Chương 8: Surroundings

They kept moving after that, hunting for whatever else the grass had to offer, but the beasts out here didn't cluster the way Alex expected. Spread thin, scattered across the open ground in ones and twos rather than anything resembling a herd. There might have been larger groups somewhere beyond what they'd actually covered, but four people on foot could only scout so much ground before caution started outweighing curiosity.

They caught signs of something bigger too, paw prints pressed deep into softer patches of dirt, shaped like nothing native to America, probably some kind of jaguar judging by the spacing and the depth of the claws. Mia crouched over one set for a long moment, running her fingers along the edge without quite touching it, before standing back up and shaking her head. They never actually crossed paths with whatever had left them, and Alex counted that as a small mercy rather than a disappointment.

Tracking down something that left prints that deep with the mana reserves they had left felt like exactly the kind of decision that ended badly in stories like this. By the time they circled back toward camp, Liam had burned through every drop of mana he had, complaining about it in the same breath he used to ask if they could find one more thing worth fighting.

Jeremy and Mia weren't far behind him, both running low enough that another real fight would have meant relying entirely on steel and arrows already in the quiver. Alex hadn't touched his own reserves the entire trip after that first fight. Partly because his hammer hit hard enough on its own that mana felt like overkill against anything this side of another level 5, and partly because he wanted the rest of the group actually contributing instead of watching him handle everything alone.

If he went all in on every kill, most of the credit and most of the value would land squarely on him and nobody else. That wasn't the point of bringing people along in the first place. Still, some part of him chafed a little at holding back. He could feel it every time he let an arrow or a bolt land first, the itch to just finish things faster himself, the same restless pull he used to feel watching someone else take too long to rack weights at the gym. He didn't say anything about it.

Complaining about being told to slow down by his own restraint felt like the kind of thing that wouldn't land well with three people who'd just fought their first real battles ever.

"I've never seen a chimp look at me like it was taking notes," Liam muttered as they put distance between themselves and the treeline, glancing back over his shoulder more than once.

"They're probably smarter than the warthog was," Mia said.

"Doesn't mean they're smart enough to leave us alone."

"Comforting."

"Wasn't trying to be." Jeremy stayed quiet through most of it, scanning the open ground ahead with the same steady focus he'd had since the fight, like the day had finally taught him what to actually look for. Alex appreciated that more than he said out loud. One less person needing reassurance meant one less thing to manage on top of everything else.

Rather than push straight back to the gate, they swung wide in a loose circle around the entire perimeter of the camp, gathering whatever picture they could of the land surrounding them before calling it a day. What they found didn't sit easily together. West held the warthogs, open grass and scattered bush, same terrain they'd already walked through.

North belonged to a forest thick with chimpanzees, dense canopy and undergrowth crowding in fast enough that Alex didn't love the idea of anyone staying there too long without serious backup. He caught a few of them watching the group from high in the branches as they passed, dark shapes shifting between leaves, never quite descending but never looking away either.

East was hyena territory, packs running somewhere around five animals on average, though Mia swore she'd spotted one group that looked closer to twenty moving together in the distance, loping along the treeline in a loose, restless formation that made the hair on Alex's arms stand up even from that far away. None of them had wandered anywhere near the camp yet, but Alex wasn't about to assume that meant anything permanent.

South rounded things out with herds of zebra-striped animals, Identify confirming them as exactly that, zebras, despite how little sense that made out here, grazing in tight clusters across ground that turned noticeably rockier underfoot the further they walked. Every animal they'd tagged across all four directions sat somewhere around level 3 to 4, though size alone made it clear some of those fights would be a lot uglier than others regardless of the number attached.

In hindsight, stumbling onto the warthogs first had been a stroke of luck more than anything else. Every other direction looked like it carried more risk, whether from numbers or terrain or both. A pack of twenty hyenas would have buried them before Mia got a second arrow off, and whatever lived deep enough in that northern canopy to make Liam's hair stand on end probably wasn't something four exhausted, half-trained fighters wanted to meet on day one.

