Surprisingly, Dakota was not dead when he awoke the next morning. Sun streamed in through the partially reconstructed window while the dying embers of last night's fire winked in the stove. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he tossed a few scraps of wood on the fire and strode onto the deck. A beautiful day greeted him. This stood in direct opposition to him feeling like a wreck. His bones ached, his leg throbbed, and he must have acquired a dozen new cuts from his mad dash through the woods last night. And to top it off, a splitting headache was forming behind his eyes.

“This sucks.”

No one ever told you surviving in the wild on your own involved so many sucky days. He had daydreamed about surviving on his own but so far, this was far less romantic.

A splash of cold water eased his headache and drove any lingering sleepiness off. Last night felt like a fever dream. Dakota almost convinced himself he had made up the lights and sounds.

He sat on the steps of the house, viewing the farm. He liked it here. There was a peace about this place that felt otherworldly. He supposed it was otherworldly considering it was, you know, in another world. He didn’t want to leave. He felt he could be happy here, for a time. Unfortunately, last night’s affair prompted another feeling. One of vulnerability. Both in the physical sense but also in the mental sense. He still didn’t know where he was, when he was or how he got here. Not to mention the existence of an echoing voice telling him he had levels when he went to sleep.

Dakota needed answers and answers required an answerer. Hoisting himself from the steps he set about preparing. He was going on an adventure down the path.

One glaring issue he faced was hydration.

He could construct a method to carry a few items and some food easily but water was a different animal. He had scoured the house and found an old waterskin but it was cracked and dried through. He had tried [Minor Mundane Repair] which had fixed the existing holes but hadn’t done anything about its brittle nature. Dakota had the reconstructed bucket but it wasn’t a great option, it was big, heavy, and would likely spill loads of water.

He decided the issue could wait. He had a far more concerning problem.

Fish were his only source of food. Acquiring fish required being near the stream. Being near the stream required going through the forest.

Hefting his war hoe (newly dubbed), he stared down the ominous trees. There wasn’t any getting around this so he might as well get it over with.

His head on a swivel, he crept through the woods. Every shadow was a menace. Every snap of a twig, a gunshot. Somehow, he reached the stream without dying to goblins or his heart exploding.

The trap was still there and, crucially, had three fish swimming in it. Not only that, but upon checking his rod, Dakota discovered a fish attached to it as well.

Over the next hour, he cooked and packaged the fish by wrapping them in grass and then inserting them into a makeshift rucksack made from his shirt. He secured the shirt to a stick, snagged a stone for starting fires, and made his way back.

Dakota lifted the bucket. It wasn’t great, but it was all he had. He fashioned a handle from the looted leather strips and filled the bucket two-thirds full. Any more and he would be spilling more than was worth carrying.

He took one last look around the farm. Something felt off about leaving. He felt grounded here, almost as if he could take on any challenge and succeed, or at least survive. But he needed answers. He had to try.

Hoisting his pack, Dakota stepped onto the path.

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He retraced his old steps, pausing to gulp some water at the point he had turned around before. He wasn’t certain but he thought this was a boreal forest. There were loads of pine cones on the ground which meant there were pine trees. He could also spot the odd birch. Boreal forests had pine and birch, right? Either way, as the hours ticked by, the trees grew thinner and his pace picked up. By mid-afternoon, he was able to walk unimpeded. The underbrush had also receded as the trees grew farther apart which was the opposite of what he thought would happen. Shouldn’t the underbrush grow thicker with less competition from the trees?

His wandering thoughts came to an abrupt standstill as a flash of blue caught his eye. Dakota peered through the trees… was that a flower?

Striding over, he discovered a patch of blue flowers growing around a mossy stump. Except these flowers weren’t like any he had seen. Brilliant blue petals opened in a star with bushy, golden fronds poking from their centers. The stalks were slender with diamond-shaped leaves curving from them. They were small, only standing a foot or so off the ground and, upon looking around, there was only one small patch of them.

Crouching, he noticed an old drawstring pouch resting against the stump. The material disintegrated as he pulled on it and a few seeds fell out. Why was a pouch lying in the woods? Dakota’s eyes searched the earth around the flowers. There! An odd shape lay covered in moss and debris. An odd shape that, as he drew closer, looked more and more like a corpse. Upon closer examination, skeleton would have been a better word. Any flesh had decomposed or been eaten long ago. As had all of the clothes and items the person had worn. The only thing to have partially survived the years was a sword which was so rusted it broke in half when Dakota went to pick it up.

More exploration didn’t provide any clues as to who the person was or how they had died.

He tucked a few seeds into his own drawstring pouch. If the mossy fellow thought the flowers were important enough to carry around, he would as well.

He turned back to the path bidding the unfortunate stranger adieu. He hoped that was a one-time meeting. Not that he didn’t mind visiting a grave once in a while but he preferred bodies to be beneath the earth.

A little while after, he glimpsed blue sky shining between the trees. Another twenty minutes and Dakota thought he must be on a hill. The trees suddenly dropped off in the distance. Wouldn’t there be a downhill slope if he was headed toward the edge of a hill? Perhaps this was a plateau.

His puzzlement grew the closer he got to the drop-off point. He couldn’t see any treetops. It went from full-grown trees to nothing.

“Must be a shear cliff.”

The last hundred yards proved the most bemusing. There was no landscape beyond the edge of the cliff. Not only that, but the cliff edge stretched as far as he could see to the left and to the right.

Dakota sank to his stomach and slithered the last five feet to the edge.

Open sky greeted his gaze.

Open, not as in a wide prairie sky, but as in open. Empty air filled the space between him and what he assumed was the ocean far below. He craned his neck over the edge looking for the connection between land and ocean. There wasn’t one.

Suddenly light-headed, Dakota crawled away from the edge. Well, this complicated things. He sat there for a few minutes, staring into the void. It was a majestic view, unlike anything he had seen before. Too bad he would die here. He wasn’t idealistic about his situation. If hunger and cold didn’t kill him, the goblins would. He wondered if this was how the stranger had died. Stranded on a floating island, murderous goblins as his only company.

As the last sliver of sun sank beneath the horizon, a cloud parted, letting a beam of light strike him on the face. For an inexplicable reason, he felt encouraged. A little candle of hope blossomed in his chest. He wasn’t dead yet, best not to act like it.

Gripping his bucket, Dakota strode into the woods. He needed to get back to the farm.

It was dark by the time a sweaty and paranoid Dakota banged through the farmhouse door. Bushwacking in the daylight had been hard enough but the night was a whole other dimension of abuse.

A few strikes to his flint got a fire and he was soon munching on a fish, feet up by the fire. His mind still reeled from the floating island revelation but it seemed his body had had enough of reality-warping concepts and decided to act normal. Which meant food. He was already growing tired of picking fish bones from between his teeth, not to mention the sliminess. Fish weren’t his favourite. Potatoes on the other hand.

“Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew.”

He could go for some potatoes right now. But that was beside the point. If he had to survive on this island he needed food and fish weren’t going to cut it as his primary source, which left him with one option. He needed to farm.

Dakota wanted to explore the rest of the island, maybe even discover how it floated but first, he had to take care of the necessities, part of which was growing crops, part of which was defending the farm. He had no reason to believe the goblins wouldn’t attack again.

Another necessity came to him as he fell asleep on the kitchen floor.

“I need a bed.”