The night in the Great Tree Sea was unnervingly quiet.
Normally, night was when monsters thrived—but the appearance of those giant bears had effectively purged the region. Everything that could flee had fled. Anything that remained had gone silent, terrified of drawing the bears' attention.
Bell broke apart a roasted masala flatbread and ate it with the dried meat they'd prepared, all while keeping his eyes up and his ears open. The Tree Sea's abnormal stillness naturally put him on edge, and the memory of the bears' overwhelming destructive power made him shiver involuntarily.
"Bell," Duncan said, patting his shoulder with forced cheer, "once you're done eating, get some sleep. Try to relax. Chances to rest this freely in the Tree Sea are rare. Tonight, we splurge."
He'd noticed it from the start—Bell was tense and exhausted. A seven-year-old lasting a full month out here without a single good night's sleep was only possible through sheer willpower. But people had limits. Better to let the string slacken now than have it snap later—especially when they didn't have to worry about other monsters harassing them.
"But…" Bell hesitated.
"It's fine," Duncan reassured him. "The clearing is wide—an ambush won't be easy. And thanks to those bears, we don't have to worry about other pests. Sleep. If they really come close, I'll wake you. Staying wound up all night will kill you faster than hunger."
"…Okay." Bell finally nodded. Then, trying to be brave, he volunteered, "I'll take over in the second half of the night. I'll wake you."
"We'll see," Duncan said noncommittally. After a month of broken rest, whether Bell could truly wake up and function at midnight was anyone's guess. All Duncan could do was hope these bears behaved like normal ones—creatures active at dawn and dusk, not relentless predators striking at midnight.
After dinner, Bell fell into a deep, heavy sleep almost immediately—partly from trust in Duncan, partly because he'd truly hit the wall. His breathing was light and steady; he was sleeping hard.
With nothing else pressing, Duncan carried a torch and planted additional torches around the campsite to help detect any intruder quickly. But because Bell was asleep, Duncan didn't dare stray too far. The bears had ranged attacks; being "thorough" only to get his partner badly hurt would be the worst kind of stupidity.
The silence itself felt wrong. There wasn't even wind. Having grown used to the Tree Sea's normally noisy nights, Duncan found the stillness almost… oppressive.
Of course, adventurers were never comfortable. After enough hardship, discomfort became background noise. What truly worried him were two things:
The bears in the forest — an external threat, immediate and lethal.
This strange clearing and the vanished ruin — an internal unknown, potentially worse.
And he had no real way to solve either.
Thinking back to the first head-on encounter, Duncan tightened his grip on his spear. The white shaft steadied him, gave him a sliver of courage. In a direct clash, the bear's aggression and durability were plainly overwhelming—but Duncan and Bell still had advantages in speed and agility.
The real problem was the wind blades.
A long-range attack that fast was a nightmare for anyone relying on close-quarters movement. Even if Duncan focused entirely on dodging the bear's physical strikes, he still had to account for invisible, sudden ranged slashes. Doing both at once was brutally hard.
If there had been only one bear, their coordination might have allowed them to gamble—probe for openings, find a way to "touch" it and escape. But there were two. Duncan hadn't even seen the one behind them clearly, but the roar alone suggested it was no weaker than the first. Two working together was far beyond what he and Bell could handle.
Just like adventurers, monsters had a "level gap" that could feel impossible—but for monsters it was often worse. Adventurers at least had status values and unique skills; defeating a stronger opponent was rare, but not completely unthinkable.
Monsters were different. Most of them were born with a ceiling. Unless they became something else, that ceiling didn't change much.
That "something else" was a strengthened variant—a monster that, by chance, devoured magic stones and gained reinforcement, then continued consuming other monsters to further amplify itself. Normally monsters killed each other without eating the stone, but exceptions happened.
It was far more common in the Dungeon: respawns were frequent, territory overlapped, conflicts were constant. The Great Tree Sea, by contrast, was vast beyond reason and comparatively sparse—so strengthened variants were rare.
The campfire's glow held Duncan's gaze for a moment too long. Spear in his left hand, he idly scraped at the soil with his dagger. The dirt looked ordinary. Nothing about it explained what he'd seen.
As the night deepened, and with no immediate danger pressing in, Duncan's mind drifted into the one place that did offer answers—his internal shop system.
All the magic stones they'd earned had been dumped into the recycler. His balance—89,000 valis—left him no room to be picky.
Chaldo had said it bluntly: monsters outside the Dungeon produced magic stones that were smaller and poorer in quality. Even the Tree Sea—one of the Three Great Frontiers—couldn't compare. That disparity was why the Tree Sea could never develop an adventurer economy on the scale of Orario. The structural disadvantage was too big; the resource base too thin.
The shop's catalog made Duncan salivate: weapons, tools, skills, magic—everything he wanted, everything he couldn't afford. At his current earning rate, even ten more years wouldn't get him close to the real prizes.
It felt like a mortgage back on Earth: you kill yourself for a decade just to scrape together a down payment. Except this shop didn't even offer installments. Which, honestly, made sense. Adventurers gambled their lives daily—even Zeus and Hera's familias could get wiped out. Any lender financing adventurers would charge absurd interest.
Then Duncan noticed something new.
Right in the center of the shop's main interface was a huge question mark.
He didn't remember it being there before.
But the interface was dark, locked—still impossible to open, just like before he'd leveled. Whether it was an "upgrade banner" or some new event, he couldn't tell. It screamed mobile-game bait, and Duncan couldn't help muttering to himself that whatever god ran this system was probably a hopeless gacha addict.
He didn't know how much time passed.
A shove jolted him back to reality. Bell's small face was right in front of him.
"Bell? What is it?" Duncan asked, immediately ashamed—he'd let his attention drift.
"It's past midnight," Bell said softly. "Let me take over. You should sleep for a bit, Duncan."
No accusation. No frustration. Just concern.
Duncan glanced around. The torches he'd planted had burned out at some point, leaving only the campfire's faint glow to fight the darkness. The thought made his stomach turn—if a monster had attacked, the outcome could have been catastrophic.
"…Alright," Duncan said at last. "I'll rest a little. If anything happens, wake me."
He accepted Bell's offer because he had to.
For an adventurer, a slipping focus wasn't a small mistake.
It was a death sentence waiting for timing.
....
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