Alex yawned and stretched his arms above his head which promptly bumped into the cave wall. He rapidly blinked the remnants of sleep away as he took in the small room around him. The only source of light was the small flaming orb that floated above him. Putting his arms beneath him, he scooted himself into a sitting position against the wall. A brief scan of the cave showed him that nothing seemed to have changed since he’d collapsed into a deep sleep. Leaning down, he could see into the tunnel that led to the entrance, but no light shone from where he thought the V.V. sized opening should have been.

“V.V.?” Alex called out softly towards the tunnel. A moment later a silver cueball floated casually into the cave.

“Ah, Alex. Good morning, we should begin moving soon.” V.V. said, as calm as ever.

Yawning, Alex said “Is it daytime yet? I don’t see any light coming in from the tunnel.”

“The sun has just begun to rise but the boulders around us are casting deep shadows over the cave opening.”

“Do I at least have time to eat something?” Alex asked, not in any mood to be moving just yet.

“Eat as quickly as you can and then we need to move.”

Alex nodded to V.V. and just as he finished speaking with her, a swooshing noise that was accompanied by a blinding flash of light filled the room. Alex knew before he even looked that his Orbs had used their Summon Sustenance spells together and his breakfast awaited him. He looked at the jiggling green mound of what could only be some type of jello. Looking closer, it seemed to have tiny hotdogs suspended within it. He immediately thought the shivering concoction looked disgusting, but he was hungry enough to at least try it. The other item that had appeared looked to be a large pepper of some kind.

“I have to say… my RNG really screwed me this time.” Alex mumbled to himself and whoever else was listening. He picked up the pepper, smelled it and took a large bite. He’d always enjoyed peppers and didn’t mind a bit of heat from time to time but this wasn’t one of those times. He immediately dropped the pepper and forced a handful of the hotdog jello into his mouth. The goo’s taste was the least of his worries as he attempted to subdue the raging heat that attacked his mouth.

“Hhhhhot! Holy shit it’s hot! Aaaagggh.” Alex moaned through mouthfuls of cursed jello.

“Interesting. Has the Summon Sustenance spell somehow failed? I don’t have any memories of this happening to other species.” V.V. said as she floated around the vibrant red pepper that Alex had discarded beside the remnants of the decimated jello mound. Alex started to bring himself back under control as the heat slowly subsided.

“I… I don’t think it was poisonous or anything. It was so hot that I couldn’t even tell you what the jello tasted like. All I know is that it was cold and kept my face from melting off.”

“Well, it’s good to know that not everything that is summoned is perfectly palatable. Maybe a smaller bite next time?” V.V. said as she floated to her customary spot above his left shoulder.

“That sucked…” Alex said as he leaned his head against the cool wall. His entire body felt like he’d walked into an extremely hot sauna. The sensation started to dissipate as he relaxed himself against the much cooler stone. Since he wasn’t suffering as much anymore, he decided to open the system and look over the remaining abilities that he needed to obtain. Before the screen had even popped open though, V.V. spoke.

“Alex, we don’t have time for you to go unconscious for an undetermined period of time. We need to continue towards the center.” V.V. noticed the customary gesture that Alex had begun doing when he wanted the System window to open as he went to flick his hand out in front of himself. This allowed her to interrupt him before he got absorbed in decisions that would surely eat into their travel time.

“Ah, but if I don’t get these abilities am I not in more danger?” Alex had finished calling up the window but didn’t attempt to do anything with it. It hung before him, waiting to be accessed as his little companion urged him to leave yet another safe space.

“If we knew exactly how long you would be unconscious then it wouldn’t be as much of a problem. As it stands, we don’t know that and as I’ve said before, getting to the center is the most important thing. Every day we don’t take the center, the monsters grow more and more powerful.”

“Yes, and if I don’t get there soon it won’t matter how many cool powers I get because we won’t be strong enough to defeat them…” Alex said sullenly, already knowing the reason they needed to move but still not wanting to face that fast-approaching future.

Instead of trying to convince V.V. to let him acquire the remaining abilities, he fell forward to his hands and knees and began crawling out of the cave. Opal dismissed the Dome and it crumbled into dust. The dust then promptly enveloped the small space and Alex crawled out hacking and spitting. The Orb had done exactly what he wanted but he didn’t think about what would happen to the space around him when it was suddenly filled with large amounts of loose dirt.

“Welp, that didn’t go exactly as planned. It’s stuck in my teeth… Bleh.” Alex said as he continued to spit bits of soil out.

“A tragedy indeed. Shall we move?” V.V. said, with what Alex could swear was a hint of sarcasm behind the feminine robotic voice. It was definitely more than a hint, he knew, but how do you ask a floating magical baseball why it’s getting snarky with you?

