A miracle didn’t happen.

That is, I found myself back in the world of dreams, only despite the sturdy clothes and the packed backpack that I wore before sleeping, I lay on the rocks dressed in the same boxer shorts in which I first appeared here. The underwear was dusty, and my body was dirty. It seemed that this time only my consciousness had transferred to the dream world.

I sighed and stood up.

What does the new day bring us?

I leaned into the eyepiece of the telescope and began to examine the islands that had become significantly closer to me—the nearest one was about thirty meters away, and the others were not much further. It was as if my base had turned into a magnet that had drawn other chunks of floating stone overnight. In the evening, I will need to fly further away to avoid collisions if the islands draw closer again. I don’t want nightmares from the islands to come to me.

“There are many poisonous plants on the island and a copper chest. Furthermore, the air is poisonous as well. If you do not have immunity to toxins, prepare protective gear, otherwise your death will be long and quite unpleasant.”

“If you fly to this island, you will meet Nightmare Snakes. You will only be able to defeat them at the limit of your strength, but by that time, you will be dying from their bites.”

“A bear sleeps on this island. You do not have suitable weapons against it, so you will lose. Moreover, you will die in excruciating agony.”

“It’s better not to go there. You will definitely die.”

When I checked the islands before sleeping, only the one with gas, which I had seen yesterday, was among them. Where did the others go? Why did this one stay in place? And where did the new ones come from?

The islands surrounded me. If I flew upward or sideways, I could collide with them. So I carefully pulled the lever, pushing it into the ground, and the base slowly descended.

The islands below were not hidden, so I flew out of the crowd and moved five hundred meters away. This maneuver cost a whole unit of energy, but now I was far from the unpleasant proximity of all sorts of nightmare creatures.

So, what will I improve today?

I could fix the auction, but the trouble was—I had nothing to trade. If I had resources, I could use them for sale or exchange, but of value, I only had the artifact “last resort,” which summons flying snakes. I’m unlikely to sell it—I have enough food and water. Today, I plan to gather more resources.

So, the auction is off the table.

The most interesting options were the training room and the bio-laboratory.

No, I would tinker with the greenhouse and breed animals in the bestiary (if that building was meant for animal breeding, of course), but first and foremost, I need to become stronger. The training room will definitely enhance me, but I’m not sure about the bio-laboratory. The people in the chat remained silent and didn’t explain anything, leaving me to think for myself.

The bio-laboratory might improve my body, produce some monsters based on given templates, or serve as an incubator. The greenhouse is useful, but it definitely won’t make me stronger and certainly won’t give me an advantage in this strange world. I think everyone is upgrading it first to avoid starving, so getting serious money or resources from reselling plants won’t work—I doubt my “burning laurel” will catch anyone’s interest.

I took the tube, examining the other islands I had approached. Within a kilometer from me were nine islands not counting that bunch of dangerous ones, but to most of them, I would need to fly at least a kilometer, and the telescope wasn’t showing any information about them yet.

I selected two empty islands. The first one I cleared and captured without any problems, acquiring the blueprint for a dagger and some basic resources:

**Island destroyed! Resources obtained:**

- Stone: 93

- Wood: 2

- Iron: 1

- Capture Points: 1

Great, now if needed, I have enough resources for a dagger!

Inspired and believing in myself, I decided to fly to the next island, which was nearby.

While flying, I opened the forum and scrolled through the messages diagonally. I became interested in someone named Crown and a couple of his remarks. It started with a discussion between two users with numbered nicknames:

— How many islands should one capture in a day? Is one enough, or do those who capture less than five not count as people here?

— Four islands in two days is normal! If you’re lucky and don’t mind spending energy flying to empty islands, you can easily find safe chunks and repair damaged buildings using light capture points.

Crown intervened here:

— Really? I see you haven’t progressed with your upgrades. It’s great that one food pack a day is enough for you, but with that kind of saving, you’ll soon end up on the same level as all the outsiders while the strong will take theirs. This world isn’t for those who hide and fly to safe islands for food a couple of times a day.

— My progress here is considered fast! — the wounded interlocutor remarked.

— Among normal people, your progress isn’t even regarded as progress.

Crown didn’t write anything further while he was being criticized. However, I found the messages interesting. Despite the condescending tone, Crown plainly stated that you need to develop. I completely agree with him: there’s no point in enjoying life here, this world isn’t an opportunity to hang around in the chat for another twelve hours, but something more. You need to move, not sit still.

