Ren landed softly in the back garden, where his parents' mature Iron-rank plants maintained an herb and food garden.
Though it wasn't theirs anymore, they could still use it to pay part of the house rent and cover some basic food for the family.
Beyond the garden's wooden fence, just a few meters away, the terrain began to descend. The view of enormous plains lay almost completely hidden by darkness...
There were no walls to climb, no guards to evade, their house was one of the last structures before the "civilized" world dissolved into no man's land.
Only some plantations dared exceed the common cultivation zone, those with enough for guards.
But with this house so close to the external zone of the abyss, nobody wanted to invest in lands that could be invaded by hordes of cursed monsters if the army ever faltered.
Being in the front line was frightening.
But Ren didn't understand why they were so cowardly, in his 10 years of life, and according to his parents in another 30, the hordes had never overcome the army.
These empty plains were perfect for cultivation in his opinion. Not that it affected him anymore...
He pulled out his father's worn map, tracing with his fingers the lines and annotations he knew by heart.
How many times had he heard the story: his father, desperate to find medicine for mana poisoning, unable to get it in the market due to that year's shortage.
He had been forced to venture into monster domain like many others. Many didn't return that year, and his father almost suffered the same sad fate.
The mandatory mission that had nearly cost him his life.
"And just when I thought it was my end," his father always said at this part, "I found it. A hidden entrance, as if the earth itself had cracked open to save me.
I thought I had fallen into a night excavator's hole...
But it was an ancient tunnel, probably from the era before mana's expansion."
The map showed the path with obsessive detail, every mark, every turn, every landmark carefully noted.
His father never knew why he'd been so meticulous in documenting a route he swore never to take again, but Ren suspected part of him always knew it would be needed someday.
An hour later, Ren finally stood at the forest's edge.
He'd been lucky not to encounter any exiled and hungry creatures.
It seemed the day's bad luck had finally run out... Ren glanced at his spore.
The spore floated beside him while its faint glow contrasted with the dark forest. Here, at the boundary, it was strangely peaceful.
Healthy monsters never ventured so close to the mana-void zone, only the hordes did that, and on specific dates, following underground routes that humans had learned to predict and attack to contain and keep them from leaving the abyss.
Here there weren't those kinds of problems.
"In theory," whispered Ren, more to give himself courage than to inform his silent companion, "we should be safe until we reach the deep iron forest. Monsters, even Iron-rank ones, hate this zone almost as much as dragons do."
Ren repeated to convince himself.
He unfolded the map one last time, memorizing the first stage. If his father had found that underground tunnel, if it really existed... it would be his best chance.
The monsters wouldn't detect him there, and he could advance much deeper into dangerous territory before having to face the real dangers.
He turned to look back toward his faraway house one last time.
They were probably still awake, worried about him, planning how to make his life more bearable in the coming years.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "But I can't accept that future. Not without trying to change it at least once."
And with that, he took his first step toward the forest. The spore floated behind him, its weak gray glow barely visible under the light of the twelve moons.
The journey that could change his life had just begun.
Three kilometers had never seemed so long.
Ren kept to the exact boundary where the earth was still poor enough in mana to keep most beasts away.
But not the Moon Toads.
The glowing trees betrayed the change in mana density.
His father had specifically warned him about these creatures. No larger than a rabbit, these blue-skinned, translucent amphibians were almost invisible under moonlight, except for their eyes.
Three bioluminescent eyes that glowed with a hypnotic radiance, capable of paralyzing their prey with just a direct look. They weren't particularly strong, barely immature Iron-rank beasts, but their hunting method was terrifying.
They moved in small groups, surrounding their paralyzed prey before beginning to secrete an acid that...
Ren shook his head. He didn't want to remember that part of his father's stories.
Or worse still, the Night Excavators.
Slow but enormous beasts, the size of a cow, that dug complex burrows under the mana-poor earth. Mature Iron rank beasts.
Their long arms ending in massive claws could split a man in half, and though they were lazy and generally solitary, their territories were full of natural traps, hidden holes that led directly to their jaws.
Both creatures depended on traps to complement the poor mana in their environment.
The spore floated calmly beside him while Ren tested each step carefully. The ground here was treacherous, a network of Excavator tunnels could collapse under his weight at any moment.
The huge dead tree had to be close.
His father had drawn it in detail on the map, an ancient oak, twisted like a claw emerging from the earth, marking the entrance to the secret tunnel. If he could reach it...
A bluish flash caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Had that been...?
No. He mustn't look directly. If they were Moon Toads, a direct look would be his end.
Another blue flash, closer this time.
Ren kept his eyes fixed on the ground, his heart hammering against his chest. Moon Toads always hunted in groups of three to five.
A soft melodious croak came from his left. Then another from the right. They were surrounding him.
"Don't look at their eyes, don't look at their eyes," he murmured to himself, repeating the words his father had etched into his memory. Moon Toads were slow, clumsy even.
If he could keep his composure and keep moving...
The ground creaked beneath his foot.
That hadn't been the sound of an amphibian. That had been the unmistakable groan of earth giving way over a Night Excavator's tunnel.
He was trapped between two deadly threats. If he retreated, the toads would catch him. If he advanced, he would fall into an Excavator's den. And he couldn't stay still, the toads were already...
A blue flash appeared right in front of him. So close he could see the details of its translucent skin, the pulse of internal organs glowing with bioluminescence.
Ren closed his eyes instinctively, but it was too late. For a fraction of a second, he had seen the toad's three hypnotic eyes.
His muscles began to go numb.
The melodious croaking intensified, now coming from all directions. He could hear the soft padding of their feet approaching, the wet sound of their skin secreting acid...