I was making my way through the forest, making sure to avoid the other monsters as best as I could. Void cloak was still active, but it wasn’t an infallible spell and I didn’t want to risk accidentally exposing myself to the skills of a powerful adversary. Whenever my void mana ran out, I took a break while hiding in the treetops, doing my best to blend in.

The forest I’d landed in was rather big and I’d been traveling for quite a while now, occasionally popping out of the trees to check if I was still on track to reach the island. I even discovered a new hobby, which was to stop close to an ongoing fight and just observe. It helped me get a better understanding of the capabilities some monsters had, how different monsters fought, inspired some new moves I could try out myself and was just plain entertaining. All while being a safe distance away.

There was still the urge that made me want to join in and fight as well, but I was getting better at restraining myself. I had to remind myself ever so often that I’d taken a big hit to my power, and that I’d resolved myself to treasure my own life a bit more. I was supposed to be “intelligent”, not a mindless monster that attacked everything on sight.

The rational part of my brain could see the logic behind that argument, but the other half just wanted to unga bunga whenever it could, because fighting was fun. And it was fun, don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed a good fight immensely, but that didn’t mean that I should just give in to that part of myself.

I was watching an altercation between an incredibly fast grasshopper and a giant praying mantis that shot out water spells like nobody’s business when I remembered that my mutated brain could potentially learn new spells just by observing them, so I paid special attention to what it did. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn any new spells but hey, I just needed to keep trying and maybe at some point I’d succeed.

My brain was a definite candidate for further mutations, and in combination with my luck stat, I might just grow into a spell-slinging wonder at some point.

My journey continued through the thicket until the trees suddenly stopped and I stood at the edge of a cliff. A huge basin stretched out before me, but there was no water to be found, the hole in the ground completely dried out. I could see various color changes the further down it got and towards the bottom, there was even some dried-out seagrass. The most curious thing about it was the big monster sitting smack dab in the middle of the deepest part of the empty basin.

I was trying to get a better look at what it was when the system suddenly piped up.

You have discovered node #66721, The Empty Lake.

Dethrone the monster currently holding it, and defend it for as long as possible to get special rewards.

A node?

I finally found a node that I needed for my bonus objective! So nodes were some kind of king of the hill system, apparently. I looked down at the solitary monster at the bottom, which was most likely the current holder of the node. I couldn’t quite make out what it was due to the distance, but it looked strong.

Or… was that another traveler?

I had already deduced that there were certain things in this world that were specifically there to test travelers, was this one of them too? Or did random monsters just take part because the system programmed them to? Or was the monster currently holding it put there by the system, in order to provide a challenge for travelers that wanted to challenge the node?

Sadly I had no real way to communicate with other travelers. Sure, there was the void language, but that would only serve to give them a headache and might even be mistaken for a mental attack. Tim had been able to talk to me telepathically even before I gained the skill for the void language, but sadly I also couldn’t do that.

Rats.

As I contemplated what to do, several monsters jumped into the empty lake from different positions around the edge, charging at the monster in the center. The monster noticed them almost immediately and started using some intimidation skills that I could feel all the way up here. This caused one of the approaching monsters to retreat immediately, but the other three just slowed down a little, their approach a bit more measured.

I really wished that I had some sort of binoculars to watch this fight, but as it is, the only thing I saw was several shapes amidst flashes of light duking it out. It took a while for the fighting to die down, but a victor emerged eventually, and I was relatively certain that the king had been dethroned.

Well, if that was a traveler, he had gotten unlucky. But it was more likely that it was just some random monster. They might be drawn here for some reason, the ones that got close being compelled to try and take the node. I took up vigil in a tree, deciding to observe the node for a while longer in order to gather more information.

At some point, I would have to challenge the node as well, if I wanted to complete my bonus objective, after all. But right now, I was still nowhere near strong enough. After all, the objective demanded that I defend the node for a full three days. I would have to prove my strength over any challengers that came during this time, and although the difficulty was probably less than challenging a hunter, I still needed to gather my strength before even thinking about attempting this one.

I might even abandon the quest entirely, should I deem it too dangerous.

So I continued my watch over the empty lake, taking note of anything even remotely interesting. The first thing I noticed was that the attacks took place approximately one hour apart, with varying amounts of monsters. I’d even seen one get ready very close to my hiding spot. It arrived, walked up to the edge, and just stood there, waiting for an invisible command to attack. And once it exploded into motion, it was joined by six others around the lake.

The system seemed to influence the proceedings quite a lot after all.

The most I’d seen attack at once was when twelve monsters rushed at the “king”. There was only a slight amount of infighting, which meant the monster currently holding the node had to fend them off mostly by itself. A harsh task, to be sure, and one that I wasn’t remotely qualified for in my current state. Neither was the king because he got thrashed quite early into the fight, the remaining monsters duking it out amongst themselves.

Aside from that, the whole affair was relatively tame. I would have loved to just sit in there, farming monsters as they willingly came to me, restoring myself after each victory by consuming their corpses, but before I did that, I needed to get stronger again.

After a few hours of observing the same sequence of events repeat themselves, I decided that it was time to move on. I’d found a node, and gathered some intel that would help me out greatly once I was ready, but for now, I had another island to visit.