I continued my journey up the riverside, hoping to find a spot to cross. In the meantime, I wanted to try playing a few more ads just to see if I could get any more information about the world that way.

Unfortunately, playing an ad had a cooldown though. Eight hours, ugh.

But I supposed it was fair, since just one ad had given me so much DP to work with.

As I walked and occasionally had John scout above the trees – I should really get the upgrade for him – the stone building slowly disappeared on the horizon, but in exchange, another point of interest in the opposite direction. Something that looked to be a mountain.

Chat and I agreed that it had to be the place from where the river was coming from, so it was a good sign that I would eventually find a spot to cross relatively easily.

With that said, it still took absolutely forever and the sun set before I reached such a spot.

Falling asleep to the sound of running water was pretty novel. It actually felt like I was out in nature now. The total lack of any animal or insect noises had really thrown me off before.

The next day, I had my shark meat breakfast with a slice of pizza, washed up in the river, and then played another ad. The sense of temporarily losing my skills and the numb feeling of my clothes wasn’t as bad the second time around, but it was still unnerving.

Anywho, the ad this time was about some kind of battle tournament specifically for second-tier individuals. The overenthusiastic dark-skinned man with horns holding the microphone said something about inclusivity, but I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. Had there been discrimination between different tiers of individuals or something? Weird.

And then it was time to walk again.

I groaned in annoyance, but I actually felt much better about it than yesterday.

I actually had a clear goal in mind, which helped. Not only that, but there were also the ads. Chat was still busy theorizing about and piecing together things from both of them and I had fun chipping in my own two cents here and there.

The conclusion was that this world was… or had been some kind of combination of a fantasy and a sci-fi world. There were all kinds of strange humanoid races and magic, but they also had spaceships and their own version of the Internet.

It was fascinating and I wondered whether I could somehow access their Internet through the system. Granted, they were all gone now, but if their ads had survived, then why wouldn’t the rest of their Internet?

Other than that, there wasn’t much to do for me other than keep walking and hope the damn river became crossable at some point.

To be honest, the fact that my best form of entertainment at the moment was alien ads was… incredibly weird.

“Ugh… Stupid river… Maybe I should just risk it and bubblejump over it,” I mumbled as I sat down on a random boulder to rest for a bit.

My mind randomly jumped to the Phoenix Blessing, and I thought it was kind of funny that I’d had several months’ worth of physical growth since I’d left the water park dungeon.

Although maybe that was why I felt like I’d been walking for months, ugh.

“Okay, let’s scout ahead again, chat,” I declared as I jumped back to my feet and found a tall tree again. A minute later – I was getting pretty good at climbing trees – and a few monkey jokes in the chat, I sent out John above me again and scanned the area.

The mountain was getting closer, but more importantly, I also spotted something else in the same direction. Another clearly man-made structure made out of dark stone.

“Chat! Another point of interest! All of this walking was worth it!”

Just yesterday, I was getting frustrated with the lack of direction, and now I had several things I wanted to check out. Patience really did pay off, didn’t it?

It still took a couple of hours until I got reasonably close to this new mysterious structure and in the meantime, the cooldown for the ad was up, as everyone in chat reminded me.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“You know, chat… This might be the first time where everyone is more eager to watch ads instead of the actual stream,” I said with a smirk. “I’m offended, honestly. Is my chill adventuring stream really that boring?”

JamieWasTaken3: yea

GeorgeDoshington: yes

Irid123: kinda

I huffed in mock annoyance.

“Fine, then! See if I care! Have an ad, chat!”

I mentally braced myself for the uncomfortable feeling again and started the ad. As before, I immediately brought up stream history, turned on subtitles, and watched along.

This time, it was a green-haired woman with bark-like skin and colorful feathers decorating her forearms singing praises about a potion that apparently made you smarter, stronger, and halted aging. Classic scam ad… although from what I knew about this world, it might have actually been legit. The potion itself wasn’t all that relevant to me, though. The fluff around it was what really caught my attention. She said things like ‘You could live for centuries like those ancient dragons’ and ‘It’s a favorite drink of griffins’, meaning that dragons and griffins had existed in this world.

