I'm not sleeping at all tonight.

Well, I wasn't planning on sleeping anyway, but even if I wanted to, it's a bit difficult while I'm hearing what's outside. Constantly, there's moaning from multiple directions, meaning that whatever's out there had us surrounded.

I am not looking forward to meeting them.

So I wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Strangely, I'm not tired at all. I mean, it's not that unusual considering that I woke up here in the late afternoon, but sitting in a dark room usually gets me sleepy. While I'm thinking about that, the first rays of sunlight start creeping through a small knot in the wood that's no bigger than my finger. Looks like it's dawn.

I hear the moans drop off, definitely a good sign. Now I can...

Wait, what can I do?

I'm stuck in some godforsaken hellhole with monsters, superpowers, and no available way home - what do I do now?

I start to dig my way out of my murder-proof box with my pickaxe. It operates basically the same as placing wood does, only in reverse; it removes a 2 foot cube of material when swung, without regard to what you're swinging at. Doesn't work for trees, though. I guess it makes sense, in a way, but it still seems strange.

I still have no idea what I should do, though. Well, I may as well go for broke:

"Alright, Guide. Guide me."

"What?" he says.

"What do you recommend I do now?"

"Well, I recommend dealing with that, first," he says, drawing his bow. I turn to look where he is looking. While I was distracted with conversation, something that looks like a massive eyeball flies through the air - towards me!

The thing is large, about the size of my torso. While I can see it adjusting its flight path, the creature's massive pupil doesn't seem to be tracking me at all; instead, it just blankly stares straight on. It must use some other sense other than sight to know where I am.

Again; what is wrong with this place?

I quickly jump back, swapping my pickaxe to my sword wordlessly. Guide lets loose an arrow, placing it right between its - no, right in its eye. The impact knocks it back a few feet. The monster must be tough, though, because it continues bouncing off the floor and walls. I dash forward, copper shortsword grasp firmly in my hand. I stab the thing in a frenzy, and I feel elation when it's skin yields easily to my blade. The small reach of the shortsword betrays me, and the creature knocks into me by chance.

It hurts.

It doesn't look like it, but the thing must weigh a ton because I'm flung backward at speed. I feel my ribs groan with the impact, the wind taken out of me. I quickly regain my footing, the throb of pain making me focus on the monster. The thing doesn't even look any worse for the wear!

"Guide!" I yell out to him behind me, "How do we kill this thing!"

"Hit it until it dies!"

Seriously?

I eye the beast carefully. I definitely don't want to get hit again, so I need to play this smart. I can hear the Guide nock another arrow, and I remember what happened last time he did that. I've got an idea.

I get out of the way to let the Guide fire unobstructed. The arrow flies through the air, sinking into the monster and knocking it back. Now's my chance! I rush forward, taking advantage of its reversed direction to lay into it with my sword. I furiously stab the thing over and over, making sure it can't get enough speed to overcome the force of the blows.

With one last shlick of the blade into monster flesh, the creature is destroyed much like the slime was, bursting into countless small chunks of viscera. I fall back onto my rear end, exhilarated and exhausted in equal measure.

We killed it.

Wow.

We killed a monster. Now that I have a chance to think about it, I can appreciate just how messed up this is. The monster looked like something out of a nightmare, something Nilbog of all things might've cooked up sometime.

And I killed it.

I really am a cape, aren't I? I mean, this ain't normal. None of it is, for that matter. You don't just go from working a nine-to-five to slaying literal monsters. I ain't gonna kid myself, I'm not some sort of Chuck Norris in disguise, I'm just a dockworker!

Something's screwy here, I know that much. I've got to get to the bottom of this.

I notice something twinkling on the ground near where the beast was slain. Leaning forward, I can see some flat disks shining in the sun's rays. One of the items is slightly larger than the others and is a metallic, silvery color; the rest are a coppery brown. I get within a few feet before the items fly straight at me. I cross my hands to defend myself; I don't feel any impact, however. I see the disks have disappeared, so they must work like the wood pieces. I check my inventory again. Sure enough, it reads that I have 1 silver and 37 copper now - Silver?

Silver?

Oh, my.

I quickly take out the silver piece and hold it in my hand.

"Guide," I ask, licking my lips, "is this thing pure silver?"

"Of course," he replies as if it wasn't any big deal.

Hang on a moment, I need to think about this. If these things are pure silver, then this chunk that I'm holding right here has got to be worth at least a hundred bucks. More than some people's daily wage, made in five minutes.

