Stay warm. Stay alive. They were simple goals. How to achieve them was a little more complex. His thoughts jumbled and darted, refused to coalesce into any coherent order. There was too much to think about, too much to do. Find other people. Catalog his belongings - what remained unchanged, what was altered to match this world's technology and resources, what was gone entirely, replaced with local currency. Find and analyze said currency. Take stock of food and water reserves. Carefully evaluate all reasonable options for both Aether Abilities and Perks. Experiment with those he already had - in particular, his R9 rated "Universal Compass". Mentally poke at the System to see if he could get more information than he had previously by asking slightly different questions. Test his body - how fast it could run, how high it could jump, how much it could lift, how sharply it could bend, how well it could climb. Find water. Find food, or potential food. Make or find find shelter. Come up with a plan.

Dan paced aimlessly, but with time was able to corral his racing, wayward mind. Of the things he needed to do, what came first were tasks that gave him more information on his current situation, a clearer picture of his resources and his needs. Only after taking each action that offered information and did not look to ask too much time in return would it be logical to plan further. It was always better to know more before making decisions.

Dan sat down, set aside the tire iron he had held in his left hand, and focused on what he carried and wore. His cotton undershirt and the long, compressive thermal underwear he wore to stimulate circulation in his legs felt unchanged, though the right leg of both his inner and outer pants were ripped and stained with dried blood from where the chieftain's claws gouged him. There were no obvious changes to his leather jacket or business casual khaki pants, though blood soaked pants could be a problem if monsters could smell it from a distance. Apparently this world had discovered the zipper. His dress shoes were gone, replaced with soft-soled, unornamented leather moccasins. Synthetic leather and rubber soles were then evidently not a thing here. They fit well though, and were more comfortable than his old shoes had been. There was no way to know yet how durable they were. The watch on his left wrist was gone. His forest green wool sweater remained. His belt bag was now leather and used a draw string rather than a zipper, but its lead sling bullet cargo was intact.

His wallet was gone. Why was his wallet gone? He had a brief moment of consternation before he remembered that his ID, paper money and credit cards were of no value now. Then he felt better, then he felt weird about that fact making him feel better. He didn't belong in a place where his identity had no value. The wallet must have had alien materials or technology somewhere in it. He still had the goblin chieftain's fur cloak tied around his neck. It too smelled of blood. At least it wasn't his blood. He was quite over-dressed for the weather, and if the temperature rose with the sun he may need to watch for heat exhaustion. Even so, it had to be correct to carry every stitch of clothing he owned with him. There was so little he had now, so few resources, that it would be criminal to abandon any of them without compelling cause.

His most valuable possession, the Firestone Amulet, still hung around his neck. It struck him that the entire initial trial was structured like the tutorial of a particularly difficult computer game. Here is your player character, and here are its stats. Here are your customization options. Here are some enemies for you to fight, that will be hard but not too hard if you're smart and if you're careful. Here are the rewards you get for leveling. Here is the one good item you get for beating the boss and finishing the tutorial. Now go have fun. It probably wasn't a coincidence at all. Such games existed because incomprehensibly powerful extra-dimensional aliens made them, or caused them to be made, as training tools just for Dan and other lucky test subjects. He felt like a puppet on strings. It angered and frustrated him, but there was little he could do other than dance like a good puppet should. The incentives for playing along had been explained quite clearly after all, and they were compelling. So he would dance.

His sling was almost unchanged, but the cord was now a very tough plant fiber with almost no stretch to it rather than the synthetic material it had been previously. That was fine; that was how slings were made traditionally. For all its manipulation and freakishness, he tentatively trusted the System to play fair. It wouldn't stick him with a crappy version of one of the most ancient tools known. The leather cradle that held the stone or bullet was the same, worn in the same places and ways, as was the loop around the middle finger of his right hand. His sling was a little different, but it was still the sling his Grandpa gave him.

Next up it was time to take a look at the backpack and its contents. First, the pack itself was now made of the same tough, woven plant fiber as the cord of his sling, light green rather than the black synthetic fabric of the original. The design was unchanged - it even still had zippers. It had many pockets and storage spaces, and the outermost contained the unaltered chef's knife that had been in the break room and then part of a hastily improvised spear and then in a goblin chieftain's neck. That knife, like Dan, had had a long day. His MREs were now four envelopes of the same material as the backpack that held dried meat, dried fruit, and nuts, none of which he recognized. Instead of four bottles of water he now had a large Bota bag, or wine skin, and it was full. In his preparations for whatever came after the last goblin's death, Dan had carefully looked through his van. A butane lighter he had forgotten and found again in his search was missing, replaced with a flint and steel that were probably more reliable once he figured out how to use them. Bandages, trail mix, compression wrap bandage, hammer (technically stolen from the utility room, but ethically defensible given the extenuating circumstances) and utility knife were there. Ibuprofen, flash light, activated carbon drinking straw, and wasp spray were gone and not replaced. His rope now looked to be made of the same fibrous material as the bag and cord of his sling. The aluminum survival blanket had been replaced with one made of some type of animal hide. It seemed like it would be warm enough.

