Jack carefully made his way around the coconut tree, avoiding getting one of the fruits dropped on his head and, annoyed to no end, watched as Rash purposefully stepped under the coconuts before he sidestepped the falling fruit, only for it to crash into the coconut he was holding in his hands. A moment later he handed one of the two cracked open fruits to Jack, who took the thing grudgingly and started to slurp the sweet juices out of the shell.

“Do you, *sluuurp*, do you have to keep doing that?”

“Why not? It’s fun and tastes delicious, stop complaining about it.”

Jack glared at his companion. “It’s also extremely loud and this is the sixth coconut I have eaten in 2 hours!”

This couldn’t be healthy for his stomach and he did not want to get diarrhea out in the wilds, absolutely not!

Rash just shrugged and continued walking through the forest of murderous coconut trees and weird red tropic flowers. “Nobody says that you have to eat the stuff I hand to you.”

“It would be a waste not to, so stop!”

Why did he even have to argue about that?

Jack sighed deeply and stopped bothering about it.

After organizing their supplies and a lot of arguing with Ronald the two of them had taken off towards the volcano around noon. Their pace had been and still was pretty casual since they had to watch out for the damn coconuts the whole time and one wrong step could mean a cracked skull. 

Near the village the damn trees weren’t that much of a problem as out here in unknown lands. They regularly patrolled the surroundings to harvest the coconuts and in the region near the portal, birch trees seemed to slowly overtake the forest.

The problem with the coconut trees was that they could do nothing besides walking and it was boring as hell. That boredom was what led to Rash harvesting coconuts in his unique way to occupy himself and tell pretty much every other living being in the forest their location. Knowing that there lived dangerous gigantic sea gulls on this island somewhere, this was not helpful and had Jack constantly on edge.

Weirdly enough, despite all the noise Rash was making, they hadn’t come across many animals in the 6 hours they had been hiking, barely any at all to be honest. The absence of life was strange and definitely something he promised to ask the spirit about. Clearly there had been any biodiversity on this island before the portal opened, but it didn’t make sense that through thousands of years of evolution only 8 or 9 different forms of life had come to be.

Looking at the setting sun, Jack let out another sigh. Why was he even thinking about the things he had learned in biology right now anyway?

“Let’s make a camp for the night next to or near the next stream we come across.” He proposed to Rash and absentmindedly threw the empty coconut away.

“Eh, sure.”

Like that they continued in silence for another hour until they came across a small waterway and thankfully Rash did not continue his coconut harvest.

The rest of the evening went by without much trouble. They prepared their tent, ate some of their dried and smoked meat and cooked out a bit of water before Jack went to bed. He couldn’t help himself but think about biology stuff since earlier, hence the cooking to kill any dangerous bacteria.

Rash took the first watch and even volunteered to stay on watch longer, because, to quote him, a kiddo needed some sleep. Jack had nearly complained about it, but after some careful consideration decided that he wouldn’t say no to having more sleep. Maybe Rash wouldn’t be so energetic if he was tired, which was definitely a plus.

Sadly, it turned out that that was not the case the next morning. Rash might have been a bit grumpy after he woke up and while they packed their stuff, but once they were on the walk again all of the energy came back. Needless to say, Jack had to drink a lot of coconut milk, though after the second one he stopped bothering about the flesh. It was a waste, but so what?

As far as he was aware there was no Afrika anymore, so he didn’t have to care about African children not smiling if he didn’t eat up.

Rash handed him another coconut. “So, what is it you are doing in the village? I heard you don’t have to gather as much as the others and can skip some of the other tasks too.”

Jack took the fruit and suppressed a gag when he smelled the sweet scent. “I experiment with magic and try to create spells to help the others. Please stop giving me coconuts.”

“Oh? So, can you do the same thing the murder pots do?”

He nodded, equally proud and embarrassed. “Somewhat, yes. I just can’t achieve the same power, though my magic missiles are still painful and dangerous.”

Rash punched his shoulder with a grin. “Damn, that’s impressive kiddo! Didn’t know you were this useful.”

“Oi!!” Jack glared at him, but Rash just laughed and sidestepped a coconut. Goodness how he hated these trees.

Some time later they came across the first significant animal since they had left the village. They had been hearing a very familiar crashing sound and before Jack could do anything, Rash had started off in the direction of the sound to investigate.