"Do the, uh, monsters, always leave these when they die?" If I could keep doing this...

"Yes, typically. The rarer or stronger monsters tend to drop more money than the weaker, more common ones, like that Demon Eye just now."

A Demon Eye, that's what it was called. I file that fact away for now and focus on the potential payday this place has for me.

I can make a lot of money from this.

Assuming, of course, I can find a way home.

That realization puts a damper on my greedy giddiness. Money ain't nothing if you can't spend it. To do that, I have to get home. In order to get home, first I have to survive.

I certainly won't with this cruddy sword, if that last battle was anything to go by.

"Guide, is there anything better than this?" I ask, holding my copper shortsword aloft, "Because this thing took way too long to hurt that, ah, Demon Eye."

He gets a look on his face like someone's asking him if water is wet.

"Of course, of course! The Copper Shortsword is one of the weakest weapons you can find in Terax. I highly recommend you make yourself a better one as soon as you can, as well as some armor for defense. You can forge one at any crafting station you make."

Crafting station.

Right.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time he's thrown instructions that don't make any sense at me.

"How do I make this crafting station?" I question.

"Just, ah," he gets a bit - what's the word? - flummoxed, at that, "just do what you do to access your inventory. You should see something new if you look for it."

Might as well go for it. I reach into my chest again, 'seeing' the familiar symbols. I heed his advice and try to 'notice' anything new that I may have missed before - ah.

There's a different symbol, some 'distance' away from the others. It's hard to explain such a metaphorical concept; imagine something that's nearby, yet doesn't stand out unless you're looking for it.

I try to interact with it the same way as with the inventory slots - sending a pulse of subconscious intent towards the symbol. I'm surprised when the symbol shifts to the side, allowing a column of 3 different symbols to appear. Two of the shapes I do not recognize.

The first unknown shape is what looks like one-half of the 'wood' representation symbol, but with a small number '2' in the lower right corner of the symbol. Having previously used 'wood' symbols to construct the cabin, I know that the number represents an amount of units of that symbol in my possession, but apparently, it can also represent potential gain.

I decide to focus my intent on the item like I do when I want to examine an item in my inventory without withdrawing it. When I do that, a new symbol suddenly appears to the side of the unknown one, as well as a description of the unknown symbol. Apparently, the item is a "wooden platform", which like wood "can be placed". The symbol that appears to the side is the symbol for wood, which I already know.

I choose to 'activate' the "wooden platform" symbol as I would an inventory item. I send the intent impulse and withdraw my hand. I now am holding a bigger version of the new symbol I saw, much like how the 'wood' symbol behaved. I check my inventory again, and I see that my 'wood' symbol count has decreased by 1.

I think I understand how this works, now. The unknown symbols represent "craftable" items. The symbol(s?) that appear when I focus on a craftable item is the item used to create the desired item, and are lost when used to make them. The actual crafting process is instantaneous and unseen, occurring in the inventory space.

Interesting.

I place the wooden platform on the cabin floor to see what it looks like.

It just floats in the air, nothing supporting it.

Right.

Well, that ain't nothing that new thanks to Glory Girl flying around all the time and that "Kid Win" guy with his hover-board, but still, a bit surprising.

Regardless, I look at the two other remaining symbols. The next one looks like a side view of a simple wooden coffee table. Examining it further shows it to be called a "Work Bench" - sounds like a winner. However, I pass over it for a moment to look at the last symbol: a copper coin symbol with a '100' count on it. If I'm reading it correctly, it'll convert one silver coin to one hundred copper coins.

While that sounds pretty impressive - especially considering it completely violates the law of conservation of mass - I'm not entirely sure that it's profitable, so I'll pass for now.

Speaking of profits, that reminds me - this is still very strange, the issue with the coins. Why does a monster place money down when it dies? What's the deal here?

I'll have to find out more about this later if I get the chance.

-[]-

I go back and create the workbench, noting the loss of ten pieces of wood. Now that I have the symbol for the work bench in my inventory, I place it down in front of me. Suddenly, a large square table appears before me. It's about 4 feet across and waist-high. More squares, huh? Seems to be a theme.

Anyway, now I've got a workbench, so I should be able to make more stuff, I think. I go back to my crafting list - wow, he wasn't kidding. There's suddenly a lot more recipes available to me - there it is, 'Wooden Sword'! That's what I need. I've already collected a good amount of wood, so I waste no time in crafting it.

