“Ahh! Shit!!”

Daryl got surprised by the boar coming from the underbrush and didn’t manage to jump to the side in time, his leg got ripped open by the sharp tusks as a result.

With a curse he stumbled around a tree and kept running.

The angry grunts of the boars chasing him kept the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Running and jumping around the trees, he had somehow managed to stay alive for the past minutes. Though it was getting harder and harder, his legs were burning from exhaustion and the newly acquired wound, it wouldn’t be long until he couldn’t outrun them anymore.

I should have never gone with them.

He had been so excited when he woke up on that clearing today. The voice promised them all kinds of fantastical adventures and powers. He eagerly joined a somewhat larger group after the introduction, excited to build up a new life in a new world. Excited to fight monsters in a party like an adventurer in a fantasy game.

That excitement lasted exactly until the trial started.

They had still been discussing things in the clearing, when a horde of boars had started rushing at them from the edge of the forest almost immediately, overwhelming the group he was in.

They didn’t last long.

Flustered, surprised and not used to fighting, their group soon scattered, leaving everyone to survive on their own.

As far as he could tell, not many had made it.

The only reason he made it was because he was the fastest runner in his group.

And because his choice of weapon, a dagger, was very light to carry around.

While running away and into the forest, he had noticed that the larger groups had attracted disproportionally many enemies. Which had led him to curse his decision to join his particular group.

But even though he had then been running away alone, two boars had never stopped chasing him. He had been running for so long and changing direction so often in an attempt to lose them, but they stuck to him like a shadow.

And now a third boar had joined them.

Aren’t boars supposed to be shy? Why the fuck are they so aggressive.

He once again dodged around a tree and to the side as one of the boars had caught up dangerously close.

Ahead of him he spotted a thick tree with wide and, most importantly, low hanging branches.

Hope rose in him.

Maybe I can climb this one fast enough!

It wasn’t the first time he wanted to climb a tree since running away, but every time he spotted one with low enough branches, he got disrupted by one of the boars. He could swear they sped up whenever he was close to escaping.

Gathering every last bit of energy, he sprinted towards the tree, putting the hilt of his dagger in his mouth to free his hands.

With a muffled yell he pushed himself off the trunk and up towards the lowest branch.

His hands successfully clasped around the branch, and he began pulling himself up.

Yes! I made it! I will-

A boot hit him square in the face, knocking out the dagger and some teeth and making him lose his grip.

“Ahhh!,” he screamed while falling down.

He fell directly into the group of waiting boars, who didn’t hesitate to sink their tusks and teeth into him. His pained screams rang through the forest.

He kept struggling for a while, but didn’t manage to get up anymore after his fall. The wounds and attacks from the boars kept him pinned to the ground.

Before losing consciousness, he still heard one last thing.

“Sorry, that’s my tree.”

****

Jett glanced at the dead man at the bottom of his tree, shaking his head.

Who in their right mind chooses a dagger? Did he want to become some edgelord rogue or something? No wonder I’ve never seen him after the first trial. It’s a miracle humanity can survive at all with dumbasses like him.

Well there were some pretty good dagger alignment skills later on, but early on it was a shit weapon. There were very few people who could pull it off. And those that could were usually psychopaths. He had an inherent dislike for those dagger users because they tended to focus on human opponents, with skills based on assassinations. He had had enough trouble keeping humanity alive through hordes of monster attacks in Alyrra, people killing each other behind his back only made it harder for him.

For an outside observer this line of thinking might seem a bit contradictory to his recent action of kicking a man to his death, but for Jett those were completely different things.

It wasn’t like he was actually trying to finish this regression, so the man would be alive again once Jett died. In other words, it wasn’t like he really killed him. More like he just temporarily removed him from existence. An annoying existence by the way, he didn’t find such a nice tree only to get bothered by a weakling also setting camp on it.

Once again shaking his head at the scene below, he turned his attention back to what he was thinking about, before he got interrupted by the commotion under his tree.

In front of him was the blue textbox of his status.

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STATUS

Name Jett Rivers Race

Human Grade

Ungraded Alignment Ǜ̵na̶lig̴̯͂́ne̵͗ď̷

Something very weird was going on.

Never, absolutely never, had the System been bugged before.

There were certain demonic corruptions that could prevent you from interacting with the System properly for some time or even forcefully change your alignment, but the problem was always with the user, not with the System itself.

And there was no way for demonic influence to reach the Tutorial.

Jett felt very uneasy about all of this.

The System had always been a reminder of unfailing order in the maelstrom of chaos that Alyrra was. No matter what happened, at the end of the day you could always be sure that the System did its job. But now even that seemed to be compromised.

