They’d quickly determined that they sharded the quest ‘Floor Advancement’, or at least had the same one with the same main objective. The rewards differed and the Hidden secondary objectives might have been different as well.
They quickly finished talking about the quest while walking up the hill Max had previously run up. Distracted as he was by the surrounding environment, they concluded that they could postpone evaluating it until they knew what was going on.
Max began to pay more attention to the smaller details of the world around them. He wasn’t walking on grass; was the first thing he had noticed. It looked similar, but only at a cursory evaluation. It seemed to be closer to moss, with individual small stems a couple fingers long growing out of the small moss patches. The rest of their environment looked fairly mundane. The hills all looked similar, but that was hard to tell from their vantage.
“What can you do?” Max asked after he’d shared his status with Jamie.
“I’ll beat you, if you make a single joke about me being moody,” she responded with a grin. Fully aware of irony.
They boiled down the difference in rewards between Max’s and Jamie’s quest to two factors. They had differing traits and different skills. Jamie’s potential rewards list was slimmer than Max’s, only mentioning an upgrade to one of her abilities instead of her Trait.
> Status:
>
> Jamie Eighty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty-six of Earth
>
> The Crawl – 1
>
> Dungeons – 0/1
>
> Boss – 0/?
>
> Stats:
>
> Might – 3
>
> Endurance – 3
>
> Agility – 3
>
> Soul – 3
>
> Perception – 3
>
> Traits:
>
> Primal - System Events do not discriminate by age. Increases starter skill amount by one.
>
> Mood Modulation – You can control your emotions instinctually and possess poise in almost all situations. Resistance to weak mental and emotional manipulation.
>
> Skills:
>
> Boxing (Beginner) – You have entered THE CRAWL only depending on the boxing classes you’ve taking during your first year in college. Well executed strikes have a harder punch and are less likely to hurt you.
>
> Running (Beginner) – The movement-type you have the most experience with. Reduces energy consumption of running.
>
> Academics (Novice) – You have learned many things in your life. Increases knowledge internalization.
>
> Environmentalism (Beginner) – Grasp the interactions of mundane actions on the environment.
>
> Navigation (Beginner) – You know where you started the day and how to get back there.
>
> Bushcraft (Beginner) – A recent skill you have picked up, that you’ve enjoyed and want to develop further in life. Helps determine whether something is digestible and allows for shoddy construction of tools.
>
> Abilities:
>
> Emotional Strength (Beginner) – Your inborn trait of Mood Modulation allows you to harness different strengths from your mental state.
>
> Sprint (Beginner) – Due to your minor skill in Running you have gained the ability to move faster than possible with your stats for a very short duration.
>
> Items:
>
> Standard Human Workman Attire (Common) – An attire common for the humans. Slightly more resistant to damage.
>
> Silver Ring (Common) – Accentuate the shape your fingers.
“Soooo, I hate to do this,” Max began hesitantly.
“You want the ring, don’t you? It’s fine. If it gives you a bonus it would make sense. But if we ever get the chance to sell it or something I want it back.” She handed the ring over and Max slid it on his fingers.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
> Silver Ring (Common) – Accentuate the shape of your fingers. Equipment Mastery Bonus: Slightly improves Abilities and Spells that originate from the vicinity of the ring.
As Max read her the new description she began chuckling.
“Have you ever tried wearing a toe ring?”
“No, I have not,” Max groaned. He did try it though. He had no spells he knew of, and his only active abilities – which he hadn’t even tried out yet – worked more with his eyes or with his feet than fingers.
To both their surprise, the ring's description changed when he put the ring on his index toe.
> Silver Ring (Common) – Accentuate the shape of your fingers. Equipment Mastery Bonus: ONLY APPLIES WHEN SLOTTED IN THE INTENDED SLOT
It didn’t fit well on any of his other toes either, so it was moved back to his hand. It might not do much yet, but maybe he would gain a spell or ability soon.
After a bit more walking, they reached the top of the hill. The view from there was both bleak yet fascinating. All around them were hills of roughly the same size, with barely any difference between them. A few were colored differently further away and even more had some sort of canopy covering them. But besides fauna and rock formations on the summits of each, everything looked near identical, periodical even.
The general topology of the region felt familiar. Like a lazy landscape generation of someone who didn’t care too much. If one looked strictly into one of the four cardinal directions – indicated by each of the valleys directly surrounding them – one would see an endless repetition of valleys and hills. If one looked halfway between the cardinal directions they would see a valley reaching half as deep down, roughly fifty meters, before the slope went up again, ending in another hill.
