“So what do you think we should take today?”

“I vote hunting.”

“We always go hunting, I want to take it easy and do a gathering quest for a change.”

“Just let Pato decide.”

“Ha, girls, girls relax, we can figure it out when we get to the guild,” The man, Pato said to his four companions as he wore a broad grin across his face, happy to be alive even in the face of the coming war.

And why wouldn’t he be? He was well respected as one of the few rank-one adventurers, he had four beautiful companions, each wanting to be the one to get the most of his affection for the prestige it could bring them, and even over three years later now he was still happy to not only have received his second chance at life, but to be free of the suffocating culture he had been born into, getting to enjoy the far laxer one that the melting pot of a world he now lived in had produced.

Unlike the others he’d arrived with, he had decided to strike out on his own, making his way in the world instead of being tied to some dusty nation as he waited for his second death, and he’d done it for one simple reason too. Impact.

If he had been taken in anywhere, he knew he’d have just been finding himself compared to the soul mage that had arrived with his group, a thought he couldn’t stand. It was much better to be the star of his own life than the side character of someone else's, so he’d made the choice that could give him exactly what he’d wanted, and since then he’d done nothing but thrive as he completed quests and raised his fame.

“Pato!” Called out the guild worker the moment he and his group came in, waving him down with zeal as he tried to return it with his most winning smile. “I was hoping you’d come in today, we received an interesting quest that was looking for you specifically.”

“Ah, you know I get plenty of those Caxy,” He told her, waving it off. “So is it actually interesting, or just something the guild’s trying to tempt me with by dressing it up as interesting?”

“I mean, it might be interesting,” She told him, leaning in close. “A couple of deep woods expeditions have found something bizarre and we need someone to look into it. Well, both of them actually ‘cause there’s two and you’re the only one in the guild with an awakened space magic. Do it for me?”

She batted her eyes at him as she always did when she wanted to be playful and pulled a laugh from him. “Tell you what, I’ll do it if you grab drinks with me this week, what do you say?”

“Ha, I’d say your companions look ready to shoot death rays from their eyes at the thought.”

“Bah, they knew they’d have to share me when they joined up, and how could I not want to share some company with a beauty like you? What do you say? All it is is drinks.”

She pretended to think for only a moment before giving in. “Mmh, alright, just drinks for now so long as you work hard on this investigation,” She told him happily, fine to take the date and even happier knowing the task would get done.

“Got it, I’ll be back at the end of the day so look forward to it.”

With that he left the guild, knowing his companions weren’t pleased but not particularly caring. He cared about them plenty, but they all knew that they wouldn’t have gone for him if he didn’t have his awakened skills so he had no issue with flirting with others in turn. He wasn’t out looking for true love, after dying once he just wanted to have the best second life he could.

As he opened another hole in space they found themselves close to their first destination, and immediately they could tell something was wrong. Pato may have had the least experience as an adventurer in his group, originally only being valuable for the power he provided, but after a few years of work in the field he was able to sense something that the others could put into words.

“There’s no sounds from a single creature,” Said Galda, their primary hunter-tracker and an elf hybrid. “I’m not sensing anything that could be considered an animal anywhere near us other than some bugs, there’s not even any smaller ones making their way through.”

Hearing that assessment, they all tensed up as they started to approach their final destination on foot, carefully watching the area as they did. None of them knew what to expect, but there was no reason for any area of the untamed lands to be so uncomfortably empty, so completely devoid of any life but the plants around them.

Pato kept himself at the ready, prepared to either fight or escape with his spatial magic depending on what the circumstances called for, but after an hour of carefully observing the situation where nothing happened, they finally came across the anomaly they were sent to investigate.

“Infinite hells,” One muttered as another grasped their hands together and began to pray as Pato could only stare on, trying to make sense of just what they were seeing.

It wasn’t that it was hard to understand, it’s just the purposes behind it were all but indecipherable to him as he looked at the pounded earth around him where no plants would grow, the soil dyed a new colour as small mountains of bones were piled up around something. Be it a monument or a throne he couldn’t say, all he saw was a wall that towered over the woods with a single empty seat built into it to look down on the world below.