Alex made a mental note to bring that up specifically when he reported back, that whoever scouted next needed to go in already knowing which direction not to push too far into, and maybe with more than four people if the east or north ever became unavoidable. What actually bothered Alex, once he had time to sit with it, was how little any of these four zones had to do with each other. The dungeon sat in open savanna, dry grass and scattered bush.

A hundred yards north of that, the terrain flipped entirely into dense forest canopy, no gradual transition, no overlap, just an abrupt seam where one biome ended and another began, like someone had drawn a line on a map and built the world to match it exactly. The hyena territory ran grassier than the savanna ever did, and the zebra fields further south turned distinctly rockier underfoot, like someone had stitched four separate places together along a border that didn't care about matching anything up.

It wasn't that the zones looked nothing alike. If anything, that would have made more sense. The real problem was quieter than that. None of them had an actual ecosystem holding them together. No water source anywhere they'd walked, not a stream, not a pond, nothing, despite every animal out here clearly needing to drink something somewhere.

No obvious prey base for the hyenas to be hunting either, no smaller animals scattered around to justify a predator population that size, no rabbits, no rodents, nothing smaller than the things already on Alex's radar as potential threats. And yet every animal they'd tagged moved, ate, reacted, behaved like something genuinely alive in every sense that mattered, not like something propped up to look the part. Alex turned that thought over more than once on the walk back and came up with nothing solid.

Whatever was holding this place together clearly wasn't following any rules he understood, and for now, "system shenanigans" was the only label any of them had for it. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. They made it back without incident, no danger in any direction the whole walk home, and Alex let himself exhale a little once the wall came into view. Whatever else this place was hiding, at least today hadn't tested it.

One more thing settled in as they crossed back through the gate. Liam, Mia, and Jeremy had all leveled up to level 2 sometime during the trip, the notifications apparently landing quietly enough that nobody had mentioned it out loud until Liam checked his status near the gate and let out a small, tired whoop. Alex hadn't leveled, still sitting where he'd been since the wave the day before, but it meant the four of them now stood as the strongest fighting group in the entire camp by a comfortable margin.

That was a strange thing to sit with, knowing a single afternoon of scouting had already separated them from everyone else who'd stayed behind, most of whom hadn't had the chance to fight anything bigger than a python yet.

Walking through the wooden gate, the camp had the low, steady hum of people trying to make the best of an impossible situation, a few ordinary campfires and torches starting to flicker on as the light faded, nothing fancier than wood and flame since nobody here had points to waste lighting up a campsite with magic.

Some practiced skills in small clusters, testing range and control on nothing in particular, the occasional bolt of mage fire or stray arrow punctuating the quiet, mixed with the dull thud of weapons striking a makeshift target. Others worked through basic strength drills, the kind of motion Alex recognized instantly even out here, push-ups and lunges performed with the grim determination of people who finally understood why it might matter.

A few sat near the fire eating whatever plain food the system had been willing to provide, faces tired in a way that had nothing to do with how late it was getting. Underneath all of it, though, Alex could feel something else sitting in the air, a current of fear nobody was saying out loud. These were people who understood, on some level, that not everyone currently breathing in this camp was guaranteed to still be breathing sixty days from now.

That wasn't something he wanted to dwell on right now, not with how tired he already felt, so he gritted his teeth, pushed the thought aside, and went looking for his dad. The sun had dropped low by the time he found him, evening settling in fast now that the day's work was mostly done, the sky out here shifting through colors Alex still hadn't quite gotten used to, a deeper orange than he remembered home ever producing.

Walking that much ground had taken a real toll on the group, and Mia, Liam, and Jeremy all peeled off toward their tents the second they were back inside the wall, clearly running on fumes, mumbling something about food and sleep before disappearing into their respective tents. Alex felt the same exhaustion pulling at his own legs, a deep, bone-level tired that no amount of adrenaline from the day could fully cover anymore. But this couldn't wait for morning.

