Since Oliver's arrival in this strange and unforgiving biome, creatures never dropped items that were pre-fabricated. It was quite surprising to see a luminous beam start to spark into life from the ground in front of The Pond King's corpse.
The glow shone brighter and brighter, eventually starting to take shape into a pile of objects. The whole process took about 10 seconds and what was left was a rather crustacean themed set of armor.
[Armor of the Chitinous Viscount]
[Material: Pond King Carapace.]
[Quality: Great.]
[Due to the relatively undamaged exo-skeleton of the recently deceased Pond King, the quality of this armor was increased by a tier.]
[Special effect detected: Damage towards any segmented creature is increased by two when wearing the complete armor set.]
As cool and practical as this effect was, the armor looked incredibly uncomfortable and rigid. It was a combination of different crab parts melded together into a breastplate, greaves, arm-guards and helmet. On the outside they were exceptionally spiky, especially around the jointed areas and the bracers to cover the forearms. The armor even seemed to be quite practical as a melee weapon with the spikes acting like brass knuckles.
The most surprising thing to Oliver was the smooth interior finish that seemed to be padded with some dark cloth and cushions. It did not even smell remotely like dead shell-fish and instead reminded Oliver of a soft, salty breeze. He did however, look quite ridiculous.
The Helmet narrowed his vision somewhat as it hugged his sideburns down to his jawline. Two rather stubby antennae pointed up from the top of the helmet, making him look like some bizarre ant morph creature from afar.
He didn't like the idea of looking like an ant in a mysterious dungeon world, Oliver felt he would have a hard time surviving as such a weak creature. Unless it was some kind of diamond coated ant, but what were the odds of that.
After inspecting the armor thoroughly and putting it on, Oliver turned his attention to the last remaining object that had been rewarded. He picked up this bizarre blue gem that lay glimmering in the rocks and sand.
[Innate Monster Crystal acquired.]
[This water-based monster crystal can be combined with an Innate Ether Seed to create a growing ether plant. Ether seeds can only be found in daylight biomes or within areas of extreme magical potency.]
This was quite bizarre, the gem felt cool to the touch and seemed to have some sort of swimming energy within it. It emitted soft blue light when he held it, an effect that soon stopped when he set it down.
The system had not stated the quality of this object as it had with other things, which was quite peculiar. Perhaps the growing quality of the resulting ether plant did not allow it to be qualified into the known quality grades? Oliver scratched his head as he tried to figure out how to use this crystal. It had to be combined with a seed and the seed could only be found in two locations.
The daylight biome seemed to be simply referencing the sunny version of the cave which he had initially been living in. He had searched quickly but he definitely did not see anything called an Innate Ether Seed.
The second location was even more bizarre, an area of extreme magical potency. Not only did this suggest that magic was something possible in this realm, which was not much of a surprise to Oliver at this point, but that magic varied in volume and density. He did not have the faintest clue where to find a location that met these requirements.
In any case, he had a pile of dead multipods and one gigantic Pond King crustacean waiting to be cut up and eaten. It would most likely take him the better part of a day to just take apart the giant pond king, and he did not want to waste any more time pondering while being inactive.
Oliver began piling the multipod carcasses that were not completely destroyed near the camp, the process taking him little more than an hour as he tossed the nasty ones back into the pond. Maybe the recent genocide had made them timid, but he did not spot any multipods sneaking around on the nearby beach or in the shallows. Maybe they were inactive because of the death of their king. It mattered little as Oliver was swimming in crab meat, most likely enough to last him months if he could preserve all of it.
The Pond King was another issue as it was far too large to drag over and Oliver did not want to leave this much meat out in case it attracted another predator. He had to take a gamble and decided it was best to work on the carcass in the sunlit biome and that he could sacrifice portions of it if he could keep the majority of the meat.
He therefore chose to focus his effort on the joints around the pincers and the tail. Using a stone hatchet to cut the tough connective membrane took a lot of work but he eventually walked off with both giant pincers and dragged a chunk of the tail off with him. If weighed, the amount of meat in these three pieces was probably close to Oliver's own body weight, the majority of which was stored in the tail chunk.
Oliver then felt a wave of fatigue wash over him as he surveyed his piles of dead crab meat. It was a job well done tonight. He had survived three rather dangerous encounters, all from creatures with many legs that were trying to eat him, and had earned and immense amount of rewards and knowledge.
