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Flickering torches stood in their sconces on the walls, and the dirt of the arena floor was scuffed and pitted where we had fought the ogre previously.

It was as if the floor falling from under us and the ensuing void had been but a figment of my imagination.

The quest reward being all question marks wasn’t helpful, but I did sense a change and had been told that the feeling of it was my reward itself.

—The feeling of fire.

I felt it in the flickering orange and red hues of the torches, a warmth that longed to spread and consume. It prickled at my senses as a new sense that was hard to describe.

It was like how you could sense where your limbs were in space, except I felt the heat of the torches in the same way.

I couldn’t manipulate the fire in the same way that I might be able to manipulate a limb, but I felt each and every one of those little fires and where they were in the room around me.

Breathing in, the faint, sulfurous smell was gone.

Empty… The arena was empty, and there was no sign of the mysterious woman, Velle, or Bernard. Had they already come out before me? If so, would they not be waiting there for me?

I decided to wait for them.

And wait…

And wait…

As I was unable to use my mana externally, I was unable to use an Item Bag that had a larger storage space on the inside that was standard for adventurers.

Grrrr.

My stomach protested in hunger.

‘It won’t hurt to at least find some food and wait nearby…’

Thinking so, I trekked back through the empty dungeon towards the entrance.

***

On the way to the entrance, I contemplated what I had seen in that other space.

It had been a world that used whatever Second System I was using instead of the System that most used and that I was more accustomed to.

The world had fought with monsters as we did and had eventually been overrun after the monsters grew in strength. They became complacent, focusing on gathering their strength and displaying their power rather than clearing the monsters.

It was very similar to how we were, which gave me an ominous feeling.

True, adventurers defeated monsters and cleared dungeons, but as adventurers reached new heights and adventurer ranks, they were often known to settle, create guilds, and grow their wealth, comfort, and social power rather than their personal strength.

In other words, high-rank adventurers didn’t adventure as much.

All of it gave me a strange feeling, like it was some puzzle or that there was some meaning behind it. Most considered the great Merge and the System a natural phenomenon similar to the discovery of fire or electricity, but what if it was something entirely unnatural?

Regardless of how many thoughts, theories, and ideas spun through my head, they were only just that. I had no way to definitively prove anything or come to a sure conclusion.

Could I really change my entire worldview based on a single dungeon encounter?

It would be foolish to do so.

Cold air wafted down to meet me as the entrance came into sight.

‘Cold air?’

From what I remembered, the air had been only mildly cool, not chilly as the air that I was experiencing was.

Huff.

I breathed out and watched a little puff of breath vapor drift into the air.

When I reached the entrance itself, my mind went blank.

‘…snow?’

A thin, white blanket of snow covered the trees of the forest around the dungeon entrance, carpeting the ground in the gaps between trees. A continuous, light drift of snow fell from the sky, giving the place a muffled, lonely atmosphere.

It would be harder to find food than I had originally thought.

I wasn’t sure how long it had been.

For all I knew, the snow had fallen over the past few nights and it was a simple turn of weather.

There was some part of me that was suspicious that the passage of time inside of the dungeon had been altered in some way, but again, there were too many things I didn’t know.

What I did know, however, was that I was alone.

I was lucky that day.

Due to my complaining stomach, I had still gone searching for food, despite the chances of finding anything promising being low. I did spot the occasional rabbit hopping by farther away, scared away by my heavy footfalls or by my scent.

Flap, flap.

My ears eventually caught the faint sound of flapping wings behind a tree, where I found an owl with a twisted wing, likely from a hunt gone wrong, huddling up against a tree and still trying to get up the trunk somehow.

If it had been Earth, I might have called an animal hotline and tried to save the owl.

If it had been Earth, the owl might have continued to live a long, fulfilling life. It might appear in a news article or have cute pictures online, it might go on to become a local celebrity after recovering or it might form a bond with the people who saved it.

It was not Earth, and I was hungry.

***

At first, I tried to return with the owl’s body in hand to the dungeon, hoping to use the fire from the torches inside to create my own cooking fire.

I found the dungeon entrance sealed, a sign that I had been the last one to leave the dungeon.

Eventually, the dungeon would either reform itself or vanish, but there was nobody left inside of it to wait for, which meant that the other two had already departed without me, more evidence that my time there had been longer than it initially seemed.

Fortunately, I was lucky to still have basic adventuring gear on me. Bernard and Velle had held the majority of the supplies, but I had still carried a basic knife and a classic flint and steel instead of a fire-starting artifact because, again, I could not externalize mana into equipment, and water.

Making a fire from the cold branches I could break from the trees in reach and from the dry, thawed bark I had to dig into the trees with my earth powers to collect, I eventually had a decent enough fire after clearing some of the snow from a spot on the ground to cook the owl.

Removing the feathers was easy enough, but I had no clue as to how to properly gut the bird, so I did my best to cook it over the fire and eat what I cooked.

After piling up enough wood and branches to keep the fire going for what I assumed would be a decent amount of time, I fell asleep in its warmth, resolving to figure out what to do next after I got some sleep and had a clear mind.

***

That night, I dreamt of the monsters from the city again, the imps and the people who had been turned into monsters.

I dreamt that I walked on a bridge of glass over the world, waves of imps and demons marching across the landscape and dancing in the sun’s fading light atop mountains of bones.

Flashes of gold and blue lit up the far distance, and the steady beating of drums echoed out through the world, reverberating through the bridge of glass that ended in a white doorway whose other side could not be made out.

Stepping through the portal, I was greeted with bright light and numbness throughout my body.

Then, I woke up.

***

The numbness remained present. I was cold.

At some point during the night, the fire had died out, and I had slept through it still.

It was a wonder that I had woken up at all.

My hands, feet, and ears were all painfully numb. I was moderately dressed, but I was not at all equipped for the heavy cold, so the leather of my armor was stiff and uncomfortably rigid.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if the fire had still been raging, but I sensed smaller sources of fire approaching me in the dim light of the early morning.

‘Torches?’

That was the only thing that came to mind.

I was hoping at first that it was Bernard and Velle, but I sensed three sources of warmth distinctly close and others further out, a large group of some sort.

Their lights illuminated the woods when they stepped into view through the snow.

I first noticed the uniforms they wore.

Heavy overcoats that extended down to their knees covered their bodies, reinforced with what looked to be sections of hardened plating woven into sections of leather in vital areas of the coats, each of which was brightly emblazoned with the design of a lion’s head on the chestpiece.

Members of the Lion Guild.