Dan followed the twilight raven through somber shadows cast by the forest in the dying light of day. In the half light the mammoth straight trunked pines seemed truly alien. They felt primordial, ageless, unearthly. He wondered how many nights like this they had been there to greet the rise of this earth's three moons. The thought left him with a fleeting sense of awe that rippled through his body in a wave of pleasant frisson, chased by less metaphysical ponderings about the three moons. How would three moons effect tidal patterns, and thus weather patterns and climate? How well was meteorology understood here? Wait, were there oceans? Presumably. Ray had mentioned that the city of Weaverton was on "The Great River". Could great rivers exist without oceans to flow into? It was harder than he would have guessed to try to imagine how a world could differ from Earth, his earth.

One thing that was no longer a mystery was why there were so few monsters. There were two reasons, as Ray had explained. The first was that this area of forest was the twilight raven's claimed domain, and it did not welcome monsters within. The second was that monsters were instinctively drawn toward population centers of System races - in this world, humans, elves, and orcs (because of course there were humans, elves and orcs). It was not known how monsters sensed and were pulled toward the locations of groups of people, only that they did. It seemed capricious and arbitrary to Dan that monsters drew such a hard distinction between humanoid intelligent beings and those with the System classification of Noble Beast such as Ray and other twilight ravens. Apparently monsters were aggressive towards noble beasts if they happened upon them but did not instinctively hunt them down. Dan was the only member of a System race within many miles, and so there was no monster beacon.

Three days before, Dan had been paraplegic. Now he ran through the crisp night air of an ancient forest on an alien world, his senses alight as a river of small details flooded his mind with each step. The sheer change in who he was, the physical being that made up Dan Martin, left him unsettled and disoriented in a small, deep way. He was disabled. Then the System cured him, lifted him to a state better than healthy, better than merely human. He was disabled and human. Now, without his consent, he had been made more. And he was less. Disconnected, and not just because the forest he ran through was in a world that may not even be in the same physical universe.

Oddly, what was hardest for Dan to get used to at the moment was the feel of the ground under his feet through the soft soled leather shoes with which the System had replaced his original footwear. In many places it was a thick layer of fallen pine needles interspersed with leaves that looked to have fallen the previous autumn and various hues of moss and fungus. It was springy and spongy underfoot. The sensations flowed unhindered from nerve endings in his feet and toes through the central column of data collection that was his spinal cord and into his mind. And that was new. Almost as much as his restored ability to freely move, to walk and run and jump, full and accurate tactile response in his legs and feet was a profound physical change. His injury had been a fixed point, a demarcation. It was not possible to remain exactly the same person he had been before the accident, and so he had changed. Dan was proud of how he had ultimately chosen to respond and who he had become. And now he ran. It was wonderful, an emancipation, but it brought with hope and joy a weight of foreboding responsibility that trailed like one of the shadows that danced across the woods as he ran past them. He had changed again, would change yet further, and in ways that might be only partially within his control. He resolved to do the best he could to remain a man his family would love and recognize. It was a small goal, and might have been a silly thing to focus on when so much was new and amazing and deserved his attention. But he was, after all, still human, and he needed this. He needed to believe the Dan who came out at the end of this could still be, in a way that mattered, the same Dan.

It was full night when they reached a quiet meadow, sheltered at the base of a hill so large and wide it almost seemed like a mountain that had grown sleepy and laid down on its side for a long nap. A sea of knee height grass bent and swayed under silver moon light, the slender blades blurring together in a gentle hiss that was almost a lullaby. It was so peaceful and idyllic that the scene seemed enchanted, gently taking hold of all who entered, wrapping them up and leaving them serenely spellbound. It seemed viscerally wrong that this place and monsters should be part of the same world. But did Dan's earth truly lack for beauty or for monsters?

First Ray of Dawn Through Wet Leaves glided in a slow arc and came to a rest on Dan's right shoulder. It was a simple act. There were no trees in the immediate area, so his shoulder was the most convenient perch. They were master and familiar. But it had been a quiet trip to this meadow, each lost in their own thoughts, and the gesture seemed weighted with symbolic meaning Dan was not in a mood to parse at the moment.

