Kyle woke from a deep sleep, his consciousness rising through layers of darkness. The first thing he noticed was the absence of pain in his leg. He flexed his ankle experimentally—the flesh where those jagged teeth had torn into him now completely mended, not even a scar to mark the violence that had occurred. The healing had accelerated overnight, erasing all evidence of weakness.

  He breathed in deep, the heavy jungle air filling his lungs. Something had changed during his rest—not just his leg, but something inside him. A subtle shift in his relationship with this strange realm. The fear still lurked in his gut, coiled like a snake waiting to strike, but alongside it grew something else: a grudging recognition. This place, for all its brutality, offered possibilities the concrete corridors of the Five-Eight never had.

  Kyle pushed himself up, muscles protesting after hours on the unyielding stone. "Anything?" he asked, voice rough with sleep.

  Marcus shook his head, not turning. "Quiet its been quiet”

  "Your leg?" Marcus asked, finally glancing over.

  "Good as new," Kyle replied, giving his ankle one more experimental roll. "Better than new, maybe.

  They stood in silence for a moment, the weight of their shared situation hanging between them. Then Marcus spoke, his voice low enough that it wouldn't reach Dex, still sleeping nearby.

  "Been thinking about what happened back home," he said. "That beef that got us killed."

  Kyle felt his jaw tighten. "What about it?"

  "We shouldn't have been there," Marcus continued, eyes fixed on the horizon. "That wasn't our territory. Dex kept insisting."

  The memory surfaced in Kyle's mind—Dex's voice loud and brash, amplified by wounded pride and cheap liquor. The challenge, the escalation, the refusal to back down. Kyle had known it was a mistake even as he'd followed. They all had.

  "Dex kept pushing," Kyle said. "But we all chose to stay."

  Marcus shrugged, the movement barely perceptible. "Same reason we always did. He pushed, we followed. That's how it worked."

  "And look where it got us."

  A bitter laugh escaped Marcus. "Yeah. Look where." His arm swept out, encompassing the endless jungle. "Makes me wonder, though. How many people died in that shooting? Why us? Why only us? Why not Tavon or Mike or any of the others who were there?"

  Kyle had wondered the same thing, though he hadn't voiced it. "Maybe they're somewhere else in this place. Maybe there's others like us all over."

  "Or maybe we're special," Marcus countered. "Chosen for something."

  Kyle didn't have an answer for that. The idea of being chosen—for this—felt more like punishment than privilege. But then again, wasn't that always how it had been? Chosen for hard lessons, for struggle, for pain that either broke you or forged you into something stronger.

  The sound of movement from the shelter interrupted their conversation. Dex emerged, stretching his long limbs like a cat waking from a nap. His eyes, still heavy with sleep, found them immediately.

  "Morning, sunshine," Kyle called, forcing lightness into his tone. No point dwelling on old wounds when fresh ones waited around the corner.

  "Y'all plotting without me?" he asked, but the usual edge in his voice was softened by the remnants of slumber.

  "Just talking about home," Marcus replied, the word 'home' carrying a strange weight now—distant and abstract, like a story they'd heard rather than a place they'd lived.

  "Had a dream about this place," Dex said abruptly.

  Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? Was it about a hot shower, a bed, and a female body to keep it warm? 'Cause that's what I dreamed about."

  "Nah, man. About this place." Dex gestured broadly at the jungle below. "About us in this place."

  Something in his tone made Kyle sit up straighter. "What about it?"

  Dex's eyes gleamed with an intensity Kyle had seen before—usually before something wild or dangerous or profitable. "We're meant for greater things here. I saw it. We can't just react to shit happening to us. We gotta make shit happen."

  Marcus exchanged a glance with Kyle, skepticism written plainly across his features. "Make what happen, exactly? In case you hadn't noticed, we're still figuring out how to not die."

  Dex shook his head impatiently. "That's exactly my point. We're survivors, right? But we can be more than that. We can be hunters."

  The word hung in the air between them, pregnant with implications. Hunters. Not prey scrambling to avoid death, but predators dealing it out instead. The concept resonated with something primal in Kyle's chest—a hunger not entirely different from what he'd felt back home when opportunity presented itself.

  "Every day, every kill. We're leveling up, right? Getting stronger."

  Marcus seemed less convinced. "There's things out there bigger than us, bro. Things we haven't even seen yet."

  "So we start small," Dex insisted. "Work our way up. Just like back home—corner by corner, block by block."

  The comparison wasn't perfect, but Kyle understood the underlying principle. Back in the Five-Eight, they hadn't started running product on prime corners. They'd earned those spots through calculated risks and strategic violence, expanding their influence gradually until the neighborhood recognized their claim.

  "Could work," Kyle admitted, warmed by the prospect of purpose beyond mere survival. "We got tracking skills now. Could put them to use."

