Inside of a birch forest, 7 figures carrying large and fully packed hiking bags were fighting their way through the relatively young undergrowth. All of them appeared to be human-like ravens, though the state of how far removed from a human they were varied.

The most striking of them however, was the figure leading the others, breaking away from the black color pattern. Instead the feathers covering his body were silvery and had a tendency of reflecting the afternoon sun, creating a sparkling display of colored light whenever he stepped out of the shadows.

Trevor, the silver raven-kin, hacked away a random blackberry vine in his path with his mostly straight walking stick. After he and his 6 wives had departed Sacra weeks ago he had picked it up at some point, though it wasn’t really a conscious decision. Picking up random good looking sticks while hiking was basically mandatory.

That reminded him, he and his wives had yet to officially marry each other, which was one of the reasons they had left Sacra in the first place, because, for some unfathomable reason, the church and Meran, the god himself, had taken offense at the notion of polygamy to the point of publicly hunting them.

The second reason they left, a system quest, was also the one that gave their family a destination of where to go. The system had given him visions of animals, plants and even humans going absolutely crazy for an unknown reason, at least he didn’t know why. Whether the same could be said about the system was questionable in his opinion.

Anyway, the going crazy part in and of itself wasn’t as much of a problem as what followed afterwards. Those that were afflicted by this weird phenomenon would go on a rampage, killing everything that was unfortunate enough to enter their sight and the longer they stayed alive, the stronger and larger they became.

Now, Trevor didn’t know how fast they grew or how often this problem occurred, but the system gave him a quest to travel to a specific location where he was meant to found an organization that trained and supported fighters to apprehend the ‘monsters’, as the system referred to the problems. 

That the system informed him about this and even wanted him to take action led Trevor to believe the whole thing had a chance to escalate into humanity's extinction if left unchecked, so he didn’t have anything against starting to work against it. He and his wives didn’t have anything else to do either, which meant that they readily accepted this new task of theirs.

Thankfully there was no need to be gloomy yet, since the whole extinction scenario was a worst case prediction of him.

“Look! This time it’s a purple light.” Josephine cawed smugly. “Another point for me!”

The 5 other girls groaned in defeat. They were playing a guessing game and whoever predicted the next color of one of the non-white spots reflected by Trevor’s feathers got a point. To win a round one had to collect 20 points.

This was the fourth round of the day already and they had been playing for a good 2 weeks now. Hiking could get really boring and pretty much anything was better than focusing on your own exhaustion so Trevor didn’t begrudge them for the monotony. He was also secretly preening at all the attention, but if he ever said that out loud he wouldn’t hear the end of all the teasing.

Trevor hadn’t always been proud of his looks, neither had he always been a raven-kin for that matter. It had all changed half a year ago when Argul Agren, also known as the Silver Witch, suddenly arrived at his village and saved him during the mana initiation, transforming him into what he was now. Not even the random teleportation incident a few months prior had been that life-changing.

The first month after the initiation had honestly been very awkward, though he had thankfully been able to distract himself with the logistic work he did for the army. Eating with a beak instead of a human mouth had been an interesting experience, to say the least. The same was true for having to care for his plumage. The beak was actually quite helpful for the latter.

The weirdest was not how his body had changed however. No, how his changed body had subsequently changed him was by far the worst and he wasn’t the only one with this problem. His new family was among other things a product of their new bodies. Having multiple wives didn’t feel weird to him for example, even if it should. He didn’t believe that the reason monogamy had been the most prevalent throughout human history was only due to culture.

For the girls on the other hand, he was the most gorgeous man they had ever seen and they didn’t have a problem with Trevor having more than one partner. There was no jealousy whatsoever between them, though they united their jealousy against women not part of his harem yet, which was arguably worse. It was probably a good thing that he wasn’t interested in other raven-kin or humans besides his wifes.

Trevor took a look at the mental minimap the system had given him access to and corrected their course a bit so that they wouldn’t walk straight into a trap. There were a lot of them, traps, and while the majority of them weren’t functional anymore, he was still thankful that the system had marked them for him.

The group continued for about half an hour before they came across a patch of sandier ground, making it relatively more free of plants compared to the rest of the forest and took a break.

Trevor would have preferred to continue since they had nearly arrived at their destination, only about 2 hours or so more of walking, but for the same reason taking one more break wasn’t a problem. They would arrive today either way and as long as they did so before dusk all was fine.

“Hey shiny, how far do we have to go still?” Dorothea asked and handed him a half full bottle of tea. She and Juliet were the only ones in their group who didn’t have a beak.

Trevor took the bottle and made a vague gesture with his free hand. “We still have about 10 km left, so we should arrive in the late afternoon.” Where exactly they would arrive, none of them knew.

Dorothea looked relieved at that. “That’s good, because we don’t have much left to drink and there aren’t exactly a lot of streams in this forest.”

Trevor nodded in agreement, not mentioning that it would remain an issue if their destination didn’t have any freshwater.

A while later they continued their hike in silence, anticipation slowly building up in all of them. There had to be something where they were going, either people, a strategic location or maybe even both, or the system wouldn’t send them there.

After another hour or so the group came across something new, a kind of silver grass that was oddly similar in shade to Trevor’s feathers. Using the skill [identify] they discovered that the system called it ‘moongrass’, but sadly it didn’t tell them anything more beyond what they could observe.

