Unbeknownst to most of Harwall’s meager populace the same activity found above ground could be found beneath the town itself at this very moment. The tunnel Rowan had ended up inside was but one of many. They were still raw and new, some a too unsteady to be made regular use of, but they were there. A safe room similar to those above ground had been dug and filled, saving a select few people from the rage of nature as they retreated into it. The select few were few in number because the room was a secret. As were the tunnels connected to it. Why, Luhnan had yet to find out.

He was trapped in a way. Lost in a new place. That wasn’t much of a change from the usual given his uncertain place in the world as a human reborn as a mandragora in what to him appeared to be some kind of fantasy world of magic and maw. That didn’t make him any less trapped though.

Luhnan found himself wandering the dark tunnels beneath Harwall, more confused than ever but to the System’s great surprise, not panicking.

‘This is more like it. Now we’re back on track.’

…

‘A dark tunnel with monsters and possible treasures. Did I spawn in the wrong place? I was obviously meant to start in here.’

……

The lumpy plantman was making his way through a dark, unlit tunnel. The only light source in there was the gently glowing pink plant blooming on his head. It bobbed up and down gently as the mandragora made his way through the dark. As a nocturnal creature the dark didn’t bother him much. He had night vision in a sense, even if he was unsure if that was what to call it without having actual eyes. At least he didn’t think he had ones. His sense of vision was weird.

What he saw was rough walls of packed earth, a few wooden pillars or structures for support, and the occasional rock. Crevices and other imprefections broke the otherwise flat walls up into uneven surfaces full of shadows. The place had the feeling of one very specific kind of place to Luhnan. His current train of thought confused the System greatly.

‘Now to start grinding. Or is it exploring first? Do I get XP? I haven’t gotten XP before. Maybe I was still in the tutorial phase. I can’t wait to fight a monster.’

The complete change in attitude had the emotionless and uncaring System… concerned. Or curious maybe? The System didn’t admit to either being the case since the System was just the System. A simple helping tool without opinion or bias.

‘Hopefully it’s something gross like a bug- but not a big bug! Nothing too creepy… A slime? Slimes are the usual low level enemies. But aren’t those like, super hard to kill too for a beginner? I don’t have any magic or anything to fight it with- or do I? Hey System, do I have magic?’

…

‘Too vague a question was it? Hm… Can I shoot fireballs or something?’

…

Still no answer. Luhnan paused his merry chattering and frowned.

‘Are you mad about something?’

More silence. Luhnan waited patiently for a few seconds, but when no answer came…

‘I take that as a ‘no fireballs’ then. That’s fine. I think… As long as my first monster isn’t something like that squirrel thing. I don’t want to be mean to something that looks like a normal animal.’

The System might not have felt emotions, or at least admitted to the ability to feel emotions, but right now… The System was confused. So much so that it could be felt by Luhnan himself. The chatty mandragora paused again, then tried to come up with a way to ask what was up without the System deeming it a answer it wouldn’t answer.

‘So ah… Where am I? What’s the name of this dungeon? This is a dungeon right? Got the whole underground dark tunnel thing and everything.’

Luhnan waited hopefully and this time the System did answer.

You are beneath Harwall, a human settlement. This is a tunnel.

‘A dungeon tunnel?’

A tunnel made by humans. It is beneath Harwall, a human settlement.

‘Oh, like uh… Ancient humans? It IS a dungeon right? The kind that spawns monsters and treasure and is meant for me to level up in at the start of my adventure?’

A longer silence followed his many questions.

...No.

The answer that finally came sounded… off. Annoyed? Confused? Curious? Luhnan wasn’t sure what to make of it. He also didn’t like the way that short and simple answer crushed his hopes of what was going on. Not a dungeon? The sense of familiarity and confidence that came with it faded in a second. He thought he’d finally ended up in a predictable scenario.

‘Then what-’

Voices. Luhnan froze at once as he heard them. Down from one end of the tunnel they came. Human from the sounds of it, but Luhnan hadn’t had good experiences with humans so far so he darted for the wall. The walls of the tunnels were rough still from having recently been dug out. There were plenty of grooves and crevices for a toddler sized plant monster to press himself into to remain somewhat hidden in the dark. The pink flower growing from his head closed up and went dark as he settled in the best spot he could find. The voices drew closer.

“-and Tomas sent him back up again, just like that.” A man’s voice, young and vexed. He had a torch in his hand that threw long shadows over his and his companion’s face. The hiding spot Luhnan had picked didn’t let him see them very well, but he feared being seen if he moved to get a better look.

“It was that artist guy wasn’t it?” The companion was a woman from the sound of it. Older but no less vexed.

“Which one?” The man asked.

“We only have one.”

“Ooh, the nervous guy?”

“He’s not nervous I think. Just silent.”

“Dunno. He seem a bit uncertain whenever I see him. Distracted.”

“That’s just cause you’re the chief’s son.”

Luhnan heard the woman wince after a light thump. A friendly shoulder punch? The light flickered as they went past him.

“He doesn’t know I’m her son.”

The woman laughed. “Hah! Everyone knows it. Chief Tilde won’t let a minute pass without mentioning it. ‘Oh my good for nothing son at it again, talking shit and causing trouble.’”

