I can blearily remember the rest of the night.  Dreams, not vivid ones, filled with dead rabbits and a creeping sense of being watched.  Barely any time seemed to pass before morning light peeked through the doorway into the cathedral.  Better to let last night wash away in the light and focus on more important things.

Most notably, the fact that I had guild things to do.  Hera said that the group would set out in the morning, so it was high time I actually found them.  I would be more worried, but our leader for the expedition, Magnifica, was not really a morning person.  True to the character she tended to play, you would more likely see her falling asleep with dawn's light than getting up with it.  Are bears usually nocturnal?  Doesn't matter too much.  She takes after the hibernate part anyway.  That and the root of berserker being bear made sense for why she tended to play some sort of animal-person if she could, especially an ursine one if she could.

Actually finding her would be harder than finding the tiny circular ears that would poke out above her head, at least in real life.  Everyone on board was pure human, dressed in ship jump-suits with a few pelts thrown over their shoulders.  For all I knew, she was a short Asian gentleman who spoke like a olden-day cowboy.  I didn't even have to think of a plan though.  Hera already told me that Buffy would know where Magnifica was, so I just had to find her.

Most of one lap around the cathedral later, I had found my objective slightly drooling and leaning against one of the floor-level pods.  She looked so peaceful, so unaware of the looming threat of being oh so rudely awoken.  Yes, she was so defenseless that it was almost a shame what I was about to do.  I mean, I would have loved to see her jump a foot in the air on waking up.

Sadly enough, Baron was sitting next to her, whittling away at a stick presumably waiting for her to wake up as well.  With a font of knowledge already awake, I couldn't very well justify pissing off everyone else here just for a prank.  At least not for such a low level prank.

"Mornin' Baron.  Know where I can find Magnifica?  Supposed to join up with her group today."

He looked up, giving me a grunt of acknowledgement.

"Meeting at lunch, we're" he gestured down at Drooly McSleeperson, "part of the group too."

Awesome.  That means I have time to get breakfast, squeeze some more information out of Baron and maybe even get some practice time in with my new sword.  Lunch was still a few hours away, looking at the lengthy shadows.

"I'll be right back, want any breakfast?"

"Already ate."

----------------------------------------

Returning with a warm bowl of stew, I got right into the meat of the task.

"So is there anything else out there besides the rabbits, lizard-cats, and the lizard people, Baron?"

He looked up and raised an eyebrow at the end there, maybe about the lizard-people?

"A few passive animals, like birds and snakes.  Haven't seen a lizardman yet."

"Nothing else that's lethal?"

He shrugs, paying more attention to the whittling with his stone knife than my facial expressions.

"Nothing else we know of."

Hmm, that's promising, I guess?  It wouldn't make too much sense if there was too many predators squeezed into one ecosystem, at least not large predators.  The rabbits are probably just territorial or something.  Though, it never hurts to check. . .

"Are the rabbits carnivores, or just assholes?"

A chuckle at that one.

"Just assholes.  Not territorial ones though.  They can follow larger groups looking for stragglers."

. . .that's just horrible.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Were they put here just to kill us or something?  Why would they even have the built in aggression if they don't have a territory or eat meat?"

No response to that, not even a shrug.  Baron seems to think it was rhetorical.  It kinda was, but I would really like an answer.  To lots of things, like did the rabbits even exist before the world just sort of "generated" out around us.  It feels real enough, we get hungry like normal, which I'm dealing with as I think, but respawning and homicidal rabbits don't make much sense.

The pumagators are at least hunting the rabbits, hopefully to eat, which seems much more normal for an animal.  The lizard-people were rational looking, keeping watch in the dark, so they seemed real enough as well.  Were they kidnapped by creepy tentacle creatures as well?  Maybe something to do with the mural on the wall in here.

The squid is floating above lots of humans fighting off monsters and other types of creatures on what looks like a badly scaled planet.  A sign of our antagonistic nature with everything out in the world?  A warning, prediction, or some bit of history that we're doomed to repeat?  I mean, it's pretty in an ancient mural kind of way, but it raises some damn big questions.