He found his dad sitting just inside his tent, going over something with Mom in low, quiet tones. Alex stepped in and got straight to it, starting with the warthogs.

"Their eyes weren't red," he said.

"Not like the ones from the dungeon. Nowhere close." That got his dad's full attention.

"You're sure?"

"Positive. I had a good look at both kinds yesterday and today. Whatever's coming out of that portal is built different from what's just living out here naturally. Matches what the guide told me back in the pre-tutorial room, actually, there's a real difference between dungeon-spawned monsters and whatever counts as normal wildlife in a place like this." He laid out the rest of it in order. The warthogs to the west, where they'd fought.

The chimps crowding the northern treeline, thick enough in number that he didn't want anyone going in light. The hyenas east, mostly small packs but at least one group that looked closer to twenty. The zebras south, calmer than the rest but still not something to walk up on carelessly.

He gave his dad the levels too, three to four across the board, and didn't hold back his own read on the situation, that today's fight had felt too easy measured against what the tutorial knowledge said this was supposed to cost people. His dad listened without interrupting, the same focused stillness Alex remembered from years of watching him handle family arguments before anyone else even noticed they'd started.

"None of what you found sounds like an outpost," his dad said once Alex finished.

"Wild monsters with normal eyes, scattered groups, no structure to any of it. If the system's talking about monster outposts and human outposts specifically, that tells me there's something more organized still out there we haven't found yet. Could be close. Could be a lot further out than a one-mile scouting loop is ever going to catch."

"That's what I figured too. We didn't see anything that looked built. No walls, no camps, nothing like what we've got here."

"Then there's probably a human settlement somewhere nearby we haven't run into yet either. Maybe more than one." His dad rubbed a hand over his face, the exhaustion finally showing through for a second.

"We'll need eyes on that eventually. Not yet, though." Alex nodded, then asked the question he'd been holding onto since they'd walked past it that afternoon.

"What about the dungeon? Anyone gone near it?"

"No, and nobody's going to for now." His dad's voice firmed up immediately, no hesitation in it at all.

"We don't know what's down there. Sending anyone in before we understand the risk would be asking for casualties we can't afford yet, and I'm not willing to gamble lives on a guess."

"We need to get stronger, though. You said it yourself. If the dungeon's the fastest way to do that-""It's also the fastest way to lose people permanently." His dad's eyes didn't waver.

"I know you want to push, Alex. I know that's just how you're built. But my priority right now is keeping everyone alive long enough to get stronger the safe way first. Leading people into somewhere we don't understand isn't strength, it's recklessness, and recklessness gets people killed before they ever get the chance to grow into something better." Alex didn't argue the point out loud, mostly because some part of him knew his dad wasn't entirely wrong.

But it didn't sit right either, and he didn't bother pretending otherwise to himself, even if he kept it off his face for now. His dad had always been stubborn about playing things safe when it came to the people he was responsible for, and arguing with that tonight wasn't going to accomplish anything beyond making them both more tired than they already were.

"Get some sleep," his dad said, softer now.

"We'll figure out the dungeon eventually. Just not tonight, and not until we know more." Alex let it go, at least out loud. He had no intention of forcing the issue with his dad about exploring the dungeon himself, not tonight, but he also knew, quietly, that he wasn't going to wait forever either. Sooner or later, with or without permission, he'd find a way to see what was actually down there. Before Alex left, his dad mentioned one more thing.

They'd be sending out another scouting trip in a couple of days, a wider radius this time, looking specifically for any sign of an actual outpost rather than just mapping wildlife. Until then, the plan was simple: rest, train, get strong enough that whenever the next wave hit, or whatever waited at the bottom of that dungeon eventually got explored, the camp would actually be ready for it. Today had only been day one.

In three or four more days, the next wave would come, and Alex had no intention of finding out the hard way whether they were actually ready for it.