Jace shut the inventory with a mental flick, banishing the empty grid and its mocking red square. The character sheet returned in its place, stark and impassive. His eyes drifted down the list of abilities.
The map—already tested. Next came something called Astral Affinity.
A block of text unfolded:
Ability: [Astral Affinity]
Increased resistance to dimensional effects and astral forces.
Dimension abilities have heightened effectiveness.
Transcendent damage output is increased.
Jace read it twice, brow furrowed. "Yeah… no idea what that means."
With a weary sigh, he scrolled down to the last entry.
Ability: [Mysterious Stranger]
Language adaptation.
Essence, Awakening Stone, and Skill-Book absorption.
Immunity to identification and tracking effects.
Jace's gaze lingered on the words. Mysterious Stranger. The name alone made his stomach clench. Language adaptation explained why he could read the medallion. The rest, though? Absorbing strange items? Immunity to… identification? Tracking?
"Great," he muttered. "So, apparently, I'm some kind of interdimensional wildcard."
The words hung before him like a verdict, and for the first time since waking in this impossible maze, Jace felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air.
"Language adaptation? So that's how I'm able to read this weird scribbling on the tablet?"
He pulled the object back out, turning it over in his hands as if a second look might reveal more than the first.
"What is this thing, anyway?"
Item: [World-Phoenix Token]
(Transcendent Rank – Legendary)
??? (Consumable, ???)
Effect: ???
Effect: ???
Uses remaining: 1/1
He snorted. "Oh, that's helpful. Nothing but question marks. Super enlightening. Am I supposed to track down a wizard or something just to get this identified?"
With a sigh, he dismissed the tablet, collapsing all the floating windows until only the map lingered at the corner of his vision.
"Fine. Whatever." He glanced up and down the path ahead of him. Two narrow tracks stretched away into the distance, each one equally unimpressive, offering no landmark or promise of where it might lead.
"Not exactly a yellow wood," he muttered, "but I guess it's time to Robert Frost this thing."
With no better logic than a coin flip, he picked one at random and started walking.
"I really wish I was wearing clothes right now," he added under his breath.
Jace moved cautiously through the twisting corridors of the hedge maze, the glowing map hovering in front of him. With every step, new sections revealed themselves, lines sketching into existence like ink spreading through paper. His strategy—if it could be called that—was simple: keep walking until he'd uncovered enough of the layout to find a way out.
The plan was going fine until he heard it—a faint rustle from the thick greenery to his left.
Jace froze. His eyes darted toward the sound, while his hands instinctively moved to cover his most vulnerable, and currently very exposed, assets.
"Uh… g'day?" he ventured, his voice half-greeting, half-apology. "Hello? …Buenos días? Guten morgen?"
Silence.
He cleared his throat and tried again. "Or maybe it's not morning. Uh… guten tag?"
Still nothing.
Jace sighed and muttered to himself, "Yeah, that was the problem, Jace. They totally didn't answer because you got the time of day wrong. Nailed it."
He gave a little shrug, as if that explanation was no less absurd than anything else that had happened so far. "Makes about as much sense as the rest of this place, I guess."
He was just about to take another step when a window abruptly flashed into existence in front of him.
---
New Quest: [No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service]
For reasons unknown, your immediate surroundings have become infested with lesser monsters.
Objective: Discover the reason lesser monsters have infested the area (0/1)
Reward: Simple Shirt
Bonus Objective: Defeat ten lesser monsters (0/10)
Reward: Simple Footwear
---
Jace blinked at the window. "Monsters? Really? That doesn't sound remotely plausible."
He glanced suspiciously around the hedges, shoulders tightening. The silence stretched… until the bushes in front of him exploded.
Something small and fast came hurtling out from beneath the hedge. Jace instinctively clapped both hands back over his privates, which unfortunately left his head wide open.
He had only half a second to register movement before something latched onto his face. Razor-sharp claws dug into his scalp, teeth gnashing at his cheek. White-hot pain stabbed through him, and he staggered backward with a strangled scream.
"Get off! GET OFF!"
