The blizzard was dense, so dense that at the risk of overusing a commonly used trope, Lucas thought that it was thick enough to cut with a knife, but in reality you can’t actually cut through a fog with a knife, but then again, he was stuck in a magical reality that had wolves that could create holograms of itself, so maybe he actually could cut the weather with an enchanted dagger or something, but lacking that, he couldn’t actually do it.

Lucas could see directly in front of him just fine, but everything that was more than 2 feet out was a white blur. Walking was miserable, too, as it went up to his knees, so every time he took a step forward, he’d have to raise his leg up to his stomach, move it forward, then let it sink back down into the snow. Oh, and while the howling and shrieking and other various threatening sounds were bearable back in the cabin, now that he was actually out in the wild, they were louder, so loud in fact that it was like someone was taking a drill, shoving the bit in his ear, and turning it on at max. At some point, the cold also caused his nose to bleed, and that was no fun because there was already a thin and constant drip of snot running down his face.

But, hey, at least he wasn’t cold. He could endure this for hours, or maybe even days, technically. Not that he intended to do so, since this whole experience was miserable, but if worst came to worst he could do it.

And really, him having to lift his legs that high could be considered a blessing too, because now he was paying a lot of attention to where he was walking, and could very easily feel out if there was an obstacle in front of him. Which there were a lot of, apparently. When he left the cabin, he picked a direction at random and hoped the other guy wouldn’t follow him, but his random direction might have worked out for the best. He found himself in a forest of trees, none of which looked quite familiar to him. Sure, they looked like trees, but something seemed different about them. Maybe the shape of the coniferous trees were slightly longer, or maybe the shape of the leaves were a bit less green than usual, or– Oh. That’s what it was. These trees still had leaves green as spring grass, but it there was currently a blizzard going on. Seeing healthy green leaves being covered by snow was a bit uncanny.

He didn’t know how long he wandered in that blizzard for, but that seemed to be a running them that was going on. His snow-blind journey ended when he accidentally stumbled into a hole that he couldn’t even see, because most of it had been buried under the snow. Falling into the hole hadn’t been pleasant, but it did reveal itself to be a cave that was much larger than his cabin had been, so that was pretty cool. There were stalactites and stalagmites made of some blue-ish glowing crystal growing out of the cave’s ceiling and floor. He considered himself lucky that the crystals were growing everywhere and provided him light, this cave would be one of the last places he’d want to be if it was completely dark.

“What is this place?” Lucas muttered to himself. He looked behind him for signs that Frank might have followed him here, but as far as he could tell, he was alone to explore the cave.

The cave looked cool and all, but as he explored he wasn’t able to find a way out. There was a small stream that he thought would lead somewhere, but instead it seemed to be dripping from a small hole in the ceiling, then falling down into a large pit. Dammit, he wanted a way out, not a way to delve deeper. Lucas then proceeded to walk back to the hole he fell into in the first place and tried climbing it, but the stone was too smooth for him to get a grip. The last option available to him was to explore the various other side paths he had found, but none of them were all that promising. They all either circled back on each other, or they threatened to become so labyrinthine that he didn’t dare traverse them. Seriously, some of those tunnels had more than 5 different branching passageways, and each of them looked like they went on for a while, and the last thing he wanted to do was get himself even more lost. Sure, he could mark some of the cave walls with like, a potion, but that would be a waste of his resources, and he was afraid his [Observation 0] skill would screw him over somehow. He didn’t know the extent of how much it affected him yet, so he didn’t want to take any risks. Did it only affect him finding items in containers, or did it affect more than that? Would it create paths in areas he had already been in, thus confusing him even more? He didn’t want to experiment with it in this magical, cavernous wonderland, so staying inside the first big room he found was the best choice he had available to him.

So, this wasn’t the best situation to be in, but it could be worse.

A low rumbling echoed throughout the cavern, as if rising to the challenge to make things as horrible as they could be. Was this an earthquake? Did he jinx himself by saying it could be worse, so someone made it worse? Why? Why would they do that?

At least it wasn’t a very bad earthquake, if it even was one. The floor shook a bit, but not enough to throw him off balance, and it didn’t last long. Really, the only damage the earthquake did to him was it made dust fall from the ceiling, and some of it got stuck in his eye. When he tried to rub it out, it just dug deeper in, and his eyes began to tear up. Even the trick where you face downwards, pull open your eyelids, and roll your eye around didn’t work. This was just what he needed, great. No, he liked having an irritated eye stuck with random cave dust. This was fantastic. No, life couldn’t be any better. In fact, he had a lot of things to be thankful for right now! Sure, there were countless negatives, but let’s start with the good stuff first. Positive thinking leads to positive outcomes, after all.