  Dex's grin spread across his face like a bloodstain. "Exactly”

  They prepared quickly, gathering their makeshift weapons and securing the camp. Kyle slipped his crude knife into his waistband, the weight unfamiliar but reassuring against his hip.He gained a few motes when he felt it was completed.

  He grabbed his spear. The craftsmanship remained rough, but it felt like an extension of his arm now, reliable.

  Dex carried both his spears, one in each hand, the morning light catching on the curved fangs that formed their deadly tips. Marcus had his single spear, but he'd also fashioned a small sack from torn cloth, slung across his back to carry whatever they might find.

  They descended from their rocky sanctuary with practiced ease, feet finding secure holds in the worn stone. At the bottom, Kyle paused, examining the ground. The soil remained soft here, ideal for tracking. He crouched, fingers hovering just above faint indentations—small, clawed prints leading toward the dense undergrowth.

  "Not worth our time," he murmured, dismissing the trail. "Too small. We need something bigger."

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  As they walked, they began marking large trees—ones with purple-tipped branches and leaves the size of their faces."We'll score the bark," Kyle decided, demonstrating by carving a deep X into the trunk. The wood beneath the outer layer gleamed wetly, pale blue sap oozing from the wound. "Every fifty paces or so. Should create a trail we can follow home."

  Dex tested the idea on another tree, his knife sinking easily into the fibrous bark. "Like breadcrumbs for monsters to follow."

  "Better than getting lost," Kyle countered, already moving forward. His newly acquired tracking skills activated almost unconsciously, eyes registering subtle disturbances in the foliage that indicated animal movement.

  After nearly an hour of steady progress, the ground beneath their feet changed, becoming spongier, wetter. The trees thinned slightly, giving way to a more open area where water collected in stagnant pools. The smell hit them like a physical force—vegetation rotting in standing water, sweet and putrid simultaneously.

  "Fuck," Dex muttered, covering his nose with the crook of his arm.

  Kyle was about to suggest turning back when movement caught his eye. Large shapes wallowed in the shallow water—massive creatures that resembled nothing he'd seen before. They had the bulk of hippos but with elongated snouts lined with teeth that gleamed even at this distance. Their backs were armored with interlocking plates, like gators grown to impossible size. Kyle counted at least thirty of them, spread throughout the swampy expanse.

  "Holy shit," he breathed, instinctively lowering his body into a crouch. The others followed his lead, shrinking into the undergrowth.

  "You think they're pack animals?" Dex whispered, eyes fixed on the creatures.

  Marcus studied their movement, the way they maintained distance from each other despite sharing the same territory. "Probably not," he concluded. "But too many. Even if we killed one, the others might respond."

  Kyle nodded in agreement. Even one of those beasts would be more than they could handle—its jaws looked capable of snapping their spears like twigs. And if they did somehow manage to kill one, there were thirty more that might see them as prey.

  The beasts showed no sign of noticing them, content in their swampy domain. Kyle led them around the periphery, careful to stay under the cover of vegetation, marking their path as they went. The swamp gradually gave way to drier ground again, the jungle reclaiming dominance over the landscape.

  "There's gotta be something better," Dex insisted, frustration evident in the set of his shoulders. "Something we can actually take down."

  They continued for another hour, the sun climbing higher overhead, intensifying the heat that pressed down on them. Sweat soaked through what remained of their clothes, attracting biting insects that resembled mosquitoes but with translucent, multi-faceted wings that caught the light in disturbing ways.

  Kyle swatted one from his neck, his fingers coming away smeared with blood—his own. "Fucking bugs," he muttered, wiping his hand against his shorts.

  Kyle focused on the jungle floor again. He noticed a different trail now—hoofprints, but with an unusual three-toed configuration. They were fresh, the displaced soil still damp. He gestured for the others to follow, leading them along this new path with renewed purpose.

  They moved more cautiously now, aware that they were tracking potential prey. Kyle felt a strange calm settling over him—the hunter's focus that narrowed the world to movement and sound and scent. He'd never hunted before this place, never stalked living prey with killing intent, yet his body seemed to know the rhythms instinctively.

  The trail led them to a small clearing where a group of deer-like creatures grazed on low-hanging foliage. Like everything in this world, they were familiar and wrong simultaneously. They had the general shape of deer, but their backs were covered in purple scales that caught the light like burnished metal. Their legs looked built for speed, unnaturally long and slender, ending in three-toed hooves that matched the prints Kyle had been following. Green fur covered their flanks, dense enough to disguise their outline among the verdant growth.

  Kyle counted ten of them, clustered together in what appeared to be a family group. Smaller ones—juveniles, perhaps—stayed close to the larger adults. All maintained constant vigilance, heads jerking up at random intervals to scan for threats before returning to their meal.

  "Does everything here have scales or plates of some sort?" Dex whispered, his frustration evident. "Like, fuck."

