I waited in that tree for hours, watching my battery slowly drain to correct all the horrible damage that I’d suffered. In that time I studied every aspect of my interface that seemed to be different from what I remembered, from my slightly higher stats to the messages in all caps preceded by two slashes. The differences were few and far between, and seemed to be benign at first glance, but as I thought on them I grew more and more worried about what had changed this time around.

The first and most important difference was my mastery level. I double checked all of my equipment to see if I’d somehow gained a level with any of them, but they all came back as mastery 0. Fresh out of the system. My core was mastery level 3, which shouldn’t have been enough to push my hazard level from 0 to 1. I’d learned that my hazard level was calculated by adding all of my mastery stats together and dividing that number by the number of armor pieces included in that calculation, and the last time I’d checked, three divided by eleven was nowhere close to one.

Yet here I was with a hazard rating of one. “It’s gotta be the error messages.” I mumbled to myself over the roar or water below. “Something has to have screwed up in the calculations, but how? I never got the numbers to work for me last time.”

I shook my head and pushed that thought to the side. I couldn’t do anything about it now, so focusing on surviving long enough to get answers had to be my priority. Which meant learning everything I could about this hazard, no matter how dangerous it seemed. The waters rushing below me had petered out to a mild trickle and no cracking gunshots rang out through the constant pelting of rain, so now was the time to get moving.

My feet slammed down on parched dirt, somehow still as dry as a desert even after two flash floods. I looked around once more to try and get a lay of the land, but I couldn’t see anything through the thick cover of trees. The suspicious lack of any other plant life I could explain away thanks to all the flooding, but the small tendrils of copper that poked through the dirt like worms after a good rain were an anomaly.

I bent down and gripped one of them between two fingers and pulled. The tendril slipped out without any resistance, exposing a bottom half that looked like a mixture of a carrot and a zucchini that shone like it had been newly polished. My interface worked it over as it rusted before my eyes, losing its luster over the first few seconds then gaining a green-ish patina until no bronze remained.

//IDENTIFIED: RUSTROOT. CONSUMABLE. A combination organic-metallic plant native to this hazard. When consumed by a core bearer with a core of the [metal] or [flora] classification, sates hunger at 200% efficiency. Otherwise, sates hunger at 50% efficiency. Rarity: Scarce. Value: Low.

I chuckled and tucked the rustroot under my arm. It was a metal carrot, and it would probably taste exactly like one, but I was dangerously low on food since my backpack had been washed away by the flood. Except for the three boxes of fruit bars I’d stored in my interface’s inventory, these things were all the food I had. And 50% efficiency was better than 0% efficiency.

“Can you check if the air here is safe to breathe?” I asked aloud, hoping the error messages could still hear me. I knew that was a function of my interface, but I couldn’t find it in any of my checks.

//NO HARMFUL POLLUTANTS OR ORGANIC MATTER FOUND.

//SAFETY OF BREAKING ARMOR’S SEAL: 99.99%.

I nodded as I read the messages coming in. “Good to know. Can you tell me anything else about this place?”

No messages came immediately, so I started walking down the least wooded path through the forest. Ten minutes of unchanged scenery later, I got my response.

//MY INSIGHT IS LIMITED TO WHAT YOU BRING BEFORE YOU.

//I SEE ONLY WHAT YOU ALLOW ME TO SEE, AND HEAR ONLY WHAT YOU SPEAK.

So these error messages could hear me and see whatever I put into the system. I didn’t love the idea of having something always listening to me, but not having to wade through paragraphs of text to find the one useful line did seem like an upgrade.

I kept my mouth shut and my feet moving forwards until the sound of screeching metal caught my attention. It was coming from behind the nearest tree, so I ran up to it and flattened myself against the squishy bark so I wouldn't draw whatever was behind the tree’s attention.

I peered around the tree once the screeching stopped for a moment to see what looked like a suit of armor standing in place inside a ring of mossy stones. But as I watched, I saw that the metal armor wasn’t really armor at all.

One shoulder exploded into writhing copper tendrils, whipping themselves into a frenzy for a handful of seconds before they wove themselves back into a shoulder piece and the creature began meandering about once more. In the moments where the creature’s ‘flesh’ had been exposed, I’d seen nothing but pulsing moss with a deep forest green glow. A freakish symbiotic relationship between the copper tendrils and the moss that covered the ring of stones.

But the plant-knight wasn’t alone in the circle. If I looked closer I could see what looked like the handle of a sword stuck into the dirt; a mossy green thing that was absolutely coated in writhing coppery tendrils. I reached for my own weapon, but my hand closed around nothing but thin air. The system hadn’t given me a weapon with the rest of my shoddy armor.

