As we were standing atop a cliff overlooking the sea, we saw something that arguably left an even bigger impression on us than the sea itself. Out of the water jumped a shark that was about ten meters long. Immediately following it were seemingly countless tentacles. Their length was impossible to determine but a rough guess said the creature which they were attached to was enormous. The shark was quickly caught and dragged back into the sea. The water in is surroundings was a muddy brown for a short while before it calmed down again. Just as it did, a giant bird flew by. It was easily three times the size of the shark. It looked like an eagle or hawk of some sort. With that beak and those talons, it definitely did not live on fruit.

Gregory and I looked at one another after the giant bird had flown by and then I stepped back into the vegetation. I immediately decided we wouldn't be taking a nice refreshing swim in the lovely ocean. That looked even worse than the jungle. Avoiding going into the water became a very high priority all of a sudden. I took a look over at Gregory and with a single glance I could tell we were in agreement on that without even saying a word.

It took a while for Gregory to calm down a bit after that. I of course was completely fine and definitely was not shaking while hiding in a small tree bole. Once everything was back under control, I had a chat with Gregory. We decided to follow the coast to the north and see where it would take us. The sea seemed even more vicious than the forest but it wasn't like we had any better things to try. Wander for long enough and we were bound to run into people. The goddesses had said there were humanoids on this planet so people must be around here somewhere. We just have to keep looking.

Before we started though, I had Gregory pile up a bunch of stones as an obvious artificial monument. I wanted to make sure that if this place was a huge island we did not endless circle it thinking we were making progress. He seemed to misunderstand and spent two whole days piling stones in incomprehensible shapes. I was able to figure out some of it. There were arrows to show where the sun sets as well as where we had come from. I have no idea what the swirls in the middle were supposed to be or why it was important for us to go down and gather some seashells from a nearby beach and stack them in piles.

Just as an aside, beaches are also scary. It is not just the forest or the sea. I made it most of the way to the ocean and was watching Gregory pick through a pile of shells when a crab burst out of the sand and tried to eat me. Luckily, I managed to dodge and Gregory was able to poison the crab before it got to me.

However, as I tried to suffocate the crab with my now standard tactic of covering its mouth with sand, what looked like a seagull that was over three meters tall tried to eat me. Gregory successfully took the seagull down by jumping on it while it was still swooping at me and paralysing it with the pain of his poison. I had to do a very quick dive to not be hit by the now plummeting seagull but at least I didn't have to worry about it trying to dive at me repeatedly. Just as I was about to relax thinking we were out of trouble, the situation became worse. The first seagull seemed to have been a scout as a whole flock of seagulls arrived.

It was hairy there for a while as Gregory hopped from one seagull to the next trying to poison them all before they swarmed me. He was jumping off one poisoned seagull onto a new seagull while both were in the air. Apparently he could jump at least five meters in one go. I swear he must have made it forty meters up in the air just by jumping from the back of one seagull to the next.

I knew Gregory was a scary little termite but I vowed once again that day to never make him angry. By the time he was done there were around fifty seagulls lying on the beach shrieking in pain. The noise was incredible. Even though they had come to kill me, I still ended up feeling guilty. No matter what actually happened, after the fact it totally looked like Gregory and I were mass murders.

I spent the entire fight playing bait and trying to avoid being hit by falling seagulls. Not to make too much of this but those seagulls had a wing span of roughly fifteen meters and were moving at speeds that made me wonder if I heard a sonic boom once or twice. There could be up to ten of them falling at any given time. Mid fight, I heard that emotionless voice once again announce something incomprehensible. When I had to check my status screen after the fight I appeared to have gained the skills Bait and Dodge. Yep, I was definitely helpful. As time goes on, I feel like Gregory is losing respect for me. Sometimes these days I wonder if he is just using me as a mount and bait combined in one. I really need to talk to him about this. Well, he will probably just deny it all with a shake like he always does.

Of course, I was the one left to do all of the digging required after the fight. I had to fill the seagull beaks with sand so they would suffocate. Having a shovel or even being able to carry sand any reasonable distance would have really sped things up and made it easier. Gregory just sat on me and watched. On the one hand, I couldn't really complain as he did just save my life repeatedly. On the other hand, that was a LOT of digging and having an extra set of ... well not hands but whatever is at the end of his legs would have been really helpful. I spent hours dealing with those seagulls. I did gain a Seagull Hunter achievement but somehow I could not feel terribly proud about it.

Apparently, my stealth skills still needed refining in foreign environments, like a completely flat and barren sandy beach around midday. I later found out the crabs were very sensitive to vibrations in the ground and the seagulls would come feed on the crabs as soon as they saw one. Not knowing this, I was sure that my stealth skills were not good enough and resolved to spend some of the time we spent following the coast practicing being sneaky on beaches and anywhere else I could think of.

Eventually we managed to complete Gregory's masterpiece of a marker and were able to move along the coast. The trip along the coast was just as spectacular as our trip though the jungle. We saw innumerable birds, bats, and other flying creatures. The cliffs, bays, and beaches could have populated countless postcards. The monsters were huge, deadly, and really wanted to eat my nearly round body.