I pull it out to inspect it. My newly-crafted 'blade' - if it can be called one - is definitely larger than the copper one I was using before and has considerably more heft to it. Its length and shape make it more suited for a slashing motion than a stabbing one, however. I'll have to change how I'll approach the monsters; get too close, and I won't have enough room to swing the sword.

Wait a minute; is this like how the pickaxe works, where it won't matter how hard I swing so long as I hit it? I wasn't really paying attention with the Demon Eye from before, I was too caught up in the moment. I'll have to try it to know.

Damn, this place is confusing.

-[]-

Before I headed out, I've crafted everything of interest in my newly-enlarged crafting list. Tools I didn't have before - a hammer and a fishing pole - are now in my inventory, ready for use. More important than the tools, however, is the armor that I'm currently wearing.

Yeah, armor. Really! I feel like I'm some kinda medieval knight, wearing this getup. I was surprised when I first noticed it after taking a more in-depth look at the new crafting list; though, I really shouldn't have been, what with the sword I made. There are three pieces of the outfit, or three recipes, to be exact: a set of 'Wooden Greaves", a "Wooden Breastplate", and a "Wooden Helmet". Each of the pieces alone took much more wood than I spent on the workbench, leaving me with only seven pieces when I finished.

Then I tried putting it on. Well, that let me learn another quirk about my powers.

Originally, I took it out of my inventory, but it was only an enlarged symbol of the item, like when placing wood. If I haven't mentioned it before, holding a symbol is... weird. It doesn't weigh anything, like holding a filled balloon. The strangest thing about it, though, is that no matter how much I turn it in my hand, it's always fully visible to me. It's like one of those optical illusion things.

Anyway, I'm on a tangent.

I attempted to place it, thinking maybe that's how it's done, but no dice. I ended up asking Guide about it, and he tells me it's in the same 'place' as my inventory. So, I go looking in there again, like how I found the crafting list. Sure enough, there's a new set of empty box symbols that I hadn't noticed before. These ones had information about them when I looked, which helped me a lot in figuring out what they did. I've got three sets of 'slots': one dealing with the greaves, one for the breastplate, and one for the helmet. Additionally, every set each had three unique descriptions: an 'armor' slot, a 'vanity' slot, and a 'dye' slot.

Of course, I had no idea what that meant at all.

After some trial and error, I figured out how it worked. Turns out I had to 'place' the armor in the slot for it to work, like moving a computer file from one folder to another. The dye slot was a no-go; it didn't let me place it in there.

Again, this is some really weird mind-stuff, so I can only say it how I felt it.

The vanity slot gave me some results, though. I placed the wooden breastplate in the slot, and suddenly it appeared on me!

Only not really.

I went to touch the armor and my hand went right through where it should have been, grabbing my shirt-sleeve instead. The entire thing was like it, looking like it was there but actually wasn't. Suddenly the name, 'vanity', made sense to me; what was in the slot would be for appearances only, a 'dress-up' item. If I ever wanted to make a fashion statement, now I at least knew how.

The last slot, armor, was what I needed. I took it out of the vanity slot, causing it to disappear and leave me in my plain work-shirt once more. Placing it in the armor slot caused it to reappear, only this time the thing was solid to the touch. I hazarded a guess to believe that things in the armor slot actually protected me, so I'll keep it in there for now.

As I was placing the greaves and helmet on myself indirectly, I also noticed that there were five more sets of slots near the armor ones; these were 'accessory' slots, whatever that meant. Accessories? What am I, some teenage girl?

Anyway, so here I am, all dolled up in my wooden armor and matching sword. I never really thought the idea of wooden armor could work - or be somewhat imposing for that matter - but somehow it does. The suit perfectly fits me, and it honestly doesn't feel like I'm wearing it at all, more like a second layer of skin than a hunk of dead tree. The only problem with it is that it doesn't cover my face.

I mean, it's not really that big a deal here, assuming I'm not in Brockton Bay anymore (I believe the guy when he said I wasn't but, you know, "trust but verify"). This issue is if I ever make it back. Some guy looks at me for five seconds in this getup, he's gonna remember my face. That, again, assumes that I'm gonna be wearing this thing when I get home.

The whole, "I'm a Parahuman" business I have to deal with, it's still nagging at me in the back of my mind.

I'll think about it later.

So, here I go. First real steps into this place and geared up for a fight.

Time to see what's out there.