The forest didn't end with a dramatic line.
Hyun Joo had imagined it would—trees thinning, sunlight widening, some kind of clear
border where his "starter area" stopped and the real world began. Instead, the change
came slowly, the way seasons shifted: fewer ancient trunks, more young trees, the
undergrowth less tangled, the ground firmer underfoot. The stream broadened in places
and shallowed in others, cutting through rock that looked worn down by long years of
patient water.
Still, his body noticed the difference before his eyes did.
For a year, every sound had belonged to the same closed world. Birds, wind, insects, the
occasional crack of distant movement. Even danger had been limited to the kinds of things
that lived near his hill and his stream.
Now there were new traces—subtle, but unmistakable. A snapped branch that didn't look
like wind damage. A patch of mud with impressions that weren't hooves. Once, he found a
piece of bark stripped clean from a tree in a long rectangle, as if someone had peeled it for
use.
Someone else had been here.
Hyun Joo's steps slowed, not from fear of a fight, but from a different kind of anxiety.
People.
He had wanted people for so long that the thought of meeting them made his mouth go dry.
"What do I even say?" he murmured, and heard the oddness of his own voice in the open
air. He'd spoken out loud during training and during long nights alone, but conversation was
different. Conversation was a bridge. If it broke, you fell.
His first worry came immediately, practical and humiliating.
Language.
Could he speak their language? Would they even understand him? In stories, protagonists
often conveniently understood everything after arriving. Sometimes it was a blessing.
Sometimes it was a skill.
He hadn't tested it because he'd had no one to test it on. Talking to himself didn't count.
His second worry was how he looked.
He'd kept himself as clean as he could—washing in the stream, scrubbing sweat and dried
blood off his hands after hunting, trimming his hair with sharpened stone when it got too
long. But clean skin didn't make clean clothes.
His shirt and pants were the same ones he'd woken up in. They had survived a year of
thorns, rainless sun, and constant work. He'd patched tears with twisted plant fibers and
thin strips of hide. Seams had been reinforced in ugly stitches. The fabric was faded and
rough, the knees permanently stained.
And the vest he wore now wasn't even a vest in the way he remembered. It was leather—
scraped, softened, smoked over low fire, and cut to cover his torso. Functional. Crude. Like
something a desperate traveler would wear.
If he saw someone dressed like this on Earth, he would assume either homelessness or
danger.
Here, he didn't know what people assumed.
Hyun Joo ran his fingers over a stitched patch near his ribs, feeling the tightness of the fiber.
He'd done decent work. Not professional, but serviceable. His spear sat across his back,
and a stone knife hung at his waist.
He looked, he realized, like someone who belonged outside civilization.
Which was, unfortunately, true.
He stopped and breathed, letting his senses extend the way they had learned to over the
past year. In his mind, the training wasn't just physical anymore; it was a way to push panic
down into something useful. He could feel the quiet pool of energy inside him—cool,
steady, familiar.
Cultivate. Breathe. Observe. React.
He'd done it for a year.
He could do it now.
He resumed walking, following the stream because it was the closest thing he had to a
road.
After maybe an hour—long enough for the light to shift through the trees—something
changed.
The air grew lighter. The canopy broke. The stream curved around a line of rocks, and
beyond it the forest thinned into a wide stretch of grass and low shrubs.
A meadow.
Hyun Joo stepped to the edge of the trees and paused, scanning like he'd taught himself to
do—left to right, near to far. The meadow rolled gently, and in the distance he saw smoke.
Thin, pale smoke rising straight up. Not a wildfire. Not natural.
A hearth.
His heart thumped once, hard. He'd expected this moment to come slowly, with more
preparation.
It was here.
He took one step out of the trees.
A translucent system window flashed into existence in front of his face, so sudden he
almost flinched like something had attacked him.
Congratulations! You have left the Starter Area.
Appraisal has reached Lv. 2.
Newly revealed talents: Aetheris Language Understanding; 100% Memory Retention
(regardless of Intelligence).
Hyun Joo stared until his eyes started to sting.
Starter area.
The words made his year feel… curated. Like he'd been placed in a safe enclosure with
training wheels, allowed to struggle but not to encounter the true teeth of the world.
And the talents—
He swallowed.
"Aetheris Language Understanding," he read aloud. His voice sounded steady, but only
because he forced it. "So I can talk."
Relief hit him so powerfully he had to close his eyes for a moment. He hadn't realized how
much that fear had been sitting in his stomach, poisoning every thought about meeting
people.
