During our breakfast, we talked about what Maxwell would need to learn when it came to the pistol I had gotten for him, focusing on what sort of "training" he received before getting placed here. Imagine my surprise when he revealed he had next to no training at all. I knew he wasn't as qualified as Joseph for combat, he had already mentioned he was different from my normal soldiers, but I assumed he would have something comparable to what non-combatant staff did in the US military. Instead, all he had was first aid "training," as well as the same not freezing "experience" that Joseph had. If he wanted to be able to properly defend himself, we would essentially need to start even further back than me, with basic gun safety and training.

  To start, after breakfast, Joseph taught him how to strip and clean the pistol. It was only a basic cleaning since we didn't have the right tools to do a complete cleaning, but it was better than nothing. Joseph also inspected the weapon for any faults, and while it wasn't in the best condition, with some rust on the magazine, it still cleaned up well and had no dangerous damage.

  Once the pistol was cleaned and reassembled, we decided to put any weapons training until after we checked what the day's quest was. If it was something worth getting immediately, but we ended up wasting too much time around the HQ to get it done, I would be a bit annoyed. Together, we made our way to the front desk, with Maxwell walking around it while Joseph and I stood in front.

  "What have we got today, Maxwell?" I asked, the suit-clad man going through a stack of papers. "Anything interesting?"

  "Patience, Sir," Maxwell chided lightly, before finally pulling a piece of parchment from the stack. "Here we go... Well, isn't that interesting? Seems like you are quite lucky, Connor."

  I raised an eyebrow, accepting the parchment as he handed it to me, looking down and scanning the quest, as well as the reward. My eyes went wide as I scanned the paper.

  "I didn't realize that was something on the table…" I said, looking down at the quest rewards. "How does that even work?"

  The quest was simple, if not a bit more difficult than usual, requiring us to travel the entire circumference of the large plains not far from the connection point. It would likely take the majority of the day, especially since we had already spent a chunk of the morning dealing with the raiders and traders. The reward, however, made completing the quest as soon as possible a necessity.

  If we succeeded, we would be rewarded with a second quest every day. Not only would this keep completing two quests a day from draining our quests to nothing, but it also meant we would have more opportunities to expand, shift, and grow. Even better, it would give us a better chance of unlocking what we wanted and needed, be it more soldiers, better buildings, or defenses around the HQ and beyond. It was, essentially, doubling our chances of getting what we needed rather than random upgrades to our standard kit, a shockingly potent upgrade.

  "The system that the entities saw fit to give you is capable of changing and evolving," Maxwell explained. "I cannot say I know the details, but I do know that some of it is metaphysical in nature. The connection between you, your worlds, and the system is growing, and therefore, the system offers new options to build upon itself. Other changes are possibilities and additions originally held back or newly created by the entities so that you may have more control over how the system grows and shifts."

  "I… I really hate how much the entities are meddling with us," I admitted, shaking my head and chewing my cheek. "We have enough bullshit to deal with without them getting involved."

  "Would you rather the system be static and the upgrade not be offered?" Maxwell asked, offering an apologetic shrug in a very "what can you do?" tone.

  "I would have rather had the option from the beginning," I responded, shaking my head. "It doesn't matter, I won't say no to having more options, not when it will make surviving and growing easier."

  Completing the quest wasn't going to be easy, though. The clearing, the extensive plains, were big, and walking the perimeter would be around fifteen to twenty miles unless my judgment of distance was way off.

  Walking around it would take anywhere from six to seven hours. Not to mention that there were hundreds of zoomorphs walking around. There wasn't anything insanely dangerous, it really did seem like the area around the connection point was a low-level starter area, but there was more than enough to cause trouble. Even kill us if we weren't careful. Still, the reward was too good to ignore.

  "Okay, we need to give this a shot," I said, Joseph nodding in agreement. "The sooner we can unlock this, the sooner we can start benefiting from it."

  "We should pack some simple rations and some water," Joseph pointed out. "Maxwell?"

  "Are you confirming that you will be taking this quest?" Maxwell asked, eyeing me closely. "If you do and cannot complete it, dropping it will cause it to disappear."

  "I think we can handle it, as long as we take it slow," I responded, looking to Joseph, who nodded confidently. "Joseph, do me a favor and pack us up, I'll reload and check over our weapons."

  "Yes, Sir," He said, quickly heading back into our room to grab our packs.