For starters, there didn’t seem to be anything wanting to kill and eat him living in the immediate vicinity. That was good! Very good! Since this world seemed to want to brutally murder him at every given moment, the fact that he had a moment of peace here was nice.

Secondly, there was a source of water. The water looked clean enough, and this was a magical fantasy isekai world, so he presumed it was probably safe to drink. If not, well, he’d deal with that when he had to.

Thirdly, shelter. He was safe from the blizzard outside. Not that that really even harmed him, but hey, shelter was shelter.

Fourth, he got away from Frank. He wasn’t too sure what Xandrious’ family expected from him – if anything at all – since he only had Xandrious’ journal to go off of, but he didn’t want anything to do with them. The rich, ruling class were always assholes, no exceptions. Wealth corrupted, and that wouldn’t change in a different world like this. Plus, from what little information he could naturally get from Frank, it sounded like Xandrious’ sister didn’t want him to learn magic, but he was in an entirely new world! Of course he had to learn magic! That was the entire point! So, distancing himself from them was a priority, and this cave provided tons of distance. So far, anyway.

That about summed up the positives. Now, the negatives.

He was hungry. Not super hungry yet, but his stomach’s yearning for food made itself known. Its grumbles were quiet, but they would no doubt grow louder and louder with every passing moment.

He had no idea where he was, but then again, he hadn’t known that since he got here, so he was used to that. It was less of a negative at this point, and more of a way of life, something he just had to accept.

If a monster found him here, he’d likely be killed, because his combat skills sucked. This room didn’t exactly have any great natural fortifications, either. The light provided by the crystals did much more to expose than hide him, and there weren’t any small crevasses to hide in. If something found him here, he’d just have to run.

There was also still that concern that someone, or something, was manipulating his thoughts and actions via some sort of magical mind control. Lucas knew walking out into the blizzard would be a terrible idea, yet time and time again for some reason the idea kept coming back into his head like an annoying song off Y**T***. If that someone or something told him to go out there, knowing he’d come here, that was even more concerning, because that would mean this cave was more important than it looked.

Wait, hold that thought, this cave already looked super important with the atmosphere it was giving off. The crystals, the stream, the pleasant and flowery aroma wafting through the cave, it all screamed “important!” to him in capital letters. Lucas hoped he was just being paranoid here, because if it was just paranoia, then the worst case scenario was that he was stressing out over nothing. But if he wasn’t just paranoid, then who knew what the hell could be lurking in the rest of this cave.

Lucas looked up at the nearest side branch and stared into it, trying to see if see if there might be some monster lurking in it, but he saw nothing but the crystals exuding their dim glow. The more he stared, the more he swore he saw the shadows flickering in the tunnel’s walls, hinting at something sinister, but the darkness betrayed nothing. If something was in there, he hadn’t seen it earlier, and he certainly couldn’t see it now. A little bit of knowledge he’d learned from TV or the internet (he couldn’t remember which) was that if you closed your eyes, you could hear better, so he tried that. If he couldn’t see the danger, maybe he could hear it.

No, there were no sounds other than the stream near by gently flowing across the cavern’s floor. He couldn’t even hear the howling of the blizzard down here.

“Great. Just… great, really,” Lucas muttered to himself. Even after taking pause and recollecting his thoughts, analyzing the pros and cons of the situation and all that, he had no idea what he was supposed to do in this situation. The system that was supposed to help him sucked so much that it was barely better than having nothing. Why base his magical power of understanding and utilizing skills on a video game, if said system didn’t even have a quest tool to help him along? Why did he not get an inventory to help manage all of his items? Why did he not have a map? Every modern video game had a map! Was this system based on something from the third console generation or something? His situation wouldn’t be nearly as dire if whoever designed this system actually gave him modern quality. Instead, he was left without direction, which in turn made him helpless.

Okay. He’d handled situations like this before. He’d managed a bunch of crappy teenagers, he’d forced them to work when they didn’t want to, and he’d turned a profit out of it. Bad things can easily be turned into good things with the right attitude. Making the right decisions and acting on them was something he had plenty of experience in, he could get through this without the typical cheats this world was supposed to give him. After slightly slapping his face with both hands, he felt more than motivated to tackle this challenge. Nothing could stop him, he’d killed a magic wolf before, he was capable of anything.

Don’t stop him now, he was having a good time.

Well, okay, he wasn't really having a good time, but singing the song did bring a small smile to his face.