[Second Zone; Day 7.]

POV Swap – Rin

This place is hell! Literally everything seems to have some kind of lethal poison!

It had taken Rin an entire week and hundreds of attempts to make it though the earlier hell zone. When she'd finally made it there was an entirely new challenge, find some edible food.

Considering how difficult it was to figure out where the exit, then figure out how to lure the basilisk away from its nest. An apparently near impossible task… she had been expecting, well something else. At least a few days break or something.

Instead, she got an empty village surround by a forest. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was no edible food anywhere nearby.

Literally, everything in the forest seems to have some kind of lethal poison.

At first, she'd thought that she was unlucky in choosing those berries, or that animal. Reloaded back into the village... however, as time went on Rin realized there wasn't anything remotely edible in the entire forest. Absolutely nothing.

Eventually, she had to load back into the earlier area.

Then attempt to find a way to, not only repeat the task of luring the basilisk away, but also bring as much food from that cold metal box as possible with her into this horrible place.

The food wasn’t particularly good and it bothered her stomach whenever she ate it. But, it was edible!

Considering how difficult it is to lure a basilisk away whilst carrying a horse-loads worth of food, Rin had serious doubts as to the sanity of whoever brought her to this miserable place.

Still, Rin did eventually manage to bring enough food in the village to do reasonable amount of exploring of the surround areas.

[Second Zone, Day 14]

It wasn’t until about a week had past that something interrupted her routine, or more accurately someone.

Rin nearly jumped out her skin from surprise when she heard somebody say “Hello…” to her.

It wasn’t that she is easily frightened, but she already finished assessing her surrounding and found nobody around her. Suddenly discovering a extremely shy looking 16-17 year old boy surprised her.

Rin decided to interrogate him, maybe he had answers about this place, “Who are you?”

The boy looked slightly flustered but answered all the same, “I’m Tobias, uhh… nice to meet you…?”

Rin walked toward him and decided to ignore his greeting. Continuing to attempt to probe out useful information, “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

“Errr… I assume the same as you? Taken… then sent into that hell-like dungeon?” Tobias answered after a few seconds with a perplexed look on his face.

‘He just came from that hellish area?’ Rin paused at that thought calming down. Before tensing up, ‘How powerful is he to survive that place? Is that even possible?’

Rin hadn’t even considered anyone else surviving that place before now. It wasn’t a matter of arrogance, but intelligence. Simply the traps in the first hallway should have killed anyone else, nevermind the basilisk or countless other monsters in the second part of the area.

She'd died countless times.

Rin stared at Tobias more carefully assessing his worth. He didn’t look particular physically powerful, he didn’t have the arrogance of the magically talented. In fact, the only even remotely unique about him would be his gold snakelike eyes.

Finally decided to speak after several long seconds of silence, “You don’t know anything remotely useful do you?”

Tobias seemed to be slightly offended, “I know plenty of useful things!”

“About how we got here? How to leave?” Rin clarified somewhat disappointed that he wasn’t the source of information she had hoped he was. Tobias didn’t even bother responding only gazed down pitifully.

“I don’t suppose you can tell me your name?” Tobias questioned after he stopped moping.

Briefly consider whether to respond, but eventually muttered, “Rin…”

[Roughly an hour earlier]

POV Swap - Tobias

Calming down from the adrenaline rush of escaping the basilisk.

If the baby basilisk had instead decided to petrify me instead of calling for its parent, I would be dead right now. That's probably the closest I’ve been to death in my life. 

Finally catching my breath, I decided to examine the screen I'd ignored earlier in favor of escaping.

<Basilisk’s Inheritance; Level 1, 1%– Basic stats strengthened, improved regenerative ability, translucent scales in process of developing, Secondary ability added Petrifying Eyes & Basilisk’s blood>

<Petrifying Eyes; Permanently petrify a creature in sight turning them to stone. Cooldown: 7 days>

<Basilisk’s blood: Your blood can cure a petrified creature.>

Confirming that I inherited the manual, I relaxed finally. Without an increased regenerative ability, or a poison resistance ability, the 2^nd hell difficulty zone would be near impossible to survive.

Everything in the Second Zone is either extremely poisonous (deadly to bite), venomous (deadly to let bite you), or some combination of the two. Fortunately, the increased regenerative ability of the basilisk inheritance should allow me to survive the normally lethal poisons, at least until I can build up a proper resistance.