“Red,” One of the girls muttered and it took a second for Pato to even register it.

“What?”

“The ground,” Galda told him, looking pale as she carefully dug down into the earth. “Even a foot down, it’s all still red.”

“Ah, I’d say it’s more of an off-brown,” He told her half-heartedly, trying to ignore his own worries and lift the mood while at the same time having no clue where she was going with that considering all else that there was around them.

“No, if you can use your nose you can tell, this was definitely all red.”

What’s she going on about in all this? He asked himself until he did as she said and smelled the air, understanding immediately.

It was blood. The ground had been stained with so much blood it had seeped in a foot deep, changing the colour of the land itself all around them.

It was then and there he decided that for that part of the quest they were done and tore open a hole in space to leave as fast as possible.

All of them felt shaken and unsure about what they’d just seen as they moved on to the next area of investigation, not needing to take notes of the last one with it permanently lodged in their minds as they went, unable to shake the feeling of danger that such an environment had invoked for them as they traveled to what they believed would be a far easier area, where all they needed to look into was some unusual plant growth.

Pato opened portals one after another, feeling eager to get it done with to get home and enjoy the strongest alcohol he could find, only to be able to tell he’d reached their destination without needing to ask the others as he opened the next tear, trying to understand what he was seeing.

All around them, thousands and thousands of trees were growing, a huge mix of species of plants that could only exist on that patchwork planet with each of them exhibiting the same unnatural trait. On every single one of them, there were at least some branches that were growing unnaturally straight, bending at right angles to form squares and cubes of all sizes in a way he was sure couldn’t be natural.

“Maybe we found a plant mage’s garden?” He asked hesitantly, not really believing it. It wasn’t that it was impossible, he just didn’t see the point and there was more oddness that he couldn’t put his finger on as he looked around. Still, it was less immediately worrying than the last area, so while staying on guard with weapons in hand they started walking around.

Unlike the prior stretch of woods, this one seemed full of the smaller life he would expect, with rodents and insects, flying reptiles and birds, along with any other small creature to exist in the world that wouldn’t fit those categories, all making their homes there. Every tree was filled with nests. It was a living forest, and if they could have gotten past their sense of unease it would have been beautiful in its own way, but as they kept walking farther and finding no end in sight to the strange cubed trees, Galda grabbed his arm and spoke quietly for only the group to hear, seeming like she was on the verge of panic.

“Pato, we need to get out of here right the fuck now.”

“What is it?” He asked, gripping his staff to try and prepare for any attack she might have detected.

“These cubes are everywhere and there’s no way this is safe. Let's get out of here before anything happens to us too.”

He felt himself relax since it seemed like it was just the nervousness getting to her as the others tried to calm her down, even as they felt nervous themselves.

“Don’t worry so much, it will be fine.”

“Yeah, it’s just some trees.”

“Except it’s not just trees,” She hissed. “Open a portal and you all can actually look around while I’m safely on the other side of it if you don’t believe me.”

Not seeing any harm and ultimately beginning to want to get out of there himself, Pato did as he was asked, opening a portal for her to step through that was at least close to the gate if anything happened and then looking around, trying to see just what she was talking about as it all fell into horrify place.

With the branches being so clear, it was easy to miss out on the smaller details with that large one being right in front of their eyes, but as he looked past it others started to emerge. While not all of them, some of the trees were growing leaves that were misshapen in a way that could only be square, or at least nearly there, and that wasn’t all. There was plenty of life around and plenty of nests in the trees, but when he looked there was always one on each that was unusually angular no matter what creature made it, and bigger than all of the others that would be on the same plant.

It was as a chill ran down his spine and he was already forcing the rest of his teammates through the portal that his eyes focused in on something completely unrelated to the plants around, small swarms of bugs flying through the air in geometric patterns, that he resolved to take a break from his hunts for a while as they all fled, going home to drink away their memories after giving their reports and dreaming of bloody thrones and fields of cubes.