There were still a few hours left in the day, and he still wanted to get a look at the [Zolith] Tile before the start of the next wave. He intended on spending the following day finishing the hide and hopefully turning it into protective clothing. On the final day, he planned to exercise, practice with his dagger, and get his mind right for whatever might be coming. Lucian had ideas for fortifying his shack, but he didn't have the tools or the time necessary to do so.

Without wasting time, Lucian walked to the hedge and started knocking away branches where he'd left off. Branches and twigs quickly piled up on the ground behind him as he sawed a path with the serrated edge of his bone dagger. The firewood was a fantastic bonus, and he'd already built up enough to last him a week even after smoking the hides.

"Just how thick is this hedge?" Lucian griped as he dragged another load of branches out of the path he'd carved. He was already two meters deep, and he still couldn't see any light.

[Error]

"Yeah, yeah," He backed out of the hole and looked up, wondering if he could climb over the damn thing. It was well over eight meters tall, and the higher it went, the stranger the fruits looked. "No. Maybe if the branches were thicker, they'd snap as soon as I put my weight on them."

With a long sigh, he walked back into the carved tunnel and began hacking away. There were areas inside the bush where fruits grew in abundance, though they didn't have the same bright pigments as the produce on the outside. These were darker colors, some even being black. Lucian tried to steer the path so that it would run by these natural growth spots without affecting them.

He continued felling the branches for hours, and the light coming from the entrance he'd made dimmed heavily. It had been some time since he'd pulled out the fallen branches, hoping that he was coming close to the end. Lucian turned and couldn't even see the entrance with the few curves and detours he'd made to avoid the new species of fruits he encountered.

"Maybe the entire Tile is a hedge..." He mumbled, staring at the long path carved behind him. He'd been inside of the hedge for almost four hours! After glancing at the timer, he saw that it should be close to the end of the day.

[2:17:16:49]

"Well, I'll clean up this mess, and this will have to be a project for another time," Lucian spoke up, talking to the rabbits crawling around and watching him from inside the hedge. He stared at the thousands of limbs he'd left in his wake and sighed, "I really wish I had a rake."

The good news was that he wouldn't need to worry about firewood for a long, long time. The bad news was that it would take him at least two or three hours to clean up the mess that he'd made.

"Ain't nothing to it but to do it..."

Though he said it to help push himself, he didn't feel hyped about this particular job, so he spent the following hour asking Ed questions while ferrying limbs out of the now nine-meter-long tunnel. He didn't receive any new answers and was beginning to feel that he'd learned all of the knowledge that Ed, or the person on the other side, was allowed to give him. After reading the [Error] response for the twentieth time, he stopped asking questions and suddenly started humming a tune as he gathered the severed branches.

"Hm. Hmmmm. Hmm.

With blackened eyes and hardened soul,

this man deserves no rest.

With shattered heart and ample fears,

the Old Gods do detest.

He cannot fight, he cannot hide,

when Death is at the door.

Only once the Dark God laughs,

can he rest forevermore.

Hmmm. Hm. Hmmmmm."

Lucian blinked rapidly.

"Where..." He looked around, finding that he was sitting in the center of his shack. "How the fuck did I get here?"

[Error]

Lucian ignored the message and looked down at his hands. In one of his hands was the bone dagger. In the other was a black fruit with a single bite taken out of it. The inside of the circular fruit was gold, and golden juices ran out of it. He wasn't sure what was going on or what drove him to do it, but he took a bite of the strange fruit.

Then another.

And another.

The fruit was gone in just a few bites, and he sat staring at the wall. An odd rhyme continuously echoed in his mind, keeping him from putting together what had happened. Lucian remembered picking up branches from within the hedge... and then he was here.

"Ed... Can you tell me what happened?" He asked.

[Host has come into contact with a Fruit of Awakening. Since Host has already awakened the [Initiate] Microlink, Host has gained 5 Psyons. The effectiveness of consuming more Fruits of Awakening will be diminished]

"What?!" Lucian hurriedly pulled up the [Microlink] tab and looked at the top left corner. Just like Ed had told him, a nice, solid "V" hovered just out of his vision. He gawked at his empty hand, wondering just where he'd found the strange fruit and where the hell the lyrics came from that were swimming around in his brain.

"Ed, what is a Fruit of Awakening?" He asked.

[Fruit of Awakening: A fruit used by primitive planets or families to awaken their descendants. The fruit is a treasure that can be consumed multiple times to gain Psyons but will lose its effectiveness over time. There are more advanced methods that can awaken an individual without the side effects]

"Primitive planet?" Lucian scoffed. If the people on primitive planets had things like this, the people of Earth must be considered neanderthals. "What kind of side effects are we talking about?"