Technically speaking, there are powerful monsters in the 2^nd zone with inheritance manual that specifically resist all poisons… but these manuals have less useful abilities. Meaning they will be far less useful in the future zones and they would be far more difficult to kill than that basilisk’s offspring.

Additionally, since I received an inheritance early all none of my purified mana will be wasted. All of it will be invested into the manual building up a massive advantage for the future. As time passes, the inheritance will automatically level as its experience percentage will increase at a constant rate according to the amount of purified mana inside the inheritor.

Thus... the longer I survive, the more powerful I'll become. Let's not forget to mention that, due to the basilisk’s regeneration power, I am now theoretically immortal (the not dying of old age kind of immortality).

The 2^nd zone begins in a small empty village surround by an overgrown forest. After surviving a year in the zone a beacon of light should appear in the sky guiding to the teleport beacon to the next zone. Even then it might be best to stay on this zone for a while to build up our strength.

I only spent about two weeks in the tutorial dungeon, meaning if I wait around Rin should head back here. Additionally, if I remember correctly Stanley should come out of the dungeon tomorrow.

After waiting around for about an hour. I finally noticed Rin walking into the village.

Wow… I never really thought much about it before now, but Rin is really cute. She has beautiful dark red-hair, jewel-like dark brown eyes, and is wearing something akin to a hunting uniform.

Overall, an extremely cute looking 14-year old.

I'm slightly surprised, despite going through the tutorial she still somehow still looked clean and pretty.

Watching as Rin's short red-hair flowed slightly in the wind and she glanced her attentive dark brown eyes examining the surrounding.

I wave in her direction, but she glanced in my direction before ignoring me and continuing onward.

Errr… Okay, that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting…

Taking some time to working up some courage, I eventually managed to spit out, “Hello…”

Rin jumped back quickly, likely an instinctual reaction to surprise from dodging countless traps in the 1st zone. Rin demanded in an intimidating tone, “Who are you!”

“I’m Tobias” I reflexively replied slightly flustered at the interrogatory tone. I quickly realized that my ability had prevented her noticing me earlier and attempted to be friendly, “Err… Nice to meet you?”

An attempt that failed spectacularly as she continued, “What are you doing here? How did you get here?” Rin had an extremely scary look in her eye as she moved toward me.

Back up slightly, I started to regret talking to her. I know I wrote that Rin was slightly imitating in the novel… but, seriously, Rin is actually genuinely scary despite how cute her appearance is.

How can a fourteen year old be so scary?

Then, I realized.

Rin doesn’t know me?

This the first time she's meeting me?

Uh... wow, I'd sorta figured an earlier version of me would've dealt with this problem already, time travel can sometimes be a convenient excuse to put off doing something… Unfortunately, it doesn’t comfort me that future versions of me won’t have to deal with this problem… It sucks to be that earlier version of me.

“Errr…” I mumbled as my brain froze, realizing Rin was still staring at me and had undoubtedly asked me a question. What did she ask again? Something about how I got here? That's probably the question Rin would ask…

Thus, I cautiously answered, “I assume like you? Taken… then sent to that hell-like dungeon?”

Rin stopped walking toward me and seemingly lost in thought. Before speaking up voice completely monotone in complete contrast to earlier, “You don’t know anything remotely useful do you?”

‘What? I know way more than you!’ Slightly offended I instinctively reasoned with her, “I know plenty of useful things!”

Rin seemed to be slightly amused with my reaction. Then, her expression turned to disappointment, like she had just discovered that she was getting coal for Christmas. Still Rin clarified her question with very little hope, “About how we got here? How to leave?”

I didn’t have the heart to answer her… I could probably… but, I couldn’t possibly explain having those answers. They weren’t even questions I wanted to think about… Thus, I elected not to answer and decided that the ground suddenly seemed interesting.

I can't exactly explain to her there was probably hundreds of thousands of people transported from various universes by a crippled system, barely running on fumes, set up by the now (mostly) dead inhabitants of this universe. Nor can I explain that this universe is slowly heading towards destruction caused by corrupted monstrosities that we are going to (eventually) be forced to fight if we want to survive.

Also… I hadn’t even completely finish writing the novel. I wouldn’t even know if we could leave, nevermind how we could do it.

Ending my train of thought, I realized she hadn’t told me her name.

I mean I already knew it... but, calling her Rin without being told would be extremely suspicious. Deciding to ask properly I questioned, “I don’t suppose you can tell me your name?”

Rin seemed surprised and suddenly started acting slightly shy before eventually muttering, “Rin…”

Attempting to ignore how adorable Rin was when she was shy, instead of intimating, I decided to start inquiring about the information she had on the 2^nd zone.