The further they traveled and the closer they came to their goal, the more often the group came across the silver grass. Strangely, the plant never really grew in places other plants would grow in and more often than not it crowded the sandy patches where nothing else had been able to survive until now. Beyond that though, the moongrass quickly lost its novelty and turned into just another plant amongst many.

 In the end, it took the group until dusk to arrive at their destination. The first sign that their journey was finally over was the sound of people talking to each other. Shortly afterwards Trevor and his wives stepped out of the forest into an artificial clearing, though most of it was hidden behind a palisade made of what looked like some kind of palm tree to Trevor and he idly wondered where those trees came from.

Before finding out about that however it was best to announce their presence and avoid a tricky situation or hostile reaction. This wasn’t old earth anymore after all and going by their effort put into keeping people out of whatever was behind the palisade, they probably didn’t want people to just saunter in.

“Hello!” Trevor shouted, not really knowing how to make first contact.

His wives chuckled for some reason and Bella, the most dominant of them rolled her eyes. “We are travelers coming from beyond the forest and searching for shelter for the night.”

Trevor scratched his facial feathers and looked away. Maybe giving a bit of information was better than simply saying ‘hello’.

Whatever conversations had been going on behind the wall immediately stopped. The people here probably didn’t expect visitors, seeing as they were in the middle of nowhere, Trevor thought.

Half a minute of silence layer the top of a wooden spear and a reptilian snout peeked over the palisade. The man, at least Trevor thought it was a man he wasn’t an expert in lizard genders, eyed them for a moment.

“Halt!” The man shouted, which earned him a snicker from behind the wall.

“Oh man, you are really getting into that guard role of yours, eh?”

The man looked annoyed at the source of the second voice and hissed something at it. Trevor had to give it to the guy, his hisses were top notch, even snakes would be proud of that.

The guard turned back to the group and cleared his throat audibly. “Ahem. Who are you and what is the purpose of your visit?”

“My name is Trevor Brown and the others are my-“ He hesitated for a moment, remembering how people had reacted the last time. “The other 6 are my wives.”

A whistle sounded out from behind the palisade. “Wow, would you look at that?! Guy has to have some serious rizz!”

The guard's eye twitched in irritation and there was the sound of someone getting slapped, followed by a grunt of pain, before his focus returned to Trevor. 

“So, what business do you have here?”

This time Bella answered the guard, stepping next to Trevor and wriggling her arm around his hip. “Hubbi got a quest that told us to go here.”

Trevor could swear, were it not for her beak then that woman would smile teasingly at him. He hated it when they called him that. It always made him cringe in his mind.

Bella had to answer a few more questions regarding the quest before this awkward first contact was over and the guard told them to stay where they were for a moment. 

He then left the safety of the palisade and the group saw his whole figure for the first time. All of the visible skin of the guard was covered by greenish scales and he was wearing worn out short clothes that seemed entirely misplaced in the mild fall weather. The guard also had a tail, completing the look of a humanoid lizard. What struck Trevor the most however, was that he seemed to be completely relaxed even though he was facing 7 strangers alone, not that Trevor had any intention of attacking him.

“Can you show me that quest of yours?”

Trevor nodded and concentrated on the intent of sharing the quest with the guard. To his and his wives surprise a screen actually appeared in the air before him and not just in their minds like it usually did.

[The system has gifted you knowledge about the existence of monsters and their potential threat to all life. You are now to travel to an to you unknown (red mark) location and found an organization with the sole purpose of hunting monsters to prevent them from growing into disasters.

For the duration of the quest you have access to a map in your mind that is actively tracking your location.]

[Update: You have arrived at your destination and made peaceful contact with the natives. Meet with the village head and share your knowledge about monsters with him!

Reward: Early access to the Sapient Support System (SSS) and all subsystems for you and the natives.]

The guard read everything carefully before he looked back up at Trevor. “Well, it looks like you all have been telling the truth, even though I wish you hadn’t. We have enough problems as is.”

He let out a sigh and shook his head. “I would really like to chat with you about how things are in the west, but if we want to get this all over with before dinner then we gotta hurry and I’m not going to miss food.”

The guard smiled at all of them and offered a handshake which Trevor hesitantly accepted . “Anyways, welcome to Doombluff everyone. We don’t have to offer much yet, but you haven’t seen anything yet either.” There was an amused twinkle in his eyes.

Without giving the group a chance to answer he then proceeded to relieve all seven of them of their backpacks and much to Trevor’s astonishment, carried them without much effort.

After reading the quest the guard appeared to be in quite the hurry, so he quickly let the group inside the palisade. If Trevor had been astonished before, then he was floored now that he laid eyes on the portal.

The guard grinned at the group, exposing a row of sharp teeth and marched towards the rip in space. “C’mon, you can stare at it on the other side all you want!”

---

[I’m just going to let that sit here, completely out of context, to honor the weeks(?) of random bullshit going through my mind]

 

I’m sitting here in this boring room

Telling to myself in this annoying as hell voice “Did you know?” not answering soon

I’d like to change my point of view 

So now I’m pretending to be you

But it doesn’t really help me

And I wonder:

I wonder why

I wonder how

Depression is like milking dry cows

Cause nothing ever happens
And I wonder…

---