And weirdly, it started failing the moment he gave up.

The moment he decided not to give it his all anymore, to neglect the power he was given, something that has never happened before, happened.

Will more and more System bugs appear if I don’t do anything? Will it spread to other people? Or is it just for me?

Did I ruin all my future regressions?

Because of my weakness? What about my regression power? Is it… still there?

He felt even more uneasy.

True death wasn’t something he had thought about for hundreds of years.

Dying was just another common thing that happened to him here and then, nothing too special in the grand scheme of things.

But to truly stop existing? To not simply start again? Only one chance, then it was over?

He couldn’t help but feel nervous.

One the one hand this was kind of what he wished for. To finally be able to stop fighting. To rest. Even if it meant to rest forever.

But on the other hand, he was also kind of scared. His survival instinct, which had been dormant for a long time, started to kick in again.

He took a deep breath.

Okay, let’s not jump to hasty conclusions here. I don’t know if something changed with my regressions. The last regression worked perfectly fine, only a small bug appeared in the System now.

Yeah, I’m not falling into the trap of thinking every regression could be my last, again.

I did that at the very beginning and it was a good motivator, but it was also way too stressful.

He closed his Status screen again and made himself more comfortable on his branch. Taking another deep breath, he pushed away all the thoughts about his regression power failing and the potential of true death.

It is what it is. I can deal with a buggy System if I need to. And more importantly, I can deal with it later. Worst case, I’ll just have to always start without a weapon now. Not the end of the world. And even if I’ll never get an alignment again, I’ll still manage.

Though maybe I should test if everything else still works fine…

His gaze wandered to the dagger lying on the ground below, tapping his chin in thought.

Should I try acquiring some skills?

Hmm…

No, I’m good.

Stupid System bugs can wait.

For now, let’s just enjoy our hard earned peace and finally relax for a bit.

Giving the boars at the bottom, who were munching way too loudly on the corpse, a last dirty look, he closed his eyes.

Well, once those piggies are done, I guess…

****

“I’m not gonna let you leave alone,” said Laira, crossing her arms.

“For the thousandth time dear sister, you have no weapon,” replied Cleo, clearly frustrated, ”what do you think you are gonna do? Yell them to death?”

“And what if I get attacked while you are gone? I would still have no weapon but I’d also be alone.”

“You…,” Cleo struggled to find a reply, “... you are still safer hiding than walking with me!”

Laira was rubbing her forehead in frustration.

“I still don’t get why we have to go hunt them anyways. We just barely escaped when they came rushing from everywhere, and now you want to seek them out again? Surely we can find another way to get food.”

“No, it’s not just food!” said Cleo, pacing back and forth, “I’m sure we need to fight them to get stronger!”

“How? How would that make us stronger in any way?”

“Because that’s how these things work! We were given weapons, we have a System, there are grades, there will even be a final boss in one week!” Cleo shot back, “Fighting must be something that will help us get stronger! And I’m dead sure that we will die if we don’t get stronger soon.”

Laira sighed and slumped down on the trunk of a fallen tree.

“Alright alright, I get it. But still, I’m not letting you go alone. And I still think we should join a bigger group.”

“No,” replied Cleo, “didn’t you notice what happened after the trial started? The bigger groups all got attacked by many more boars. I think the trial wants us separate. Or in small groups. But anyways,” she said, sighing and rubbing her eyes, “let’s go together then. I guess you might as well try and be useful. Maybe we can even find out how you can use your weird alignment.”

Laira clasped her hands together and stood up, suddenly full of energy.

“Alright, so that’s decided! Can you lend me your spear for a minute?”

“Umm… sure?”

Cleo hesitantly handed over the spear to her sister.

Laira immediately started cutting apart her dress with the metal tip of the spear. Or rather, whatever was left from her clothes after she had been running through the undergrowth for the past hour.

She only stopped briefly when she saw the look on her sister’s face.

“What? You told me that my dress is unhandy. And you were right. I’m getting ready to hunt.”

Cleo shook her head and chuckled.

“I know, it’s just surreal to see my fashion loving sister cut apart her clothes. Today is truly a marvelous day.”

Laira rolled her eyes and kept cutting down rags.

“But also,” Cleo continued, “why do you seem so eager to go hunt all of a sudden? Weren’t you arguing against it just a second ago?”

“Might as well take it seriously, if we are going to do it,” Laira replied, briefly looking up to flash her sister a smile, “and I’m just happy you agreed to do it together after all.”

Getting back to work, she added, “Oh and can you fetch me a large stick? I want to make my own spear too.”

Cleo mumbled something inaudible about her “silly” sister and started walking around, in search for a suitable piece of wood for a spear.