A single landmark stood out against the endlessly repeating rolling hills. The white tower in the distance. Reaching up into the sky, vanishing in the endless expanse of space. They couldn’t tell whether it had an end.
“We need to get there,” Max stated.
“Do you think it has an elevator?”
“Fuck… It has to, right? If that’s the way up to the next floor, how did other get up so fast?”
“Yeah, how did they?” she responded.
They observed the tower for a bit longer. Max checked his prompt again after a long minute. They may have been here for a total of ten minutes and people already had progressed.
> A total of 4.3 trillion entities from your universe have entered THE CRAWL. 1 038 have progressed to Floor Two.
They shared a worried look.
“100% has an elevator. And you can’t convince me otherwise. Let’s look around a bit more and then head over there.”
Jamie nodded in response. They observed the surrounding four valleys for some time. They occasionally spotted creatures in some of the valleys and peaks. The liminal zones seemed fairly clean though. The question neither of them wanted to ask was whether those were foe or friendly. Because none of them looked like humans as far as they could tell.
But both believed that if they were sapience, they too would have looked for a higher elevation. Not only that, but the groups were larger than their group of two had been.
“It was one of the questions that I asked,” Jamie said after they shared their observations. “I was told, that the CRAWL is primarily for combatants. Though there are other ways to progress. I got five in total. Everyone on earth is experiencing this. Our siblings too. We can’t have a larger initial group size than two.”
“And I doubt it has different rules for other beings. Unless those other beings are not sentient, maybe. And it did say that we had to fight.”
“It never told me such a thing.”
“Because you’re a dummy.”
Max couldn’t even come up with a good response. She was right. He should have tried asking. He might have tried if there had been a keyboard or a pen but gaining feedback to vocal questions had never once been a consideration. He’d expected the text to be a notice. Well, he’d also expected that he was having a stroke. So there was that. Maybe he should have used his phones assistant more, to grow used to such interfaces. Phones that were now missing.
“So, what do you propose?” Max asked.
“I don’t know. We could either try fighting – you do still have the pitchfork –,” Max held it up in response to Jamie with a grin on his face, “we could try to walk past them, or walk along the ridges without descending into the valleys. But I don’t know if any of that will work.”
“Yeah, but like, what do you think is the smartest move? I think an argument could be made for trying to avoid combat for as long as possible.”
Jamie contemplated his question for a moment before voicing her thoughts.
“We have no proof that it’s gonna get easier or stay as safe the further we go. So, I think it might be best to try and see what the potential enemies close to us can do, before we move further away. This is supposed to increase our odds of survival after all,” Jamie stated after a solid minute of contemplating. “Furthermore, if you check your status, it says we might have to fight bosses or dungeons, depending on whether that’s a maximum or requirement we have to hit. Seeing what could come of going down there would be best.”
Max had been having some of the same thoughts, but he didn’t like some of the implications. He would try to converse with whatever beings were down there before attacking. They would see them coming either way.
Right about now he began missing the stealth archer arche-type. He’d have liked that. Then again, maybe that was an option for the future.
The pair decided after some discussion to try Jamie’s approach. It had a bit of risk involved, but far from the risk that a sudden ambush might have. Or not being prepared for a fight.
Not wanting to appear threatening, the hiked down into another valley – where they’d seen movement of bird like creatures. Max was almost regretting their decision of taking it slow as he’d have loved to test out his running skill on the way down a hill. But he perveiled. As they closed the distance between themselves and the creatures in the valley, they became increasingly aware of what they were dealing with.
The good thing was that their movements alone indicated a lack of greater sentience. They seemed to have no further goal besides picking in the ground.
It felt like a good point in time to try his Analyze Ability.
> Chicken of Prey – Monster – Floor One – Level 1
Whether Max should be worried he didn’t know. Chickens had been on top of the threat list given to him in the black void.
“Uhm, hold up Jamie. I just used my Analyze ability on them. It gave me a text prompt in return.” He shared the little information it had given him with Jamie freely.
“That guarantees that they are not other people, right? Wait, have you analyzed me? Do it!” Came the order as he twisted his face. It felt a bit invasive, but he complied anyway.
> Human – Unleveled
“It just says Human and unleveled. So, it’s different. I guess you are right.” But that would mean he should always use the ability whenever he came across anything living. Just to be safe.
“Let’s beat up some chickens,” Jamie chuckled. “This is so messed up.”
“What are you talking about. This was your idea.”