translation: slow torture. No monsters to kill, just frostbite gnawing at your fingers until you forget you had them.
Great.
Peak entertainment value, System. Truly riveting.
The arch behind me faded, like even it didn't want to stick around for this frozen lawsuit-in-waiting. I flipped it off anyway.
I stared up the slope again.
Snow whipped across the ridgeline in short, violent flurries. No clear path. No glowing markers. Just rock, ice, and wind screaming for me to leave.
This is your fault, Hagar.
I could've stayed. Sat on my ass, eaten the powdered stew, let the System file me under "forgettable."
But no. You had to sell me the dream.
"Get the tag, Eirik."
"Don't fade out, Eirik."
Yeah? Well now I'm standing at the foot of Frostbite Mountain in blood crusted thong, chasing a piece of bureaucratic recognition like it'll stop my toes snapping off.
The wind hit my face like sandpaper dipped in liquid nitrogen. Air thin, dry, already clawing at my lungs, and I hadn't even taken one damn step.
And sure, I was stalling.
Not just because I was scared.
I'd learned a thing or two since Level One.
Rule one: don't charge straight into the teeth of the world when your lungs are already bitching and your "pants" smell like regret.
I needed a plan.
Or at least the illusion of one.
So I parked my ass on a half-frozen rock, cursed Hagar's name a few more times, and did a quick inventory of everything I didn't have.
I wasn't about to let the System grind me down on a schedule it refused to print.
Supplies? Two ration bars.
That's it. Two.
Step one wasn't climbing. Step one was scouting. I wont survive this with just my bars...
I paced the edge of the base, boots grinding frostbitten moss. The treeline loomed close, twisted pines hunched like old men frozen mid-complaint. Snow clung to their branches like they owed it money.
Water. I needed water. Maybe something edible. Even bugs would be a win. Stretch the bars, buy myself an extra day to spit in the System's face.
Just ten minutes later I found a runoff channel, barely more than a crack in the rocks where meltwater trickled stubbornly down. I crouched, dipped a hand. Icy as hell. Clean enough.
I drank. Cold enough to punch my teeth, but it was fresh.
Next priority: cover. Not a cabin, not even a lean-to. Just something to keep the wind from skinning me alive. Ended up with a shallow alcove between two boulders, half-sheltered by a pine that had already given up on life.
I scraped snow away with a stick, stacked stones into a makeshift windbreak. Didn't look like much, but it whispered "camp" instead of "grave," and that was good enough.
Inventory check:
Two ration bars.
That's the list. Expecting more? Cute.
I glanced back up at the ridgeline. Snow slicing sideways, exfoliating the mountain like it wanted it smooth and unlivable.
The fire took three tries and enough swearing to make a priest renounce his vows. Frostbitten pine needles and damp moss fought me the whole way, but I beat them with friction, shattered bark, and blind fury. The result was a pathetic little flame that danced like it was embarrassed to be here.
Relatable.
I hunched close. Not out of desperation. Not even that cold.
Which was the weird part.
By rights, I should've been blue already. Teeth chattering SOS.
Instead? I felt... fine. Not cozy, but not dying either.
I flexed my fingers. Warm. Responsive. No stiffness.
"Constitution?" I muttered. "Or is the bear just hairy enough on the inside?"
No answer. Didn't expect one. Probably both. Stats creeping up, slow but steady. And the Root settling deeper every hour. Less human, more... whatever the hell this is.
Useful, though. Can't bitch about useful.
But if I was going to climb, I needed more than dried blood and optimism. Firewood. Food. Fur, if I was lucky. Because once I left this base camp, there wasn't going to be a checkpoint or save file waiting.
I hefted the sharpened stick I'd carved earlier, more stabbing club than spear, but it had a point. Which put it ahead of most people I knew.
I looked toward the treeline.
"Alright. Let's gather."
The forest wasn't quiet.
It creaked and shifted like an old man settling into a chair made of complaints. Wind hissed through branches. Snow fell in fits, light, then like the sky wanted to bury me.
I moved slow, scanning for signs. Anything edible. Anything that moved.
Ten minutes in, I found tracks. Small, clawed. Rodent, maybe. Or a very stupid rabbit.
I followed, crouched low.
Three minutes later: a scrappy, snow-colored thing with too-long legs and ears like frostbitten leaves. Digging at a tree base, unaware. It didn't act like a normal animal, probably tweaked to be easy hunting for the golden bois.
One throw. Stick snapped through the air, more luck and power than skill, and hit it clean in the ribs. It squealed once and flopped.