Alex continued to spit every now and then when he discovered a new granule sneakily hiding between his teeth. They walked away from the boulders and into the clearing that allowed Alex to see where they’d come from the day before. He began walking back towards where they’d come in as there was a clear path that had once been a part of a man-made road. Before he’d taken a few steps, V.V. got his attention.

“Alex, I made another path through the woods that leads directly towards the center.”

“Huh?” He said as he looked around the large area more carefully. Almost two football fields away from him on the opposite side of the clearing, there was a small darker spot carved into it. Alex looked at it for a moment, pointed and V.V. moved ahead of him to lead the way.

“When did you have time to cut a whole new tunnel and why don’t we take the road?”

“The road heads away from the center. It may curve back towards it eventually but that is time we could already be heading straight there. Also, I don’t need sleep.”

“Right… Let’s head to the center then.” Alex said and was shocked to see a System window pop up in front of him.

Quest Alert!

- Claim the Zone! -

You’ve declared your intention to claim a Zone while being less than 10 miles away from it. Congratulations on your attempt to stake your claim!

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Defeat the current subjects of the Zone! 0/12

Defeat the current pseudo-Ruler of the Zone! 0/1

Time until pseudo-Ruler takes True Control. 26 hours 13 minutes 22…21…20…19…

Rewards!

1 Class Skill

3 A-Grade Building Tokens

250,000 System Credits

Access to Title: Zone Ruler – Claim a Zone and control it for 168 hours. All stats while within your Zone are increased by 25%. All subjects’ stats while within the Zone are increased by 10%. 100 Building Points are awarded.

“What in the holy hell is this!?” Alex exclaimed as he read over the new System window.

“Ah, you’ve finally gotten a quest.” V.V. said excitedly.

“Finally? You knew I’d get this if we got closer to the center?” Alex asked, still surprised and now annoyed that V.V. had known it would happen.

“Yes and no. I didn’t know how to trigger the quest or any quest for that matter. The fact that it’s telling you how you triggered the quest is something I’ve never seen before. Quests are much more frequent on worlds where the System has just arrived. It’s possible that you may have never gotten any quest at all.”

“…I see. Well shit… Now I have to kill a bunch of monsters.” Alex said, resigned to his fate.

“You were always going to have to fight monsters, Alex. At least you’re getting extra rewards for doing so.” V.V. said as she floated towards the path she’d made.

“I know, but I was still hoping we’d be able to find some way around that bit and what are Building Tokens and Points?” Alex said, scratching his cheek that had grown in itchy hair over the last several days. He sighed and continued to walk as V.V. led him towards obvious danger.

Zzzsigh

V.V. made a funny noise as she continued to lead the way. She quickly explained that Building Tokens and Points were used in creating settlements and that until he’d claimed the Zone, explaining more wouldn’t be the best use of their time. Alex accepted that V.V. would tell him when he needed to know and followed behind her. Once they reached the opening, Alex was impressed by how much V.V. had done in the time he’d been sleeping. As they got deeper into the woods, he went from impressed to amazed. She’d ceaselessly snapped small trees, limbs and brush for hundreds of yards with enough space for Alex to easily walk through.

“This is nuts, V.V. You must have done this all night long to get this far in.”

“Hmm? Oh, this only took me until around midnight. I’d have done more but there were several annoyances that kept me from my work.”

Alex was shocked that it only took her a few hours to get so far. As he was about to compliment her again, they came to the end of the relatively straight path. The area was more flattened and disturbed both to the left and right. He wasn’t completely sure why the area had been so heavily trampled here but it looked like there may have been a fight. As he looked around, even though it was still relatively dark since the sun hadn’t fully risen, he could make out three dark spots on the ground. Alex walked to one and examined the blackish smear.

“It looks like an oil spill or something…” Alex said.

“Ah, that’s where one of the coyotes died. Most of the remains were probably eaten and then the rest was absorbed by the ground.” V.V. said casually as ever as she started to cut her way through the brush to continue the path.

“A coyote!?” Alex exclaimed. “Also, the ground absorbed them, what does that even mean?”

V.V. nonchalantly recounted her adventure the previous night. She told him of the large mammals fighting, the creatures that lived in the trees and of course, the three coyotes. She then went on to tell him about how the world itself was coming alive with Mana and that it absorbs decaying corpses after they’ve been sitting for a certain amount of time undisturbed. Alex was silent throughout the retelling and explanation, his mind a whirl of thoughts and emotions. He’d been dreaming deeply while his one and only sentient companion was out there fighting monsters and trying to help him get to the center as fast as possible. Of course he was scared of everything that was happening, but he couldn’t let his only friend on this god-forsaken island get hurt when he wasn’t around.

