When he was walking through the crowd moving towards the portal it hadn’t felt like he was surrounded by ambient noise, but now, standing on desolate plateau, he realized exactly how much noise he had been unconsciously tuning out. The silence was deafening, only the whispering wind to accompany him as he looked around, scanning for the slightest sign of danger.

He was standing on a fairly sizeable plateau, the ground dropping off in front of him to reveal a wide expanse of sand-blasted rock far in the distance, rife with cracks and uneven ground. It looked like the aftermath of a cataclysm, and it wasn’t hard for him to realize why people wouldn’t want to enter this Shard. Even if you made sure you had enough food and water, who would want to spend time in such a desolate environment if given the choice? He could already feel his skin drying out, the small particle matter carried by the wind scraping against every bit of his exposed flesh and rubbing his skin raw.

After some time spend digesting the land of crags and crevices spread out before him he turned around, checking out the rest of the terrain. Behind him were mountains, huge chunks of stone skewering the sky high above. Staring at them, it took him some time to figure out why they looked wrong. Finally he realized: the mountains were bare, just one sheer expanse of stone from top to bottom. His impression of mountains said they should have trees near the bottom and snow near the top, but both those were absent. The only thing he could see was rock, stone, and more rock.

The landscape in his immediate vicinity had more plateaus spread out around him like giant stepping stones, rising from the blasted land far in front of him to meet the craggy peaks behind. There was a sizeable distance between the plateaus, and Tormacc realized that if he wanted to traverse from one to the other he would have to descend into the valleys in between before climbing back up. And since he couldn’t reach from one to the other, it meant that if he wanted to reach the cracked plains below or the mountains behind him he would have to find his way through the network of crevices between the plateaus, losing his field of view during his journey.

He had been a bit dismissive when Stella had described the Shard to him, but seeing is believing, and he had greatly underestimated the weight of her words when she said the terrain would be his biggest obstacle. Travelling around the plateaus would leave him naked to almost all ambushes, and Stella had stressed to him the danger of the monsters inhabiting the Shard. He had no chance in a direct contest of strength, especially on defense, which was why he was wearing leather armor. Heavier armor wouldn’t help him with defending, as with or without armor he was likely to be severely incapacitated, if not directly killed, from even a single blow. Dodging was his only hope when fighting the Stone Giants.

Speaking of the giants, he was able to see some creatures moving around far in the distance on the blasted plains, presumably the Stone Giants. As best he could tell they appeared to be spread out, a fair bit of distance between each moving dot. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t group up, but fighting more than one enemy raised the difficulty exponentially. He was banking on being able to fight one, but he knew his limits, and if a second were to appear it would signal a retreat.

In that sense, the cramped areas between the plateaus might be a blessing, as it would hopefully limit the number of enemies he would face. But it was best not to make any assumptions. Because this Shard was rather unpopular there was limited information about it. All the Shards were unbelievable huge, so without the huge volume of traffic the less dangerous ones experienced it could be hard to find reliable information about a particular Shard. Making things worse was the fact that they were known to change, sometimes while you were in it. Kaz had told him a story about that which was funny at the time, but thinking about it happened to him made his skin break out in goosebumps.

Tormacc spent the next few hours making sure his plateau was well and truly secure from any immediate threats before taking out some supplies and doing his best to make a map. His first attempt was trash, as was his second, but seeing little improvement from the first try he decided to plow through with it. Having anything was better than nothing, even if his map looked like the prized possession of a three-year-old who had just learned how to draw a circle.

With his map “finished”, he moved on to exploring the sides of his plateau. If the top of the plateau was safe, at least for the moment, he wanted to make sure he could retreat back up to it once he descended into the cracks between Plateaus. There was a decent chance he would need to retreat, and retreating down unknown passageways was suboptimal to say the least. He couldn’t afford to carelessly run around.

Choosing a starting point and working his way around clockwise it took him the rest of that day and into the next to confirm the best place for him to climb down and back up the plateau. The cliff face had plenty of hand holds, and unlike the other sides, more than one area large enough for him to fight on should he be harassed mid-ascent by enemies. Thankfully there were no flying creatures in sight, which made his strategic planning much easier. He couldn’t discount threats from above completely, but knowing he could safely devote most of his attention to the open areas around him and the ground was a huge help.

His next issue came when it was time to climb down from the plateau. During his time in the Shard he was always holding onto his hammer, wary of enemies springing up onto the plateau in an ambush. But if he wanted to climb down, he would either need to store his hammer in his Spatial Bracelet to allow for more mobility, or sacrifice said mobility with the rationale that having a weapon on his direct person was more valuable. During his explorations he hadn’t actually seen anything in the crevices below, so in the end he opted to store his hammer, only keeping a short sword strapped to his back. He wasn’t entirely happy with the compromise, but it wouldn’t be an actual problem if there was a perfect solution.

