"So this is the place you were found as a baby?" Ryan asks as he looks around the Great Napping Spot.

I told him about more about what I've learned and theorized as we finished eating lunch, and my test at taking another person into the Mythic Forest has proven successful. That included about the this zone being where I was found as a baby, and that's apparently what he's focused on now that we're here.

He's dressed in his combat gear as well now, in preparation for potential stronger monsters. It's designed both for protection and quick movement and looks pretty nice on him. Even the shirt he's wearing underneath it is armor, and I honestly think that would have been more than enough protection for what we're going to do but he wanted to be extra certain.

If I've never taken a hit by anything, then I doubt Ryan would when facing off against what might be the strongest beasts I've encountered so far. It's also possible that everything in the zone Aster wants cleaned up is no stronger than my Level 12 Awakening Quest, though I still want the added protection just in case.

Casting times really make for a problem when I can't ensure I'm not going to be struck.

"Right at the peak up there," I point to the top of the hill. "How I ended up in here is still a mystery to me, though."

"Is it something you're wanting to know?" He glances at me.

"Not really," I answer, and he starts looking around again. "It's not something I find important. What matters is I am who I am and will stay that way. If my parents abandoned me, well, they're missing out on their son and I'm missing out on them, but I've developed a life without them."

There's no point in stressing over what could have been if things were different twenty years ago. I'm doing pretty fine without parents and am quite happy with how things are.

"I see," he says. "What's the plan for the zone Aster wants you to clear? You want me to tank the beasts while you cast?"

"That's one possibility," I say. "Though I did some thinking, and while it could just be that I've only been in weaker zones so far, everything I've fought could be in a Category 5-1 Dungeon except for those. They probably could be as well, just as bosses. It might be easier if you handle all of the monsters, especially since I won't be able to tell where they are until they're rather close. I can probably handle the other aspects of the Special Quests."

"Okay," Ryan says, then looks at Aster, who's sitting in his pup form beside my leg. "Ready, little guy?"

"Woof!" We appear in a zone of heavy fog.

"Oh," Ryan looks around. "When you said there was a fog that restricted vision to fifteen feet, I'd just assumed it was some sort of natural fog. It's Fog of Obscurity."

"Fog of Obscurity?"

"A magical fog most commonly found in Category 5-3 Dungeons and higher or equivalent power in Dungeons of lower Ranks," he explains. "It hinders even magical senses for people, though beasts can still tell where people are. They seem to not even notice its presence. I didn't think to ask, but do you have a spell which will let you draw in monsters? The air feels like a Category 5-1 Dungeon so it's doubtful any of the monsters will be higher than Category 5-2."

I did think about that, but even those would be too strong for me to handle.

"I do," I tell him.

"Alright," he says. "Mind that I'm able to handle near to the end of Category 5-3 Dungeons, so if we're right, I can handle everything here and they won't have a chance to touch you. If you can draw everything in, then that's the best option."

"Okay," I reach out with a finger and begin drawing on the air, a line of lilac light trailing after my finger. "Aster, how wide is this zone you've brought us to? It's furthest point from us."

Aster responds with "many steps" before correcting that to "five thousand one hundred eighteen feet and seven inches".

That level of preciseness amuses me a little when considering his inability to measure time, but I guess time and space are two different things.

The spell takes me around twenty seconds to complete and once I do, a purple shimmer forms in the air around me. I've designed it to draw in any beast within six thousand feet of us. The fog walls should stop it from being sensed outside of the zone – and if it doesn't, it'll stop them from coming at us. Now that my Mind is at 502, I can affect the goblin cosmic mages, which should have the highest Mind stat of any beast in the Special Quests I was given.

Ryan becomes a blur for a moment, then there's a dead wolf as tall as I am with a pelt similar to Aster's only six feet from my right. Rather than being fully starry, however, its dark blue, almost black pelt has just a few streaks of silver and gold, with spots of it on the ears and tail, its paws golden.

+1 starseeker wolf slain!

Ryan continues to turn into blurs, either disappearing from my field of view or ending at the corpse of a beast within it. After only a minute, he stays out of my view entirely, though I can occasionally hear the sound of his fists breaking bone or something heavy hitting the ground.

"That's all of them," Ryan blurs to a spot a few feet in front of me just after the last completion notice for the monster-slaying Special Quests pops up in my vision. "You want to do the others now as well?"

"Yeah," I answer. "And the fog should lift as well if it's like the other Special Quests acquired in this manner. You were counting? I know I gave you the numbers, but-"

"A little," he says. "But I received the Special Quests upon our arrival here."

I really should have thought that would happen, but I hadn't. The Special Quests are something the King of the Celestials has been issuing to me, so the idea that he'd include anyone I bring in as well hadn't crossed my mind.

"Oh," I say. "I'm not sure what water-void pillars are, but I'm guessing they void out water as their feature."

