The forest was massive, and the trees were even more incredible and insurmountable, making it an army of harsh greenery. Even while the rest of his group began setting up camp for the night—and yes, it was becoming night, that much was obvious now that the impenetrable shield of tree canopy above them began to break and crack to reveal the sky beyond—Colt was staring at his tree. The tree. The one that he would climb. For a few minutes, he visualized his way up its massive surface.

  Its bark was a living, natural, deep, ruddy brown like old, weathered skin. It had all types of lumps and cracks on its surface. This ancient guardian is waiting for its conquerer to come and scale it.

  Colt took a last look at the group, shook out his hands, and then went to his tree, placing a hand on a little knot on its surface. His foot kicked up—finding another small hole to dig into. Then he stretched his back and another arm, finding another narrow spot to pinch and pull.

  Climbing was a popular sport that captivated him as a kid.

  Seeing how people moved their bodies to scale insurmountable physical puzzles gave him a visceral thrill. They could leverage their balance, summon their muscles, and chart a path up even the most impossible surfaces. It was insane and motivating to watch, as a kid, it’d been all he’d wanted to do. But his parents yelled at him whenever he tried.

  In person, though? Colt found it almost as much of a mental exercise as it was physical. His body was capable of meeting the demands. Now, with all of this dexterity and endurance, the stats had pumped into him, both swinging his body to the next hold and finding that innate sense of balance was almost a trivial exercise. Holding onto a grip for ten seconds while thinking by his fingertips—still easy. Not as easy. Still, do not pull your hair out hard.

  But as he climbed, he crossed from the forest floor to three stories high…

  The difficulty of the task sank in.

  Climbing was all about solving problems. His superior body allowed him to leverage it in ways that brute-forced many problems. But it happened to be that three stories up, Colt ran across a stretch of bark that was just too flat—too smooth to find an easy way past.

  He glanced downward, seeing Nate milling about and setting up a small fire. Julia was talking to Sarah, and his friend appeared frustrated. Nick gave a wave when he noticed Colt looking.

  Colt sighed and turned back to the task at hand.

  Above was a flat stretch of bark without much in the way of hand-holds. He could try to throw himself up, but he didn’t fancy having to work his way back to here without an answer on how to solve this problem, if and probably more like when he fell.

  Climbing was a mental sport for someone with a body like his.

  Only, really, if you let it be.

  He grit his teeth and dug his left hand into the hold he had—just his fingertips pinching on the surface of the bark, barely three inches. The rough surface of the tree was pain, scratching at his skin and threatening to rip it off and let his body tumble below. Colt freed his right hand and then focused. Wrapping the fingers of his right hand with the Edict of cut.

  It was grueling, concentrating it around his weak and fleshy skin. Cut wanted a nice and narrow metal blade to hone itself on. A representation of the tool that most naturally did what it did.

  But the truth was, with enough force, anything could cut. Colt compelled the Edict to action where force was lacking, wrapping around his digits. Then, once it was efficiently coated, he thrust his fingers into the bare bark above him, tearing a smooth hole into the tree.

  Mental games, willpower, and physical reality were bent by the Edict wielded in his hand.

  This grip was deeper. Easier. Carved into this ancient tree by an Edict and the will of the one who controlled that Edict.

  So when Colt balanced with his right hand and shoved that same Edict around the fingers of his left, it was all the much simpler to conquer the tree wall by brute forcing his solution to the problem. Who needed to know how to climb well when you could just make your own handhold wherever you damn well pleased.

  Shortly, Colt defeated the stretch of near-impossible-to-climb tree.

  ———

  *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Basic) has gained a level!

  ———

  He went this way for the next hundred feet. Swapping between natural climbing when it was faster to slicing into the tree and making handholds when it was impossible to climb otherwise. Focusing the Edict around his fingers wasn’t easy, and each time he did, it took a toll. Sweat began to roll off him, making his shirt cling to his back. When he reached three hundred feet and the first large, gnarly branch, he paused and took a breather for ten minutes.

  Up here, he got a good view of the forest floor below—in the distance, he could see a large antelope, about triple the size of a regular beast. It was trampling about and grazing on the dark foliage. He thought it odd that they hadn’t run across one on their travel so far. It could be they were skilled at evading hunters.

  Colt shook out his sore fingers and then looked up.

  A long way to go.

  Life is a serious thing. And as a serious thing, life sometimes demands giving it all you’ve got. As Colt approached the tree and began to climb again, the thought went through him that reaching the top would take hours. But, as he did it, he’d learn, grow, and walk away with valuable information. More important than all that was the person he’d become when he reached the top of this tree. When he conquered it. Even as he flexed his sore fingers, he found determination in that thought.

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  Soon, Colt stopped using natural handholds, forcing himself to climb up the tree by carving each and every groove in the process—not because he had to, but because it was hard.

  He felt the way his edict shivered and bucked, its natural instincts going against being used to sharpen fingers. It cried for a knife. It cried for an edge that would slit, slice, and sever. But Colt made it obey, his soul twisting and reigning it in.

  Grip after grip, wrestling with his Soul and the edict became more difficult.

  Good. When things are harder, that’s when you grow best.

  Colt stopped five hundred feet up—hanging from one hand with the jug he’d made in the tree; the air up here was pleasant, a breeze which brought a nice cooling relief to his sweaty skin. Breath in. Breath out. The limiting factor now was his will and the sheer effort it took to hang from the tree for minutes at a time.

  ———

  You have gained 1 point of Endurance!

