First, I must check what the goddess left for me in the inventory.

Opening the inventory tab within the menu, a page comprised entirely of tiles appears. Each tile seems to represent a slot in which an item can be stored. The first few tiles have icons within them displaying a simplistic image of the item stored. At a glance there seems to be two books, a loaf of bread, meat of some kind, a bottle of something, and a shirt.

“Ok, now how do I get them out?”

I press the tile with the bottle hoping that it will allow me to take the bottle out of storage. When I do so the tile enlarges, shifting the surrounding tiles out of the way until a quarter of the panel is taken up with an image of a bottle, a descriptive text and a series of options.

  Water bottle of the Fountain: A magic tool capable of producing clean spring water when mana is injected.

That’s great and all but… how do I get it out? Next to the description is a series of options: Analyse, Disassemble, Rename and Sort. Currently “Disassemble” is greyed out though. Those are all really interesting functions but I want the drink bottle! Just give me the drink bottle!

With that thought the tile closes and the bottle materialises in front of me.

“Oh, ah! Oops!”

The bottle appeared suddenly, hovering momentarily in the air for a fraction of a second before falling, in my surprise… I missed catching it and it fell to the sand. I’m glad no one saw.

It seems that taking things out of inventory is an action that doesn’t require the menu but something that responds to my thoughts. It’s probably a safety mechanism that I must actually think along the lines of “I want ‘item’ out of inventory” or directing a thought of “give me ‘item’” to the inventory to prevent removing items accidently with any stray thought.

Anyway. Thankfully the bottle seems undamaged and so I pick it up and inspect it. It’s a brown glass bottle about the size of a wine bottle, the outside is covered in a sleeve of leather fastened at the neck of the bottle and the cork is also fitted with a leather top and tied to the sleeve with a braided cord. It’s stupidly heavy for a water bottle.

Curious (and thirsty), I pull the cork and sniff the contents. The smell of ions and water wafts from the mouth of the bottle, it smells of the air before a thunderstorm. Taking a leap of courage, I take a swig.

!

How could water be so delicious? It’s cool and refreshing with a hint of sweetness that lingers at the back of the tongue. It tastes nothing like bottled or tap water. Unable to stop I swallow a few more mouthfuls before pulling away with a hearty sigh.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Delicious.”

But I’ve already downed half the contents and I don’t know how to “inject mana” to get more. Considering that I don’t know yet if there’s suitable drinking water on this island, I should save what remains until I can use the water bottle properly.

“Now, how do I…?”

Thinking about how I took the water bottle out, I direct my thoughts along the idea of “I want the water bottle to enter storage” and, without even a sound, the bottle vanishes and an image of it appears in one of the tiles within the inventory menu.

Alright! Inventory take in and out sorted! I mentally pat my own back.

I take the opportunity to store the coat I’m carrying into the inventory.

Now then, let’s take a quick look at the other tiles. I press them each in turn to check the description. First there are two books titled “Basic Knowledge of Thain” and “Manipulating Mana: A guide to magic that even an idiot could understand,” both seem really useful and one seems sort of irritating. I’ll definitely read both when I have time. There’s also a kilo of dried meat, four loaves of bread and a selection of clothing similar to what I’m already wearing. I take the opportunity to store the coat I’m carrying into the inventory while looking at the clothing selection. One interesting fact is that the inventory utilizes a subfolder system. When I press the “bread” tile it enlarges and four tiles each representing one loaf of bread appeared. Again, when I press the tile with the icon of a shirt, it enlarges and displayed multiple tiles representing different items of clothing. Additionally, if there are more tiles than the space allows then the panel becomes one you can scroll through. I tried scrolling on the main page but gave up when there didn’t seem to be an end to the amount of available empty tiles.

OK. I’ve got some food and water, but I still need a safe place to sleep, I can’t just stand on this beach for all eternity. Finally, I bring up the “Map.”

Map [https://i.imgur.com/YTDuI8U.jpg]

Well damn.

I was expecting a much smaller island. From the looks of it, the island is around 40KM across. Isn’t that bigger than Hawaii’s biggest island? If I assume that the blinking star shaped icon is me, then I’m currently on the south beach at a location called the “Beach of Beginnings.” I’ve a sneaking suspicion that the goddess labeled an un-named beach so…

Anyways, looking at the map, the best location for me is likely going to be the ruins at the center of the island. If there’s ruins, then that means people once lived there and thus the necessities for life such as availability of water and ease of gathering food must surely be there too. The places I certainly want to avoid are the swamp, the Dragon’s cave and the Forest of Fear… Unfortunately, I’ll have to go through the forest if I want to get to the ruins.

I quickly glance at the sun; going by its angle I’ll have two hours at most of daylight. At least that would be the case if the duration of a day in this world is the same as that of Earth. The average hiking speed is something like 4km per hour and, given the size of the island, it’s unlikely I’ll make it to the ruins before dark. In fact, I’d be surprised if I could make within eight hours.

I do not want to spend my first night in this world sleeping in a tree in a place called “the Forest of Fear.” I do not want to do that. Let me say this again, this is something I do not want. Why couldn’t I have been dropped of near a nice town? Everything about this island is screaming “DANGER.” But there’s no use just standing here. If I don’t move, then I’ll never get anything done. I’m going to give up on getting to the ruins today and instead head the mouth of the river and make camp there. Then tomorrow morning I can make my way to the ruins by following the river upstream.