A light breeze caressed Ace's face, and his brows furrowed slightly. His body felt worn out from excessive strain, and he wondered how many pushups he’d done before passing out. With his eyes still closed, he clicked his tongue, annoyed he hadn’t kept track of the number.

Suddenly, hushed voices reached his ears, making Ace think that maybe it was his neighbors talking out on the shared balcony. An old couple who smoked cigarettes there every morning. One voice suddenly turned a bit louder, and he could finally make out the words:

“Decan, I think you worry too much about the guy? He doesn’t look like much to me.”

“Shut up! Do you want to wake him up? You better start praying the guy’s dead, or he’ll...”

“He’ll what? If he’s that dangerous...” There was a brief pause, and Ace suddenly heard a snap, as if a branch had been broken in half.

Ace didn’t recognize the name Decan, but a wispy voice he definitely recognized reached his ears, “H-Hey man, I don’t think you should do that. The cops will be onto you when they hear of this.”

But this confounded Ace even more. Why was Norman on his motel balcony? How did he get access? Were Norman and the two others related to the old couple? He really wanted to open his eyes and assess the situation, but lying on the grass felt so good. The sensation was totally unlike lying on his cold, hard mattress, gently soothing his tired body.

Why am I sitting on grass, Ace thought with shock. He realized that he was outdoors, and all his senses flared up, but still, he didn’t open his eyes yet. He heard footsteps approaching, and given the strange circumstances, did not wish to alert the person heading his way that he was awake.

The person approaching him spoke again, “Since he’s sleeping, we might as well take care of him now.”

Ace heard uncomfortable shuffling and it dawned on him what was about to happen. He gave a cold smile but made sure it wasn’t too obvious since he wanted to keep the surprise a secret.

When the footsteps reached right next to him, his eyes shot wide open and he grinned.

“What are you doing?”

“Argh!”

A boy looking no older than Ace screamed like he had seen a ghost and stumbled backward a couple of feet. His face whitened to match the color of flour, and his hand holding a thick branch shook tremendously.

The boy had been scared out of his mind when he’d seen Ace grin and had almost suffered a heart attack. Seeing as he’d been caught, the boy gritted his teeth and charged at Ace, lifting his branch high above his head.

Ace’s grin disappeared and his eyes grew cold. He gave a small sigh, sidestepped the lad, and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck as he overshot passed him. He watched as the branch felt limply to the ground when he applied the slightest of pressure on the young man's neck.

The young man froze, his face contorted as if he was a cat grabbed by its mother, but his eyes were filled with horror. He tried escaping, but with each small movement, his spine was compressed harder. The young man felt a pain travel from his neck towards his brain, feeling as if someone was splitting his nape with a dagger.

Ace lifted the young man off the ground with one hand and whipped his other hand across the guy’s mouth.

Pa!

A shower of blood and teeth erupted from the young man’s mouth, splattering the green and purple undergrowth beside them red. Ace then threw the guy aside like a used shoe and took in his surroundings.

Blergh!

Ace saw six other young men, two of whom he was familiar with, having interacted with them yesterday. One was Norman, who was puking his guts out, and the other was a terrified large redhead, whose name Ace couldn’t remember.

“Ogh my ghad, my tgheght! My tgheght are ghone!”

Ace ignored the young man wailing to the side and looked at the tall, massive trees around him. He shook his head, thinking that the word "massive" couldn’t truly describe how large the trees were. He had to crane his neck so much to see the top of one. He was standing right next to one, but it didn't feel like a tree but rather a continuous wooden wall. He estimated it was a hundred feet in diameter, and he felt like there were others even larger in the distance.

“Norman, do you mind telling me why my motel room suddenly ha red woods in it?”

The short boy had by now recovered, even though he stood with his back to the disfigured young man, not wishing to see the gore any longer. Despite being visibly shaken, Norman nodded and followed Ace’s gaze to the trees.

“I’ve estimated their height already, in case you are wondering. Some are easily a thousand feet tall, and there are many of them. I counted at least ten that reach that high. That tells me that larger specimens are definitely possible.”

Ace frowned, trying to recall if any forest on Earth had such large trees, but he finally regretted not paying much attention in class. He said, annoyed, “Norman, I don’t know much geography, but where on Earth can you find such trees?”

Norman smiled ruefully, “Well, Ace, that’s the thing. There are no trees on Earth that are this big. Because of gravity, it's impossible for trees to grow this tall.”

“What do you mean, 'back on Earth'? I thought you were smart, Norman. You don’t even know what species of trees these are.”

Norman shook his head and pointed upwards at the sky. Ace followed with his eyes, and even though he had to search for a while, he saw a hole in the thick canopy hundreds of feet above the ground. Through it, he saw the sun and another smaller orb orbiting around it. The light the orb emanated barely bothered his eyes, but it sent shockwaves of incredulity through his mind when he realized what that small light meant.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“This isn’t Earth, is it Norman?”

“Most likely. Now check your countdown.”

Ace quickly realized he’d forgotten an important detail and pulled back his sleeve, only to see the blue light still greeting his eyes just the same. However, the number displayed now was forty-seven hours.

“Norman, you mean to tell me we transported to another world?”

He turned to look Norman in the eye and saw the boy nod. Ace immediately took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. He looked at the countdown clock once more and said, “What do you think happens when it reaches zero again?”

Norman shrugged his shoulders, “If we’re lucky, we go back home. If we’re unlucky, we go to another world.”

“It has to be back home.” Another voice chimed in, and Ace turned to see another boy his age, munching on what appeared to be a purple fleshy fruit of sorts. He frowned and immediately barked at the young man, “Put it down, idiot!”

The boy began trembling, but despite feeling nothing but fear, he looked defiantly at Ace, “I’m not giving you my food, dude. I’m not scared of you, and if you assault me, I’ll go to the cops.”