  It took us about twenty minutes to prepare, with Joseph putting some basic rations and two bottles of water in each of our packs. The ration was a small brick of dense protein bar-esque food that looked like they tasted like sawdust, and the water bottles would inevitably be warm by the time we drank them, but there wasn't much we could do about either of those things.

  Meanwhile, while Joseph got us packed, I topped off our magazines. We had both used some ammo taking down the raiders, but with our recent resupply, we had plenty to refill our mags. Eventually, when we were done, we made our way through the HQ to the dark door. After a quick check to make sure there wasn't anything waiting for us on the other side, we stepped through into the crisp, clean air of the Horizon world. As we made our way out of the dark tunnel that connected the two worlds, both of us froze.

  "Well… this just got a lot less fun," I said, frowning and staring out into the forest, watching as a heavy rain poured down through it.

  "... Rain is a good cover," Joseph pointed out, though I could hear his disappointment as well. "And it's warm enough that we won't have to worry about hypothermia."

  "Oh, goodie," I responded, pushing past the cover of the tunnel and out into the rain.

  Despite me being the one to take the first step, Joseph quickly took the lead, just as he had done before, as we approached the massive clearing. Once we arrived, neither of us even paused, cutting into the woods and beginning our journey around the large open area.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  As much as I hated to admit it, Joseph had been correct, the rain did cover a whole lot of our noise. Unfortunately, it also covered the noise of things around us. Luckily, the zoomorphic robots stomping around us were still loud and heavy enough that we could hear them coming. However, the smaller, real animals were a lot less noticeable. Within the first hour, we walked straight into a rafter of turkeys.

  Thankfully, these were not the demon birds I knew from my home, who were wholly unafraid of humans and just a step or two below geese as Satan's favorite birds. Instead, when they finally realized we were there, they ran, gobbling and waddling away as fast as they could.

  "I wonder if they taste any good," Joseph asked quietly, watching the birds run into the brush and disappear.

  "Probably not," I responded with a frown. "Or, probably not as good as the turkey you're used to… Wait… do you know what turkey tastes like?"

  "Of course…" Joseph started to say, only stop in his tracks and trail off. "Huh. I guess I don't. Fingers crossed, I get to try it someday."

  The soldier, after a moment of thinking, simply shrugged and continued walking, leaving me behind as I watched him go. While Maxwell's explanation of how serving me as a soldier was more or less the "payment" for being saved from the void between realities, having real live people under my control was still not sitting right, especially not after hearing things like that. Unfortunately, if I wanted to survive and maybe even do some good around here, I didn't have all that much of a choice.

  But neither did they.

  All I could do was do my best by Joseph and any other soldier I summoned. If I ever had the opportunity to improve their quality of life, I would take it in a heartbeat.

  "We could hunt one, maybe cook it before we get back," I pointed out as we walked, crossing over a large fallen log to catch up to the soldier.

  "You want to stay in the rain any longer than we have to?" He asked, looking back at me. "I think getting back and dry will be plenty of a reward for me, sir."

  "Fair enough," I responded, still frowning.

  As we continued, slowly approaching a third of the way around the clearing, we stopped for some water under the cover of a tree, fallen against a large boulder. It wasn't much, but it was at least partial shelter from the rain, which was as much as we could hope for. While enjoying the lukewarm water, I grabbed my ration, opened it, and split it in half, passing Joseph the other half.

  "Thanks," he said, taking a bite without complaint.

  I nodded, taking a bite out of my own half, wincing slightly. The ration was barely passable as edible, and tasted like someone tried to make something that could technically be called a desert protein bar, but was actually as far away from that as they could possibly make it. It was edible, sure, and stuffed with calories, but it tasted like lightly sweetened cardboard and felt like chewing soggy, soft wood chips.

  It felt like every time we ate them, the standard, low-level food the HQ provided got worse and worse. Not even the isotonic drinks were enjoyable anymore.

  "So, you really think Reed and Adam are going to keep quiet?" Joseph asked, giving me a look as he chewed. "You made a good case, but smart solutions don't work well on stupid people."

  "They seemed smart enough," I responded, though I followed up with a wince. "I was more worried about their team. Hopefully, it will buy us time. A lot could happen in two weeks, especially when we hopefully have two quests coming in a day."

  "You think we can keep up with that?"