"Mrrgph."

Ah, looks like I don't have that much time to wonder about them.  A wild Buffy is waking up with a yawn and a few sniffs in my direction.  The stew smells good, after all.  They must have gotten the salty taste out of the blood and found some plants that masked the gamey flavor, so it didn't taste too different than some of the stuff my mom made me as a kid.  Back on Earth so far far away from here.

Yeah, let's not step back into dwelling on how screwed up things are right now.  At least we got past leaving Earth for good years ago.

"Foooooooood."

"Is that the first thing you want to say when you wake up?"

She's stretching her arms out in my direction, eyes slowly blinking with little real recognition in them.

"Fooooooood?"

Is she some sort of stew-zombie, doomed to wander in search of properly cooked brains?

"Get some yourself, this is mine."

She's even reaching close enough to make grabs at my bowl.

"Awwwwww."

"No, not even if you were polite enough to say please."

And with that she was off, wandering towards the morning sunlight muttering under her breath.

Better get back to quizzing details out of Baron and then switch to Buffy for infor on the state of the camp.

"Alright, any interesting geography around here?  Dungeons?  Caves?"

"Nothing I've heard."

"Dang.  Just the forest and the plains then?"

"Indeed.  Mountains are too far away for travel yet."

"Not enough people out combing through the whole place to find anything really hidden, I guess.  Would be a bit disappointing if there wasn't anything typically magical around here."

"Besides us?"

"Exactly.  It's mostly just us with whatever weird powers we have, and some weird monsters.  Do they have magic cores at least?"

He just shakes his head.  Damn.  So they're really just weirdly shaped animals that enjoy killing people?  You would expect something more interesting, like the living trees from that one game we played, or fish that breathed fire.  Even classics like magically moving slime or undead would be more interesting than a rabbit and a big cat.

Is this a non-magical world?  It might. . .no, wait, there was that stick that the silver asshole stole.  Means that there's at least magic somewhere here.  Maybe if we can find some of those lizard-people we can ask them?  Should I bring that up as a goal for searching?  Even if they were hostile, we seem to be immortal, so what could they do, spawn camp us?

. . .

Actually, that's a scary idea.  If a monster got in here and set up a nest, would people just respawn to get eaten and then die?  If it was an intelligent monster, would they barter with us using an eternity of torture?  That's. . .I really have to get Hera to get this place fortified.  Maybe get her to catch some animals and see what happens in they get in the cathedral without being cooked first?  I would rather that this place stayed safe if I have to respawn here for who knows how long.  If I get old aged, will I respawn after natural death, dying over and over?

"Omni!  Excited for the scouting mission today?"

Buffy is waling back, steaming bowl of stew in hands.  She's grinning like everyone does before diving into new game content.  Everyone but Baron who just grins when he sees the market prices of what we tend to bring back with us.

"You know, heading off to battle bunnies in mortal combat sounds good, actually."

"Right?  Itching to take your revenge?"

"Absolutely.  That and I want to see how well their fur and pumagator scales hold up against my new sword."

She looks a bit envious of the blade as I pull it out from behind me.  Everybody I walk past has been complimenting me on it, and I'm really happy to let people think this is just my own personal respawn reward.  Wouldn't want people trying to rob me for it.  That would suck worse than having to find it after I respawn if it doesn't come with me.

"Let me eat this stew real quick, then we can find Magnifica."

"But we don't have to be there until noon?"

I give a glance at Baron.  He wouldn't slip me bad info, but it might have changed?

"Right, but what else would you do instead?"

"Sword practice?"

"But you'd be missing out on the fun!"

"What fun, she's probably still asleep?"

The big grin made everything slip into place right before she said anything.

"Exactly.  Plus, I know someone who stuffed one of the more in-tact pumagator corpses."

"I'm in.  Can you do a convincing cat hiss?"