Dinner.
I exhaled, jogged over. Not much meat, but protein. Survival.
Back at camp, I gutted the corpse with my axe. Slow work. Messy.
I skewered the meat over the flame, turning it while the fat hissed and popped. Smelled better than it had any right to.
I ate in silence.
Gamey. Bitter. Warm. Solid.
After, I peeled the hide as best I could and draped it over my shoulders. More symbolic than effective right now. Give me five more and I'd have a cloak... if I ever figured out how to turn frozen roadkill into high fashion. Spoiler: I haven't. So for now, one rat-pelt shawl and a whole lot of optimism.
I leaned back against the rock wall, watched the fire crackle low.
This was going to take time. And blood. And probably a dozen more rodents.
But I was doing something. Fighting. Not locked into a loadout blessed by team buffs and pre-approved quests.
It was mine. And I liked that better.
Somehow I felt less stressed and more happy on the side of a snowy mountain fighting for my life than I ever did back in the civilized world.
Fire, food, fur.
One night at a time.
I was going to out-endure this bastard mountain...
I got to work the next morning with one goal: not starving.
Which meant full DIY apocalypse.
I scouted a new crevice in the rocks, shallow enough to trap heat, deep enough to funnel smoke. Lined the bottom with damp pine needles and frozen moss, stacked a rough grid of sticks above. Airflow was trash. The whole thing looked like a stone-age oven designed by a drunk squirrel.
I lit a low flame, fed it green twigs and bark shavings, then shoved in what scraps I hadn't eaten. Not cooking, smoking. Try to preserve the leftovers.
Thank you, SurvivalTube.
Thank you, insomnia.
It reeked of burned sap and bad choices, but the smell of drying meat was there too, faint. Enough to believe this might work.
No Hagar barking insults. No mystic shitstain dropping passive-aggressive prompts. Just the fire, the cold, and me.
And for once... that didn't feel like punishment.
I hunted more that day. Two more rodents, one lean, one lucky.
Skinned them slower, tried not to butcher the hides completely. Still got blood everywhere, but the shapes were... pelt-ish. If you squinted.
Three total now.
Halfway to a cloak.
New problem: how the fuck do you make one?
No needle. No thread. Just instinct and desperation.
So I did what any rational person would do.
Cut open the gut of one rodent, pulled the intestines free, rinsed them in snowmelt, stretched them in the wind like I was summoning a plague god.
Give it a few hours and I'd have rope. Or... stringy goo. Either way, something.
Then the discovery.
I held a pelt up to the firelight, trying to figure out how to punch holes, and caught myself baring my teeth.
I blinked.
Bit down.
Not hard. Just a test.
The pelt tore.
Clean.
Like it wanted to yield.
I stared at my reflection in the blackened axe blade. Teeth, thicker. Sharper. More animal than human.
I smiled, jagged and real, and got back to work.
It was early morning when I finished.
The cloak turned out... better than expected.
I tied the pelts together with the dried gut-strips I'd stretched over the rocks. Rough cordage, stiff and ugly, but strong. I looped them through crude holes I'd bitten into the hides, then knotted them tight. Needlework by spite and molars.
Draped across my shoulders, it actually looked like something. Patchy, furred, crusted with old blood, but layered. Thick enough to break the wind. It hung to my knees and clung to my back with a kind of primal dignity. Or at least, so I told myself.
Combined with my bare chest, shaggy hair, and the not-so-subtle animal changes creeping into my jawline and shoulders?
I looked like I'd mugged a folkloric forest god.
If anyone at the hub saw me now, they'd probably call a raid.
I let the cloak settle, adjusted the weight. Warm. Heavy. Rank. I didn't mind. It was earned. Every knot and gash was something I took and bent to my will.
After that, I packed.
The smoked meat had hardened overnight, salty, dry, a little bitter from resin smoke. Edible. Two, maybe three days if I rationed. I wrapped the strips in pelt shavings and tucked them into a satchel made from the rest of the skins.
Firewood next. Bundled ash branches, lashed with the last of the gut-rope. Not much, but enough to coax a flame if I found shelter higher up. I slung the bundle over one shoulder like a medieval lumberjack cosplayer.
No arch. No base. No fallback.
Just snow. Stone. The climb.
One last look at the fire pit, then I faced the ridge.
"Let's dance, bastard."
The wind cut, sharp and sudden.
When it picked up again, there were fresh paw prints ahead of me in the untouched snow.
Small. Deliberate. Pointed downhill.
Straight at me.