  *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Basic) has gained a level!

  *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Basic) has reached level 10! This skill has advanced to *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Intermediate)! As this is now at the (Intermediate) level, the resistance of both Soul and Mind has increased. It is now an Iron Wall. This brings a 10% increase in effectiveness in withstanding the effects of utilizing Edicts, resisting Mental Skills, or resisting Soul Skills.

  ———

  He drove himself to climb again, the next massive gnarled branch only fifty feet away.

  Then he paused. Something was wrong. The forest's background shifted, and a movement caught his attention.

  In the distance between the trees, he saw a flickering shape. A grey creature’s black eyes sharpened and locked on him from its perch on another massive tree’s branches. Feathers the size of a man expanded and fluffed, a deep gray that was hard to spot in the shade of the giant leaves above.

  “Really?” Colt asked god, as the bird-monster took off its perch and spiraled right at him.

  Colt wrapped the edict of cut around his foot, digging it deeper into the hole it was; this, too, took focus, but if he could use it on his hand, why not a foot?

  The monster smashed through the air, tilting to its side to narrowly avoid crashing into one of the towering trees, like an airplane performing stunts. Colt summoned his dagger—balanced on one foot and one hand hundreds of feet in the sky. If he fell…

  He wasn't sure he'd survive even with a body this strong. Down below the rest of his party were the size of ants.

  He layered Cut thick on his knife, focusing and sharpening along the blade, narrowing its focus to a sharpness that would cleanly eviscerate solid steel walls. The monster narrowed in—zooming fast, darting, ducking, weaving, bobbing—too hard to get a clean hit with all the trees in the way.

  So Colt ignored the trees, following its path.

  Then, he threw, Edict wrapped tight around the knife; it went straight for a tree, and then… The blade, edict, and all vanished through it, reappearing right on the other side as he activated Phantoms Gambit at the precise moment required to travel through the ancient lumber. On the other side, he felt it hit. The weapon connected with the monster; there was a screech of pain and a contest of wills as it tried to employ whatever lesser Edict it had to contest his cut.

  Colt pushed, and there was another shriek.

  Then, he saw the monster as it entered view again—one of its wings sliced off, a stump of blood and feathers. It crashed face-first into a tree hundreds of feet up with a sickening pulp.

  Desperate, the monster tried to grab onto the wood with its talons—contorting and twisting its broken body.

  It failed and tumbled down hundreds of feet.

  Splat.

  ———

  You have defeated Ancient Forest Sparrow - Level 53

  ———

  There was a rush of experience as it died, not enough to tip him over to the next level, but enough to feel the welling power in his chest. It is odd how the more sensitive and in tune with the world around him he became with his Edict, the more he perceived the power that amounted to ‘levels.’

  Colt hung there, one hand and one foot dug into the tree for a brief minute, staring at where the monster crashed and then cometed to its death.

  Had it hit him, that end could have been his. Oh well.

  Sucks to be a giant bird.

  He scouted the deep forest around—nothing but more trees as far as the eye could see. No birds on branches, though. So… Taking a deep breath, he began to scale upward again. Reaching the branch he’d wanted to take a break on.

  Then, he moved further upward.

  Again and again, branch after branch.

  The light became more frequent up here until it went away, stripped from the land as night claimed its rightful place on the throne. From this vantage, he got a look at the stars above. Violently bright things. Taunting him from the patches in the leafy surroundings above. In their flashy glory, they claimed he would never rise to their level. That scaling this tree was pointless.

  Hand by hand, foot by foot, he made his own path up the tree.

  ———

  You have gained 1 point of Endurance!

  *Soul And Mind Fortitude* (Basic) has gained a level!

  ———

  When he finally saw the top of one of the nearby trees for the first time, he knew nothing but elation.

  The forest floor had become a sea of dark green leaves, a veritable landscape of tree leaves—along the way, he’d spotted some other birds. They’d looked different. None had noticed him, thankfully, mostly because they’d tucked away for the night in their nests.

  Colt kept climbing and saw the tops of more trees. The sky above now dominated by stars instead of choked out by vegetation.

  Then, Colt reached the top of his tree.

  As far as he could see—a perfect circle of an island—the middle of which rose to a mountaintop. At some point, the trees gave way to barren black rock…At the tip of that mountain, though, that’s what boggled his mind. It was as if a trail of stars came from the heaven above, condensing on the top of the mountain and radiating with a holy glory that was terrible to see with your own eyes. It burned to stare at too long, and even squinting, he wasn’t sure what was searing its way into his skull.

  Almost like a river of stars came from the skies above to meet the top of the mountain.

  It was so captivating that for a second, he didn’t realize what was surrounding the trees—at the edge of the ‘island,’ which was laid about in a perfect circle, was complete blackness. The trees fell off into a black void.

  Go far enough down, it seemed, and you would meet an abyss.

  The scale of the dungeon, though…

  “Yeah. This will be a few days,” Colt said, shielding his eyes while gawking, transfixed on their destination. Whatever was happening at the top of the mountain, it had to be the crux of this place. One of the bosses… Or… Loot… Or…

  Colt shook his head as he finally was forced to look away.

  Right, well, that sealed the deal on their destination. Now… All he had to do was spend hours upon hours climbing back down the tree he’d climbed up to tell everyone what he’d seen. Colt inhaled deeply, set his shoulders, and got to work. Nothing in life came easy. But hardships brought the most growth, so he willed for this trip downward to be just as hard, if not harder, than the trip upward.