The cavern she'd found was a rare oasis in this endless twisting maze. A rounded chamber with just enough room and ventilation to have a fire and still stretch out, entrance narrow enough that she'd piled some loose stones into the gap. Nothing was sneaking up on her tonight.
Hundreds of crystals grew from the walls, catching the campfire light and throwing it back in slow hypnotic patterns, pale blues, deep purples, silver-white flickers moving across the stone like something breathing. Danica sat cross-legged on a smooth patch of floor and let herself have it. Just for a minute. The quiet, and the light, and the first moment all day where nothing was actively trying to kill her.
In the hours between the last rat and finding this place, she had also dealt with the single most inconvenient fact about dungeons.
The distinct lack of bathrooms.
Would she ever be able to look at moss the same way again?
No. No, she would not.
Somewhere, her father was probably smugly nodding, satisfied that all those survival lessons had finally come in handy.
Danica shuddered. It had come to this.
She took a bite of the meat she'd just finished roasting over the fire. Mutant rat, it turned out, tasted a little like boar, gamey, slightly dark, nothing she'd order off a menu but considerably better than the chalky compressed bricks the System called rations. She chewed steadily and stared into the fire. This was her life now. Crystal caverns and campfires and leveling up by picking mushrooms that might or might not be hallucinogenic.
"You would think nearly dying would count for something," she said to no one. "But no."
Her soul hadn't leveled again from fighting. Not from the fifth rat, not from testing her skills in an actual life-or-death situation.
She'd gotten a level from picking glowing fungus.
She rubbed her temples. "Apparently plant collection is more spiritually enlightening than mortal combat. Good to know."
At least it had done something — Mind Level 4, Soul Level 3, Body still at 3. Eenax had said Soul was typically the average of the other two, which tracked, but she hadn't done anything particularly soul-expanding today. She'd picked mushrooms and stabbed a rat. Apparently, that counted.
But the question that wouldn't leave her alone was whether she was going about this all wrong. Fight or forage? Grind combat or grind skills? Which path got her to five and out of this tunnel system before she had to think seriously about rat as a regular dietary staple?
She looked up at the ceiling. The crystals shifted their patterns in the firelight, slow and indifferent and genuinely beautiful in a way that felt almost mean given everything else about the situation.
Her thoughts drifted, unbidden, to Mark.
Mark, who could light up a room just by walking into it. Who made jokes at the worst possible times, always riding the line between hilarious and wildly inappropriate. Her best friend, who could eviscerate someone with nothing but words but had never been a fighter.
She had never needed to protect him before, not really. He had always handled the world with wit and charm, slipping through problems like they couldn’t quite get a grip on him.
But here?
Here, that wouldn’t be enough.
Her stomach twisted.
Was he even still alive?
If he had been pulled into this nightmare, if he had to fight, had to kill…
I can’t go there.
She forced her thoughts toward Zelimir.
Her brother had always been ahead of the curve. Smarter, faster at figuring things out. A planner, always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else. If anyone could survive this new world, it was him. But would she ever find him again?
Her heart ached at the thought.
Without technology, without GPS, without comms, how was she supposed to track him down? Even if she got out of this cave, even if she reached the surface, what if the world had changed too much to navigate?
What if they were separated forever?
And her parents—
She sucked in a sharp breath, fingers curling against the rough stone floor. If the world was really terraforming, if this wasn’t just some overlay but a true restructuring of the planet itself, then her parents' fall-back plan wouldn’t work. They had spent years preparing for some government collapse, some world-ending event. But those plans were built on the assumption that the land itself wouldn’t change.
What if their safe houses, their hidden caches, their entire survivalist network… What if it was all gone?
Her vision blurred, heat rising behind her eyes.
Tears.
She wasn’t going to cry.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
She was just exhausted, that’s all this was. The stress, the constant tension, the unknowns piling up, pressing down, suffocating.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, inhaled deep through her nose.
No.
Not now.
The pop of the fire was like a gunshot breaking her out of her spiraling thoughts. Danica exhaled slowly, pushed the thoughts back, locked them deep in a mental vault where she could deal with them later — when she wasn't alone in a goddamn cave eating rat off a stick.
One problem at a time.
One problem at a time.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, picked up her fire stick, and poked at the embers until they flared back up.
"Alright, System," she muttered. "Why is Soul Level 5 so important?"
The System chimed immediately.
—
[SPECIAL ACCESS GRANTED: GLITCH PIONEER]
QUERY: "Why is Soul Level 5 so important?"
Hello, esteemed bug-finder and reluctant System user!
Due to your GLITCH PIONEER status, you have been granted access to System documentation when outside of liminal space. Please note that some information may be restricted due to your Initiate clearance level — or because the universe thinks spoilers ruin the fun. This notification will not show on future queries.
Rather than overwhelming you with a quantum-sized info dump, relevant topics have been compiled for your review.
