The flood had come and gone, and close to an hour of walking had provided less than five percent exploration for my map. Either this place was unfathomably huge for a level one hazard, or we had to find something like a cave or abandoned building that was the brunt of this place’s experience.

“So, I should have asked this earlier, but what’s your name?” My unnamed friend asked, still playing with the short sword I’d pulled out of another tutorial ring for them. It was half the size of my own blade, and was closer to what I was used to, but without a shield I wasn’t going to ask for a trade. “I’m tired of calling you ‘blue armor’.”

“Seb.” I answered, my head on a swivel for anything that broke the tree and metal monotony.

“Seb.” They repeated. “Is that short for something?”

“It is.” I confirmed with a shallow nod, but didn’t elaborate.

“Cool. Cool.” My friend said, then fell silent for a few short seconds as we walked. When they spoke again, it was full of energy and impatience. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my name is?”

“Nope.” I said plainly. “You’re obviously uncomfortable telling me, since you left it out earlier, so I’m not going to pry.”

“I’m Juniper. But you can call me June.” Juniper said, then tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned my head to see… her? I couldn’t be sure, since a helmet could distort someone’s voice something fierce, but as far as I knew Juniper was a woman’s name. I turned to see her reaching out a hand for me to shake. I raised an eyebrow, a move that was completely pointless under my one-way helmet, and reached out to shake her offered hand.

“Well, good to meet you, Jun.” I said, mentally shorting what I knew she meant as the month to a three-letter nickname. “We’ll be stuck with each other for at least a few days, so it’s nice not to call you ‘my friend’ in my head any more.”

“A few days? We’re going to get out of here in a few days?” Jun muttered as I resumed walking. I understood her disbelief at how long she’d be stuck in here with me, but it was something she’d have to learn to live with. Especially after we went our separate ways and she didn’t have someone like me who was so used to dealing with hazards.

She tapped me on the shoulder, and I realized that she’d said something else that I hadn’t paid attention to. “Sorry, I spaced out. Can you say that again?”

“We’re going to be done here in just a few days?” She said with disbelief. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, without any signs of people other than us, and we’re going to be safe in less than a week?” She jogged up to walk next to me, then crossed her arms and shook her head. “I don’t know where you get that confidence, but we’ve been stuck here for almost two months. So unless you know something I don’t, we’re not getting out of here for a while.”

“Two months?” I asked, catching myself before I said more. Had that much time passed in this world before I got here? I shook my head and forced a laugh. “Maybe I hit my head a little too hard when I got caught in a flash flood. How do you know nothing about your interface if you’ve been here for two months? Didn’t you get curious?”

“I was more focused on surviving, thank you.” Jun grumbled. “It’s not like there were instructions that came with all this stuff.”

That didn’t seem right, and I pulled up my interface to double-check. Right there in the top right corner of it was a small icon that looked like a lower-case ‘i’ inside of a pentagon. I pressed and held it while a white line traced the length of the pentagon, then watched as another window opened on my interface that had a detailed explanation of the stat screen behind it.

I explained what I’d just done to Jun, but after long minutes of fruitless efforts we came to the conclusion that her interface was laid out differently than mine. And that my interface had quite a few functions that hers didn’t.

//I HAVE WORKED YOUR MEMORIES INTO OUR INTERFACE.

//THE CURRENT INTERFACE IS FAR LESS INTRICATE THAN WHAT YOU HOLD.

“That explains a lot, actually.” I chuckled, wiping off the sludgy waters that had flooded over us a handful of minutes ago. Jun cocked her head to the side in question, but I just shook my head and waved her off. “Just had a thought, but it doesn’t matter. Looks like we’re finally getting some new scenery.”

The uniform brown and copper were still there, but the copper had greatly increased its presence. Tendrils wrapped around the bases of trees like parasitic roots, plunging themselves into the bark and emerging like surgical stitches to tie together parts of trees that had previously snapped off to send out a flood. It explained why I hadn’t seen any fallen trees, but it also led into multiple questions on how these metal tendrils lived. Were they half-plant like the rustroot? Did they draw from an underground power source? Were they feeding on the trees themselves, and was that why the bark was so spongy and the branches were so warm?

Every hazard had a heart behind it. It could be a massive gemstone powering constructs for miles around, or a chimeric beast emanating a miasma that turned everything into mindless husks that fought to defend it, or a ruined tower rising up through pitch-black to reach for a verdant sky. And the key to clearing each and every hazard was its heart. The increased activity from the copper tendrils had to be a hint that we were getting closer to the heart, or was at least leading us to a clue. We just had to make sense of it.

A wave of warm air slapped me in the face, accompanied by a notification that forced my interface open.

//Requirement for entry: Floodwalker. Requirement met. WARNING: you are leaving the protected grounds of this hazard. From this point forward, lichenthropes will not be bound to certain zones. Proceed with extreme caution.

