Unconsciously he tracked the sounds of destruction the Otrogon made as it continued on its way, now completely out of sight. Not being able to see it somehow made it all worse, and he almost wanted to come back so that he could keep it in his line of sight.

He slumped further back against the bamboo, groping for the menu. He glanced over the options once more and settled on the [Map]. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger of being eaten, he could actively investigate it.

A large, empty grid greeted him, colored a faded grey, and along the top of the map were the words, [Devil’s Nest]. The lines of the grid were black or grey and barely present. Each row and column had an identifier, Alphabet up the left side of the grid, and numerals along the bottom. Each side of the map was labeled with a letter, [N] at the top, [E] at the right, [S] at the bottom, and [W] at the left—the cardinal directions.

There was a single splash of color on the otherwise greyed-out map, a small line of green, less than the width of his fingertip and almost the same color as the bamboo around him. It sat in the cross-section, where the [B] row and the [13] column met. A tiny white triangle pulsed, right at the end of the line, barely the size of a pinhead.

In other words, it was completely useless.

It was covered in a fog of war that would require him to travel all over the place to uncover anything of note, and he had a massive internal resistance towards actually doing that with things like the Otrogon walking around.

August pressed his finger against it, and the map shuddered, so he took two fingers and pulled them away from each other—sure enough, the map zoomed in, the grid boxes growing larger. If he could count on anything, it was that the navigation of this system was intuitive. He zoomed in again until he spotted a tiny silver circle at the start of the green line, with a [?] hovering over it.

That would be the pit he’d woken up inside and the ring of metal at the top.

August had been hoping that some kind of pathway would exist, showcasing how he’d gotten into the pit to begin with, but there was no additional line cutting through the fog to show which direction someone had carried him from. Either he’d just appeared at the bottom of the pit, or the Map had only begun updating the fog of war after the menu had been unlocked for the first time.

The map was locked to the area within its grid and not August’s own position, which absolutely meant something important. Overall he was located on the bottom right-hand side of the map; he was closest to the south side of the grid. He could continue his journey south, all the way to the [0] row, and there he’d be sure to learn a lot.

If he crossed the [A] row and the [0] line, would he no longer be with the borders of Devil’s Nest? Would the map update to a new location? If would there be some kind of impassible terrain, invisible walls, or a mountain pass too steep to climb? He didn’t know, but moving south was better than heading deeper into Devil's Nest.

August closed the [Map], backtracking into the [Menu], and he opened the [Settings] option.

HUD

Location – Off

Year – Off

Compass – On

EXP Tracker – On

Mana Tracker – On

Skill Cooldowns – On

Quest Tracker – Off

Quest tracker? EXP tracker? That was by far the clearest piece of evidence suggesting that this followed the rules of a game. Except it wasn’t a game because he’d almost been eaten by a fucking monster not five minutes ago. August turned on each of the options and then backed out of the menu entirely. New elements had joined the others in his vision. Up the top left were the time, year, and location.

Year – 304 AC

Location – Devil’s Nest

“What the hell is AC?” August mumbled, staring at the number.

Year 304? Had he gone back in time? Or was this some arbitrary date that someone had come up with to mess with him further? AC wasn’t any kind of identifier he’d heard of either—August gritted his teeth as his understanding of the situation grew more confusing instead of less.

On the right side of his vision, three quests were listed under one another in tiny text.

Survive

Water - 0/1

Food - 0/1

Shelter - 0/1

Fire - 0/1

The Forgotten

Summon Voithos - 0/1

Complete Devil’s Nest

Open the door – 0/1

Making a shelter made him uneasy; just how long was he expected to stay in this hell forest? Making a fire was probably a good move though, he could use the smoke to alert someone to his presence. He’d need a safer location first because staying in here with the Otrogon was something he was going to be avoiding completely.

August exited the menu and started forward into the fog, head on a swivel as he tried to distinguish any moving shapes in a mess. He used the compass on his [HUD] to orientate himself perfectly south; if he could at least get close enough to see the edge of the map, he might be able to figure this out.

He glanced over at the quest list as he moved, trying to determine anything else from contextual clues.

The Voithos had to be the race described in the description earlier, but it wasn’t a word he’d ever heard of before—neither had the world Otrogon for that matter. Would [Summon] deposit some kind of insane creature next to him? Would he be expected to tame it?

That seemed like a one-way ticket to getting killed if whatever the creature was decided to eat him.

August checked his Mana bar; it had almost regenerated from the cost of using [Analysis] on the Otrogon. That had supposedly cost him 25 Mana to use, and at a glance, had left him at 75% of his total mana bar. He could safely assume he had somewhere in the vicinity of 100 Total Mana.

August checked the [Tame] skill again; 1 effectiveness per second at the cost of 10 Mana per second. The Otrogon had a taming progress bar of [0/260], and he didn’t bother doing the math—he’d run out of Mana long before he even it a tenth of the way filled. Summoning a potential monster that he might not even be able to tame in the first place would just get him killed.

August winced as he brushed against another bamboo shoot, and when he checked the damage, he found a small line of broken skin. He rubbed his finger along the scratch, wondering how many he would have before he escaped this place. He needed to make maintaining his safety a priority; breaking something or even twisting his ankle would be devasting here.

A smell caught his attention, along with a breeze, and almost immediately, he knew what it was; twenty-odd years spent living near the ocean had burned the smell of saltwater into his memory.

“I’m near the ocean?” August murmured.

The bamboo was starting to thin out now, the gaps between them no longer difficult to pass through, and the fog was beginning to disperse. Light shone down through the gaps above him, and then, directly in front of him, through the last of the treeline, August saw the sky. He broke through the last of the mess and came to a stop.

Ten meters of long grass were matted down into the ground before him, stomped flat by some unknown creature, and then the grass abruptly ended in a sheer cliff that dropped away from his sight; Past the cliff lay an unfamiliar ocean, endless, large, and blue. August stilled, staring out over the water at the largest of the three faded spheres writ large in the sky above him [Analysis].

Briareus

The second moon of Gaia and the largest of the three.

“I was right,” August said, swallowing. “This isn’t earth.”