But that only made me wonder about the races of the people I’d actually seen in these ads. Most people in chat believed that the red woman from the first ad was a slime, since the ship was called Slimeship Enterprise. And the guy from the second ad looked like one of the fantasy renditions of a demon. The third one, I had no clue. It could be a dryad? But she also had those feathers…?

She could also be something entirely different from conventional fantasy races. The others too, honestly. There had been plenty of humanoids in the background of these ads that neither chat nor I could figure out what they could be.

The ‘feeling’ returned to my clothes as the ad ended and I perked up.

“Welcome back, chat! I guess you’re gonna want to watch it with subtitles now…”

It was a bit awkward to do that, but I didn’t have a better way of doing it. Luckily, I apparently had some pretty dedicated people in chat and they were already compiling all the words and phrases used in those ads to create a freaking dictionary for my wiki. The more ads I played, the less they would need the subtitles.

Once done, it was time to keep walking, and for chat to theorize about the world in the meantime.

Truth be told, I was getting a fairly good idea of what kind of world this was before… whatever had happened had happened.

It was a fantasy world, yes, but it wasn’t in its middle ages. Not anymore, at least. If I compared it to Earth, it was technologically more advanced in some aspects, but lagging behind in others.

At least that was assuming that all of these ads came from the same time period, which we still weren’t entirely sure about.

Half an hour of walking later, I climbed up a tree and sent out John again, only to see that the structure I had been walking toward was practically right in front of me.

And now that I could see it, I realized that it was… a city. Walls made out of that dark stone, countless buildings inside, and a huge castle in the middle. The castle’s central tower was what I’d seen earlier.

“A city, chat! Civilization!”

GeorgeDoshington: oh shiiiiiit

JamieWasTaken3: it’s probably a dungeon

Irid123: either way this is exciting

Irid123: I’m gonna ping people in dissonance

“Jamie, shut up. Let me have hope!” I huffed. “Oh boy, people incoming. I better make it there quickly, then. Let’s get going, chat! I really hope there’s actual people inside!”

I didn’t believe there were though. I couldn’t see anyone through John. Only the buildings. And they didn’t look to be in a great state either. I wouldn’t call it ruins just yet, but it didn’t make me very optimistic.

Over the next half an hour, people trickled into chat and I greeted each one of them as I came closer to the city. When I finally reached it, I stopped and stared in wonder.

As I’d expected, the city itself had been built on the river I’d been following. The black stone walls themselves were about four stories high and seemed to surround the entirety of the city. There was only a hole big enough to let the river through, but not big enough for me to sneak inside through there. At least not in this direction, because of the currents.

Up on the walls, there were small towers clearly meant for guards to look out for threats outside of the city.

But all of those towers were empty.

I wilted just a little, even though I had been expecting this.

Regardless, I steeled myself and walked alongside the walls while looking into the towers, hoping to spot something or someone.

“Hello?!” I shouted. “Is anyone there?!”

There was no reply.

“Hello?!” I kept trying though.

But nobody came.

After a whole ten minutes of walking alongside the wall and yelling out in hopes of someone popping out, I found what seemed to be the main entrance to the city.

The gates were wide open. It should have felt welcoming, but instead, it felt like there just wasn’t anyone left to care that strangers could freely enter the city now.

I wilted even more as I sighed.

“...I don’t think there’s anyone inside, chat.”

Irid123: you can still explore it

GeorgeDoshington: rip

SpoOo0oOon: that’s a shame

JamieWasTaken3: dungeon time?

I hummed.

“Well, I don’t know yet if it’s a dungeon… I guess I’ll see,” I mumbled and slowly walked forward while pulling my naginata out of my backpack.

The inside of the city looked even more dilapidated than what I’d noticed from afar via John. The main street going from the gate was barren and I had the feeling that the only reason why the buildings weren’t more deteriorated was because the buildings were made out of the same black stone. The material had to be pretty resistant to erosion then.

The moment I stepped through the gates into the limits, I felt the familiar feeling of dread, although this time, it was mixed with something else. Some kind of… pride? Unity? The sense of belonging? It was strange.

But either way, I already knew what this meant.

“Chat…” I sighed and stepped back out. “This place is a dungeon.”