“Should… should we go this way?” Jun asked, reaching for the shortsword strapped to her hip. “Is going into danger really the best idea?”

I shot her a confused look. “Of course it is. You don’t escape a hazard without completing it. Which means going towards the danger.”

“Drowned interface not giving me hints.” Jun grumbled. “Alright, alright. I guess I’ve got to get used to this sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.”

‘Sooner’ came much–well–sooner than either of us had been expecting. The creaking of metal and the squelching of something wet turned my attention to a tree a dozen paces ahead of us and off to the right, where copper tendrils were whipping about as shards of wood flew into our path.

I placed my hand on my sword but didn’t draw it. Instead, I turned to Jun and grinned. “Your turn.”

“Already?” She asked, her voice full of concern. But she didn’t shake or stutter, nor did she take even a single step back. “Are you really sure? I’ve never really used a sword before.”

“It’s a level one hazard.” I scoffed. “The only dangerous thing here is the heart. And you might already be stronger than it.”

Jun nodded and stepped forward, awkwardly drawing her green-rusted sword and pointing it with one hand at the tree as if she was challenging it to a duel. She tensed up and stayed tense for a moment, then lifted her other hand to the sword’s hilt and fell into a stance that could easily shift into many different fighting styles.

I sighed, keeping my hand on my own sword as I remembered the first time my interface had butted in to correct my form. It had felt like lightning running all through my body as muscle memory implanted itself into me, giving me the most basic knowledge of the weapon I was using so I didn’t bite the dust on my first fight. It had happened again and again whenever I picked up something new, until I was a beginner with almost every weapon type that had existed in the new world.

I barely had to watch as a lichenthrope burst from the tendrils in a spray of liquid moss, tightly-knit armor burst open at the chest and both elbows to reveal countless spots glowing forest green. It let loose a horrible shriek and charged at Jun, its feet unraveling with every step for extra oomph while its hands spun into two long rustless blades that looked exactly like pristine versions of what Jun held in her hands.

Jun shifted her foot as she readied to deflect the coming blow, whispered ‘identify’, then paused. She whirled around and caught one of the lichenthrope’s blades on her left arm, wincing as the blade barely dug into her armor, then severed the creature’s arm with a one-handed slash.

Her stats were simply too high for the lichenthrope to do anything, especially with the resilience and speed bonuses her sword was giving her. I knew that from experience, but she’d taken one hell of a gamble after getting a good look at the lichenthrope’s stats. Or maybe she’d seen something else in its description.

//IDENTIFY: LICHENTHROPE.

//ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS: COMPLETE.

//LICHENTHROPE: LEARNING FORM. A lichenthrope specifically designed for combat. Innate ability; Reiterate. When an attack is blocked and its damage is reduced to 0, instantly transform another part of this lichenthrope’s body to attack the weakest available point. Stats below:

Bat: 0 Spe: 3 Pow: 3 Res: 1 Rec: 1

She’d taken a hit on her arm so that the creature wouldn’t hit a weak point. If her stats had been any lower, like mine were, she would have been in serious trouble. As it was, though, the fight was obscenely one-sided. The lichenthrope’s severed arm twitched twice before the copper unraveled and burrowed into the ground, leaving the inner core of moss to dry out and die on the forest floor. It screeched once more in defiance and threw itself at Jun, and this time she didn’t bother blocking.

A swift upward strike severed the creature’s remaining arm, the follow-up downswing splitting it from shoulder to hip. The shrieking mass of copper and moss fell to the ground and began convulsing, the main body unspooling and retreating into the dirt while the second severed arm quickly rusted now that it wasn’t attached to whatever life source these things had.

Jun kept her sword pointed at it as if it would spring up at any moment, but a quick identify and analysis told me it wasn’t getting back up ever again.

“It’s not going to bite you.” I said, startling Jun out of her concentration. “Identify your prize.”

She cautiously lowered her sword and stared intently at the severed arm, then whispered ‘identify’ as quietly as she could. She crossed her arms and looked between two points in space then let out an excited murmur, snapping up the arm and putting it in her inventory with one swift motion.

“Two scarce materials from one kill. Not bad.” Jun said happily, then turned to me. “That’s not bad, right? Scarce means it’s good?”

“Not bad at all.” I answered with a nod. “And if we can replicate what you did to the arm so it doesn't burrow away, we’ll have a damn good head start.”

Far better than what I’d had last time. The images of struggling for the simple things flashed past my eyes, of relying on the armor’s life support systems for weeks at a time when we couldn’t find clean water or any food that didn’t poison us. But I’d learned from those hardships, and I would never suffer them again.

“Are you alright?” Jun asked with concern, smacking her sword to her hip where her armor locked it in place. “You spaced out there for a second.”

I waved away her concern and shot her a smile only my reflection could see. “I’m fine. Just reading my interface.” I lied, stepping over the pile of dried moss towards the tree the lichenthrope had burst out of. “Let’s see if this tree has any clues.”