  "I think if we do one a day, we can make sure not to miss anything good," I responded. "And taking down the easy ones twice a day would keep us from getting behind. I would have proposed doing the other exploration quest, the one that gives us the maps, today as well, if we hadn't spent the morning saving Reed and Adam."

  "What kind of mission is it?" he asked, standing back up in the rain, brushing off the dirt from his clothes as he looked around.

  "Just scouting further up the river," I explained. "One way leads to a lake, but I have no idea what is up the other way."

  "We should try and do that next, Sir," He said with a nod. "Having maps to mark out what's going on here in the Horizon world will help in the short term, and having both will help long term, especially when you have more of us to order around, Sir."

  I nodded and stood, following after him as he started to make his way through the wet, dripping forest. Before we had taken our break, we had walked a bit away from the clearing for more cover, but now that we were moving again, we got a bit closer. Slowly but surely, we continued to make progress down the long clearing, passing by several herds of simple zoomorphs. The only time we really slowed was when we were creeping past a pack of seven.

  While I was pretty confident Joseph and I could take on even large groups of striders and grazers, even with their watcher guards, I was not nearly as ready to take on scrappers. Not only were they reinforced with armor, but they also were much more heavily armed. Their saw-tooth mouth would certainly chew through our light armor, while their back-mounted meant we couldn't even play the range game with them.

  There was no way we were tangling with them until I could safely set up a tactical flank, which meant at least one or two more soldiers. They had a weak spot on the backs, and while I was pretty sure the laser was volatile as well, you would have to punch through the armor. That would either require some pretty accurate shooting, bigger guns, or maybe some armor-piercing ammunition.

  Creeping around the dangerous bots took an extra forty-five minutes, but once we got past them, we were able to push on. We did stop to watch the as it lumbered past, heading in the opposite direction we were. It was eye-opening to see just how big it was, considerably larger than I imagined from the video game or from what I saw from afar the past few days. This one didn't have any helpful handholds or convenient buildings or outcropping to jump from in order to climb to their "head" either.

  As we approached the halfway point, not long after moving slowly by a pack of watchers and striders, we both stopped at the same time. There, not fifteen feet in front of us, was a well-worn path, which came from deeper in the woods, cutting sideways as it approached the clearing, running alongside it in the direction of the river.

  "Well…. We did know that there were people living here…" I said after a minute of staring at the path. "I kind of just assumed that they would be farther away."

  "Still could be far away," Joseph pointed out. "Just might well be traveled. A consistent hunting point, far enough away from a village to keep game from running?"

  "Maybe," I replied, not sounding very confident. "Either way, I am not ready to meet the neighbors. Let's move through as quickly as we can."

  He nodded, and together, we moved, breaking out into a light jog as we traveled along the path. It was simple, unadorned, but wide enough for two people to walk side by side, which to me seemed to say that it was used often enough by multiple people. We continued to jog, coming around a dense patch of trees, and getting closer and closer to the river. Just as we were quietly starting to debate how we would cross the river, we spotted another sign of people. However, this nearly confirmed that they were at least relatively close.

  There, running across the river, was a bridge. Made with thick logs and sturdy woven wire, this was clearly not a temporary hunter's bridge, but a permanent bridge meant to carry plenty of people. Under it, the river moved fast and deep enough that, without the bridge, I wasn't sure we would have been able to cross it at all.

  "Fuck… Still think they aren't nearby?" I asked, now at full alert, looking around, half expecting to see a camp nearby or someone in tribal gear aiming a bow at us.

  "Yeah, yeah, no need to rub it in, Sir," he responded, just as agitated as I was. "I was just being optimistic."

  "Fair."

  "So… what's the over-under on us getting hit by a half dozen arrows before we even know someone is sighting us in?"

  "Depends on what kind of tribe has formed here," I responded, shaking my head. "Either way… we need to get closer to the clearing. We might risk getting spotted by the robots, but I'm not ready to meet the neighbors, and I'm hoping they wouldn't risk it."

  Joseph nodded, and together, we quickly crossed the river, our boots thumping across the wooden bridge. As we did, I could tell it was well-maintained and clear of rot, which told me it was far from abandoned. Once we were on the other side, we quickly cut in, following the river until we were significantly closer to the clearing. From there, we moved, continuing our way around the clearing with a bit more urgency in our steps.

  We had a long way to go before we were in the clear, and both of us wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the bridge.