"They suck it in and 'delete' it from existence," he says. "Or 'void', in other terms. I've encountered them as a Dungeon Quest before, and their ranges were always around twenty to forty feet."

He looks around, then scratches the back of his head.

"Finding them in this fog will be difficult, though."

"Woof!" Aster says, then takes a few steps forward, turns, and looks at us.

"You want us to follow?" Ryan asks.

"Woof!" Aster nods.

We follow Aster and soon reach what can only be the edge of a pond based on the sudden drop. It's only a few feet so we're able to go down fairly easily, then we follow Aster about forty feet to a pillar twelve in height. It's a rounded square three feet in width made of a black crystal with green-blue streaks running through it, and Ryan lets out a whistle.

"Biggest one I've seen," he says as Aster tells me something.

"Aster said they're spaced around sixty feet apart," I tell him. "But their range is closer to forty feet. They weren't always this big but grew over time, so he 'convinced' monsters to block up the spring… wait, you did what?"

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Aster's response to that can only be interpreted as 'it's complicated', but the images he sends include him chasing monsters into boulders. That won't work for removing the obstructions, so we'll have to do that part entirely on our own.

"Can these be destroyed by brute force?" I ask.

"Yeah," Ryan answers. "You only need to damage them to a certain point, and they'll shatter and dissolve. There's no negative effect despite what it might sound like from their name, so I can just punch them out."

Which is exactly what Ryan does to it: punch it into oblivion. Once that one's gone, we move on to the next. As we do, we learn a few things. The pond seems to be around three hundred feet at its widest, and some of the pillars are in the streams feeding into it or flowing out of it. There's also dark bramble in the streams, which is where I come in.

With my right hand extended, I cast [Flamethrower] to incinerate the dark bramble, then use [Telekinesis] to pull out the parts buried in the ground to destroy those as well.

Dealing with the blocks are a little bit more tricky as they're actually located at the heads of the three streams which flow into the pond. One of them has shattered boulders blocking them up, while the other two have boulders on them. Navigating to them requires exiting the bed of the pond and the streams, as there are small waterfalls at each entrance and at the exit and more small ones along their paths.

Dry, of course, but it's a hassle to climb up each one.

Ryan and I double-check that the paths are open and the Water-Void Pillars are gone before moving the stones to clear up the spring openings. I also make absolutely sure every last trace of the dark bramble is gone as well to ensure it won't regrow and start destroying more water or contaminating the soil again.

A new area within the Mythic Forest is available to access via your gate: the Starry Pleasure Waters!

"What's that look for?" Ryan asks as the fog lifts, and I look at Aster, who's looking up at me expectantly.

"This is a play zone meant for you, isn't it?" I ask, and Aster lets out several happy barks as his tail wags.

"A play zone?" Ryan asks. "What do you mean by that?"

I suppose he didn't get that notice, probably as he's not one with a gate to access various parts of the Mythic Forest.

"This zone," I say. "It's name is 'Starry Pleasure Waters', and we've got a starry-furred pup here who was insistent on it getting opened up. Hello, Mrow."

Ryan looks over and spots Mrow, his eyes widening for only a moment. Rather than popping up over by the monsters, the lifeseed worm popped up close to us. It's probably curious about Ryan and wanted to check out the new person here.

"He's a lot bigger than I thought," Ryan says. "Even with the pictures. Wait, hold on. Can we get him to not eat the beasts? They can be pretty valuable, even the goblins have some use with their essence crystals."

"Mrow, hold on," I say, and the lifeseed worm looks at me. "What parts from the goblins? Just the essence crystals?"

"Yeah," Ryan answers. "The others, we can do their hides and meat, the tusks of the boars, and the fangs and claws of the wolves."

"Did you catch all that?" I ask Mrow, who nods. "Thanks."

Mrow goes back underground and I look at Ryan.

"I'm not sure about the other monsters' parts," I start walking down the stream, toward the pond. "But since we're only getting the essence crystals from the goblin mages, he'll still consume those. He can separate the essence crystals and not convert them. The soil will be deposited around the pond. Or maybe not for this one, he'll probably dump it in one of the areas I've been working at."

"Okay," Ryan says. "I want to harvest the materials, they really do sell for a decent amount."

"Alright," I say. "You do that, then. Mrow will take care of anything you don't take, and I'm going to use [Cleanse] on the contaminated soil."

"There's contaminated soil?" Ryan asks.

"Yeah," I tell him. "Just a moment and… here. Notice how the soil's a little bit darker here?"

There's not a distinct line where the soil darkens and I'm pretty sure the contamination actually goes about seventy feet out from the smaller streams, but this spot has soil that's noticeably darker than further away.

"It's caused by the dark bramble," I tell him. "On top of 'eating' the water, it creates a miasma which infects the ground. [Cleanse] will take care of it, and my Magic's high enough now that the spell has a range of about twenty feet. If I shift it into a spherical spell rather than its normal wave, I can do a decent chunk of space at a time."