—
"Soul Levels & Universal Integration" — 747 pages
Overview of how Soul Levels function within the System. Outlines key thresholds and their effects on the user's existence.
(Note: Full details on higher-level transformations restricted to Evolved Clearance Level.)
—
"System Synchronization & Why You Should Care" — 332 pages
Covers the dangers of desynchronization, including but not limited to spontaneous bodily instability. Discusses how premature exit from tutorial zones increases risk of existential fragmentation — which is exactly as bad as it sounds.
(Warning: Contains mild existential dread.)
—
"Known Anomalies & Theoretical Exceptions to Soul Stabilization" — ??? pages
Contains reports on rare cases of users skipping stabilization thresholds. Outcomes range from mild success to catastrophic non-existence.
(Note: This file is redacted so heavily it mostly consists of black bars and ominous footnotes.)
—
"How to Stop Overthinking System Mechanics & Just Do the Thing" — 1 page
"Fight, train, level up. That's it. That's the advice."
—
Would you like to:
1) Request a summarized version? (May still be longer than you'd like.)
2) Open full articles and suffer through the fine print?
3) Close this message and pretend you never asked?
—
Disclaimer: The System is not responsible for existential collapse, frustration, or the realization that the universe may be actively withholding useful information from you.
—
Danica stared at it.
Seven hundred and forty-seven pages. Three hundred and thirty-two pages. A third document with an unknown page count that was apparently mostly black bars. And a one-page entry that amounted to please stop asking questions and go stab something.
She had asked one question.
"I hate this UI," she muttered.
A soft flutter of wings materialized beside her before she could spiral further. Danica didn't even have to look.
"I felt your existential screaming from across the void," Eenax drawled, his tiny projection flickering in the firelight. His translucent form cast no shadow, no warmth, just a floating reminder that the System had a sense of humor when it came to technical support.
Danica groaned and flopped onto her back. "Great. It's my least favorite interdimensional help desk agent."
"I believe I am the only interdimensional help desk agent you have encountered," he said, wings settling with an air of mild offense. "Which would, by definition, make me your favorite as well."
Danica let out a short laugh despite herself. "Fair point. And I probably shouldn't be insulting the one person who might actually give me a straight answer."
Eenax inclined his head with the precision of someone accepting an apology they considered long overdue. "Now you're getting it."
She pushed herself upright, elbows on her knees. "Alright. Soul Level 5. Why is it such a big deal? The System presented me with approximately a thousand pages of documentation and one sentence of actual advice."
Eenax's expression settled into the particular patience of a tutor.
"Soul Level 5," he began, "is the transition from Dormant to Harmonic. Until that threshold is reached, your soul remains bound to its original parameters — the rules that governed your existence before this world was rewritten."
Danica frowned. "And that's a problem because—"
"Because," he said, with the tone of someone who had been hoping she wouldn't need it spelled out, "the mana saturation in your world is now considerably beyond what a Dormant soul was designed to tolerate." He paused, apparently searching for an analogy she might find accessible. "Imagine hurling a rather delicate circuit board into a lightning storm and then expressing surprise when it fails to function afterward. That is, at present, you."
Danica's stomach dropped. "Oh."
"Quite," Eenax said. "Should you exit the tutorial before reaching Level 5, your soul will not simply struggle. It will take direct damage from the ambient environment. No combat required. The mana will burn through you."
Danica stiffened. "People can just… die from existing out there? Without being attacked?"
"Indeed. Level 5 is not merely a milestone of power. It is a stabilization threshold. The moment you attain it, your soul ceases resisting the mana saturation and begins synchronizing with it instead." A brief pause. "No further risk of what I shall diplomatically refer to as spontaneous collapse."
"You're saying that very casually."
"I say most things casually," Eenax said. "It is a professional necessity. You would not believe how many civilizations have faced complete integration failure simply because they declined to follow basic safety protocols." His wings gave a small, precise twitch. "It is invariably the same sequence of events. Some overconfident individual decides they can brute-force their way through the tutorial, and then." He made a small, deliberate gesture with one clawed hand. "One moment they exist. The next — molecular confetti."
Danica exhaled. Her fingers pressed against the stone floor.
Her thoughts went immediately to children.
"What about kids?" she said, voice tight. "An eight-year-old isn't going to level fast enough to survive this."
Something in Eenax's expression shifted, the dry composure pulling back slightly, leaving something less comfortable underneath. "The System grants passive protection to those under the age of thirteen," he said. "Beyond that age, the responsibility for ensuring a child reaches Level 5 falls to their guardian."
Danica's breath caught. "That's—"
She stopped.
She thought of the millions of children in her world. Of the ones with no one looking out for them. She wanted to ask. Wanted to demand the actual number, the actual outcome, the thing he wasn't saying.
She didn't.
Because what if the answer was worse than not knowing?
Some things were better left unknown. For now.