“Damn it.” I sighed, stepping out from behind the tree and watching the plant-knight like a hawk. If it suddenly sprinted at me, I was ready to run like hell. “Hey, freakish thing, can you hear me?”

The knight didn’t so much as react to my voice or footsteps, trudging towards the edge of the ring of stones with a mindless focus. I walked the edge of the ring while keeping one eye on the knight, testing to see if anything at all would draw this thing’s attention.

Nothing did. I was three inches from the thing’s writhing faceplate and it still didn’t react, its feet trudging a rut in the dirt where it stood. “Stuck in the stone ring, are you?” I shook my head. “Gotta remember this is a level one hazard. These things are here to be cleared, not to kill me. That’s for the double-digit hazards.”

I followed the ring so that the knight was on the exact opposite side of me, the sword hilt perfectly between both of us in the center of the ring. I’d be surprised if this thing didn’t run at me the second I stepped into the ring, so giving myself the most room to back the hell up seemed like the best idea.

I took a deep breath and gently placed my foot onto the mossy rock; nothing. The knight didn’t react at all. I took a tentative step into the ring, staring a hole in the knight’s back, waiting for it to liven up and charge at me. It didn’t. I walked all the way to the hilt, leaning over the thing and hovering my hand an inch from it. Still nothing.

“Alright then. So you’re going to attack me the second I touch this thing, right?” I asked the back of the plant-knight, unsurprisingly receiving no answer in return. “Let’s go, then.”

I tapped the handle with my palm and jumped back, settling into a stance that was equally ready to fight or run based on how terrifying the plant knight became. But when the knight still didn’t react, my confusion was equally met by disappointment.

“Is this a tutorial fight?” I mused, now willing to risk stepping closer to the plant-knight. Its shoulders, knees, face and chest burst into tendrils at random intervals, but it still didn’t react to me. Even when I put a hand to its back and tried to push it out of the ring. “Fucking hell, this is a tutorial fight.”

I couldn’t help myself as a wide grin cut through my face. I’d only ever heard of tutorial fights, the criminally easy encounters in level 1 hazards that usually gave out equipment that was on par with the hazard clear rewards. I stepped over the sword and grasped the hilt, waiting ten seconds for a notification to inform me that I was about to trigger a tutorial. It never came, but that wasn’t going to dissuade me.

I yanked the hilt free of the dirt, bringing a supremely rusted copper blade out with it. The thing was missing huge chunks and didn’t hold anything close to an edge when I ran my finger over it, but I could make out some bizarre markings under the rust that held back the majority of the damage. If this thing wasn’t at least somewhat rare, I’d eat my helmet.

A notification finally showed, and it forced itself open when I called upon my interface.

“Combat tutorial; fragile weapons.” I read, then scrolled down so I could see a small animation of a sword crumbling to dust. “Fragile weapons are weapons that cannot be taken outside of the hazard they are found in, but are disproportionately strong compared to others of their kind. They cannot be placed in your inventory, and do not count towards your weight limit. See the difference for yourself against the provided hostile.”

As my eyes traced over the last word, my interface forced itself shut. I turned at the sound of screeching metal to see the plant knight lumbering towards me, its face burst open into tendrils to show countless dots of glowing green staring out at me from the mossy interior. I held the blade out between the knight and myself, feeling the power of this fragile weapon coursing through my veins.

//POWER AND SPEED INCREASED BY 8. FUNCTION: FLOODWALKER GAINED.

//FLOODWALKER: Ignore all hampering and negative effects while inside fast-moving water. Does not replace the battery drain needed to breathe underwater.

I whistled in appreciation. This sword would let me walk through this place without worrying about dying to the floodwaters. Almost as if I was supposed to appear inside this ring and find the sword before exploring the rest of the hazard.

The plant-knight lunged at me, with a grinding shriek, and I swung the sword down into its right shoulder with as much strength as I could muster. The dull edge sliced through the coppery tendrils without any resistance, and the knight looked down at itself as if it couldn’t believe what had just happened to it. The poor thing was tutorial fodder, and it didn’t even know it.

The two halves of the knight slammed to the ground but didn’t stop moving. Luminous moss bled from both halves like extremely thick blood, bright spots blinking rapidly before eventually going out. I watched as the bronze tendrils unwound themselves and burrowed into the dirt, leaving two mounds of dull moss that looked only vaguely like they had ever been in the shape of half a person.

Another notification forced itself on me.

//Congratulations on your first victory! But know that all the other Lichenthropes will not fall as easily as this one. Most other versions of the fragile weapon have been depreciated, and the sealing circles have been broken. Welcome to the rest of your life.