Josh was embarrassed at how easily he had been captured. Really, carried off by a Jungle-touched horse and dropped into a hole in the ground? He'd seen fresh-faced recruits do better. Even considering that he was pretty sure a [Tamer] was involved, he was embarrassed at himself. His old trainer would have kicked him straight back to boot for a stunt like this.

So now he was trapped in a hole in the ground, with a tunnel leading in one direction. He sighed, took out a chemical light stick, and snapped it to activate it. While he was obviously being led by the nose, he had to go down the path before him, whether he knew it was a trap or not.

The tunnel looked like some sort of mine shaft, judging by the rusted metal rail tracks on the ground. Water dripped from the ceiling and the walls were rough stone, braced by wooden supports.

It was a rather ordinary tunnel that didn't look much different from the tunnels he had made—though he still wasn't strong enough to use one with the [Instant Crafting] spell yet. Still, something was off about it, and it took him a moment to put his finger on what it was.

The Jungle wasn't here.

Well, that was putting it too simply. The tunnel was still inside the Jungle's domain. When Josh took a deep breath, he could feel all the mana in the air, and he drew it in to replenish his reserves. You didn't get that on the safe side of the Burn Line. He thought if he dug down deep enough, he'd fall out of range or however you wanted to call it.

But despite the fact that, despite all the magic in the air and everything that implied, the Jungle itself was not in the tunnel. No vines reached down from above, growing so fast that he could see it. No trees sprouted in the small pool of sunlight he was standing in, no tiny shrubs with too many sharp thorns. There weren't even mosses and mushrooms on the wooden supports. It was, for all the world, like a perfectly ordinary tunnel.

It was a well-known fact that the Jungle didn't like going underground. No one had been able to determine why for certain. Lack of sunlight was the obvious culprit, but things that lacked photosynthesis didn't enjoy accelerated growth either. A mushroom above ground could spore and sprout over an hour on a dead log. Underground, everything proceeded as normal.

It wasn't a hard and fast law. In some towns, they coaxed the Jungle into caves to get special mosses or fungi to grow at accelerated rates. Josh had never been to any of them before, though.

He had assumed it was the magic in the air that made the difference. Everyone knew that the Jungle increased the mana density around it, which it then used to grow more and increase that density further. But if that was true, then the mana in this tunnel should be accelerating growth as well.

And yet... it wasn't.

This was very strange. Josh hadn't exactly grown up in the Jungle-touched wilderness, he knew what the world was supposed to be like. He had seen lands choked by the Jungle and its magic, and he had seen lands free of the taint. Seeing them mixed was... strange.

Josh shook his head, clearing out the cobwebs. He didn't have time for this. Maybe this was just what a place felt like when the mana first rolled in, before it had a chance to accelerate plant growth. Or maybe this was a sign of the end of the world. He didn't know, and he had more immediate problems to deal with.

He was walking into a trap. That was obvious. The question then was, how did he turn the trap around and ambush whoever had set this all into motion?

Josh touched the nearest wooden support pillar. “Hands-Free Crafting.”

Bits of wood shaved off the pillar, as if he was going at it with a scraper and a pick. Within a minute, his spell had carved out a large handle, the kind suitable for a lumber ax. There was even a wooden head, but he quickly detached that and tossed it aside. He had tried using a wooden ax before. It hadn't really worked.

The support pillar creaked and groaned, and Josh hurried on. Once he was sure he was far enough away to escape any potential collapse, he started hunting for the next part of his plan. A big heavy stick might be enough on its own, but he wanted something a bit more substantial.

It didn't take long to find a nice, heavy stone, about the size of his head. He knelt down next to it, handle in one hand, and touched the rock with his other. With a quick cast of [Hands-Free Crafting], the stone chiseled itself into a simple ax head and attached itself to the haft.

He actually had most of the tools he would have needed to carve both haft and head by hand. But using the spell did it automatically, which was easier. He thought having the tools might reduce the cost a bit, but with his sky-high Sensitivity such a simple crafting only took him a single point of mana anyway. He didn't want to look deep into his menus for the gritty numbers when he was in a potential danger zone.

