I heard an audio clip a few months ago where these parents were reacting to the news of the death of their only child. Back then, even listening to a low quality audio clip gave me the chills. I wondered how a human being could possibly make such a heart-wrenching sound.

Nothing would’ve prepared me for the despairing, desperate wails of the woman in front of me. It was so haunting and dreadful that for a moment, I too was consumed by her despair.

My heart twisted in her despair, feeling hers as if it were my own.

And then she said something that made my heart slick with dread.

“Because everyone who completes this mission will die!”

And after that, she had nothing more to say. Silently, she covered her face and weeped, quaking occasionally. Carefully, gently, I asked her.

“Claira?” Her red eyes looked up at me from behind her knees, “What do you mean?”

She hurriedly wiped the tears with the sleeve of her shirt and gazed into the distance, a tremor occasionally passing through her body.

“Sorry.” She sniffled.

“I— it’s true… There’s no way to complete this mission.” She chuckled, “We were such idiots. And look what happened…”

She sunk her head into her knees, and I could no longer see her eyes.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Tell me what happened, right from the beginning.”

“There isn’t much to say.” She sniffled, “There was a mission to investigate this mission and— and Steven said we should try it because he had a return scroll.”

Surprising me, her tone became laced with venomous rage out of nowhere. So much so that I could feel the oozing malice from her words.

“But that bastard never told us it was only for one person!” She spat. “That bastard! If I see him again I’m going to kill him! I’ll rip him apart from limb to limb and fuck his brains out!”

My brows furrowed. That was a weird thing to say… I could understand her rage but what she said at the end was a strange way to express it.

But to each their own. Different people had different ways of expressing their emotions after all.

But still, that was a weird thing to say.

“What happened then?” I asked, ignoring her strange choice of words.

Once she’d calmed down and stopped her spew of insults, she carried on with her narration of the events, her tone still carrying the bile of her previous insults.

“When we accepted the mission we came to a large, dark hall with a giant statue.”

My attention was caught by her description. Unknowingly I had shifted closer.

“Something was chasing us from behind but luckily there was a portal next to the statue, so we went through it. Ashley… Ashley didn’t make it but umm…” She sniffled.

“Where was the portal?”

“Huh? It was right in front of the statue…”

“On the floor?”

“Yes? It was on the floor.”

I had to massage my brows because they were getting too tense. It seemed her and her party had arrived at the same hall as me but for some reason, the portal was somewhere else.

“Did you receive anything?” I prompted.

“Uhmm, no… We just ended up where I found you. In those fields of grass”

Strange…

“Did anything unusual happen in the hall? Seeing someone, or seeing a floating panel? Voices talking to you?”

“No? Atleast, I didn’t. I don’t know about the others.” She wiped her eyes.

A theory formed in my mind and it was so laughable I wanted to disregard it immediately.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The theory was that for some reason or the other, I had been selected. Maybe nobody had come back from the fog gate because nobody else was meant to.

Except me.

It was obvious why it was ludicrous. There was nothing special about me, and this isn’t some webnovel or a fantasy story. This is real life, and I’m not some protagonist. There must be some alternative explanation.

Re-surfacing from my thoughts, I asked her what happened next, but she simply stared at me with red eyes and slowly looked into the cold, dead ashes of the bonfire.

“Then we found this cave and… One by one, the others started to disappear until I was the only one left.”

“How long have you been by yourself?”

Her sniffles had quieted, but her eyes were still red and unfocused.

“A few weeks… I think.”

Gods. No wonder she was at her breaking point. A few weeks alone and with no hope of rescue would drive anyone insane. It was a wonder she’d been able to survive for so long. Like the soft light of a candle in the dark, I felt bad for her.

Would I have survived in her shoes? I couldn’t say.

“You’re not alone now Claira. We’ll get out of this place together, trust me.”

She chuckled, still staring away.

“If you’d been in my place, you wouldn’t be that confident.”