Then the other talent registered: 100% Memory Retention (regardless of Intelligence).
He read it twice, then a third time.
It explained the clarity. The way his mind had been able to pull details from shows, scenes,
and stories as if he'd practiced them himself. He'd thought it was just stress sharpening
him, or youth returning.
No.
It was a gift. A cheat. A rigged advantage.
And suddenly, his thoughts drifted—unwanted but persistent—to his previous life.
A small apartment. Long shifts. Tiredness that never went away. The kind of exhaustion that
didn't come from honest physical labor, but from life grinding you down without giving you
anything back. He remembered sitting at a desk, shoulders hunched, scrolling through
anime clips late at night with the volume low so he wouldn't bother neighbors. Watching
heroes and geniuses and men born with everything.
Jealousy had lived in him like an ache he refused to name.
And now—
Now he had talents handed to him by a world that greeted him like a customer.
Hyun Joo opened his eyes and looked at the smoke again. The meadow, the far-off
suggestion of people.
He didn't feel triumphant. He felt wary.
If this world gave gifts, it probably demanded payment later.
He willed the message away. Before it vanished completely, he caught the line about
Appraisal.
He brought up his status window and focused on the talent.
Appraisal Lv. 2
Provides basic safety assessment and a brief description.
"A brief description," he repeated softly. "That's… huge."
Even one line could mean the difference between "safe to eat" and "safe to eat raw," or
"harmless animal" and "territorial animal." It could mean identifying a person's role, a
tool's purpose, a plant's medicinal use.
He didn't know the limits yet, but he knew this: in an unknown world, information was
armor.
Hyun Joo dismissed the window and began walking toward the smoke, staying near the
edge of the meadow so he could retreat to trees if needed.
As he walked, he rehearsed what to do when he met someone.
Not what to say—Language Understanding would handle the words—but how to behave.
He had watched enough shows and read enough stories to know that appearing
threatening was a quick way to get killed. A spear in hand could look like an attack. A knife
at the belt could look like banditry.
At the same time, walking unarmed could look like weakness, and weakness could invite
different dangers.
He needed to look like a traveler. A survivor. Someone who could defend himself but had no
intention of starting trouble.
He shifted his spear so it was clearly strapped across his back, not held ready. He kept his
hands visible as he walked. He practiced a calm expression—neutral, respectful, not eager.
And he thought about his appearance again.
How do I explain this?
"I… was lost?" he whispered, testing the phrase in his mouth like a new tool. The words
came out in a language he recognized and didn't recognize at the same time. His mind
understood it without effort, but his ears heard something that wasn't Korean, wasn't
English.
It worked. He could speak it.
He tried another sentence. "I have been living in the forest."
Again, the language flowed.
Hyun Joo stopped walking for a moment, startled by how natural it felt. It was like waking
up fluent after a lifetime of studying.
"Thank you," he said quietly—to the system, to Aetheris, to the unfairness of it.
Then he resumed, pace steady.
As the smoke drew closer, he began to see shapes: a rough track through the grass, packed
down by repeated footsteps and cart wheels. A fence line made of uneven stakes. And
then, finally, buildings—small, sturdy structures with slanted roofs, clustered near the
water where the stream widened and slowed.
A village.
Not large. Perhaps a dozen buildings. Smoke rose from two or three chimneys. He saw
movement—someone carrying a bucket, someone bending near a garden patch, a figure
leading an animal that looked like a goat but thicker, with curling horns.
Hyun Joo's heart beat hard enough to feel in his throat.
He stopped at the edge of the track and stood still, letting his body settle. He didn't want to
appear as if he'd been stalking them.
How do I test myself against people without being rude?
The thought came from a practical place. He'd raised his stats to twenty across the board,
but numbers didn't tell him what a person with a lifetime of experience looked like. He had
strength, yes—but did it match a trained soldier here? Did his agility compare to a hunter?
Did his magic mean anything if he couldn't use it?
He needed a measure.
But he couldn't walk into a village and start asking people to arm wrestle him like a
challenge. He couldn't ask someone to swing a sword at him "just to test reflexes."
So he thought the way he'd trained: indirect tests.
Offer to help with work. Carry water. Lift something heavy. Volunteer for a task and see how
easily he kept up. Observe how others moved. Listen to how they spoke about strength and
skill. Learn their baseline without making it a contest.
And while he was here—he needed answers about magic.
