When I was reborn in this world, one of the many subjects I took an interest in was geography.
After all, it's a new world, so I was quite curious to see if it held any resemblance to my old one.
Nope.
Not at all.
To begin with, unlike most videogames and novels, humans were far from being some kind of master race that ruled over the continent.
Wasn't it a common trope? The evil and powerhungry humans would crush and subjugate the other races such as elves and dwarves, beat up all the monsters, and take over with a massive empire.
Yeah, as if.
Humans were a powerful force, but they weren't at the level where they could take over the continent.
Elves, despite having a much smaller population, posessed an extremely high average combat power, with practically their entire population being trained for battle.
Dwarves specialised in magitech weaponry. Humans had also made many leaps and bounds in the field, but in the end, can one compare a hydrogen bomb to a coughing baby?
Those were just two, but there were plenty of powerful races which could pose a threat to humans.
And naturally, there were plenty of monsters.
Back to the geography of the world, it was seriously weird.
I assumed it had something to do with mana, the mystical force I had recently awakened.
To put it simply, nothing made sense.
A desert could be next to a tundra.
There were mountain ranges that had peaks far higher than Mount Everest on earth.
Scorched lands full of volcanos existed and there were 'lakes' in the continent that were practically oceans.
These uninhabitable areas were no civilisations had risen or claimed were collectively called the Wild Lands.
"And I have to go there."
---
Furio stared at the window in front of him to try and see if there was any way he could avoid heading there.
[Become Stronger!
The user's current rating is: garbage!
It is heavily advised that the user becomes stronger!
To do this, the host must enter The Wilderness within the next month!
Reward: Get Stronger, ?
Failure: The user receives a certain, painful, dreadful, agonizing and slow death!]
He had only a month to enter a wilderness area.
It was not much time, but it was manageable.
The Notoria family were situated near the southeastern border of the empire, controlling most of the area.
He had been travelling for a month, hitching a ride with some low level merchants whenever he got the chance.
Thus, he was only a few days away from reaching the actual edge of the empire.
From there, it would take him about two weeks to reach the closest wilderness area, the White Desert.
Travelling there was thus not a big concern, no, the problem was what he would find once he got there.
Furio thought that maybe as soon as he stepped in, he would be able to exit as it was 'technically' a completion of the quest, but he immediately quelled the thought, the window would probably tell him he'd die.
He had only a month to grow strong enough to be able to survive against the monsters in the desert.
On top of that, he would need to prepare supplies to try and survive in that harsh environment.
---
A week passed quickly, and Furio used up the last of his money at a border town to get some basic supplies for survival.
Right now, he was damn thankful that his murderers had not looted his corpse.
Although they killed a child, perhaps they had at least the minimum amount of honor to not strip him bare.
He was not sure he would be able to survive without his spacial pouch.
It was only a low tier one, but being able to store a one by one meter area worth of objects was huge.
More importantly, the pouch would maintain a constant temperature, meaning that it would be able to preserve food that would quickly rot under the desert heat.
Secondly, Furio had been able to somewhat verify that circuitry of infinity worked.
In one day, Furio had casted magic bullet several hundred times without resting.
Naturally, he felt mental exhaustion from constantly constructing the magic circle in his mind so many times, but physically, he felt no sense of mana exhaustion.
Magic bullet was an extremely simple spell, but even a third layer mage would be exhausted after firing the spell that many times.
Of course, being able to fire a basic spell a few hundred times over a few hours was far from proving that he had infinite mana.
Someone like Furio's father, Silvio Ars Notoria, would be able to fire hundreds of magic bullets in a second if they chose to.
But whatever, he decided that he would trust the window's credibility, even if it was seemingly trying to get him killed right now.
Speaking of the window, he had learnt something interesting.
After firing magic bullets for hours on end, a window had appeared.
[Magic Bullet - Skill
Fire a bullet of pure mana at high speeds.
Level 1 - 18%]
As someone who occasionally enjoyed videogames between odd jobs in his past life, he immediately recognised that if he levelled it up, it would become stronger.
At the very least, before he reached the wilderness, he had to raise the level of the skill to two.
He wasn't sure how much good it would do for him, but it was something, at least.
---
LOG 4 - THE WHITE DESERT
A harsh and unforgiving land, teeming with magical beasts and dangerous fauna. Few people choose to live in such a place, mainly adventures looking to make it big and those on the run from the law after being judged as criminals in the Key Empire.