He took a deep breath, activating his [Meditation] skill for just a moment to get that mana point back. Even though it might have regenerated on its own by the time he fought anything, there was no reason to be careless. He was still in what had clearly been intended to be a trap. Just having a shoddy ax wouldn't be enough to get him out of it.

He continued down the tunnel. There was still only the one path. It sloped down slowly, and he had to wonder where it had come from. There weren't exactly loads of mines in this region. Or at least no active ones. The City still stuck mostly with scavenging the Old World, and this area hadn't been big on iron or other industrial metals even before the Fall.

He brushed his hand along one of the wooden support beams. Though he was hardly an expert, and this clearly wasn't a brand-new construction, he didn't think it was that old, either. Surely not from when people were still mining gold in the area. That was... what, three hundred years ago now?

For some reason that thought made him feel unbearably old. Which was mad, because it wasn't as if he had been there. He shook the feeling off. The point was that he highly doubted that a tunnel made three hundred years ago would still be intact. But he couldn't imagine that someone had been keeping the place maintained all the way up to the Fall.

After a good ten or twenty minutes of walking, he came out in a large underground chamber. Not a cavern, because it didn't appear to be natural. There was a small river nearby that he thought was probably natural, because the stone there was rougher and more rounded. The rest of the chamber had squared-off walls and supports built into the ceiling. It looked like someone had greatly expanded a cave.

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There were a few more tunnel exits, all of them marked with rusted metal signs that were now illegible. There was also a large pile of very dirty plastic crates, most of them still sealed. He walked over to one that had been opened. It was filled with silvery foil packets, and after a second's inspection he realized that they were MREs and other emergency rations.

“Was this a shelter?” he said aloud.

“Oh, it was more than that,” a voice echoed across the chamber.

He spun around to see a man standing near the river. He was wrapped from head to toe in leather armor, without an inch of skin showing. Josh wasn't even sure of the person's gender, though the voice was pretty masculine. They were tall, too—and Josh wasn't exactly a small person himself. They were seven feet, though slender and willowy, which made things more confusing.

“This place was once a mine, as I understand,” they said. “Though I will admit that I am not familiar with such things myself. My people have never been adept at digging underground.”

Their accent sounded Japanese. Was that a reference to... what? Josh didn't think there was any weird Japanese stereotype about them being bad at mining.

“Some time before the Fall—I apologize for being unable to be more specific—someone with a measure of authority in the region thought to make use of these mine shafts. As I am sure that you are aware, the Jungle reaches towards the sun. It does not grow underground unless coaxed.” They rubbed their hand along the wall. “Which means if you find a tunnel deep enough, you can escape the Jungle's tyranny.”

Josh finally realized why they were down here. Now that he was paying attention, he could sense it in the air. The lack of a scent, the lack of humidity, the lack of an electric charge. There was no mana here. They had managed to dig under the Jungle's influence after all.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Josh demanded. Best to get straight to the point. The lack of mana was making his skin ache, and he was worried it was part of some plot.

“I am Mizuno Masahiko,” they said. A single, polite nod. “You may call me Lord Mizuno.”

Well, that answered one question. “Yeah, not gonna call you that.”

Mizuno gave a lazy shrug. “My family taught me to introduce myself. I am certainly not going to force you to be polite.” He cocked his head. “For example, it is polite for one to introduce themselves in turn.”

Josh said nothing.

Mizuno did not let the silence stretch for long. “Mister Hundredborn, I am not going to pretend that I am here for friendship.” Josh didn't miss the little detail that he already knew his name. “I am not even going to pretend that my intentions are noble.”

“You're here to kill me, yeah?” Josh asked, tone light. “Gonna grok you some glint and shine, then set up your little farm with cows and chicks and all that?”

There was a pause.