He could cultivate the energy inside him. He could feel it even now, a slow swirl beneath his
ribs. But he didn't know what to do with it.
If there were mages, priests, shamans—anyone who understood the world's rules—he
needed to find them. Not by demanding secrets, but by being useful first.
He stepped onto the track.
Immediately, a child's voice called out from somewhere near the fence—sharp and
startled. He couldn't make out the words at first because his mind went blank with the
suddenness of being perceived. Then the language talent snapped it into clarity.
"Mom! Someone's coming!"
A figure straightened near a garden patch. Another person paused mid-step with a bucket.
Heads turned.
Hyun Joo stopped and raised one hand slowly, palm outward. Not a wave that might look
casual—more like a clear sign: I am here, I am unarmed in my hands, I want to be seen.
He took another step, then another, careful not to close distance too quickly.
A man approached from the nearest building, stepping into the track with a cautious
stance. He held a tool—maybe a hoe or a heavy stick—gripped in both hands like it could
become a weapon if needed.
Hyun Joo kept his voice calm. "Hello."
The word came out in Aetheris' tongue, smooth.
The man blinked, and Hyun Joo saw the tension shift—just slightly. Understanding.
Surprise that the stranger spoke.
"You're not from here," the man said, eyes flicking over Hyun Joo's patched clothes, the
leather vest, the spear on his back. "Where did you come from?"
Hyun Joo's mouth opened—and then his rehearsed sentences vanished. A year alone
didn't prepare him for the weight of being asked a simple question.
Where did you come from?
He couldn't say "Earth." Not yet. He didn't know if that would mark him as mad, or
dangerous, or valuable in the worst way.
He chose the simplest truth that wouldn't reveal everything.
"I was… lost in the forest," he said. "For a long time."
The man's eyes narrowed. "How long?"
Hyun Joo hesitated just long enough to feel suspicious, then forced himself to answer
plainly. "A year."
There was a murmuring behind the man—other villagers, drawn closer now, forming a
loose semicircle. Not hostile, but watchful.
"A year?" the man repeated, as if the word didn't fit in his mouth. "In the Greenbelt?"
Greenbelt. So his forest had a name.
Hyun Joo nodded. "Yes."
The man stared at him, taking in his posture. Hyun Joo realized then that training had
changed more than muscle. He stood evenly, balanced, alert. Not like a starving castaway.
Not like someone who'd barely survived.
That could be good.
Or it could be very bad.
The man spoke again, more carefully. "What are you doing here now?"
Hyun Joo kept his hand raised, then slowly lowered it to his side when he saw no one
advancing. He chose his words with the same discipline he used to hold a plank until his
core screamed.
"I'm looking for people," he said. "I want to trade for proper clothing, tools… and
information. I don't want trouble."
That last part mattered. He added, "If I can work for it, I will."
The man's grip on his tool loosened a fraction. His eyes flicked to the spear again, then
back to Hyun Joo's face.
"You speak well," he said. "But you look like a wild man."
Hyun Joo almost laughed—because it was true, and because he didn't know how else he
could look after a year. Instead, he bowed his head slightly in what he hoped was
interpreted as respect.
"I had no choice," he said. "I did what I had to."
The man studied him, then glanced back toward the village. "We can talk. But not on the
road like this." He gestured. "Come. Slowly."
Hyun Joo nodded and followed at a measured pace, letting the villagers see his hands,
letting them see he wasn't reaching for his knife.
As he walked into the village, he felt something strange and sharp in his chest.
Not fear.
Not relief.
Something like… possibility.
He thought, briefly, of his old life again. Of sitting alone in a room with a glowing screen,
watching other people's adventures because he didn't believe he'd ever have one. Of envy
souring his stomach when he saw characters born talented, born beautiful, born lucky.
He'd trained for a year in a forest until his body became a tool and his mind became a
record that didn't forget. He'd gained gifts he hadn't earned. He'd survived.
Now he was walking into a village in another world, and for the first time, his future wasn't a
continuation of a schedule.
It was unknown.
Which meant it could be shaped.
As the man led him toward the center of the village—toward smoke, voices, and the first
real human warmth he'd felt in a year—Hyun Joo made himself a quiet promise.
He would not use his strength to threaten.
He would use it to learn.
And if there was anyone here who knew what that energy inside him was called—mana,
essence, aether, whatever Aetheris named it—he would find them. Not by demanding
secrets like a fool in a story, but by earning trust the hard way.
Because in the end, he wasn't here to play a game.
He was here to live.