Finally, in a large pocket within the main chamber of the backpack there was an assortment of coins. Some were gold, some copper, some silver. They were each inscribed with a stylized dragon on one side, and glowed almost imperceptibly within his Aether sense. He had no frame of reference for how much each was worth other than that it represented the System's idea of fair compensation for a low mileage, full sized van customized for handicap accessibility. Most of the coins were gold, and he decided to take that as a good sign.

Overall, he was not in bad shape as far as supplies went. There had to be a fair bit of water for the forest to be so lush and verdant. He had warm clothes, blankets, various tools. If anything he may have been carrying too much. The heavy pack could tire him over a long hike. But every item he brought was there for a reason, and it wasn't clear which of them could be safely jetisoned. Perhaps the hammer and tire iron weren't needed. They were heavy. Still, with his enhanced physical abilities, it didn't seem like it would be a problem to bring them anyway.

His next project was to investigate the Aether Abilities he already had before considering whether to allocate some or all of his four free Aether Abilities now or save them for when he had more information - ideally in the form of intelligent advice from those who were used to life with the System. "Peer Through Past" he already knew - it was cheap to use and let him look through the immediate history of a specific inanimate item, roughly twenty-four hours when he'd used it on the safe with the gun he had to do without. It had shown him conclusively that no one opened the safe within that time, which, he supposed, was good to know, if not actually helpful in any way whatsoever. "Minor Restore Health" had rapidly restored 10 health at a cost of 40 aether. It presumably was better yet now that he had an extra seven points of Aether Attunement. "Unerring Aim" was cheap and awesome, as was "Sensory Locus". He only tried "Minor Aether Bolt", "Detect Monster", "Eagle Eye", "Sense Deceit", and "Penetrating Sight" once each, as part of his preparations before finishing off the last goblin. "Universal Compass" was wholly untested.

His current situation seemed quite safe, at least in the very short term, and there was time for more careful, thoughtful testing. He decided to set aside "Sense Deceit", as it didn't seem useful while alone in a forest. "Detect Monster" on the other hand, did. Dan tried it. The ability turned out to only cost 3 aether (probably because his Perception was so high now), and had a duration of 8 hours and 40 minutes. As far as how it worked, that was still unclear - there were no monsters within its range - but at that minimal of a cost, there was no reason to ever go without having it active. Back in the pocket dimension with him, his office building, and the last goblin, the small monster could be sort of felt and seen from any point in the area. It was a difficult sensation to describe, but it told him the location of the goblin and imparted a vague sense of its strength relative to himself.

Dan used "Eagle Eye". For a cost of 2 aether, his already incredible range of vision extended significantly. The effect lasted for 52 minutes. This was another one that was so cheap and lasted so long that he decided to keep it going continuously. Really, it was just a mistake not to have used both of those immediately after the realm shift. Given how acute his senses were, it had not seemed urgent. But that was sloppy thinking. More information was always better, no matter how much you already had.

Next he tried "Penetrating Sight". It was, just as he had hoped, comic book style X-Ray vision. The ability did seem to have limits. It could not look within living organisms, though it could see through them to whatever was on the other side. Each time his vision encountered an obstacle, he found that he could choose to look through it as if it were not there at all. Dan looked down at his chest and peered through the leather jacket to the sweater below, through the sweater to the polo shirt underneath it, through the polo shirt to his white undershirt, through that to his skin. Each time his vision forced through an obstruction there was a brief delay, no more than a second or two. This one lasted for 52 seconds at a cost of 5 aether. Honestly, it was really cool, even if the practical applications in his current environment were not immediately clear to him.

Compared to his Esper school abilities, "Minor Aether Bolt" was horrifically expensive at 40 aether. Not that that was a surprise - he had a 1/3 penalty to the cost of non-Esper Aether Abilities, which were governed by Aether Attunement rather than Perception. It launched an invisible, incredibly fast bolt of aetherial energy. If it were not for Sense Aether, it might have seemed instantaneous. His test completely obliterated a flying bug with a wicked looking stinger. If nothing else, he had a first rate fly swatter. He couldn't think of a good way to test or evaluate how it would do against bigger game, but somehow had the impression that he'd underestimated it, and that even accounting for the non-Esper penalty it was a more powerful attack than a bullet from his sling.

Dan had intentionally saved the most intriguing for last. "Universal Compass" was rated R9. The ability description he was able to pull from the System said that it could attempt to find anyone or anything for which the user could form a clear mental conception, and that the easier the target was to locate the greater the chance of success. It was vague, but could describe something truly incredible. Even though he was terribly excited to try it, there was a good reason he had not already done so: It was an Esper ability that required 200 aether.