POV Swap- Rin

[Several hours later…]

Rin wasn’t exactly sure what to think of Tobias. He was certainly intelligent. She had gathered that much from his ramblings and Tobias had to have had some redeeming features, but currently she simply found him annoying. Tobias was constantly talking to her like an old friend, and she didn’t know when he suddenly started to become infuriatingly friendly… Does he have an off rune or something?

Granted some of his ramblings were actually contained useful information, when they wasn’t about impractical things such as how cute she looked or random mentions of his past before this place.

Although annoying, his ramblings let Rin realize, if he wasn’t lying, Tobias was from entirely different universe than her. She realized it as Tobias had began to mention how strange mana and monsters are.

Tobias distinctively mentioned how monster and mana didn’t even exist on his world. She couldn’t even begin to fathom life without mana and monsters. Nor the amount of mana that might be required for a spell to bring someone from another universe.

Another infuriating thing Rin has learned from their conversations over the past few hours, is that Tobias despite being so talkative, refuses to talk about his abilities. Everything time she's brought it up, Tobias refused to talk about it and attempts to shift the conversation to avoid topics relating to his abilities. Tobias might seem like an open book from first glance, but he guarded his actual secrets zealously.

Eventually, when he was getting hungry (she assumes) Tobias mentioned that he believed he could survive the poisons of the animals and plants in the forest (despite her insistence that he cannot). When Tobias insisted that he try, Rin decided to save. She didn’t want to have to deal with repeating the last several hours again.

Rin doesn’t really know whether it's stupidity or confidence that has led him to believe he can survive the (obviously) deadly poison. Despite deciding that it likely is stupidity, she would let Tobias try and would simply reload and stop him from eating if he actually died.

This way Rin discovers more about his capabilities, even if he dies in the process. Also, it provides a possible chance of conserving some of her food. The food left wouldn’t last more than a few days with two people eating it.

Much to Rin’s amusement, Tobias didn’t die from the poison. That didn’t prevent him from regretting his idiotic decision of eating the poisonous berry though.

Whilst Rin had died within several minutes of eating the berries in the forest, Tobias was still going strong several hours later. An impressive feat considering the circumstances.

Although, Tobias seemed to wish he was dead and was mumbling about the pain the entire time and complained for several hours afterward.

Rin briefly considering loading back and preventing him from eating the berry, but decided against it. Not only was this undertaking informative about Tobias’ abilities, it should teach Tobias not to disregard her opinion and information so casually in the future.

POV Swap- Tobias

Honestly, I have never been in so much pain in my life. The Redeemer’s process was only a paper cut (although it was a very painful paper cut) when compared to the last few hours. When I planning to try out the poison, I was expecting discomfort not agonizing pain. I could have braved through it if it was simply a few minutes of pain (similar to the mutation process), but it took hours for the poison to wear off.

I absolutely shouldn’t have tried the poison, I was trying to save some food and thought my regenerative ability should be strong enough to survive the poison at this point. It was, but I almost wish it wasn’t as several long hours of inhuman amounts of pain were unbearable.

In hindsight, while lying in the floor in pain, I realized I probably should have just poured a tiny amount of berry’s juice into some water to slowly adapt my body to the poison. Of course, I only had this revelation after eating that bloody berry.

The worst bit was Rin wasn’t even slightly sympathetic, I swear I saw even saw Rin smirking whilst lying on the ground in pain.

I swore to myself then, I'll not attempt to eat an entire berry again.

At least, not until I've improved my inheritance manual’s by several levels. Hopefully, in the future, ingesting small amounts of the poison with my water will shorten the duration of, or completely prevent, any pain. I guess I’ll collect some berries for that before I sleep tonight.

The most unfortunate thing is that I will have to repeat the process of building immunity with various poisons in the forest over the coming months. Most people don’t seem to realize this, but building up immunity to the poison of a specific plant or animal only makes you immune to the poison of that plant/animal. Your body doesn’t magically make you immune to the poison of another type because you have suffered to build immunity to one type. Although, some of the poisons in the forest are the same even if from different sources.

Despite that Rin’s lack of sympathy, I think she is beginning to warm up to me. A nice change from the story where Rin was entirely a loner, except for some rare occasions when Rin decided that others were needed for whatever reason.

When it started getting dark, I decided that it seemed like a decent time to get a decent night’s sleep. I’m going to be busy dealing with Stanley tomorrow.