I didn't move.
I didn't even dare blink.
I just watched… that being.
It looked like nothing I had ever seen.
Not a predator. Not an animal. Not even a beast.
It was… something else.
It rose slowly, four meters tall, as if the forest itself were peeling off the ground. A mass of knotted roots, dark flesh, oozing wood. Its body seemed made of damp soil, rotting leaves, corrupted sap, and cracked carapace.
A sick trunk.
A failed tree.
A being of bark and nerves.
It moved without a sound.
Its legs — if you could call them that — were just twisted, asymmetrical vegetal extensions, shaped by pain and earth. Each step sank into the moss as if it recognized him. As if the ground accepted his dominion.
He had arms.
Long. Too long.
One was gnarled, thickened, like an old oak gnawed by centuries. The other dangled, loose, disproportionate, covered in quivering vines that cracked softly in the air. With each movement, some of those vines seemed to stretch, as if driven by a will of their own. Alive. Furtive. Attentive.
But that's not what paralyzed me.
It was his head.
Or rather… its absence.
Where a face should have been, there was only a bark mask. Oval. Smooth. No mouth. No eyes. Nothing.
Just four holes.
Four black sockets, pierced into the matter like memories carved with fingernails.
And those holes… were watching.
Not me.
But everything.
Everywhere.
With indifferent stillness. A primitive omniscience. As if seeing no longer mattered. As if the whole world was just an old dream to him, a memory grazed by root tips.
I didn't understand what I was seeing.
My mind refused.
My body refused.
I wanted to vomit, scream, run, pray to a god I didn't know. But nothing came out.
Because he was there.
He moved with a sickening slowness. Not like an animal. Not like a hunter.
Like an idea.
An idea too ancient to be named, too vast to be contained.
He wandered through my kingdom… and nothing could resist him.
The traps — the ones I had spent hours setting — collapsed at the slightest contact. The slicing vines parted, the sharpened stones shattered. Even the trees seemed to bow in his presence.
He didn't break. He erased.
He didn't dominate. He replaced.
He took possession of space, of air, of silence.
And behind him, the world changed.
Leaves decayed faster. Roots trembled. The humidity rose a notch, suffocating, as if each breath cost me a happy memory.
He wasn't an intruder in the forest.
He was the forest.
Condensed.
Condemned.
Alive, but lifeless.
An ancient guardian. A rooted plague. A vegetal punishment for a world that had forgotten the seasons.
I don't know how long I stood there, frozen, eyes locked on him.
I saw him tilt his head. A root emerged from his back, long, tense, like a bark tentacle, burrowing into the ground.
It grabbed a corpse.
A wolf I had killed three days earlier.
It lifted it. Slowly.
Then broke it.
Not killed.
Broke.
As if the bones were just twigs. As if death wasn't enough.
He opened his back. Literally. A wet slit formed between his shoulder blades. Roots came out. Sharp. Trembling.
They absorbed.
Everything.
Skin. Flesh. Fur. Bone.
He left nothing.
Not a drop.
And I understood.
He wasn't a beast.
He wasn't a predator.
He was a moving sanctuary.
A sanctuary of death.
A wandering temple built by hatred, fed by time, worshiped by rot. A vegetal king, forgotten by civilized races. A horror born in a world that doesn't forgive.
And me?
I was there, heart pounding, throat tight, unable to move.
A squatter.
An insect.
An entire cult could have worshiped him.
Me, I was hanging in a tree, like a stupid bird… singing in a graveyard.
And he hadn't seen me yet.
Or maybe… he didn't care.
That would be worse.
Because if he ignored me… it meant I was worth nothing.
Not even worth killing.
Just a breath in the air.
A dead branch's creak in his kingdom of roots.
A parasite.
A monster embryo… facing him.
And then, just like that.
He wrecked everything.
My traps.
My vines.
My XP farm.
My so-called kingdom.
Literally everything I had built these past few weeks.