Ace felt a headache coming on and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at how stupid the guy was. “You don’t know what that thing—” But before he could continue, he felt Norman tug at his hoodie.

Norman was looking him in the eye, all but telling him to stop. Norman then leaned in and whispered in Ace’s ear, “How are we going to know if it’s safe to eat?”

Ace immediately picked up on what Norman was trying to communicate, and he himself agreed after some deliberation. Seeing as they were on a foreign world, they would need to figure out from scratch what was safe and what wasn’t. Having a guinea pig would be a good idea for them since he definitely would not test things on himself.

Looking at the young man wolfing down the purple fruit, Ace thought his expression was too simple. He mustn't be that bright, Ace assumed, and so even if they lost him, it wouldn’t actually be a loss, but a net gain.

Ace hovered his gaze over the other five youths present and thought they all seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place them in his memories. He turned to Norman, “What do we have in common with these guys? Any shared traits? Why are these the people we transmigrated with? There are millions of people with countdowns, so why us together specifically?”

Norman made a weird expression and seemed at a loss for words. He took an entire minute to collect himself, and Ace could even feel some slight contempt in Norman’s eyes when looking at him now. Ace wondered why this was the case.

“Ugh, they are our colleagues, Ace.”

“They are?!”

Norman nodded and pointed towards his back but still didn’t turn to look in that direction, “All except him.”

Ace took a minute to try and remember any memories he had of any of them, but they all looked so foreign. He did feel like he’d seen them somewhere before, but it was like the feeling he had for a stranger he saw on the street, not for his classmates.

“Argh! I get it now! They must be new transfers. But damn, five at once?”

Norman seemed shocked to see Ace’s logic, but he just closed his mouth and said nothing in return. The silence was basically confirmation that they were new transfers to Ace, and he soon put the matter behind him.

He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds as if to sort some things out in his head, and then strode towards the group of five and said curtly, “I’m in charge of this group from now on. If anyone has issues with that,” Ace pointed towards the guy still in shock at having lost all his teeth. Everybody present gulped loudly and swiftly nodded their heads as if to confirm to Ace that they were okay with that decision.

“Good!” Ace nodded, pleased that they were obedient. “As much as I hate working with other people, this is a foreign world, and we have no idea what to expect of the place. So, until we figure out what’s going on, we have to stick together. Norman, you’re the smartest in the group. What do you think we should do?”

One of the other five immediately opened his mouth, “Actually, I placed higher in the math olympiad.”

Ace gave the guy a cold look that immediately shut him down. Norman looked towards that boy with a smug grin but quickly let it go and went into deep thought. Only after a long while did Norman respond.

“First, I suggest we keep our noise and interference with the world to a minimum. This means as little noise as possible and as little movement as possible. We don’t want to attract the attention of anything larger than a fly, and even then, I'd still be cautious of the fly.” He turned to look towards the boy stuffing himself who by now had almost finished all the purple fruit, “But above all else, don’t touch anything, since we don’t know the chemical composition of any of this stuff, and for all we know, even though it might taste sweet, its poison.”

This caused the boy scarfing down the fruit to drop the leftovers as if they were singing him. He looked shocked towards Norman and screamed at him, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

Ace clicked his tongue, irritated that such noise was being produced. The boy realized he’d drawn Ace's attention, and he had no choice but to clamp down on his anger, fearing he’d end up like the guy still moaning about his lost teeth.

“I agree with you, Norman,” responded Ace. “Let's set up camp here and keep as low of a profile as possible. We'll use this large tree trunk to cover our backs. If by the end of the countdown we aren’t back home, well, we’ll think more about what follows then. Everybody place all the items you brought with you on the ground right here. I want to see what we’re working with.”

“Great idea!” said Norman. In all honesty, he’d thought about that long before Ace, but he feared telling the other guys to do it since they never listened to him. But it seems they had no issues listening to Ace. A glimmer of hope ignited in Norman’s heart, thinking their chances of survival just doubled with someone as reasonable as Ace in charge.

Just as Ace was listing out the things worth anything to their survival, a loud sound traveled through the forest and continuously bounced off the large trees.

“Eeek!”

Ace was confused at the sound since that sounded like...

“It’s that woman,” stated Norman as a matter of fact.

“A woman came with you guys here?” Ace was confused why this was the first time he’d heard of this. This seemed like an important detail to miss out on, an entire person.

Another one of the guys answered for Norman, “When we first arrived, she began screaming at us, telling us to stay away from her and stuff. Saying how she knows how disgusting all of us are and that she’s the unluckiest woman in the world to be stuck with us here.”

All the other guys chimed in, all painting a pretty disturbing picture of the woman. She seemed like someone he’d rather avoid, thought Ace to himself.

“I think she’s one of those, what do you call them? A misogynism, that’s the word!”

“Yeah, I think she hates men,” added another.

Norman frowned and an urge to correct the guys on their misuse of words arose, but gave up as soon as the idea arrived. Instead, he turned to Ace, “I know her. She’s one of the school secretaries, and she looked like a loose cannon so I didn’t stop her from leaving when she said she would. I just hope she doesn’t bring trouble this way. And yes, I's pretty sure she hates men. She almost made me lose my scholarship one time.”

Ace looked in the direction the scream came from and made a quick decision, “Let’s move camp a mile away from here. In case she drags trouble back here, we’ll be long gone by then.”

From everyone’s description, the woman didn’t seem like she’d be cooperative anyway, so he didn’t feel bad for her potential loss. He could feel an absolute desire to survive well up inside him and knew he couldn’t fight against it. Since that was the case, he might as well play into that instinct and do everything in his power to survive. That was the goal Ace decided on for now, to survive the next two days.