The chat was buzzing today. It turned out that until yesterday, everyone really had forgotten about the world of nightmares in the real world, but for some reason, that didn’t happen yesterday. Rather than developing useful skills or determining the best survival strategies, giving each other advice and creating guides, these people behaved as if they were not in a remarkable and dangerous world but sitting on couches, drinking soda, and chatting with friends.

I didn’t start urging people to level up and capture islands; their lives are not my concern. I didn’t want to read the messages to pick out grains of wisdom; the only grain was from Crown. Instead, I asked directly:

— What happens if I capture and destroy an island inhabited by a nightmare? Is that possible?

No one answered my question for five minutes, and I thought my message had gone unnoticed amid the wave of excitement, but as I was about to reach the third island, the chat pinged. I got a reply from Karamelkin.

— I don’t think you can destroy it. Fly around the island, look for any movement or sounds, but don’t dock if you notice any. I think if there’s a living creature on the island, you won’t be able to destroy it. You might even have to dock manually, but I’m not sure about that.

— Are you “thinking,” or stating facts like an experienced seeker? Have you been in this world for long?

— I’ve been here for more than two weeks. I’ve captured seven islands, which is not a bad result. But I spend most of my time in the chat: I read every message and analyzed it. Thinking, observing, and analyzing—this is what helps me survive, understand? Regarding your question—the guy who spotted the Bone Hound and decided to destroy it with the island and wrote about it disappeared from the chat. He died, so I don’t advise you to do that.

— Maybe he just decided to leave the chat?

— There’s only one way to leave it, brother. Every morning there are a hundred people here, but by the evening, there aren’t as many, and they don’t leave the chat, you can believe me.

I learned all I wanted and didn’t drag the further conversation into empty chatter. Marking Karamelkin as useful, I left the chat.

The second island turned out to be empty. I walked around it, clearing piles of small stones, but found no hiding places and destroyed the island.

Judging by the message "you missed a chest," I missed a hiding place, although I tried to search thoroughly. Oh well, there will be other hiding places.

Reflecting on the mysterious bio-laboratory, I couldn’t help it and logged into the chat again. If Crown states that some seekers can’t satisfy themselves with just one food brick, then either they just love to eat, which is hard to believe, or they modified their bodies in the bio-laboratory and simply require more food. I prefer to believe the second option—with physical upgrades, capturing just two islands a day really seems like a waste of time.

I think I can gauge how many people modified themselves based on the market situation. I’m curious how many people have gone through this upgrade and how far behind I am from them.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

— Can you tell me if food is sold at the auction? — I asked in the chat. After skipping over a couple dozen meaningless messages and duplicating my post a few times, I awaited a response.

— Newbie? Yes, food is sold at the auction, but it costs so much that in the real world, it would be traded for kidneys. Cheap food is snapped up in an instant.

At this point, I was going to ask if anyone was trying to meet the demand, but I held back. If such people exist, they are trying, but they are failing. I also didn’t want to plant the correct and profitable idea in the minds of the other inhabitants of the chat.

If people have somehow genetically modified themselves, and their appetite has drastically increased, I might find myself among those who eat a lot and beg for food after building the bio-laboratory. I would prefer to be on the other side: among those who supply the market with meat, bread, or pasta in tubes, exchanging them for resources that pumped-up people gather on the most terrifying islands.

So, I need to clear islands, and as many as possible. Points for capturing, resources, weapons, and food are needed. I need to upgrade my energy reserves, but first—build a training ground. I will engage in construction and training after spending my last energy unit flying to a large island.

Unfortunately, Crown didn’t respond to my polite message with a couple of questions. The guy is either eating or working out. Anyway, it’s time for me too—I’ve already been hanging around near the third island for ten minutes.

The next island I approached looked strange. It was twice the size of the first, plus there was some kind of building made of stone blocks in the middle of it. There were no doors—either they were blown away, or the building never had any.

Beautiful columns, half of which were now ruined, stood near the entrance.

I looked around, but no one was in a hurry to attack me.

I treated the "warehouse" the same as before. I threw a small stone, waited, drew closer, threw again, and only then entered.

Inside, the room looked like an ancient temple stripped of all its idols and statues. The walls and ceiling had bloated and peeling paint. If there had been paintings there before, they couldn’t be made out now.

