What lay in front of Max was a sprawling valley of epic proportions, bathed in the warm, pink and orange glow of the huge disc that was this world’s setting sun, sinking into the distant mountains.

There were so many points of interest, Max didn’t know what to focus on first.

There was another set of beautiful, smaller waterfalls cascading into a wide lake in the east, a network of caves carved into the mountainside in the west, a marshy area that seemed to be alight with the flickering of thousands of fireflies, the ruins of a strange tower in the middle of a wide plain, a far-away, vast forest, and in the centre of valley, a gorgeous, quaint-looking medieval-style village built around the base of a giant, crooked tree; the largest tree Max had ever seen in his life.

New Location Discovered!

Oakhaven Valley

+1 Exploration Orb

“It’s official,” Max muttered to himself. “I never want to leave.”

Max was itching to get to the village so he could finally speak to someone in this world and find out exactly what it was and how he had arrived in it, but he needed to find a way down the steep cliff he was standing atop first.

He searched around the cliff-face for a set of steps, or even a rope ladder of some sort, but there didn’t appear to be anything. It seemed the people of this world didn’t venture up this way regularly. Given the beasts he had encountered in the forest, there was probably good reason for that.

Max had no idea how the fallen campers had gotten up to the forest, although now that he thought about it, maybe they had entered from the opposite direction, possibly from a different settlement that was on the same level as the forest.

It didn’t take Max long to come to the conclusion that there really was no way down.

He peered over the edge of the roaring falls.

Stupid idea, he thought. You didn’t put yourself through all that fighting just to throw yourself off a cliff and drown.

He scoured his inventory for anything he might be able to use, and wished he had come across some kind of rope that he might have been able to use as an abseil.

As he scanned everything for a second time, wracking his brain, he paused on the bedding. Then his eyes shifted to the river beside him.

There were plenty of dragonwhisker reeds. Would they be both sturdy and pliable enough for the plan that was forming in his mind?

He yanked a few out and tested their durability by bending them and pulling on them as hard as he could. A few snapped, but the majority held firm. It would do.

You’re either a genius or you’re insane, Max thought to himself.

He was going to make himself a hang glider.

Max collected a load more of the reeds, then he went on the hunt for sturdy fallen branches. Any that snapped when he tried to bend them, he discarded.

When he had four thick, strong branches at his disposal, he used the reeds to tie them into a triangle shape, with the fourth as a spine running down its centre, then he pulled the bedroll out of his inventory and used the knife to separate its outer sheet from its inner padding.

He then laid the sheet on top of the triangular framework he had created and traced the tip of his knife over it, cutting the sheet to fit.

With a few small incisions to the edges of the sheet, Max was able to then fasten it securely to the frame.

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He stepped back and admired his handiwork. It was bare-bones, but it might just work. All he needed now was a handle.

With a bit more scouting of the area, he found a curved branch that would be just the right size for its purpose. He grabbed another straight-ish branch along with it, and tied them together to make a hollow semi-circle. Lastly, he tied that to the centre of the framework, then with a few final checks to make sure the thing was sturdy, he held up his invention and admired it.

A burst of text appeared above it:

Item Crafted!

Makeshift Hang Glider

+1 Crafting Orb

Max couldn’t help but let out a laugh. This was going to be one hell of a ride.

Before he set off, Max considered his inventory. He now had one available space since he had removed and dismantled the bedroll. Up until this point, he had been carrying the map and his water canteen, but he would no longer be able to hold either if he was going to be clutching the hand rail of his glider.

Being the larger item of the two, Max placed the canteen in the empty slot, then he rolled up the map and shoved it into the left pocket of his tattered trousers. The right pocket had been completely torn apart in his battle with the hornback, but the right was just about holding together. There was a chance it might fall apart and he would lose the map, but since he was out of the forest now, he imagined there would be little use for it beyond this point anyway.

With the limited open space on the clifftop Max had available, he held the hang glider above his head and jogged a little to see if the wind would catch.

And it did.

Max could feel the fabric tugging on his fingers as he clutched the handrail.

It was the confirmation he needed. This was going to work. He just needed to commit to it and do it.

In his previous life he had turned down the opportunity to parasail twice. In this world he felt like a new man. There was no fear, just exhilaration.

Retreating as far back into the forest as he could with the hang glider held above him, Max then stopped, took a deep breath, and began running.

“Let’s fucking gooooooo!”

As he reached the rocky clifftop he felt his feet lift off the ground and he soared into the sky, leaving the roaring falls behind him.

With the slightest of pressure applied to either side of the handle, he found he could control the trajectory of the glider with ease. It was an empowering feeling, as if he had sprouted wings and become one with the wind.

His hair whipping behind him, and the whooshing air cooling his bare and bloodied chest, he could only marvel at the sights below him; the lush, green valley sun-kissed with soft, golden light, the charming village nestled under the giant oak at its heart, and the shimmering river running through it.

As he descended, a footpath adjacent to the river became more and more visible, and on it a moving vehicle of some kind.

Maybe a travelling merchant?

Max set his sights on the soft-looking grass beside the path it was travelling along.

Carefully, he tilted the glider backwards a little to put the brakes on his speed as he naturally descended.

He prepared his feet, and as he connected with the ground, he ran, easing the momentum of the glider until he could bring his run down to a jog, and finally to a halt.

Still feeling the rush of his flight, Max swapped the hang glider for the canteen, and waved to the approaching vehicle, which he could now see was a horse-drawn wagon.

As it approached, the clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves and the rumbling of the wagon’s wooden wheels against the stone path underneath it gradually quietened.

“Greetings,” Max said, as the driver hopped off. He realised in that moment that he had never greeted anyone with the word “greetings” before in his life, but somehow it felt fitting for the world he was now inhabiting.

“What you doing looking like that?” the driver replied, narrowing his eyes and eyeing Max up and down.

The guy was dressed in blue merchant robes and had the kind of old-fashioned commoner London accent found in Dickensian period dramas.

Max let his focus settle on the man’s face, hoping that a bit of text might appear in the same fashion as it had done with all the beasts he had fought, but nothing did.

Max couldn’t pinpoint why he felt this way, but something was beginning to suggest to him that this might not be some innocent merchant simply travelling from village to village.

Maybe it was the faint banging that seemed to be coming from the wagon.

Then the door of the wagon opened, and two more men emerged from it, eyeing Max intensely before closing the door behind them and locking it.

There was still banging coming from the inside of the wagon, even louder now than before, and there was the muffled cry of a young woman along with it.

Things were starting to seem more suspicious by the second.

“Who have you got in there?” Max asked the men.

“That ain’t any concern of yours,” snarled one of them.

“Looks to me like you’ve been battling beasts up there in Alryn Forest,” said the driver. “What they drop, eh?”

Fuck. These are thieves.

Max could feel his blood beginning to boil at the thought of his hard-earned loot being stolen from him.

“It’s none of your business what loot I’ve got.”

The driver then opened his palm and a small shortsword materialised in it.

“How about this? You hand over everything in your little slots, or me and my associates loot them from your dissipating corpse.”

Max let out an incredulous chuckle. If these bastards thought they were going to kill him and steal his loot, they had another thing coming.

Max opened his inventory and selected the knife.

“Wrong move, shitface,” he growled.