  They spread out slightly, positioning themselves at the edge of the clearing. Each chose a target, carefully raising their spears to throwing position. Kyle selected one of the larger specimens, a male judging by the small antler-like protrusions emerging from its forehead. He measured the distance, calculated the arc, accounted for the creature's potential movement.

  A slight nod passed between them—the signal to throw. Three spears launched simultaneously, cutting through the humid air with deadly intent. Kyle's struck true, burying itself in the flank of his chosen target. Dex's found its mark as well, driving deep into another creature's gut. Marcus's throw fell short, his spear striking the ground near his target's hooves.

  Chaos erupted in the clearing. The deer-creatures bolted, their three-toed hooves tearing up soil as they scattered in all directions. Kyle's and Dex's victims stumbled, wounded but still mobile, crashing into the undergrowth with their weapons still embedded in their flesh.

  Marcus retrieved his spear, frustration evident in the set of his shoulders. They moved as a unit, following the blood trail left by Dex's target first—bright droplets of orange-red liquid speckling leaves and soil. The wounded animal hadn't gone far, its strength sapped by the spear jutting from its abdomen. They found it collapsed in a small depression, sides heaving as it fought for breath.

  This time, Marcus didn't miss. His spear flew straight and true, embedding itself in the creature's neck. The animal tried to rise, to flee once more, but its body betrayed it. It staggered a few steps then collapsed, strength failing as its lifeblood leaked onto the jungle floor.

  Kyle approached cautiously, knife drawn. The creature's eyes found his—dark pools with horizontal pupils, wide with pain and fear. It tried to lift its head, a final act of defiance against its fate. Kyle didn't hesitate. His knife slashed across its throat in one clean motion, opening a second mouth that wept orange-red.

  Kyle wiped his knife clean on a broad leaf, watching as the orange-red smeared across the waxy surface. He was getting better at this. The thought should have disturbed him more than it did.

  The motes appeared then—those strange particles of light rising from the creature's cooling flesh. They swirled around the three men before sinking into their chests, bringing with them the now-familiar cold fire of advancement.

  Kyle nodded, sheathing his knife. They left Marcus to begin field dressing their kill—a skill they'd all acquired through their leveling, knowledge appearing in their minds without being learned. Kyle led the way again, following the second blood trail with practiced ease.

  "One down," Dex said, already scanning the jungle for signs of their second wounded prey. "Let's get the other one."

  They debated for a few moments before deciding to leave Marcus to begin field dressing their kill—something they'd all acquired through the Survivor skill.

  Kyle led Dex following the second blood trail.

  This one had traveled farther, its vitality greater or perhaps its wound less severe. The drops of blood grew smaller, more widely spaced as they tracked it deeper into the jungle. Twice they lost the trail completely, forcing Kyle to circle wider until he picked it up again.

  Finally, they found it—collapsed near the base of a massive tree with corkscrew-patterned bark. Kyle's spear still protruded from its side, the shaft rising and falling with each labored breath. The creature lifted its head at their approach, too weak to flee but still defiant.

  Kyle felt a grudging respect for its tenacity. It had run far, fighting against pain and blood loss with every step. A survivor, like them. He stepped forward, knife already drawn to deliver the final mercy.

  When it was over, Kyle retrieved his spear, pulling it free with a wet sound that turned his stomach despite his growing familiarity with such things. He examined the stone tip, satisfied to find it intact after its journey embedded in flesh.

  Dex surveyed their kill with calculating eyes, already mentally cataloging useful parts—the scales for armor, the sinew for cordage, the meat for sustenance. "Good eating tonight," he announced, satisfaction evident in his voice.

  Kyle nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere, scanning their surroundings with heightened awareness. They'd made noise. They'd spilled blood. In this jungle, both acted as beacons to predators. They needed to work quickly, to secure their prizes and return to the safety of their elevated camp before something larger caught their scent.

  The white motes appeared around them once more, rising from the fallen creature like minuscule stars. They swirled momentarily before driving into their chest.

  [Congratulations you are now Level 4]

  "Let's get this back to Marcus," Kyle said, already calculating the most efficient way to transport their kill. "Then get both carcasses to camp before something smells the blood."

  Dex helped Kyle hoist the creature onto his shoulders. Its weight settled across his upper back, legs dangling on either side of his neck, lighter than he thought it would be.

  The sun lingered on the horizon, giving Kyle a few hours before nightfall, Kyle predicted. They reached Marcus, who had just finished his own work, he was relieved that nothing had tracked or ambushed him. Kyle threw the freshly killed carcass onto the ground and methodically began the process of removing its organs.

  With each cut of his blade, Kyle felt himself slipping further into his role. Hunter. Killer. Predator. The labels felt like inevitabilities—the next logical evolution in a life defined by adaptation to hostile environments.