Reduced to nothing.
Not in one night.
In a few minutes.
A handful of steps, a mute wandering… and my work became dust.
My vine net? Torn apart, shredded, melted into the humus.
My baits? Ripped to pieces, devoured, integrated into his body.
My most complex traps? Shattered like they never stood a chance. Like they never mattered at all.
And then he left.
Without a word.
Without a glance.
Just as he came.
Naturally.
Inexorably.
A silhouette of slow agony that vanished into the forest like a forgotten memory. Like a nightmare that doesn't need to kill you to destroy you.
And me…
I stayed there.
Suspended. Motionless.
And everything gave out.
My muscles.
My breath.
My composure.
Everything.
I felt like I had run fifty football fields on my knees, lungs torn, heart hammered to bursting.
I felt like I had swum through a sea of crushed glass until I couldn't feel my limbs.
I was empty.
Exhausted.
Drowned in stress.
In that visceral, primitive, absolute fear.
The fear of prey before something it cannot escape.
A thing.
An abomination.
A being above.
Not stronger.
Not faster.
Above.
Untouchable. Intangible. Unfathomable.
And I had a reminder, seared into my skull in black fire.
This world is dangerous.
This world shouldn't exist.
The species that live in it deserve only extinction.
Damn god.
Damn goblins.
Damn… forest guardian.
I should have been the hero.
The one who slays monsters.
The one who saves the cute waifu.
The one who protects the weak and defies the impossible.
But here…
I was the weak one.
The pathetic one.
The small. The hidden. The silent.
The cockroach under the boot.
So I found myself thinking, with a bitter, nervous grin:
If I have to… to survive… I'll become a waifu.
I even almost laughed.
Not a real laugh.
A mental spasm.
A defense reflex to avoid shattering.
Just a bit of twisted humor, to keep from sinking.
Because otherwise…
Otherwise I would have screamed.
I had to accept it.
Not as a lesson.
Not as a mantra.
As a fact.
I am not strong.
Not yet.
I am the weak one who curls up.
And tonight, in the shadows of a dead forest, in the debris of an illusory kingdom…
I was nothing.
Just another goblin who thought he could survive in a world that eats the living without chewing.
But in this misery…
In this chaos.
In the total collapse of all that I was…
There was a certainty.
Fragile.
Instinctive.
But real.
My next evolution was near.
I don't know why I felt it.
I didn't deserve it.
I hadn't triumphed.
I had curled up, gone silent, incapable of acting.
But in that helplessness… I searched.
Everywhere.
In my body.
In my bones, my muscles, my nerves.
Searching for a hidden power, a forgotten reflex, a last-second miracle.
Spoiler: none.
No solution.
No divine blessing.
No secret power unlocked by fear.
Just… me.
Empty.
But digging deeper — not physically, not with my hands, but with this new awareness the light had given me — I found something.
A point.
A center.
An organ.
Or maybe a core.
Right there, behind my navel.
Not a muscle.
Not a stomach.
Something else.
A crucible.
A secret sanctuary at the heart of my flesh.
And it pulsed.
Faintly.
But I felt it.
It was almost full.
Saturated with energy.
With that sinuous, sickly violet light. That slow poison I swallowed with each death, each trap, each strangled scream.
It had gathered there.
It had made its lair in me.
And now… it trembled.
As if… it was waiting.
One more drop.
One offering too many.
And it would explode.
And I would change.
Once more.
One more step on this black road.
This path of monsters.
So even if I was a fallen king…
A string-pulled ruler dethroned by a faceless god…
Even if I had seen my kingdom turned to humus in mere minutes…
I still had this.
This warmth.
This point of tension in my guts.
A future.
An escape.
A way out.
And as long as I could feel it…
As long as that core beat like a foreign heart…
I wouldn't completely sink into madness.
I would hold on to that.
To that idea.
To that promise.
My second evolution.
It would be my revenge.