The squirrel did die, and as Thaddeus looked at it, he saw the system slowly but surely start processing everything. First, the skin popped off and folded itself into a neat pile, which he thought was extremely strange, but then again, he had been having a few strange days lately.

  The next thing that happened was the squirrel being sliced open by invisible knives as the blood drained from a now open neck. It was all squeamish, and Thaddeus would have thrown up if his stomach hadn’t been empty. As it was, the process started to speed up after a few minutes. The squirrel was soon lying on its skin, having been completely butchered.

  There was a pile of offal to one side that he decided to ignore. Instead, he picked up the body; it was smaller than he thought it would be.

  “Well, I guess I have to make a fire now, " he said to the meat in his hands. It would help fill his empty stomach, and the thought of where it came from would have to pass.

  Another problem was the skin lying on the grass. Logically, he knew that leather could be made from it, but how he would do that was beyond him.

  At this moment, the system popped a message to him.

  Processing complete.

  Store extra material in subspace?

  Yes/No

  Bewildered again by whatever happened to him in this strange world, he selected yes.

  Hidden Squirrel Skin successfully stored.

  Subspace inventory full.

  Scoffing in annoyance, he returned to the clearing he had passed out in. Collecting small pieces of wood as he went. Despite everything, he had watched enough videos online to know that he would have to spit the body over a fire to cook it properly.

  He also knew that eating it raw, even a little bit, would make him extremely sick, so he used two of the sticks he had found to spear the meat and stick the wood into the ground.

  He hoped no flies would see his hanging meat as the prime spot to lay eggs.

  The next part would take him a few hours, and as he started getting everything ready, he saw the sun beginning to set.

  Starting a fire without tools was easy in theory, but it could be a complete headache in practice.

  Three hours later, after darkness had fully set, Thaddeus was still sitting in a dark clearing with broken twigs, leaves, and large wood piles.

  He had tried rubbing, spinning, and smashing out of pure frustration to get something to make some heat.

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  But now he was staring at the pile he had hoped would be fire by now with utter frustration.

  So, he decided to try something foolish but saw no reason not to. Since he had seen a dragon already, he might as well try something absurd.

  Closing his eyes, he put his hand on the pile of leaves, imagining a fire bursting out of his hand into the pile.

  At first he felt stupid.

  Then he felt insane when nothing happened.

  But just as he was bout to stop, he saw a pop-up from the system.

  Basic Magic.

  Firestarter learned.

  Just like that, he felt something cold run through his arms, and then, the unmistakable feeling of fire in his hands leapt into the pile of leaves. They quickly started burning, and a small fire lit up. His momentary shock at what had just happened was quickly replaced with panic as the tiny flames promptly ate up the leaves.

  He piled small sticks onto the leaves and started nursing his small fire into life. Soon, he was happy to find it was becoming bigger, with some smoke from the larger pieces and hissing as they were not entirely dry.

  He sat back and marvelled at his small fire, enjoying its heat. He had done the most essential things for survival: He had killed something and started a fire.

  Now, all that was left was to find water, not that he cared. He was not all that thirsty, which he thought should be strange, but he quickly dismissed it.

  The squirrel cooked rather easily, and after 30 minutes of turning it and trying to angle every corner to be slightly charred, he risked eating some of it.

  To his delight, Thaddeus “Bennie” Poundsworth found that the cooked squirrel tasted quite nice. It was a bit tough because of the way it was cooked, but otherwise, it was perfectly fine.

  He stoked the fire a few more times after eating as much of the squirrel as he could, then unsuccessfully tried to store the rest, and then went to sleep.

  The second day had ended rather uneventfully if you didn’t consider learning the most basic magics, killing squirrels, and cooking them as necessary as eventful.

  The morning of the third day, found Thaddeus up early and walking through the forest, trying not to be seen by anything around him. He knew that even a squirrel was tough enough to pose a problem.

  Over the night, he had healed some, and the system told him his health had returned to full. Now, all he had to do was hopefully find something other than a clearing to sleep in. He went from tree to tree through the forest, heading in what he hoped was a northerly direction.

  Several moons in the sky and two suns that rose in opposing directions meant he could not tell directions.

  So he kept going, hoping that he wasn’t walking in circles.

  He did this for most of the day, fortunately not seeing any animals or probably being so loud that any animals he would have seen ran away before he noticed them.

  He tried appraising several things as he went, receiving experience each time, but never enough to level up. The more trees, plants, and grass he appraised, the more the system seemed unwilling to give him more experience.

  This was partly why he wanted to find more animals, appraise them, and gain experience from them.

  It was with a running thought about how he should try just sitting down and waiting for animals to walk past that he did not see the big wooden fence he walked into until it was too late.

  He stumbled backwards and looked up, unsure what he expected to see.

  What he did see, though, made no sense. A sign was at the top of the fence, which stood about 10 feet high.

  To his eyes, it read: Begone, we have failed.

  Which made little to no sense, as the fence, or rather, wooden wall, seemed proud.

  So he chose a direction, right, because it felt right, and hoped to find a gate. Whatever was inside the wall was very large; it took Thaddeus twenty minutes of walking to reach what he would call a side gate—a small one, barely taller than him.

  It was clearly in disrepair, but it did have metal hinges. Even if they were so rusted, the gateway was hanging on by a metallic thread.

  Pushing slightly against it, the door fell in with a loud clang and clatter that seemed unnaturally loud. Thaddeus suddenly felt like he should not have tried going in.

  Taking a deep breath, he looked through the open doorway and used appraise.

  Ruined Mansion of the Lost.

  Current occupant: 1

  Status: Ruinous

  Basic Sock Puppets:

  J.R. Timmerman

  Christo M

  Free Members:

  Scarlett Dawn

  Lisa M