Yeah but I’m not you. I have a System that can let me do whatever the hell I want. But of course, I couldn’t say that, so I simply asked again to trust me.

By now the light from outside had faded and the shadowy cave took on a dark blue hue. Silently, she stood up and left, bringing back with her a bundle of wood. She dropped the wood into the bonfire and sat down next to it, clacking two stones together.

“You know that’s not the best way to—”

Before I could complete my sentence, the sparks from the stone lit up a small bundle of tinder. She picked up the burning tinder and blew on it, and then she carefully set it down below the wood.

“You were saying?” She asked with an expression so earnest, that I knew she hadn’t heard me.

“Nothing.” I turned my gaze towards the silently rushing stream of water, and the waterfall— barely visible in the dark.

Fire crackled to life in front of me, and painted her face in beautiful shades of orange. The flames silently sputtered between us, and I yawned. When my stomach growled I realized how long it’d been since I’d eaten.

“I’ll go get us some food.” She said, getting up.

“Thank you.”

I watched her leave and disappear into the depths of the cave and wondered what exactly she was eating to survive. Hopefully it wasn’t fried insects or the sort. Shivers went down my spine at the thought.

So with nothing to do, I brought up my System panel again, this time looking at the last component slot.

I stared at it silently, scratching my head.

I must have spent an ungodly amount of time just staring at the screen because my neck felt tight. I got up and stretched, walking around to loosen up, but still, I had no ideas.

And then a very unconvincing idea struck me, but after all this time it was the only one I had, so I went with it.

A simple inventory. I thought of all other things— a questing system, a shop, a gacha system or a class system.

But ultimately, the convenience of having an inventory beat out everything else. And hopefully I could use it in more creative ways than just storing items. A corner of my lips curled up.

No, I was definitely going to find ways to use it creatively.

Without hesitation I mentally thought out the specifications for my inventory component and felt satisfied when the System accepted my request.

A blue grid of squares opened up in front of me that was quite large.

Alright, the moment of truth.

I picked up a rock and mentally issued a command, imbuing it with my willpower. Immediately, the rock disappeared from my hands and ended up in one of the squares.

[Simple rock

Weight: 0.151kg]

Alright. Now the next moment of truth.

I mentally issued a command to fling it out of my inventory like a bullet. But nothing happened. Damnit. Did the System change my specification? I looked at the description of my inventory component but that was not the case.

‘Eject!’

‘Shoot!’

‘Fly away!’

I tried so many phrases but none of them worked. Much to my embarrassment, I even tried saying it out loud, but thankfully she wasn’t back yet.

Maybe like Bruce Lee once said, maybe I shouldn’t think. I should feel it.

So I tried to imagine the feeling of ejecting it. I imagined the feeling of an energy leaving my chest and the stone fell to the ground with a clack.

A sigh escaped me.

It just dropped to the floor instead of shooting out like a bullet. This was completely useless in battle.

I felt such a sense of regret that I felt it crush my heart. I hadn’t felt such a regret even after being scammed out of a thousand dollars. This was…

I collapsed onto the bed of straw and felt my stomach growl harder. Atleast the food would comfort my wounded soul.

Footsteps shuffled somewhere and I looked up at Claira who’d just arrived… empty-handed.

“What? What happened?” I asked.

She seemed startled by my question, “Huh? Wh— What do you mean?”

“I mean, with the food. Did you not find any?”

“No… No, I couldn’t.” She looked away, walking towards her bed of grass with shivering legs.

“Maybe you could sit closer to the fire.” I suggested.

A look of confusion drew on her face, “Why?”

“Because you’re cold aren’t you? You’re shivering.”

Immediately her face flushed red and she turned away. Without saying a word, she turned away from me and lay down on the bed of grass.

I couldn’t hope to understand women for as long as I lived. And I knew that the task was beyond me, so I simply lay down and slept. The sound of the fire crackled softly as I drifted away. And I waited for the new day to come.