The ceiling inside was four meters high. In just under two days, I had already gotten used to being surrounded by sky on three sides, and the enclosed space caused a slight unease.

Here I encountered my first problem. And the problem was that the sought-after chest was positioned on a thick three-meter column, almost right under the ceiling. I could jump. I could even pull myself up and climb that pedestal, but why on earth would they put a chest on a column?

I walked around the pedestal, examining the stone, and noticed multiple scratches on the back side of the column. It looked like some animal had clawed at the stone, trying to climb up. Or maybe it had even succeeded, as the scratches went all the way to the top.

Upon closer inspection, I didn’t find any tracks running parallel to each other, so the theory of it being animal claws fell through. But who then made these scratches?

I stepped away from the pedestal and looked back at the chest.

It seemed to me that when I entered, it was properly positioned relative to the entrance, but now it was tilted a bit. And it gave me a strange feeling that I wasn’t alone...

Oh, this doesn’t bode well.

I walked around the hall once more, gripping my dagger and examining the floor and walls.

So... what is that a meter away from the base of the pedestal? Some suspicious brown spot.

I imagined how some careless adventurer examines the hall. He steps around the perimeter, tapping the walls, but finds nothing suspicious. So he decides to jump onto the pedestal to reach the chest. If he has a knife—he grips it tightly in his hand. If he has a sword, he places it next to the pedestal to keep it out of the way and not pull him down.

He jumps up, grabs the edge with his palms, pulls himself up. But instead of the chest, he finds a mimic on spider legs that quickly bites the head off the defenseless adventurer. The body falls, blood splattering everywhere. The mimic descends, devours the body, and licks up the pool of blood. Then it climbs back, scratching the column with its spider legs.

A plausible story that explains the scratches, the blood, and the strange chest.

So, how do I defeat a mimic with a dagger?

I can’t. So, I circled around the hall once more and simply exited the abandoned temple, sprinting back to my island.

Leaving was easy—I pulled the lever back, the chains slackened, and I slid off from the neighboring island.

So, Karamelkin was wrong. If you dock at an island, you can easily leave without having to exterminate all the nightmares.

But I didn’t want to fly far.

I could have left the island and flown to an empty chunk, but I wasn’t going to do that either. Running away from the first monster I encounter, even the weakest one—is merely feeding my cowardice. Perhaps today will be the turning point, and today will decide whether I will loot empty shards or hunt monsters, looting everything in my path. Will I settle for a tube of pasta a day, or will I step up?

Perhaps risking my life on the second day is the wrong decision. Surely, dozens of seekers like me have made such risks. They thought they were ready for a fight but woke up dead, their bodies taken to the hospital. Anything can happen.

But surely there are those who are lucky. And I want to be one of those people—I want to be at the forefront, fearlessly facing the strongest monsters and defeating them. Not for the common good, not to make things easier for others, but because the most dangerous islands should have the most valuable resources.

First of all, I created the dagger. It was a shame to spend metal—it is already scarce—but the knife was utterly useless here.

The blade turned out to be not very long—together with the broad grip, it was a bit shorter than the distance from my elbow to the tips of my fingers. Thankfully, I have long arms.

Armed, I decided it was time to train. I selected “training room” from the menu and pressed “restore.”

The island hummed. And then real magic began to happen beside me.

The scattered stone blocks stirred and rolled into free space as if alive. The stones lifted back to their places, forming walls as if someone was rewinding time. The blocks were drawn to one another, fitting together to form neat rows. Two stone beams rose up, turning into supports inside the room.

Dust and small debris flew around. These particles collected into neat layers of mortar that filled the gaps between the stones, binding the blocks together. The dust transformed into wooden window frames and even pieces of glass that melded together—suddenly, the building had a wide window, and peering inside, I saw that in the thirty-square-meter room, straw-stuffed mattresses laid, a couple of benches stood, and a wide wooden target with crudely painted circles hung on the wall. The ruins had turned into a hall that looked as if it had just been vacated by students a moment ago.

“Well, would you look at that…” I muttered, then noticed the line on the display:

“**To improve your skill with the dagger, land a thousand correct strikes! The instructor is available for 60 minutes a day at the current level.**”

“A thousand strikes?” I chuckled in confusion. “I’ve never practiced sword fighting in my life, and I won’t be able to do that much now.”