“V.V… I don’t want you to go out when it’s dark… If you died…” Alex said, his voice almost cracking at the thought of her dying and him being alone again.

“Hmm? Ah, I wasn’t in any real danger, but I do think I should stay closer to you when you sleep. Those coyotes got much too close to you. I appreciate your concern but I’ll need to do go out when it’s necessary.”

Before Alex could say more, V.V. snapped a tree the thickness of his forearm and as it fell away, they were greeted by another open area. This new spot was much smaller than where they’d just come from, but it was still somewhat oval shaped. V.V. floated into the area, spun once and then continued to float across to the opposite side. As Alex followed, he noticed that the trees that he was now approaching were more spaced out and the brush wasn’t nearly as thick as what they’d been trudging through previously. Their whole trek to that point had been completely unbothered. No tree monsters threw things at them like V.V. had described nor were there any signs of the giant mammals she’d mentioned. As Alex crossed the midpoint in the clearing, he noticed something. The ground had tall lush green grass from edge to edge but to either side of him he could see two large dead spots. A chill ran through him at the sight of the amount of blackened dead grass.

“V.V, you said the big mammals fought in this clearing?” Alex asked, dreading her answer.

“Yes. One was killed and the other seemed mortally wounded.” V.V. responded as she continued to the more spaciously grown trees and started snapping twigs and other minor obstacles that may impede Alex.

“So, these two giant dead spots…”

“Yes. That is where the creatures died. We should continue on.” V.V. called back to him as she started to move into the trees.

“I’m so freaking dead…” Alex whispered to himself as he took another look at the largest of the two spots. The darkened ground at its longest was over twenty feet in length and about ten feet in width. The turkey was big but whatever had died here had been bigger. He made his way to V.V. suddenly realizing how far away from him she’d gotten. Definitely need to stay near my little ball of death. Alex arrived at the new forests entrance and immediately felt both better and worse about the situation. Better that he could move more freely and quickly through the woods and worse because he knew everything else could do the exact same thing.

“Do you think the things that fought here are what are waiting in the center?” Alex gestured back to the clearing as he spoke to V.V.

“We aren’t too far from the center now and those creatures would have no problem roaming long distances. So, probably.” V.V. did her best impression of a shrug and continued to clear the way. Alex just stared at the cueball in slack jawed annoyance. A dragon could be waiting for them the size of a mountain and as far as Alex was concerned, V.V. would probably just tell him to go stab it to death. He said nothing though as he continued to follow his companion into the woods that were starting to brighten as the sun finally started to rise above the trees but didn’t remove his dread.

“Fantastic…” Alex muttered and continued walking towards giant deadly monsters. What else was he going to do, jump off the island?

It had been over two hours of moving through the spacious woods before V.V. finally stopped. She spun in place and quickly floated over to Alex.

“I’ve just detected three entities moving in this direction from the center of the island. They aren’t moving very fast, but we’ll see them in about thirty seconds. I suggest putting a Dome up and getting behind it. I’ll float into the higher branches of the trees, and we can get the drop on them.” V.V. said this and without consulting Alex’s opinion, left him to his own devices while she floated up and away. Alex stood still for only a moment before things started happening. Opal put the Dome between two trees that were about three feet apart, so the dome enveloped both trees’ sides. The hope was to give him a larger area to hide behind or move around if he needed to.

This would be both the first time Alex could utilize everything he’d learned from the store and use the Orbs to their fullest potential. His Orbs, like his arms and legs, just did what they were supposed to do. Opal moved to his right, several trees away from him and remained still while Ruby did the same to the left. Emerald and Sapphire stayed with him, and he felt a surge of power rise up inside himself. Sapphire had boosted his Attack, Defense, Speed and Recovery while Emerald activated its Wound Care, Focus and Speed Auras all at once. The sensation was almost overwhelming as he tried to focus on the direction the creatures would be coming from.

Whatever was about to happen would happen very soon, so Alex focused his mind on his abilities and felt a familiar, comfortable understanding of his skills, abilities and spells that simply waited to be brought out. He decided and summoned both his Healing Orblet and Greater Sphere. There was the customary flash and pop from the Orblet, but the Sphere appeared as if it had come through an invisible portal floating in the air and no sound or light signaled its arrival. Alex thought it was a little spooky but only a little since his new comrade looked so cool. The sphere was a little larger than V.V. and had swirling flamelike patterns of gold and blue that covered its body. The sphere moved to hover above his right shoulder and waited. V.V. was wrong this time; the Sphere was like his Orbs, maybe not as perfectly reactive but the Sphere knew what it needed to do. The last thing he noticed was the little healing marble slowly rotating around his body before the first monster came into view.