Hours bled into darkness before the sky above finally began to shift.
A pale, sickly gray hue crept across the horizon, slowly dispelling the oppressive darkness of the night.
Aiden opened his eyes beneath his visor, watching as the first light filtered through the dense, tangled canopy.
The morning light revealed his surroundings in horrifying detail.
Aiden wasn’t merely trapped in a tree.
He was suspended in the center of an entire forest of monstrous plant life.
As far as his eyes could see, towering, pale trunks stretched toward the sky like bleached ribs.
Thick, fibrous vines carpeted the ground below, coiling and twisting as the morning warmth touched their bark.
The moment the first rays of sunlight pierced the mist, an intense wave of emotional feedback washed over him.
It wasn’t a single consciousness.
It was a collective presence composed of faint, instinctual hunger.
The trees surrounding him began to awaken.
As the forest stirred, the tree holding Aiden reacted violently.
Its grip suddenly constricted with tremendous force.
Thick branches pressed against his chest and shoulders, attempting to crush the steel armor protecting him.
CRACK.
Faint fractures spider-webbed across the surface of his armor
Aiden gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the armor to shatter.
Yet after nearly a minute of intense pressure, the tree suddenly loosened its grip.
The branches relaxed into a steady holding position, as if the organism needed to recover after exerting so much force.
Aiden exhaled slowly.
During the brief lull, the dark steel of his armor shimmered with faint magical energy.
The fractures across the armor gradually knitted themselves back together, completely restoring its structural integrity before the tree attempted another crushing cycle.
‘So that’s how it works,’ Aiden analyzed, watching the bark expand and contract.
‘It exerts maximum pressure to break its prey, then pauses to conserve energy.
It operates on a cycle.’
He also realized something far more disturbing about his initial arrival.
The rest of the forest had remained completely dormant throughout the night.
The tree holding him had only awakened because he had landed directly on its branches during transportation, triggering its feeding instincts.
A bitter smile touched his lips beneath his helmet.
‘Is this because of my [Cursed] Attribute?’ he thought, cursing his relentless bad luck. New chapters come out on g.com first.
‘Out of all the places I could have landed, the Spell had to drop me directly onto an active predator.’
Shifting his gaze beyond the immediate tree line, Aiden attempted to gather long-range visual intelligence.
Focusing his eyes through a gap in the skeletal branches, Aiden spotted something towering in the far distance.
It was a colossal wall.
The structure was gargantuan an ancient, dark rampart so massive it dwarfed the surrounding forest and stretched across the entire horizon, disappearing into the fog.
It was larger than any fortification Aiden had ever encountered, even in his previous life.
Curiously, the heavy, rhythmic sound of ocean waves he had heard crashing against that massive barrier throughout the night had completely vanished as the sun rose higher.
There was no water in sight, nor any sign of a tide.
The eerie, sudden silence made him wonder if the crashing waves had been nothing more than an auditory hallucination induced by his disorientation, or maybe something behind The wall.
Unfortunately, identifying a landmark meant nothing if he couldn’t move.
Aiden focused his will, summoning his weapon back into reality.
Dark violet sparks coalesced in his pinned right hand, and the sleek hilt of Kurohana materialized in his grip.
Attempting to free even a single limb, Aiden angled the blade and tried to cut through the branch pinning his right wrist.
Sparks flew.
The bark was impossibly tough, and without enough room to generate proper leverage, he couldn’t cut deeply enough to sever the fibrous wood.
Suddenly..
His grip slipped because of the awkward angle, and the blade tumbled from his numb fingers, falling through the air and burying itself in the pale soil below.
Aiden didn’t panic.
Instead, he closed his eyes and willed the Memory to return to his soul core.
A second later, he summoned it again.
The blade instantly materialized back into his palm.
‘At least I can re-summon it regardless of distance,’ Aiden noted calmly.
‘Good to know.’
He tried again.
And again.
He attempted to angle the point directly into the trunk, tried to use leverage to pry the smaller tendrils away, and attempted to carve through the vines binding his torso.
Every time he made a move, the tree responded immediately.
The moment it registered his resistance, the surrounding branches tightened violently.
Sharp, needle-like wooden spikes sprouted from the inner bark, striking relentlessly against his steel plating in an attempt to pierce his armor and siphon his vitality.
His armor suffered heavy damage with every assault, but whenever the tree exhausted its attack and paused to recover, [Immortal Shell] gradually regenerated.
Thanks to his [Immortal Renewal] ability Visit g.com for the full chapter.
The cycle repeated continuously.
Aiden attempted a breakout.
The tree clamped down and struck back.
The armor absorbed the damage and regenerated.
Then both sides settled into a tense, temporary stalemate.
Hours turned into a full day.
As night fell once more, a dark realization settled into Aiden’s mind.
He was running out of options.
Every tactical approach he had attempted was countered by the plant’s biological mechanics.
Physical strength couldn’t break the density of the wood, his sword couldn’t generate enough leverage from his position, and aggressive resistance only triggered the tree’s predatory defenses.
The only logical way to escape this situation was external intervention, someone else cutting him down from the outside.
Yet Aiden immediately dismissed that hope as pure fantasy.
Who would be foolish enough to wander into a dense, uncharted forest where every tree is a Nightmare Creature?
The odds of another Sleeper stumbling upon his exact location were practically nonexistent.
And even if someone did, they would likely leave him to die rather than risk awakening an entire forest of predatory plants.
Then, the true enemy revealed itself.
It wasn’t the tree.
It wasn’t the spikes.
It wasn’t even the crushing pressure.
It was biological attrition.
Gazing down at his boots, Aiden realized that despite having months worth of water containers, canned food, and medical supplies safely stored inside his Bottomless Pouch, he had no physical way to access them.
Both of his arms were pinned securely against the trunk, and his visor was locked shut inside his armor.
He couldn’t reach his pouch.
He couldn’t open a water container.
He couldn’t eat.
He was an elite military strategist, a former Supreme Commander, and a sleeper possessing a Sacred Aspect.
Yet he was going to die from something as simple as dehydration, trapped like a piece of fruit on a wooden branch.
Days began to pass in a haze of silence and sunlight.
Day turned to night, and night bled into morning.
Aiden remained suspended five meters above the ground, his body locked inside steel armor, his throat burning with absolute dryness as he watched the pale sun rise and set over the silent, endless forest.
For the first time since entering the Dream Realm, Aiden realized that his greatest enemy wasn’t the Nightmare Creature holding him captive.
It was time.