It’s true—without regular training, my arms would be falling off after two hundred. Moreover, how will my skill increase from merely waving a blade in front of me? Is this that kind of leveling from LitRPG where you can kick at empty goals 24/7 and become a brilliant footballer thanks to a leveled skill? The most I could achieve would be to move from the stage of “how the heck do I stab an opponent with this knife” to “oh, I actually hit where I aimed.”

But that’s still not bad, so alright. Great things start small, and those without a training hall don’t even have that.

I took a breath and hurried to the training hall. When I entered the room, I became serious.

I was met by my own clone. The translucent silhouette was dressed in long ghostly shorts and held a copy of my dagger. This surprised and alarmed me. Thankfully, the instructor didn’t start rushing me around the room but stood still and waited.

“Do you understand me?” I asked but received no response. It seemed the instructor was just an ordinary hologram.

“Alright, let’s get started…” I murmured, and the training began.

My silhouette showed me how to strike with the dagger, and I repeated the movements after it. Sharp thrusts alternated with cutting strikes. The silhouette either struck in front of itself, demonstrating movements, or swept through the air, moving swiftly but gracefully like a cat.

When the time came to an end, the silhouette vanished, and I came back to myself. The training felt like a trance—I moved along with the silhouette, striking accurately at it and into the air. We even managed to throw the dagger at the target.

I swung and hurled the strip of steel. An ordinary blade with a loose grip sunk halfway into the very center of the target.

I had to exert noticeable effort to retrieve the blade.

The dagger felt in my hand like family. As if I had been carrying it for at least a month, constantly gripping it in my palm, knowing its balance and being ready to send it at an opponent in any moment.

Marvelous!

I don’t know what kind of magic is used in this training hall, but I am eagerly looking forward to the next session. And I’ll be sure to find myself a better weapon than my knife to quickly achieve masterful skills with a more suitable blade.

Now I felt much more confident than in the morning and was ready to visit my first island with a Nightmare.

My calmness was fueled by the message I saw in the telescope. It had changed.

“**On this island, a Mimic pretends to be a treasure chest. The nightmare is cunning but weak. You will be able to eliminate this creature: you just need to deal enough damage without exposing yourself to its attacks.**”

The message is encouraging. But there’s no guarantee that the telescope showed correct information for the second time.

I tightened my grip on the dagger and tilted the lever, directing the base towards the island with the mimic.

I landed without any problems, and entered the hall again.

This time, the mimic did not pretend to be a chest — he jumped off the column, opened his mouth-lid, and trotted towards me.

The monster looked pretty disgusting — the god of this world obviously came up with it with a hangover, or being very out of sorts. Six spider legs, a scorpion tail growing from under the bottom, and a mouth-lid studded with fangs at the edges. I wish I could feed Semyonych to such a creature.…

Apparently, having read my thoughts, the monster hissed and began to dangerously swing its tail, at the end of which there was a huge spike.

He did not dare to come close — I began to walk around him in a circle. So we circled — the monster moved sideways, not letting me out of sight, and affably snapped the toothy lid.

The mimic couldn't stand it first. He lunged at me, I instinctively ducked, and the tail swept over my head. The right side of the trunk-trunk opened up in front of me. I immediately hit this side from the bottom up, after which I shifted to the side and hit again, in the tail area.

It seems that the blow under the tail clearly did not like the mimic — he creaked, turned in my direction and tried to get me with a sting again. But either I accelerated and got faster, or I damaged something in the bottom of it. The scorpion's tail swept past, and at that moment I jumped up to the mimic and stabbed him right into the gap between the lid and the chest.

The mimic chuckled — he didn't like the iron — scuttled off with his paws, crawling away, and received a second blow exactly in the same place. After that, he fell on his side and, just in case, I swung the blade a couple of times, chopping off the trembling paws.

That seems to be it. The mimic died.

I dragged the dead creature to my place, put it in a warehouse and searched the island. Unfortunately, I didn't find any hiding places.

But when analyzing the island for resources, I was pleased with the new inscription:

"Attention! Iron accumulated 1, copper — 3, marble — 4, capture points — 2. This is enough for an overhaul! Would you like to renovate the island?

I press "yes".

After this stage of repair, the grinding inside the island subsided, and a marble fence appeared around the edge of my base.

That's great! Now my flying vehicle won't attract monsters with noise. And it will become more difficult to fall when you come to the edge.