It was a beautiful day today. The sun was high in the sky, a cool breeze blew through the trees, the sounds of nature filled this angelic riverside clearing, and near the water, a mostly dead Monica Furdel laid there, face down in the gravel, sopping wet, and occasionally twitching.

“Chk…”

Silk had, somehow, fared much better from the impromptu white water rafting experience, mostly due to the fox having bundled them tight against their chest the whole trip, cushioning them from the rocks they’d been dashed against repeatedly with her own body, even if it had been unintentional.

The spider poked and prodded at her cheek, each probe getting a muffled groan out of her, but not much more than that.

Well… she wasn’t dead, at least.

They considered their options on how to go about getting her up again. Which, as a Level 2 basic enemy with their summoner incapacitated, were rather limited.

The resourceful little spiderling set out to work, running lengths of webbing around one of her arms, and after a bit off effort they managed to turn her up on her side at least, getting her face out of the mud so she could actually breathe.

Taking two limbs, they gently pried one of her eyelids open, shaking her a bit to desperately try and get her to wake up.

Finally, they gave up their attempts at gentle ministrations, taking a few steps before slamming hard into her stomach, eliciting a loud grunt from her as she was forcibly knocked conscious, and a few inches back for good measure.

“Pbbbtthhbtthtbbththbth-”

She sputtered and spewed a lungful of river water, hacking as she struggled to sit herself upright, needing several minutes of messy coughing to even get her bearings back.

Silk sat nearby chittering proudly, presenting themselves as smugly as a spider could, waiting patiently for their well earned thanks.

Bonk.

Instead, they earned a staff smack right between the eyes, a very annoyed kitsune glaring at them.

“Guh… you could try and be at least a little gentler about waking the dead…”

The spider chittered angrily, skittering just out of bonking range, disparaged but mostly glad to see her up again already.

Monica rubbed at her eyes, taking in her surroundings as well as checking on how well she’d survived being churned into paste in the river.

They’d not ended up too far away… she could still make out the town on a tall hill some ways away. Definitely a few miles walk though if she wanted to go back that way. Which… with how it had gone, she wasn’t exactly in any hurry to head back that way. But good to know she at least had a landmark to work with still.

As for herself…

She grimaced as she popped her UI open again, her total HP of 15 now reduced to a single pip, one point of health flashing aggressively at her. She popped open and guzzled an entire bottle of one of her few health potions, the bar rapidly filling back up again to a full, bright green. Another notification also caught her attention as she healed up.

[New Skill: Swimming I]

- Unlock: Travel by water for a total of 1+ hours.

- Swimming speed and duration breath can be held are both increased.

- Increase is 10% per level, and duration is 2 minutes per level.

“...Very funny.”

Eventually satisfied that she was fine for the time being, she stood up, giving a pouting Silk a pat as she surveyed the immediate area, considering where they should head from here.

The area was… mostly unexciting. The same forest stretched each direction, the only things breaking up the endlessly repeating landscape being the town they’d come from, and the river leading from there to here.

So if she’d come from the direction of the town… it made sense to keep following the river the other way and keep heading further away.

Silk had been appeased enough to resume following along again, and the pair headed off further into the treeline, following the river as it rushed alongside them.

The forest, amazingly, seemed to be completely peaceful. She’d expected at least some amount of wild monsters to show up here and there, but for the most part the duo simply got to enjoy another peaceful nature walk.

They took their time, exploring the immediate area, continuing to dig through the local plant life, looking for anything worthwhile at all.

She knew she’d still be completely helpless if they did end up in another fight… with everything that had happened in the packed few hours since her first combat encounter, she still hadn’t expanded her toolbox to included anything other than her same old staring stun spell. They needed to find some way for her to at least defend herself if she got caught out in a fight she couldn’t just sprint out of…

“Hmm… Hey, Silk. Can you fight? Or just kinda… nibble?”

“Chk? Chkchk...”

The spider stopped in place, head tilted to the side, thinking for a moment. After a second, they turned around faced a nearby tree, and with a tiny flex of their mandibles, they shot a knot of webbing out rapidly which crashed into the tree trunk with enough force to wrap around it several times. They gave it a few tugs, showing it was plenty durable hard to shake free of.

Monica reached down to test the strength of the fibrous material, and while it certainly felt as tough as a length of rope, what was much more interesting to her was the consistency of it. It took her a good few minutes to get her hand unstuck from it, and a glance at her status page definitely showed it giving a hefty debuff to her AGI.

“Hmm… useful! Anything else?”

Silk thought for another moment, before biting down weakly on her ankle once more.

“That’s it, huh? Well… guess we’re set if we need to run from anything, at least?”

“Chk…”

Pat pat.

Two helpless, harmless idiots, lost in the woods.

She could almost laugh, if it hadn’t been so depressing.

They tried to not stand around and pout for too long, and quickly resumed their downriver exploration.

The path stayed mostly unobscured, giving them a good view of the river still even as they poked a ways into the treeline, looking for anything of note. Monica kept up her collection of random bits and bobs from the gathering nodes she found, fiddling with them every time they stopped, trying to make heads or tails of the crafting the game supposedly had, with not much to show for her efforts.

By the time another hour had passed, she’d resorted to just chewing on the random herbs she found, gnawing on some of each of them and trying to take notes on which of them tasted the best.

Not terribly useful, but it broke the tedium.

Silk joined in as well, chittering at her as they took their turn judging the edibility of random garbage they’d picked up off the ground in the woods.

The ground seemed to pass by faster and faster under them as they cycled through a myriad of ways to try and figure out anything the two of them were good at. Without much luck at it, they wandered down the path further and further, the sun getting lower and lower yet again.

Monica popped back to attention as the telltale blue glow of the Mushmoons started popping up, only now noticing they really had been gone from town for a long while now, and still hadn’t found anything in the way of a solution for her previous issues of unwanted fame…

She furrowed her brow, trying to figure out any way she could turn what she could do now into anything useful at all. Maybe if she could sneak back to town long enough to get into that skill shop, or if she could keep grinding out her resistance skills, or maybe she could craft some kind of damage item, or-

Her trail of considerations was cut short, and the trail of walkable ground was also cut short, the distracted fox walking directly off the path and plunging directly into the water in front of her.

Splashing and flailing and tossing and turning in surprise, she quickly found she was in only about knee deep water as she sat up. The river they’d been following had led here, opening up into a wide, clear pond that reflected the moonlight above beautifully. Mushmoons and flowers and lily pads wrapped around the water, giving it an almost sacred air, fireflies lazily dancing right above the water as the entire area practically glowed.

It was… breathtaking. Like a drawing from a book of fairy tales came to life.

But what drew her attention was what lay directly opposite her, across the water, tucked close up against the side of a tall cliff, a waterfall feeding down into the pond next to it.

A door.

A huge door.

Massive and stone-hewn, covered in moss that crawled over intricate carvings.

Before the totally harmless duo loomed something that no other player in the entire game had located in the entire time this game had been live.

By sheer, unimaginable luck, she’d been the first player to find the game’s first dungeon.