For several seconds, Traise simply stared at the glowing quest window hanging in front of him.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Quest: Kill 10 Silverhorn Hares]
[Quest: Kill 3 Moonfang Stalkers]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The slow grin on his face faded slightly as his eyes settled on the second quest again.
Kill 3 Moonfang Stalkers?
One of those things had nearly killed him earlier, even while heavily injured from fighting another monster.
If the boar-like creature hadn’t interrupted the chase, Traise doubted he would still be alive right now.
The system apparently didn’t care.
The system expected him to grow stronger.
Whether he survived long enough to do that was apparently his own problem.
Traise exhaled quietly before focusing on something else instead.
The five unused stat points still hovered near the bottom of his status screen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Free Attribute Points: 5]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“This part’s more important.”
He opened the full status screen again while mentally reviewing everything that had happened so far.
Strength clearly mattered for damage.
Dexterity affected movement and reaction speed.
Intelligence helped him think through problems faster.
Endurance improved survivability.
Willpower…
He still had no idea what Willpower actually did beyond vague system descriptions.
Right now, survival mattered more than theory.
If he wanted to keep hunting monsters without getting killed, then he needed to become faster and stronger immediately.
Allocate 2 points to Strength.
[Strength increased: 11 → 13]
A faint warmth spread through his arms and shoulders almost immediately.
His grip around the dagger tightened instinctively as the muscles in his forearm felt slightly denser than before.
Then he continued.
Allocate 3 points to Dexterity.
[Dexterity increased: 14 → 17]
The change felt stranger this time.
The forest itself didn’t slow down around him the way games or movies often portrayed enhanced reflexes, but his own body suddenly felt lighter and easier to control.
His balance shifted naturally beneath him while small movements became smoother without conscious effort.
Traise flexed his fingers experimentally before taking a few careful steps forward.
Even walking felt different.
His feet landed more naturally while his body adjusted faster to uneven terrain without forcing him to consciously focus on every movement.
A small grin returned to his face.
“Okay… that’s actually ridiculous.”
He reopened the status screen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[The Upgrade System]
User: Traise Axton
Grade: Initiate
Level: 2
XP: 1 / 20
Health: 16 / 16
Mana: 10 / 10
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Attributes]
Strength: 13
Dexterity: 17 (+3 Equipment)
Intelligence: 11
Endurance: 11
Willpower: 10
Luck: ???
Free Attribute Points: 0
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The numbers still looked surreal.
Even after everything that had happened, part of him still expected this entire situation to break apart like some elaborate dream or hallucination.
Instead, the stat screen remained floating calmly in front of him.
A dry feeling in his throat interrupted him before he could dwell on it further.
Thirst.
Traise frowned slightly as he finally noticed how dry his mouth had become after hours of running, fighting, and hunting.
Hunger had been obvious earlier, but thirst felt worse somehow.
“Right… survival.”
His excitement settled quickly as reality returned.
Stats and levels didn’t mean much if he died from something stupid like dehydration.
Traise began moving again, this time paying closer attention to the environment around him instead of searching only for monsters.
The deeper sections of the forest grew denser in some places while opening unexpectedly in others, forcing him to navigate around tangled roots, moss-covered stones, and clusters of glowing plants that spread faint blue light across the ground.
Several times, he thought he heard running water before realizing it was only wind shifting through distant leaves.
Eventually, after nearly twenty minutes of searching, he finally heard an actual stream nearby.
The sound immediately pulled his attention forward.
Traise carefully pushed through a wall of hanging vines before finally spotting shallow water flowing between smooth, dark stones ahead.
Relief spread through him instantly as he crouched beside the stream and stared at the moving water cautiously.
The surface looked clean enough.
Hopefully.
“Please don’t give me alien parasites…”
After a moment of hesitation, he scooped water into his hands and drank carefully.
Cold water immediately spread through his mouth and throat.
Traise nearly groaned from relief.
He stayed crouched there for another minute, drinking several more handfuls until the dryness in his throat finally faded and some of the lingering exhaustion weighing down his body eased slightly.
Only after satisfying his thirst did he start experimenting with the inventory again.
Inventory storage.
He stared at the stream for a moment before focusing mentally on the flowing water.
[Store Water?]
Traise blinked.
“You can do that?”
He mentally confirmed the action while focusing on a small amount near the edge of the stream.
The water vanished instantly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Stored Water]
Volume: 1 Liter
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared at the screen curiously before attempting to retrieve it.
Water immediately materialized in front of him—
—and spilled directly onto the ground.
“…Right.”
The inventory could store water.
That didn’t magically solve the problem of actually carrying or drinking it afterward.
“I still need containers.”
Still, the discovery felt important.
The system wasn’t just limited to weapons and monster drops.
Traise stood again before glancing toward the quest window floating faintly near the edge of his vision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Quest: Kill 10 Silverhorn Hares]
Progress: 0 / 10
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The second quest still felt suicidal, but the Silverhorn Hare quest looked manageable now.
At least compared to everything else living in this forest.
Traise tightened his grip around the Silverhorn Bone Dagger before beginning another hunt.
Finding the creatures proved harder than before.
Now that he was actively searching for them instead of stumbling into them accidentally, Traise quickly realized the hares weren’t simply scattered everywhere waiting to be killed.
Long stretches of forest passed without any signs of movement at all, while several trails turned out to belong to entirely different creatures, judging by the claw marks and strange footprints pressed into the dirt.
Twice, he found signs that made him immediately leave the area without question.
Deep gouges across tree bark.
Large tracks.
The remains of something half-eaten.
The forest constantly reminded him that Silverhorn Hares were probably near the bottom of the food chain here.
Eventually, he spotted movement near a cluster of pale bushes ahead.
