Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 226: Ch224. At the Beginning

Chapter 226: Ch224. At the Beginning

The silence settled thick around them, broken only by the occasional rustle of leaves far above, and the tiny chirping of Dee.

If there was wind, it was soft enough to go unnoticed. If there were birds or insects, they kept to themselves, and if the world cared about their presence, it made no sign of it.

Miles stood still, his hand extended forward, waiting for the faintest tingle of energy, of connection, of anything. He reached inward again, this time with every ounce of focus, calling not on weapons or Artifacts, but on his [The End] Story fragment.

And still, nothing happened. No thundercrack of narrative, no glint change in how Miles saw everything around him, no whisper in his bones.

"... It’s gone..." He muttered, his shoulders slumping down in quiet frustration.

Sarissa didn’t respond at first.

She sat against a tree, her forehead slick with sweat, her skin pale in a way that wasn’t from fear or exhaustion alone. She tried not to look at the patch of moss she’d vomited into a few minutes earlier.

"Maybe it never existed here." She said finally, her voice hoarse. "Or maybe we’re the ones that don’t exist. Not here, not really."

Cheshire stretched on a sun-warmed stone, his feline body entirely at ease.

"Now you’re thinking in the right direction."

"You said this is your world. What does that even mean? Where are we? How far back? Why can’t we summon anything?" Miles turned towards him.

"The name is Tir’Serene, and I was born here. As for to why you can’t summon a single thing, it’s because you’re in a place that has never heard of the System. A world before stats and titles and achievements." Cheshire blinked, the motion deliberate and slow. "A world where power isn’t given by classification, but by truth."

"That doesn’t mean anything!" Sarissa snapped, then winced and clutched her stomach. "If we can’t fight, can’t even heal, can’t even drink the damn water... Then what are we supposed to do?"

"You survive. The same way everyone did before the System offered shortcuts. You eat, you drink, you learn to walk without the crutch." Cheshire flicked his tail.

"No shortcuts... No support." Miles exhaled slowly. "At least the place has a pretty name..." He rolled his eyes.

"Just you." Cheshire retorted. "And whatever the world deems worthy to grant you."

They sat in silence after that. Not a resigned one, more like stunned. The kind of quiet that came only after a foundation had cracked and fallen through into something deeper.

Something older.

Sarissa tried again, quietly, to summon something small. A utility knife she used to carry before her current gear. The hilt should’ve appeared in her hand.

It didn’t.

She stared at her palm as if it had betrayed her.

"Hey." Miles crouched beside her.

"I just wanted something real..." She whispered. "Even if it was useless. Just... Real."

Miles nodded. He understood. The System had always been a tether, a promise, a sense of progress, no matter how brutal or treacherous. Now, with it gone, even their memories felt suspect.

Were they truly stronger? Or had they only ever borrowed strength from something else they didn’t know the first thing about?

Cheshire leaped down from the stone and padded between them.

"You’re still yourselves. The System may be silent within you, but the choices that shaped you into who you are now...? They are not."

"You keep saying that. What do you mean?" Miles tilted his head.

"Exactly what I said, my dear." Cheshire purred. "The System only documented and categorized your Story. It didn’t write it."

Sarissa raised an eyebrow.

"So where does that leave us? If there are no Skills, no weapons, no Artifacts?"

"It leaves you at the Beginning." Cheshire said.

He led them through a narrow grove of trees, the ground here softer, shaded, filled with roots that knotted like sleeping serpents.

The air smelled faintly of iron and mint. They came upon a circle of stones, smooth and cracked with age, their surfaces inscribed with spiraling glyphs.

"This is where the First Hunter fell." Cheshire said, hopping onto the largest stone.

"Hunter?" Miles stepped closer.

"Not a Class. A name, a title. One they earned, not granted by anything but themselves and the Stories within them. They chased a creature across ten lifetimes, through fire and frost and grief. And when they finally brought it down, they carved its bones into arrows and became legend."

Sarissa touched one of the stones. There was no surge of power, no glow, no system window popping up, but she felt something. A presence.

A pressure, like standing on sacred ground.

"You said this is your home..." She murmured.

Cheshire nodded.

"Then you... You weren’t... Always a cat, were you?"

"No more than you were always a warrior." Cheshire smiled, showing a few too many teeth.

She let her hand fall from the stone. Miles remained quiet, his eyes scanning the grove, his mind clicking through details, patterns, gaps.

"You said this world doesn’t trust us yet. Can it?"

Cheshire didn’t answer directly. Instead, he leapt down, tail flicking.

"Trust is earned. Or stolen, depending on your methods."

They moved on, and hours passed. Or maybe less.

Time had no proper rhythm here.

The deeper they walked, the more alien the forest became. Some trees no longer had leaves, just long strands of bioluminescent fiber that twisted in the wind. The soil changed from black to rust-red to a pale, almost luminous white.

They found bones. Giant, unfamiliar shapes. Some looked almost human, others distinctly not. There were skulls with too many eye sockets, ribs the size of wagon wheels.

They felt like they were being watched.

Not by a predator, though. But by the world itself.

It observed them.

And it didn’t yet care to properly notice them.

Eventually, Sarissa stopped walking. Her hand braced against a tree that pulsed faintly under her palm.

"We need to eat."

Miles nodded. He could feel his own body beginning to falter. His limbs moved slower than they should, and his vision narrowed when he stood up too quickly.

"We’ll have to hunt." He said. "Find water, too. Can’t rely on that lake."

"Not unless we want to gamble on drinking mana-leeching slime." Sarissa muttered.

"Now you’re learning." Cheshire plopped onto a branch.

"There might be tracks. Maybe, if we’re lucky." Sarissa squinted at a patch of underbrush.

"Do you even remember how to track something without enhanced Perception?" Miles crouched beside her.

"A little." She gave a faint smile. "I learned some of it during one of my first quests. When we still used to think real survival skills mattered."

"Ironic, because now they do." He glanced sideways at her.

"Funny how that works."

For a moment, neither of them moved. The forest swayed gently, as if waiting.

Then Miles stood and stretched, his joints popping and his muscles aching.

"No more theories. No more questions about the System, or the gods, or where we are. We’re starving, almost falling from thirst, and that comes first."

"Food, water, shelter, then answers." Sarissa nodded.

"Wise. Now you’re starting to sound like people who belong here." Cheshire purred.

"We start simple. Anything that moves, anything that runs." Miles stepped forward, scanning the nearby brush.

Sarissa took a deep breath. She wiped her palms on her pants, as if shedding the weight of her role, her rank, her entire Classpect.

"Let’s hunt."

They didn’t know the terrain, they didn’t know the prey, they didn’t even know what kind of weapons they could fashion from the world around them.

But they knew what it meant to starve, and they knew what it meant to fight.

Cheshire watched them go, his tail twitching with amusement and something almost fond.

They walked into the wild undergrowth, muscles aching, stomachs hollow, eyes sharper than they’d been in years.

The System was gone, but they were still alive.

And they intended to stay that way.