Clawing wildly, he finally managed to seize the thing with both hands. Ripping it free tore a chunk of skin from his head, blood slicking his fingers. He collapsed to his knees, roaring in pain, and slammed the writhing creature into the ground. Once. Twice. Over and over again, until the thing stopped moving.
He knelt there, panting, hands trembling as he stared at the crumpled monster corpse.You have defeated [Potent Hamster].
Defeat lesser monsters: 1/10.
Jace released the limp creature and scrambled backward on hands and knees, his breath ragged. His chest heaved as if he'd just run a marathon, though he hadn't taken more than three steps. The wounds on his scalp pulsed with every heartbeat, hot blood threading down his face in messy rivulets. He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, smearing red across his cheek.
"What in the merry hell is happening?" he gasped. "How—how does a hamster even jump on someone's head?"
He blinked through the sting of sweat and blood, forcing his gaze back toward the thing lying on the ground. The glowing system message insisted it was a hamster. Jace frowned. Hamster? Hamsters were supposed to be fist-sized balls of fluff spinning in wheels, not nightmare rodents that could crush watermelons with their body weight.
The corpse before him was easily the size of his own head, its body half-collapsed from being slammed into the dirt, its fur streaked with his blood. Jace's stomach rolled at the sight, but curiosity warred with disgust.
"Yeah, no. That's not a hamster," he muttered, then cautiously crept closer, moving like the ground itself might lunge at him. He hovered just beyond arm's length, his muscles coiled to spring away. After a long hesitation, he reached out one trembling finger and gave the corpse a tentative poke.
Another window flared into view.
Would you like to loot [Potent Hamster]?
Jace jerked back as if the question had bitten him, then doubled over, clutching at his head. His fingertips brushed the torn skin and he let out a sharp yelp, tears pricking his eyes.
"What the hell is going on?" he rasped, voice caught between fury, fear, and the gnawing realization that this might not be a dream.
Jace blinked and read the glowing text on the screen a second time, as if repetition might change the absurdity of it.
Would you like to loot [Potent Hamster]?
"…Yes?" he muttered uncertainly, as though answering a question on an exam he didn't study for.
The moment the word left his lips, the creature's body began to react. A fizzing noise erupted from it, sharp and violent, like acid poured onto metal. The corpse sagged and collapsed inward, melting at an alarming pace. Flesh sloughed away in sheets, dissolving into a swirling haze of rainbow-coloured smoke. Even the bones crumbled, dissolving as though they had never been solid at all.
For a heartbeat, Jace found himself transfixed. The shimmering vapour was oddly beautiful, like oil on water catching sunlight. But the illusion shattered the instant the stench hit him. The smoke carried with it an odour thick and suffocating—cheese left to rot in the sun, the acrid bite of burnt hair, and the rancid reek of spoiled meat all blended into one nauseating assault.
Jace gagged. His stomach lurched violently as he scrambled backward on hands and knees, trying to escape the invisible cloud. He dry-heaved until he thought his ribs might crack, coughing and spitting onto the grass.
When at last he dared to look back, he saw nothing. The body—bones, fur, flesh—was gone. No blood, no carcass, not even ash. It was as if the creature had never existed at all. Only the faint shimmer of lingering smoke proved it had ever been real.
A new window blinked into existence before his eyes, but Jace ignored it. Instead, he collapsed onto his back, spreading out in the soft grass, chest heaving as he tried to steady himself.
"I hate this," he rasped to the sky. "I'm naked, bleeding, and I have no idea where the hell I am. The only explanation that makes sense is that I've gone completely mad." His voice cracked into a bitter laugh. "And the cherry on top? I'm about to get sunburned in places that should never see sunlight."
Groaning, he forced himself upright again, wiping sweat and grime from his forehead. The glowing message still hovered before him, waiting with impossible patience.
[Monster Core (Lesser)] has been added to your inventory.
[Healing Unguent (Iron)] has been added to your inventory.
10 [Lesser Spirit Coins] have been added to your inventory.
Jace let out a low groan. "Straight into the inventory. Right. That magic pocket-dimension thing where I can make objects appear and vanish like some half-baked stage magician. Yep. Absolutely insane. No doubt about it."