The man grunted, unamused. “I’m not like that. She knows that. And I am helping this place. I’d tell her too if Josey didn’t-”

“At at ah, don’t say that.,” the woman interrupted, clicking her tongue at the man. “You know what a fuss the others will cause if you keep bringing that up. Chief’s not in so we don’t tell her.”

Luhnan heard the man sigh as they rounded the corner of the tunnel, slowly getting too far away from him to make out the words.

“I know, but I’m her son. Surely I could-”

“No. Josey tried and she failed. We’re not risking-”

The voices faded. Luhnan was tempted to follow just to listen in, nosey as he was, but the risk of being found far outweighed whatever shady business those two were talking about. What would he even do with that info? It wasn’t like he could tell anyone. Relieved and disappointed, Luhnan continued in the opposite direction of where the pair had come from.

The way he went took him to a place where the tunnel divide into 3. He’d come from 1 and didn’t know where either of the other 2 went. One had the sound of distant voices coming from it so he took the other. It led him towards silence with a faint angle to the ground. He was going upwards slowly but surely. The tunnel divided a few more times, each time having Luhnan pick one at random to continue through. He saw few ways to tell them apart aside from the occasional piece of wood stuck to the walls with a nail or two. They had some letters Luhnan couldn’t understand scribbled on them, signs he assumed. They didn’t help him one bit.

His aimless wandering came to an end after what felt like hours had passed. His feet hurt, his back hurt, his everything hurt. He realized after all this walking, running, and tumbling that maybe… just maybe mandragora were not meant to be walking around all day. He had a strong urge to just sink into the ground, literally. Some soft soil to disappear down into and do… whatever plants did. He wasn’t so sure, but it hadn’t felt half bad the past couple of times he’d been submerged to nothing but his flower sticking up. Even that horrible time spent inside the pot at the scary lady’s house hadn’t been that bad. If you ignored the whole being caught, hit, and trapped part. He was pretty sure that if he found one of those pots alone with no old woman and her angry bird around to guard it…

‘I kinda miss the pot. Everything else was horrible, but the pot? The pot was nice.’

Luhnan’s happy reminiscing was joined by a new pleasant sound. Faintly he could hear rain, soft and refreshing. The tunnel was also getting brighter. Up ahead he saw the source of it, a crude pair of wooden stairs led up through the tunnel into a small patch of daylight. The smell of grass and wet earth called to him. Luhnan put some more energy into his steps, eager to finally be back above ground.

A fresh gust of air nearly blew him back down the hole as he stuck his head out of the tunnel. The end the tunnel turned out to be a hatch set in the ground out in the middle of nowhere. Luhnan could see the walls of Harwall far off in the distance on one side, and the pine forest he’d first appeared in to the other side, equally far away. The hatch was placed in the middle of a vast grassfield. The trapdoor belonging to the hatch lied torn off some paces away from the hole itself, broken in a way that suggested it had been kicked off its hinges and tossed to where it lay now.

Speaking of destruction; the ground all around the hatch had been upturned as if a farmer had plowed through it. Luhnan might have connected the dots between the torn ground, the missing plantlife, and the recent event that had trees and lake water fly all over as if mother nature herself was throwing a hissy fit, if it wasn’t for the strong allure of dark and soft soil calling to his tired body.

The mandragora ignored common sense and wariness in favor of hobbling out of the hatch to then let his roots grow and sink into the ground. Luhnan let out a content sigh as his somewhat humanoid shaped body disappeared beneath the surface, leaving only the stalk and its budded up flower visible above ground.

‘Bliss.’

The soil that only hours ago had belonged to a Guardian’s forest was rich in nutrients and o so pleasant for the mandragora to surround himself with. Before he knew it sleep took him. Turns out even plants can feel exhausted.

…..

Cain watched with fascination as both the Pines and the Maples slowly crept towards the looming mountains covering Harwall’s north, west, and east. ‘Slow’ was a deceiving word, for the speed of which both territories moved was urgent enough for the movement to be seen by the naked eye at a distance. Cain had a fair bit of distance between the woods and himself.

He sat on a wall, stone, brick and gravel. It was a broken wall. The dry moss covering the cracks between the old brickwork told him that it’d been broken for quite some time. Cain turned his head from north to east. What met his gaze was the fall of organization. Broken buildings, greenery reclaiming tamed stone for patches of trees not quite large enough to be called a forest just yet. Open grassland lie past the other side of the once upon a time mighty wall that surrounded the ruins. Remnants of the Pines were pulling itself away further and further, until the dark foot of the mountain could be seen far, far in the distance.

The mountain range was vast, shaped like a crescent moon with its two tips pointing south. Within its embrace lie the Pines, the unnamed lake west of Harwall, the maples, and the everchanging pieces of grassland filling the gaps. Cain would guess that the plains made up just a little less than a third of the space fitted inside the half-circle of mountains. It looked like more the longer he spent watching the moving land. Both the Pines and the Maples seemed intent on hugging the mountain range, pressing themselves thin and dense against the base of the mountain.