One of the overlooked topics of interest was that the system had hidden features and quests that Oliver could find by trying new skills or hunting specific creatures. The danger seemed to be quite variable as these extremely low level crabs had spawned in a rather deadly boss variant. Luckily, his previous run in with the spider made it so he had the proper equipment to successfully take it down.
He quite liked the hidden quest system as it felt very much game like; rewarding players for going out of their way and preforming tasks that would otherwise be pointless. The gain in exp was quite nice, too.
He sat down on his bed-platform and, without even taking off his armour, fell asleep, changing the biome from the twilight biome to the sunny cave. For the first time since his crash landing, Oliver was visited by dreams as the purple glow of night was changed into the bright and lush landscape of the daytime cave.
The dreams began very much like the events that had already taken place: crash landing with his plane due to the freak blizzard, trekking through mountains, and eventually finding the lone pine tree with the glowing cave under it.
However, the dreams turned nightmarish as a gigantic creature made of bones stood behind the pine tree, dwarfing the tree to minuscule proportions. The monster had many heads and even more dark eye sockets that seemed to track Oliver as he made his way into the cave on all fours, oblivious to the presence of this voyeuristic entity.
The dreams faded as Oliver once again passed out near the stream after having a drink of water and smiling knowing he was going to survive. For now.
***
The dreams did not fade away as consciousness returned to Oliver. Instead, they felt imprinted on his brain, like he had seen something that could never be forgotten. The massive looming figure that stared at him as he entered this cave, what did it want? Was it the cause of the plane crash, or maybe it was the creator of the system? In any case, the feeling of being extremely small had never felt more real.
Oliver gulped down some water that had previously been boiled to shake away the lingering thoughts of cosmic horrors. He would kill for some tea or coffee right now. He missed the old mud making machines that were present in hotel rooms. They weren't too fancy, and there was often times a taste of burnt coffee grounds or the gritty feeling of the last swig of a cup, but he did miss the small comforts he used to have.
In fact, Oliver thought about many things that he missed from his old world. The feeling of flying, the taste of a new food, the squirrels in the parks and the feeling of the sun. He could do without the Canadian winters, he was still a bit traumatized from dredging through snow for a few days. But the summers and the hiking trails he did miss.
It was easy to start spiraling and thinking about how lonely and difficult his current situation was, but Oliver did not want to give up. It had kept him alive through a plane crash and it powered him through to find the cave. He looked around at his mediocre camp, the piles of decapod legs and bodies staring back at him.
Sure, the squirrels were replaced by man-eating creatures of various size and leg count. The new food was no longer a spicy vindaloo from a nearby restaurant but was instead very muddy tasting crab meat. There was no sun, only glowing crystals on the ceiling. If he really thought about it, the hiking trails resembled the forest he currently lived in. It could be worse.
He could have died in the snow, a skeleton that would slowly sink into the tundra. His body might be found by a wandering hunter, but the chances of that were slim. Instead, he was warm, had tons of food and was wearing.....a very bizarre crustacean shell armor. Life was not as bad as it could be.
Right now, he needed to get his mind off of things and eat some giant crab meat before it went bad. He stoked the fire and smashed the crab legs with rocks, extracting the filamented meat inside with the best of his ability. He stacked the carcasses outside of his camp, maybe the little cat creature would still want the leftovers when he want back to the dark biome. He carved out the giant crab meat and roasted it over red embers, it sizzled as water heated up within the meat.
He took a massive bite, chomping down on the large white and red flesh. The giant crab meat was excellent, much better than that small decapod variant. He didn't have any garlic butter or salt, which would've made this dish to die for, but he was happy. He ate to his heart's content and kept the rest of the meat he couldn't finish in hollowed out decapod shells, using two of them as makeshift storage containers.
He thought to himself that he would need to be extremely resilient if he wanted to survive here, but luckily, the system rewarded such tenacity. He then looked at the crystal seed and realized an area he knew that would most likely contain the Ether Seed he was looking for.
With a quick face wash, he donned on his crab helmet and picked up his huntsman spear. His wounds from the previous fight had healed with the help of the nearby campfire and the food. He felt confident and empowered, a fire burning in his heart as he made his way to a place where no daylight shone but was certainly rich in magical energy.
A place he thought he would avoid for a long time, if not completely.
A short walk later brought him before a rock face with a dark opening in the middle of the cavern wall. A cold chill ran down his spine just like the first time he saw this place but no red text popped up warning him not to enter.
It was time to explore the cave.