The monsters that populated the coast were very different from those in the jungle so I gained quite a few achievements. Overall though I did not notice much of a change to my stats. I mean it was hard to tell because I had no hard numbers and the descriptions in my stat window never changed but I was pretty sure they did not change that much.

A few days into our journey we came across a cooled lava flow. I have no idea how old it was but it did not seem hot anymore and there was no vegetation to be seen anywhere in front of us. Just as I was about to start walking on the blackened ground, Gregory pulled me back by my hair. That really hurts you know!

Gregory wouldn't let me set a foot forward until we went inland a bit. Eventually, he led me to a fallen tree. It looked like it had been knocked over recently by a storm or knowing this forest some strange monster. He nonchalantly jumped off of me and tried to pick up the whole thing. Of course he didn't get far with it as there were still all the branches and what not still attached. He then started jumping between myself and the tree. I tried to tell him there was no way I was going to be able to carry that. Not only was I pretty sure I was not that strong, the branches were going to be an issue for me too and my curse was going to break it as soon as I picked it up. As soon as I thought that far I realized what Gregory wanted and went to pick up as much of the tree as I could. Of course, after I picked it up the section I was holding broken into pieces thanks to my curse. With that Gregory was able to carry off a more manageable section of tree that was about a meter tall and two meters long.

I tried to explain to him that it was ridiculous for a termite, one the size of a grain of rice, to be able to pick up something that size. Gregory ignored me and just started heading back toward the old lava flow with his new prize. I tried picking up another part of the tree just to check the weight. It was definitely heavy. I was not sure if there was something incredible about this world or about Gregory but either way I realized once again that my common sense was completely useless here.

The trip across the lava flow took a few days. Gregory carried his log with him the entire time. When we were attacked by the fire creatures that lived in the area he fought them and immediately went back to carrying his log. I asked him about it quite a few times but the only guess I got right was that he wanted to have food on the trip across this barren wasteland.

At first, I thought it was just that but he kept carrying it even after we were back in the jungle. I will say that if my appearance was not strange enough before it became even more surreal now that I was being followed by a log. Because Gregory was so small it was impossible to see him under the log. So it just looked like the log was a pet following its master.

For a while there, Gregory was really clumsy when carrying his log so we were almost constantly under attack from all the monsters around us. I ended up having to give him stealth lessons in a desperate attempt to make the insanity end. My life seemed to be getting stranger all the time in this world. The less crazy option for me at this point was to give lessons in stealth to a termite so that a log could be sneaky. If there was a psychologist around I would have gone straight away.

I kept trying to guess the reason he was doing this until one day after we woke up in the morning he seemed to make a noise on purpose. This drew the attention of a seven foot tall walking vine monster complete with zebra head. They were pretty normal in this part of the forest really. After we dealt with it, he started jumping from the things head to me and back again. I had no idea why he wanted me to pick up the things head but I did it anyway. After the head fell to pieces, which was horrible grotesque by the way, Gregory went into the pieces and pulled out a bright green glowing gem. That should not be normal. Right? Things shouldn't have gems imbedded in their brains. That makes no sense. I had to wonder if I had one of those in my brain. The whole thing freaked me out a bit so I decided to focus on what in the world this stone was.

Maybe it was the legendary magic stone mentioned in various light novels? The ones that are used to power magic items, create alchemical potions, and store enormous energy which can allow beasts or heroes to level up. While I was trying to make sense of this new found aspect of monster anatomy, Gregory carried the gem over to his log. There he lifted up a piece of bark and stored the gem inside a cavity I didn't even know existed.

Apparently, for the last few nights he was hollowing out parts of his log for storage. The only problem I had was that the size of the cavities he was making were bigger than the log itself. Gregory was making a magic space log and acting like this was all normal. I started calling him Doctor Gregory for a while after that but since I was the only one to understand the joke eventually I stopped. He used bark to cover the cavities in a very clever way so even I wasn't sure how many of them he eventually made. I didn't even want to ask when else he made in there as he seemed to spent a great deal of time working on the log every night.

From that first day on whenever I killed a monster Gregory would insist on getting the magic stone from the monster. At first I was excited because I thought they might be super rare but no they seemed to be inside every monster we killed. Then I thought maybe I could start gaining levels by eating them but Gregory was adamant that me eating them was a really bad idea. When I questioned Gregory he claimed he was collecting them for the log. I tried to follow that up but failed horribly. I had absolutely no idea why a log needed magic stones. Ultimately, we just accumulated piles and piles of magic stones inside Gregory's log. He stored different colours in different cavities and even seemed to sort them by size and brightness. It was at this point that I learned that Gregory was a bit of a neat freak. Maybe we could trade the stones with people when we finally met them one of these days? That had to be worth something right?

After roughly a year of wandering the coastline, we came across a very familiar collection of rocks and seashells. Apparently, Gregory and I had been born on an island. Everywhere we went there were sea monsters and flying bringers of death. It appeared we would not be getting off this island easily.