To lick their wounds he thought, if Guardians even had to. Did they suffer from this fight? Were there wounds? How long would it take for a forest to heal. Cain could have made the journey to ask, but he feared the two forest creatures might react similarly to Telrind. He’d wait a bit before risking something like that. For now he was perfectly content to sit in the faint drizzle and watch as the land decided on a new layout to rest in. The north was always restless.

Further west and just a bit to the north lay Harwall, the currently standing settlement of the north. A few years ago that title would have belonged to Raan, which now lay in ruins. The name was lost to the incubus currently using its crumbled walls as a perch. Further south yet lay another settlement, by now a budding city and a hub for any trader dealing in northern rarities or the unreaped riches of the unclaimed wilderness. Rider’s Rest had been what Harwall was now once upon a time, many years ago when humanity had decided to take yet another careful step further north.

Unlike Raan it had lasted, survived the harsh flora and fauna and the sporadic fits of the Guardians that lived up there. The mountain range had been named the Snake Spine shortly after Rider’s Rest made itself a lasting part of the north. The city lie just beneath it, out of range from both the Pines and the Maples.

South of Rider’s Rest lies what humanity and their cousins liked to call ‘civilized’ lands, but our story has yet to reach that far. Our focus remains in Harwall, shaken and recovering from their most recent challenge.

Cain considered going back to Harwall to spy on said recovery. After all, watching humans doing human things were among his top 10 favorite things to do. Sure, his top 10 list wasn’t yet complete, but he figured 3 out of 10 was a good start. On that short list were ‘watch humans’, ‘pretend to be a human’ and ‘eat humans’. All very human centered but that was just the way he was. Maybe he should go back to the place full of humans. The idea of finding something new to do was interesting but mostly daunting. Why go through the effort of that if he could just do the usual? Yes, Cain was finding out that routines were a very nice thing to have.

Thus decided Cain hopped off his perch on the wall and landed softly on the ground. He had a long trek in front of him before he reached Harwall. He should probably find some clothes on the way too. The ones he’d worn before the lake incident had been wrangled through mud and water til the point of being useless. Cain had some standards for what to wear, thank you very much.

A helpful prod from the voices lingering at the back of his head turned his attention to one of the many wrecked buildings making up the ruins of Raan. Oh yes, corpses sometimes wore clothes. How convenient! Now he just needed to find a corpse. Surely there would be a few corpses left? Or would the wildlife have eaten every last bit of them by now? The voices were less sure about that. Nonetheless it was worth a shot. Cain set off towards the closest pile of no-longer-a-building and went looking for a way into it.

There were windows and a door, or the crumpled remains of them at least. The key here would be to find one opening not crushed or covered by rubble. It took him a good long time until he found a hole on the ‘roof’. A big ol hole from when the entire thing had caved in. Maybe he should have checked the roof first… Oh well, Cain felt as if he was becoming a more experienced ruin climber from the effort.

Digging through the ruined house proved fun but ultimately fruitless. Alas, Cain was not one to be dissuaded! Mostly because he had a hunch that walking up to a human naked wouldn’t end well. A second building found itself searched and conquered by the great demon explorer, this time with a bit more luck on the looting side.

Cain found a set of chainmail not yet fully consumed by rust. He considered it a set because it consisted of two pieces. The voices were in full agreement that it could be called a set. That was until they and Cain noticed that the pieces were two parts of one whole. The ‘set’ had once been a full shirt of chainmail, but now it was more like half a shirt with a runaway sleeve. Did it still count as a set? Maybe… Cain wasn’t interested enough to ponder on it for long. He tried putting the chainmail on, failed, then lost interest in it fully. Clothes that couldn’t be worn were useless to him.

His search continued until he suddenly heard a noise not made by himself. It came from outside the ruin and was most definitely not made by a human. Cain froze as he heard it, fearing for one short moment that it was the lake man that had caught up with him. The moment of fear passed as a second sound followed the first. This time Cain could hear it more properly since he was focused on listening. It sounded like a horse. Curious, Cain stuck his head out of the missing piece of wall he’d entered the ruined building through. What he saw was something new and exciting. And just a little bit daunting.

Humans and horses, lots of them. Cain counted maybe a dozen of the rugged men and women streaming through the broken wall surrounding the lost town. The visitors themselves seemed equally rugged. Armor sets made up of mismatched pieces all bleached down by wear and tear in the sun was the most common attire. Cain spotted a blond man in far more well kept armor leading the group at the front. His armor was of dark leather and fur, a matching set rather than scavenged bits and pieces like most of the rest. A wicked battle axe hung at his side, matching the muscles required to swing it. Similarly the rest of the group wore weapons and the appearance of knowing how to use them.

Cain swallowed nervously. He’d yet to find anything to wear so he didn’t exactly believe in his odds of befriending these dangerous strangers if he was seen. The plan of running away before the spotted him seemed like a great idea at first, but once he noticed the group spreading out and setting up sentries around the place his hopes fell. He wouldn’t be able to slink past the cracked wall without getting seen. The bows and quivers of crude arrows he saw on the backs of the sentries erased any desire to test his speed against their aim. The incubus could only watch in suffocating anticipation as the band of bandits started making camp all around him.