Defiance of the Fall

But before he got further than around a kilometer the road abruptly stopped , and dense forests gave way to a cliff with a drop of roughly 5 meters . The road , heck the whole ground , was simply gone .

The view that instead greeted him was a panoramic view of an ocean . At least he thought it was , as he could see no land in sight , and he was still too sore to climb down and test whether it was freshwater or saltwater . He guessed it was salt-water though from the smell in the air . In either case it was mind boggling as the camp site was hundreds of kilometers away from any body of water of that size .

Finally he remembered some words the system said in the start which he had completely glossed over in his panic . It said it had merged the planet with others and had been somehow randomized . Just how powerful was the system in the end , to grab multiple planets out in space and mashing them together without him noticing anything .

That thought was almost scarier than the immediate threat of the demons .

This also made him realize that most of his plans of going back home and finding his family likely had to be scrapped . If the system could drop an ocean in the middle of the country , his family might be on the other side of the planet for all he knew .

Which brought us back to now . Zac had mutely trudged back to camp , this time with far less vigil than before . Still it seemed that there were , at least for the moment , no threats in the immediate vicinity .

He now sat in one of the camping chairs , at a loss of what to do . He was emotionally and physically wrung out after the day and the sense of purpose he had before had largely vanished . He was still anxious to find his family and friends , but now he didn’t even know how to begin looking for them . Were they even together after the teleportations and reshuffling of the world?

For all he knew he was actually on an island , rather than next to a large body of water . Then he would be well and truly stuck in some sort of nightmare-like castaway situation . At least he had a camper which was lucky , as he had no real idea how to build a serviceable shelter . He regretted bloodying it up now though , but hindsight is 20/20 .

He knew that finding anyone he knew would likely be a far-off venture now , and he had to focus on surviving this demon forest first . He had already discarded trying to swim towards where the nearest city was before the apocalypse , as he had no idea of how large the water was or even more importantly , what was lurking in the water . If there was demon dogs in the forest , why not demon sharks in the water? No thanks . He had to put some faith in the fact that the system wasn’t a complete maniac and had put some checks and balances in the tutorial zones which would keep his family safe .

He once again opened his status page and quest page to see whether there was something he had missed earlier which could help him with his current situation . After a while he gleaned a clue from his quests .

Incursion Master (Unique) : Close or conquer incursion and protect base from denizens of other alignments for 3 months . Reward : 5 E-Grade Nexus Crystals , outpost upgraded to town , status upgraded to Lord . (0/3)

There were references to some sort of base building in two of his quests , and it seemed important , almost like the main quest of the area .

Outpost . - Zac said , hoping for some sort of prompt which could guide him further .

Requirements met to create Incursion outpost . Create now?]

This time he heard no robotic voice , only a prompt showed up , still looking like an old RPG window .

So there was a function like this . Once again a tinge of rage flared up at the system for its chronic inability to properly explain what was possible . How many other things did he not know about due to the system not teleporting him to a tutorial village?

Zac didn’t immediately answer the prompt , leaving it hovering . He was unsure whether this was the correct choice . Was creating an outpost a onetime thing? Would it make him even more stuck to this area? Would it make a loud noise , attracting curious beasts?

Then again he wasn’t sure if he had much of a choice . It either was creating an outposts and hoping that it would somehow help with his situation , or essentially going out into the woods and grind for levels by killing demons , and hope that he would get strong enough to leave that way , before getting himself killed . Seeing as his state was pretty pathetic after just one encounter it didn’t feel like an option . What if he met a pack of the demon dogs instead of a lone scavenger?

Gritting his teeth he decided he just had to go with the flow this time , and decisively said - Yes . - .