“I'm not even sure that was English,” Mizuno said at last. “Yes, I am here to kill you. However, I see no reason to be impolite about it.” He gave an exaggerated shrug. “I truly don't believe any of this is your fault. If this world wasn't drowning under a tide of monsters, perhaps...” He sighed. “Well. I suppose such hypotheticals are little more than a depressing distraction, in the end.”

Josh hefted his ax. He tried to project a confidence he didn't feel. He was still wearing his mask, so Mizuno couldn't inspect him for his level—and vice versa, Josh couldn't inspect him—but he was well aware of his odds here. He had a non-combat class. Almost everyone else in the world had an advantage over him in a direct confrontation.

“I'm gonna roll the dice and make a guess,” he said. “You already know my class, and can probably figure my level. That about the size of it?”

Mizuno gave a simple tilt of his head, acknowledging the point. “Unless you have had a truly exceptional run of good luck, I would assume you are still a Stonecrafter. Or did you decide to step off the Basic-tier advancement path? I am not an expert in Crafter classes, but you could have an Improved-tier class already if you chose to specialize.”

Josh ignored that. He had always known it was a risk sticking with his current build. He had his goal in mind. Mechanist, then magitech. “I think it would only be a fair shot for you to share, yeah?”

Mizuno cocked his head to the side, then nodded. “Very well. I am a Tamer, specifically the Beast Caller class. I am level 42.”

Josh blinked. That was easier than he had expected. He had figured that Mizuno would drop the polite gentleman act, or at least find some excuse not to answer.

Then he realized what Mizuno had actually said, and his blood drained out of his face.

Not only was he fully eleven levels above Josh—in a combat class, because of course he was—but he had an Improved-tier class. He'd be able to juggle Josh around like a ball if he was even slightly competent.

Beast Caller was a summoner-type class, an unofficial subset of the [Tamer] role. Mizuno would be able to summon temporary copies of the monsters he had tamed. It was a powerful class, though reliant on mana. If he ran out, he wouldn't be able to summon his pets, and would be largely helpless.

...so why had Mizuno taken him here, outside the Jungle's influence? There was no mana in the air to breathe in through [Meditation]. Summoners were famous for letting their pets do the fighting, meaning that they could actually recover their mana in the middle of a fight if they knew what they were doing. This might be the worst place in the world for him to fight.

“I don't suppose I could buy you off?” Josh asked, playing for time. “I've made some money recently.” Not anywhere near enough to match the world quest, but it was worth a shot.

“Apologies,” Mizuno said with a chuckle. “I am not doing this for money.” He sighed. “In fact, at this point you are almost an afterthought. I apologize for that, as well.”

Josh frowned. “Wot? The hell's that supposed to mean?” Why would anyone want to kill him, besides the world quest? Well, maybe people would really be mad about him “stealing” the class, but Mizuno didn't sound like one of those. And what did he mean by “afterthought?”

Josh looked up, towards the village and the monster horde attacking it.

“Yes, I am afraid your suspicions are correct,” Mizuno said. There was real grief in his voice, which just made Josh angrier. “I am the one behind the attack. It is not a distraction or a trick. My monsters will kill every single person they find.”

“Why?” Josh snapped. His hands tightened on his ax. “What did any one of those people do to you?”

“Oh, they did nothing to me.” He pointed a finger at Josh. “My goal is to eradicate everyone who might have possibly spoken to you.”

“Is this some weird guilt by association thing?” Josh demanded. “Most of them never even met me!”

“Knowledge is like a virus, Mister Hundredborn,” he said sadly. “It spreads and spreads, difficult to drown out at the source. Sometimes the only solution is to kill all who might know something.”

Josh thought he could hear the screams. He thought he could smell the fires.

He remembered the last time he saw a town burn. Long, long ago. They had thought themselves safe from the Jungle. They had thought they had everything under control.

He remembered holding his sister's hand as the town burned. They had both been adults, veterans of the endless war against the encroaching Jungle, and yet he had clutched her hand as if he was a child clinging to their mother again.

I can't go on like this, he had said, as tears ran down his cheeks.

I know, she had said, as she healed his burns. We have a plan.