Tier 1 Gate (1)
The shift was instant.
One second Lanz was standing in a mossy clearing under the night sky outside Velmordop. The next, he was somewhere else entirely.
The light hit him first. The forest inside the gate wasn't dark or spooky like those black-and-red gates from the webnovel series. It was... morning? Soft sun filtered through high trees. Everything was green. Birds chirped somewhere off to the right. A breeze rustled the leaves like it was trying to calm him down.
He didn't feel calm.
The gate behind him had vanished, typical. The air smelled clean, almost sweet, and the ground under his boots was a little too soft. There was a faint shimmer to the edges of his vision, but there was no system UI, health bar, floating map, and absolutely no button that said return to safety.
"...So this is a real gate," he muttered.
He crouched low and started moving. Quiet, careful, cloak tucked close. Just in case anything out here had a taste for morons in black hoods.
Animal tracks were everywhere, little clawed feet and a thick gash on the bark of a tree like something had marked it recently. A snapped branch was ahead. 'Something had passed here recently.'
"This isn't a sim anymore," Lanz muttered, eyes scanning left and right. "But the dying part is still on the table, so that's great."
Suddenly, leaf fell from the trees and landed on his head, making him jump.
"Even the forest wants to scare me, huh? Cool. Love that from you," he said, staring at one of the thick trees like a complete idiot.
He adjusted his grip on the sword hilt and moved forward.
The forest wasn't empty, it just liked pretending it was.
Lanz spotted the first sign off the trail — a patch of trampled grass, too wide to be a deer and too heavy to be random. A few steps later, he crouched by a cluster of half-burnt bones, blackened at the edges. Chicken maybe? Or something chicken-shaped that definitely didn't buy its own firewood.
Near it were boot prints, but it was small, and barely pressed into the dirt like the wearer was light, or hunched. He narrowed his eyes and glanced around.
"Okay," he whispered. "So something's been eating and has not been doing a lot of cleaning up. This is so a goblin."
He moved off the trail, ducking under low branches, stepping over roots without snapping them. His cloak helped, it blended into the underbrush better than he'd expected. Between trees, he caught flashes of what might've been a trail. Broken twigs, displaced moss. The kind of trail that said, 'I live here now. Stay out.'
Suddenly, he heard something. It was growls, not too loud, but audible enough to raise every hair on the back of his neck. He dropped lower, heart kicking up a gear, and slid behind a thick tree trunk.
Two shapes emerged from the brush.
Scrappy, hunched, and green-skinned. 'I knew it were goblins!' he exclaimed in his thoughts.
They were muttering something, clicking their tongues like rats that had learned to gossip.
One of them dragged a squishy sack. He didn't want to know what these b*tches had in that sack.
They were smaller than him. Barely came up to his chest. But they were alert, twitchy, sharp-eyed, sniffing the air like bloodhounds in a bad mood.
He waited until they passed his position. Then he moved quietly, knees bent, keeping his body low as he crept along the slope. The terrain curved just enough to give him cover, and he used it to angle toward the goblins from the left. His sword stayed down and behind him, the blade tilted slightly, ready to snap upward. One of the goblins hesitated, its head turning as if it sensed something, but Lanz didn't give it the chance.
He activated Feint Step, his body jerking to the side before blinking back into position from the opposite angle. He surged forward, blade rising.
But just as he stepped in, his foot caught a dry branch and it snapped.
Both goblins froze. Their heads turned toward him, and the second they locked eyes, they let out a pair of shrill, grating screeches that echoed through the trees. No hesitation. They sprinted straight at him, blades raised.
"Oh come on," Lanz hissed.
The first goblin ducked low, slashing wide with a jagged knife that looked like it had been torn from scrap metal. The second aimed higher with a forked spear, driving in toward his chest. Lanz twisted to evade, but the first blade caught the edge of his shoulder, cutting through his cloak and scraping skin. He hissed and shifted his stance, raising his sword just in time to meet the spear.
The impact jolted through his arms. Not a shock, not some controlled training feedback, just f*cking pain. His shoulder throbbed where the blade had caught him, and his balance wavered for a split second, but his body moved anyway — instinct from the sim fights kicking in. He twisted to the side, raised his elbow, and slammed it into the goblin's face. It screeched, staggered, and Lanz parried hard with his sword.
The second goblin lunged in.
Lanz spun, ducked under the swing, and rammed his blade up. It froze, shuddered, and slumped down onto him.
Dead weight, literally.
He shoved it off with a yell, just in time to see the other one circling, snarling. Smarter than the first. It was more careful now after what it witnessed, it hesitated, then lunged again, blade flashing.