"Oh," he says. "Alright. I'll go do the harvests."

Ryan heads off to do that while I begin casting [Cleanse]. When the spell completes, a golden light shimmers and flows out from the point I cast it at, right at the ground. The soil it touches loses the darker tint to it and returns to the lighter color of its dry, dead self.

I repeat this process over and over in different spots to clear up the miasma-filled soil. The dark bramble spread it around seventy feet from where it was and the feeder streams themselves are about seven to ten feet in width at various points. At the exit stream, which is about sixteen feet in width, the amount of dark bramble was enough to influence more than two hundred feet of land in each direction.

Fortunately, I'm able to use [Cleanse] for all of that more easily as while the three springs which feed into the pond are flowing, it still takes time for the water to reach this part as it has to fill the lower sections of the pond first. That goes up to twenty feet deep while the pond is only about six feet at the exit flow.

I don't even need to take off my sneakers and socks for this.

Ryan looks like he's made short work of the carcasses of the beasts, though being Level 28 probably helped some as he's able to move quite fast when he wants or needs. When I approach him, he's finishing putting stuff into his storage bracelets, then he pulls out a magic cloth to clean off the blood with.

"Where'd Aster go?" Ryan asks.

"Last I saw him," I point at one of the entrance streams. "He was up that, jumping off the short fall from the spring into the stream, splashing around, then getting out and doing it again. In his otter form."

"Okay," he looks around. "What do you think this place looked like before it died? The Mythic Forests have a lot of different types, right?"

"This is probably part of the same one I've had access to," I tell him. "Which I think is pure forest with waters like these. Since this one was apparently made as a playground for Aster, it probably had a lot of berry bushes and maybe beehives."

A vision flashes through my mind, scenes of this area in full growth. The streams at full strength, their waters flowing off short drops to continue down below until eventually reaching the large pond before flowing away from there. The short cliffs and small slopes of the zone covered in ivy and vines, bushes and flowers, and trees of several varieties. Small tunnels which run through the short cliffs and small slopes, a starry-furred wolf pup running out of one during one of the visions.

And the plants… they're clearly magical in nature. The leaves of the trees and bushes, and the petals of the flowers, are dark blues and purples. Many of them have starry patterns to them as well. Even the blades of grass of the zone are touched with a starry appearance, giving the entire zone an appearance akin to the night sky.

The thick, lush growth of the Starry Pleasure Waters conceals the sky from view for most of the zone, casting it into a dim or even dark state depending on the spot within it. It stretches much further than the under-a-mile zone we're in now, maybe four of five miles in diameter based on the aerial view in one of the scenes I'm given.

"You okay?" Ryan asks as the vision ends. "You got a strange look on your face there."

"Sorry," I smile at him. "I sometimes receive visions after finishing up a place and just got one. It's of the place in its former glory."

I tell him about what I saw and how beautiful it looked.

"Damn," he says. "I've never seen anything like that in any of the things I read about Mythic Forests. Think this is a rarely-visited area?"

"Maybe," I say. "This is a zone which will probably take awhile to restore, both because it'll need its energy flows fixed and because I can't use [Grow Plant] to grow magical ones. I'll have to grow normal ones, then they'll have to adapt and mutate into the magical ones which belong here… if they even can on their own. That might be something the King of the Celestials can do."

"You mentioned about the flows earlier," he says. "They're all tangled here, too?"

"Yeah," I nod. "I checked while I was working on [Cleanse]. There's one in the pond itself, toward the southeastern edge over there. That's probably where the drought lizards came from, but I'm not entirely sure."

The location would make sense, since drought lizards are common in areas which formerly housed water, such as dry lakes and ponds. In regards to calling something "southeast", I'm basing that my by assumption that water flows south here and a little bit of intuition about the directions of the Mythic Forest.

"Another is right over there," I point to my left. "About thirty feet. There are probably others since it's known that only one type of monster can spawn per Monster Egg, but it's hard to sense them further out. There should be least two more, though."

Ryan puts his cleaning cloth away and looks around again.

"Is doing these Special Quests part of why there's a faster shutdown?" He looks at me. "Draining extra energy or something?"

"Considering that the total amounts to less than two million," I say. "And more than that is earned by Awakened killing monsters in less than half a day every day on Earth alone… probably not. My best guess is that the System is designed to operate at a certain level based on how much energy is left, then stop Dungeons and Level 1 Awakening Quests if it dips below a certain threshold. Those probably cost the most energy."

"Not further Awakening Quests?"

"I didn't make the System so can't say for sure," I shrug. "But I'm guessing people aren't inherently connected into the System and performing the connection costs a lot more energy than just boosting one's abilities."

"That makes sense," he says. "Once a zone's cleared up like this, you said you start growing plants?"

"There's something else to do first," I tell him. "It'll make things grow faster while I'm not here."

"What's that?"