What greeted them was a gigantic turtle, happily munching on some kind of salad. The animal had seemingly wandered under one of the trees without care and, more importantly, shrugged off all the coconuts as if they were nothing. There wasn’t a single mark on the turtle's shell, which was a testimony to the thing’s durability.

Jack just barely managed to stop Rash from getting close to the animal and they proceeded to watch it eat for a few minutes. He was not comfortable in his ability to hurt the turtle and would rather not make it angry.

After that nothing else of interest happened until the late afternoon when the forest finally opened up, revealing a long rocky rise that continued for a few kilometers before the incline of the volcano got steep enough for it to be difficult to get any higher without climbing.

Jack scanned the area in front of him, taking note of the silvery grass that seemed to be more dominant here than in the forest and the lack of weird looking massive flowers that could explode him. 

Thoughts about the spirit betraying him and this actually being a trap entered his mind, but he dismissed it immediately. He didn’t think the spirit was the kind of person or being that would do anything like that and the flowers might be rare. There was no reason to come to rushed conclusions here.

Rash stepped further outside of the tree line and stretched his legs. “Whew, finally we are close, I really thought we would get here faster.”

Jack nodded in agreement and put down his backpack to get the crude map he had drawn. He had thought they would get to the volcano in less than half a day, but it had taken them more than double that time. If he was honest, it had been quite frustrating to walk towards the volcano for hours only for it to appear the same distance away as before.

Having found the wooden blank he had drawn on he started to look for a few key features of the area, like a noticeable plateau on the mountain, to orient himself. “Alright, the cave I need to go to is thankfully not that high up.”

Jack pointed at an overhang that was on the side of the massive mountain. “You see that there? It should be somewhere in that direction, but closer to us.”

Rash grabbed his spear and grinned. “Allright, let’s go. Hopefully this is going to be more exciting than the trip through the forest!”

Jack hoped that wouldn’t be the case as he followed his companion. He would be totally fine without anything happening.

The two walked on with refreshed vigor and in Jack’s case, a lot more wariness. Now that he didn’t have to look out for coconuts he checked the area around them with his mana sense every few minutes and kept an eye on the sky. He really didn’t want to get surprised by anything.

There wasn’t really anything to worry about though. The sky was practically empty, safe for the occasional dark dot that was too far away to be of any danger. The incline itself didn’t prove to be much different than that either, being practically void of life.

About half way up, Jack turned around and took in the view. The island was far larger than he had first thought and there was another mountain in the other direction of the village, though it was even farther away than the volcano. The area between the volcano and the middle mountain near the village was mostly forest that then opened up into plains some distance away from the middle mountain.

What was more important to him though, was what he saw in the direction they were walking in, that had been hidden before. There was a trench there, though he couldn’t see the bottom of it, and it was likely connected to the cave they were searching for. What concerned him though, was that the air was flimmering above the trench as if it was hotter than the surrounding air and this being a volcano opened possibilities he didn’t like.

The two of them made their way over to the large furrow and took a good look inside. The thing led indeed to the cave, which was also the origin of the hot air. The trench itself was populated by a few weird flowers, one kind looking a bit like a tree with light blue blossoms instead of leaves. The other kind had a bulbous ring at the base and then rose into the air a few meters like some kind of pyramidical obelisk.

Rash grunted in awe. “Well, you don’t see things like that every day!”

Jack, though, picked up a loose stone and threw it at one of the bulbous obelisk flowers only for the thing to light up in a gas explosion. Why was this plant a thing?!

“Holy shit!” Rash burst out.

Jack pointed at the flower that hadn’t been harmed by the explosion in the slightest. “You don’t see things like this!”

“What was that?!”

He could only sigh. “A flower that explodes if you touch it. Please don’t go near them.”

Rash looked at him puzzled. “How did you know this?”

“I didn’t, I was just wary.” Jack lied, trying to be as convincing as possible.

Rash just waved him away and picked up a stone himself. “Yeah, yeah. That’s why you aren’t surprised in the slightest. I don’t care though, because this is so cool!” 

A second flower lit up and the guy picked up a second stone. Jack saw this, knowing exactly what would be happening for the next few minutes and had to admit this one time, it was kinda cool. He picked up a stone and threw it, copying Rash.