Lanz didn't dodge this time.
He stepped into the lunge, yanked his cloak up and threw it in the goblin's face. It screeched and was blinded. He kicked its knee out from under it, pinned the thing to the ground with one foot, and drove his sword down clean into its chest.
It twitched, twitched again, then stopped.
A soft chime echoed in his head:
[ENEMY DEFEATED – EXP GAINED: +6]
[First Kill Bonus: +3 EXP]
Lanz stood there, panting. His chest rose and fell fast, arms trembling, disgusting goblin blood streaked across his gloves. It was thicker than he expected, smelled metallic and weirdly sweet.
His stomach turned.
He leaned over and threw up into a bush.
He wasn't expecting anything graceful. But it was just too raw and messy, it almost looked like a half-digested cereal and bile hitting the dirt. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, still shaking, breath unsteady.
"...That counted," he muttered, voice rough.
"I did it."
He stayed there, crouched low behind the brush, letting the adrenaline drain out. His hands kept twitching a while longer, but his breathing started to slow. The nausea didn't vanish, but it stopped clawing at his throat.
After a moment, he wiped the blade clean on a patch of moss, stood up straighter, and looked back at the bodies.
Still there, no vanishing act, no system reset. Just two motionless shapes in the grass.
He took a breath.
"Alright," he said, hoarse but steady. "Let's see what you were hoarding."
One of the goblins had a satchel — barely more than a torn shoulder wrap with a pouch sewed on. Inside: a cracked compass, some dried meat, and a bent spoon. "Peak find," he said, clearly losing his mind.
But the real treasure was the jagged dagger still clutched in its hand.
Lanz pried it free and gave it a few test swings. It was off balanced, not clean, but light and sharp enough to matter.
He slipped it into his belt, and that's when he heard it.
A soft shuffle, not on the ground, but above.
His whole body tensed.
The trees rustled faintly. Was it a bird? A plane? No, it was f*cking nothing, he was just being delusional — maybe. But he still scanned the canopy, eyes straining past the branches, the dappled light. Yet, there was truly nothing, but something felt… wrong.
"…Right. No roofs in a forest, duh. Of course there are flying monsters. Are you sure this is a tier 1 gate?" he asked the system, but nothing came up.
"Rude."
After being completely ignored by the system, he kept moving. A little faster this time and much lower to the ground.
Just in case something was watching.
Lanz didn't stop until the scent of blood was a memory and the trees thickened enough to feel like cover.
He found a spot between the roots of a massive oak, half-covered by moss and a rocky outcrop. More importantly, it was less stab-friendly.
He crouched down and sat, letting the ache in his body catch up all at once.
"Yay, survival," he muttered, pulling out the goblin's satchel again. He laid everything out on a patch of flat rock like it was treasure: a bent spoon, dried meat, and a cracked compass so crusty it probably gave people tetanus on sight.
And the dagger. Well, one could say it was a dagger of all time. But it was still better than the basic ass sword he got from the sim.
He took a bite of one of the goblin's dried meat strips. It tasted like regret and tree bark. He chewed through it anyway.
The sky above the forest had dimmed a little, but not much. This gate's time didn't match real-world.
He leaned back against the stone and exhaled.
He'd survived the first day. There was a weird feeling in his chest. Heavy, yeah. But not all bad.
He looked out past the clearing. Through the cracks between trees, a warm flicker danced in the distance, it was light from a fire. A camp, maybe from goblins. He sat forward, eyes narrowing.
"…Alright, Zero. Time to see how deep this forest goes."
He stood up, dagger in one hand, visor down, and cloak rustling faintly.
Then, vanished into the trees.
End of Chapter 7.
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ALT SYSTEM — USER PROFILE: ZERO
Level: 5
EXP: 9 / 50
Next Unlock: Skill Upgrade Token (Level 6)
Global System Tracking: DISABLED
World Rank Association: UNLINKED
Stats:
STR: 4 | AGI: 4 | VIT: 3 | DEX: 1 | INT: 0 | WIS: 0
Skills:
[Basic Footwork Lv.2]
[Blade Control Lv.1]
[Parry Timing Lv.1]
[Feint Step Lv.1] (Active Skill)
[Reflex Sync Lv.1] (Passive Skill)
[Combat Awareness Lv.1] (Passive Skill)
Equipment:
Aged Blade Fragment (??? Rarity) (Bound)
Lightweight Chest Padding
Boots of Basic Mobility
Fingerless Gloves (Basic)
Starter Cloak: Faded Black
Training Ring (+1 VIT)
Goblin Dagger (Looted – Rusted, Jagged, Minor Bonus to DEX when equipped)