Another Silverhorn Hare.
This time, the creature barely had time to react before Traise lunged forward.
His improved Dexterity made the difference obvious immediately.
He moved faster.
Turned faster.
Adjusted faster.
The Silverhorn Hare still tried to flee, but Traise closed the distance before it could fully escape and brought the dagger down cleanly across its side.
The creature collapsed after only a brief struggle.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[You have killed a Silverhorn Hare]
[You have gained 2 Experience]
[Quest Progress Updated]
[1 / 10]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Another notification appeared afterward.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Item Acquired]
Silverhorn Meat x1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise exhaled quietly while wiping the dagger against the grass.
“That was way easier…”
The stat increase had changed more than he expected.
The next several hunts gradually confirmed it.
Traise still failed sometimes.
A few hares escaped entirely after spotting him too early, while others forced him into long pursuits through thick undergrowth before he finally cornered them.
Even so, each successful hunt became slightly smoother than the last.
The dagger helped enormously compared to the crude wooden branch from earlier.
By the third kill, he already felt noticeably more comfortable moving quickly between obstacles while tracking fleeing prey through the forest.
By the fourth, he stopped stumbling nearly as often.
The hares still occasionally scratched him while escaping narrow corners, but the injuries felt increasingly minor compared to earlier fights.
[Minor Regeneration Mastery increased: 12 / 100]
The notification appeared while a shallow cut across his forearm slowly closed itself.
Traise stared at the healing skin briefly before shaking his head.
Minor Regeneration was still improving.
Just slower now.
Less damage meant less healing.
That made sense.
The hunts continued for hours.
Some kills dropped nothing at all.
Others produced meat, fur, horn fragments, or small monster materials that slowly filled the inventory.
Traise gradually began understanding that the system rewards weren’t guaranteed, though he still viewed the overall drop rates as fairly normal from a gamer perspective.
After another extended chase through uneven terrain, he heard a new notification.
[Endurance increased to 12]
Traise slowed slightly while catching his breath.
Or rather…
Not catching it as hard as before.
His chest still rose quickly from the prolonged sprinting, but the burning exhaustion that used to build inside his lungs no longer hit him nearly as hard.
His legs also recovered faster between hunts, allowing him to continue moving without stopping as often.
The difference felt obvious now that he paid attention to it.
Hours earlier, this level of constant running would have left him collapsed somewhere against a tree.
Now he was still moving.
Still hunting.
Still thinking clearly.
The realization alone pushed him forward again.
The next several hunts became increasingly efficient as his body adapted further to the constant movement.
He reacted faster during turns, adjusted more naturally to uneven footing, and wasted less energy during prolonged chases.
Eventually, another notification alerted him.
[Dexterity increased to 18]
Traise slowed slightly after the message appeared.
Another Dexterity increase.
But compared to earlier, the gain had taken far longer to happen.
The same movements that had pushed his body before now felt easier to perform.
The system clearly expected more from him as he grew stronger.
That thought settled heavily in his mind as he continued hunting.
The easier things became, the harder improvement would probably get.
Again, another notification rang out after a particularly long chase.
[Endurance increased to 13]
Traise let out a slow breath afterward while leaning briefly against a tree trunk.
Even after several consecutive hunts, his body still felt surprisingly stable.
Tired, yes.
But functional.
The seventh hare nearly escaped him entirely.
Traise spotted it crossing a narrow animal trail before immediately sprinting after it, his improved Dexterity allowing him to weave between trees far more smoothly than before.
The Silverhorn Hare darted sharply around a cluster of rocks before suddenly changing direction again.
Traise reacted instantly this time.
He planted one foot against a stone, pushed off hard, and cut directly across the creature’s path before slashing downward with the dagger.
The hare collapsed into the grass.
Then the system appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[You have killed a Silverhorn Hare]
[You have gained 1 Experience]
[Silverhorn Hare threat assessment adjusted: Minor]
[Reduced experience granted due to repeated successful hunts]
[Quest Progress Updated]
[7 / 10]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise let out a tired breath while brushing loose dirt from his sleeve.
Then another notification appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Item Acquired]
Silverhorn Boots
Grade: Initiate
Effect: +2 Dexterity, +15% Movement Speed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise froze.
“…Boots?”
He immediately opened the inventory and pulled the item out.
Dark silver leather boots materialized directly into his hands, reinforced with pale fur lining near the top, while thin silver patterns curved along the sides of the material.
Compared to the rough survival conditions surrounding him, the equipment looked absurdly clean.
A real equipment drop.
Traise quickly swapped out his damaged shoes before standing again.
The difference nearly threw him off balance.
His body responded too easily now.
Each step carried farther than he expected, while small adjustments happened almost automatically beneath him.
His footing stayed stable even while weaving around rocks, uneven terrain, and low roots at speeds that would have made him stumble repeatedly only hours earlier.
It felt wrong.
Not painful.
Not uncontrollable.
Just… unfamiliar.
Back on Earth, he had spent most of his life sitting behind screens.
Even a few minutes of running used to leave him exhausted.
Now his body moved with a level of coordination that honestly felt alien to him.
[Dexterity increased: 18 → 20]
Traise took several experimental steps before breaking into a short sprint between the trees.
The speed increase wasn’t overwhelming, but combined with his already improved Dexterity, the effect felt incredible compared to how clumsy he had been earlier.
For the first time since arriving in this world, Traise genuinely felt dangerous to something other than helpless prey.
A grin slowly spread across his face again.
Then a distant howl echoed somewhere far deeper within the forest.
The sound instantly froze him in place.
Low.
Predatory.
Familiar.
The grin disappeared almost immediately.
A Moonfang Stalker…