The climb down was uneventful, if quite a bit longer than he anticipated. Looking down from above he had underestimated the height of the plateau. Thankfully his increased strength made the climb almost effortless, as his strength and vitality had long surpassed what was normal for a Humen, allowing him to effortlessly achieve feats of athleticism normally attributed only to trained circus performers or professional athletes. That was both comforting and frightening at the same time. Comforting in that he knew he would easily be able to scale back up the plateau should he run into trouble, but frightening knowing that his current strength wasn’t enough to make him safe on the Shard. While he had fought powerful monsters in the starting zone, he hadn’t come across anything that could flatten him into meat paste, which Stella had gone to considerable length to assure him was a reasonable outcome here should he fail to dodge properly.

The bottom of the crevice was surprisingly flat, and Tormacc thought that water must have run through at some point, although likely not for a while if Stella’s information was to be believed. Thirst was a very real consideration on the Shard, with water sources few and far between. But the smooth ground was a plus for any combat he would have to face, and with his hammer back out again he set out exploring.

He hadn’t fully made up his mind about which direction to head, but after exploring everything in the immediate vicinity of his starting plateau he decided to head towards the cracked plains. He saw movement there, and since defeating monsters was the best way to farm Essence, he should aim for where the monsters were. And if he had trouble defeating them, that was also valuable information. Regardless of defeat or victory, he needed firsthand combat experience on the Shard. The only concern was making sure he survived the fight.

He hadn’t gone very far when he heard a strange noise behind him. It clearly sounded like a squeak, but it was a few octaves lower than squeaks generally were, its gravelly sound grating on his ears. Turning around, he was confronted with two stone rats. They were fairly sizeable, about a meter long not including the tail and half a meter high. They were squeaking at him aggressively, the baritone sounds echoing off the walls around him.

As they were behind him, they were between him and the area he already explored, so retreat wasn’t an option unless he was willing to venture into unexplored territory. Not that he wanted to retreat anyway. He was just looking for something to kill, and the stone rats seemed much less threatening than the Stone Giants Stella had warned him about. They would be a good warm up to test his new strength on.

He slowly slid his feet across the smooth ground while raising him hammer into a combat stance. The rats were advancing towards him, but he decided to let them, as he couldn’t attack them if they weren’t close to him. As they closed in, he tightened his grip on his hammer, watching as they crossed an invisible line he had mentally drawn before they were close enough and he sprang into action.

Still holding onto his center of balance should he need to dodge, Tormacc swung his hammer at the first rat, activating Double Strike. Seeming to ignore the laws of physics, his hammer swung out twice, rebounding from the first strike in a bizarre manner to strike once more. The second rat took advantage of his attack, leaping towards him with a speed belied by its stone body. He was prepared though, and activated Sudden Strike, his hammer rebounding for a third time to smash into the second rat midair and sending it flying into the rocky walls.

After that was silence, and he slowly moved his hammer back, holding it steady in case the battle wasn’t over. But neither rat so much at twitched, and when no more appeared, he knew he won, and easily at that. He could feel happiness bubbling up from within him at his victory. Not because he had killed the rats, as they seemed rather weak, but at how the skills from his Fate Wheel had functioned.

He had been a bit skeptical reading their descriptions. He was a combat veteran, and his body knew what it was doing without any fancy external abilities. He had been worried that relying on external aid would interfere with the fighting skills he already had, but it appeared his worries were unfounded. Perhaps it was because of skills like Utilization and Integration, but using the abilities of his Fate Wheel had felt natural, their powerful effects easily meshing with his already honed combat sense. It had been a joy to experience, skills like Double Strike and Sudden Strike enabling him to achieve feats otherwise impossible. He was almost salivating thinking about the improvements he could make to his combat style with such powerful abilities to fall back upon.

He still needed some practice to get used to his new skills, and these stone rats seemed like just the enemy to practice on. Just like the monsters in the starting zone, they only gave one Essence per kill, confirming his guess that they were weaker than average for the Shard. Based on the information Curtain had gathered, you were able to tell a monster’s strength for their Shard based on how much Essence they dropped. The weakest monsters would only give one Essence, while the stronger ones could give upwards of twenty. Of course, since the strength was relative to the Shard, those weakest monsters could still be terrifying, but luckily he was easily able to handle the stone rats, so he set off to start hunting.