"This is the place?"

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"It is. The World's Energy is strong here, but on this night the Lonely Moonflower drinks most of it for herself. You should be able to sense it."

Dan could. There was a point in the field that glowed fiercely in his Aether sense. He walked over, bent down, and gently parted the cool grass. There, growing almost flat to the damp soil, was a mass of tiny, leafy shoots and nestled within, a minuscule white flower. This small, single bloom was the first non-sentient that he had been able to detect through Sense Power. Dan reached out and gently, almost reverently, brushed the leaves back, giving him an unobstructed view. The flower was no wider than a fingernail. Its tiny white petals drank the moonlight as they fluttered faintly in the breeze, like the wings of a moth. System Identify confirmed that it was indeed a Lonely Moonflower.

"What do I do, Ray?"

"Eat the flower."

Well, that was simple enough. It felt wrong though. Sacrilegious perhaps, a strange aversion for a man who had always been more concerned with the material than the spiritual. He got over it. Dan plucked the flower and ate it. It was bitter, with insubstantial papery petals and a stringy stem. As soon as he swallowed it down, he was rewarded with a System notification.

Congratulations! You have gained a +5 bonus to Constitution by consuming a Lonely Moonflower. Further consumption of this substance will have diminishing returns.

Dan felt an upwell of vitality that he would have found difficult to quantify or describe. His body was just... better. More resilient, tougher.

"Thank you, Ray."

"You're welcome. Please do keep this place and this flower a secret. We can return on this day four more years before you will gain no further benefit."

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. Should we stay here for the night before traveling to Weaverton in the morning?"

The raven paused before replying. Dan was still some distance from anything close to fluent in twilight raven body language, but had begun to get the idea that when Ray was still in response to a question, that usually meant his familiar had mixed feelings about the answer.

"This is a good place to rest tonight. However, there is another place we could go in the morning. In System worlds there is a phenomenon called Dungeons. They are places of great danger, but the System rewards those who succeed in meeting their challenges. It rewards more generously those who are the first to conquer a new Dungeon, and more generously yet the very few who conquer dungeons alone, without a party of fellow System race beings. It is customary to enter in a group of five, the largest allowed. Dungeons have level locks. There is a great leap in power for those of System races from level nine to level ten, and only those of level nine or lower may enter many Dungeons. There is a Dungeon newly born into my wood. As yet, none of your kind know of it. If we leave in the morning for Weaverton, I do not believe it will remain hidden or that we can be the first to claim it when we return. We could face it together first. There is risk, but very great reward."

Dan sat in the softly rustling grass for several seconds. It was his turn to be still and quiet.

"Just to clarify, rather than go to the city and find others of my kind, the first I will have met on this world, where I can get equipment, training, information, and allies, you are suggesting that just the two of us take on an untested Dungeon all by ourselves? And you know that I am level five and have no meaningful combat training or experience and minimal equipment?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Huh."

So then. If Ray wanted him dead, there were far easier ways to accomplish that then tricking him into going into a dungeon unprepared. What were the relevant questions here then? Off of the top of his head, Dan had a few. One was "on average, how many members of a five man team of level nine adventurers going into a level nine locked untested dungeon come back out of it alive and in sound body and mind?" Another was "how does the general utility and combat potential of a Dan and Ray team compare with that hypothetical five man team of level nine adventurers?" It was totally plausible that Ray was the stronger side all alone. Dan just didn't have enough information to make an informed judgment. His initial impression was that this seemed like a stupid, unnecessary risk. But Ray was not stupid, and had good cause to have at minimum Dan's intermediate range best interests at heart. So this suggestion had to be taken seriously.

Other things he needed to know: Just what kind of rewards were potentially up for grabs here? Were dungeons generally just straightforward tests of combat ability, or could they end up stuck deep underwater or somewhere with a poisonous atmosphere or something? What about traps? He was pretty sure he could at least sense those, but that didn't give him means or expertise to disarm or evade them. How long did it take to clear a dungeon? How much food and water would they need to pack to be safe on provisions? What does it mean to conquer a dungeon? Why was he asking himself these questions rather than his centuries old familiar?