Chapter 3: Local Cuisine

Jason frowned at the object in his hand. The carnivorous mandrake proved to be the most generous monster thus far in terms of loot, producing not only an extra tin of the precious healing unguent, but also something new.

Item: [Trowel of the Blood Cult] (iron rank, uncommon)

A gardening implement enchanted to affect certain kinds of plant. (tool).

• Effect: Improves health of carnivorous plants.

The trowel looked rather sinister, made out of some kind of black metal with a red sheen. It carried the wear marks of having been used as a planting tool, but also a razor edge that was wholly unnecessary for gardening purposes.

“Blood cult?” Jason read unhappily from the item description. “Who gardens with an evil trowel? Whose hedge maze is this?”

Not having anything better, Jason kept the sharp trowel in hand, on the ready for more monsters. After checking his map again he set off, weapon in hand. Still naked aside from a pair of sandals, he was very careful about where he held it.

***

Jason looked at the well. It was a circle of bricks, the mortar aged and crumbling. There was a wooden bucket and crank, both weathered with age. It was the kind of rustically picturesque feature he could imagine someone putting at the centre of their hedge maze.

Quest: [Stranger in a Strange Land]

• Objective complete: Explore the hedge maze 1/1.
• [Simple Pants] have been added to your inventory.

• Quest complete.
• 100 [Iron Spirit Coins] have been added to your inventory.

Jason gave a fist pump and took the pants out of his inventory. They were made of plain white linen, with billowy legs and a very low crotch fit, held up by a drawstring.

“It’s like a Mennonite made some hammer pants. Did I wake up in 1991 rural Pennsylvania?”

Putting aside fashion concerns, Jason slipped the pants on, walking around experimentally. They were sufficiently roomy that it didn’t feel much different to walking around without them.

“I don’t suppose I can get a quest for some boxer shorts?”

He waited hopefully for a few moments, but no window appeared.

“Worth a try.”

After being attacked by so many creatures, Jason was a mess of blood and ointment, even if the wounds had been healed. The result was the white pants being immediately stained red and unguent-yellow.

With his nudity concern ameliorated, Jason was able to turn his thoughts to other aspects of his situation. He sat down on the edge of the well to think over his next move.

The things he was experiencing were clearly impossible, which broadly placed him in one of two situations. One, his faculties were significantly compromised and his understanding of what he was doing was massively detached from the reality. Brain trauma, hallucinogens, some kind of severe mental break. His knowledge was too shallow and his observation point too subjective to make any definitive assessment. To the best of his understanding, though, none of those options made sense. He was too lucid, too capable of critical thinking. His consciousness wasn’t skipping around, glossing over the inconsistencies of a compromised mental state. That being said, his understanding of mental conditions was essentially nil, so that might be what crazy felt like from the inside.

The big point going for the mental-impairment hypothesis was that the alternative scenario required Jason’s most fundamental understandings of reality to be somewhere between woefully incomplete and breathtakingly wrong.

Either way, his only real option was to get on with it. If it was all in his head, then it didn’t matter what he did. Inversely, if it was real, and he ran around acting like it wasn’t, the consequences could be dire. He took a deep, calming breath.

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“Alright, Jason” he said, steeling himself. “What’s next?”

Sooner or later he would need to find his way out of the maze, but the fact that his quest ended on reaching the well implied there was something special about it. He started by examining the wooden frame which had a simple crank and rope to lower a bucket, along with a little wooden roof to shield the mechanism from the weather. It only seemed to have worked to a degree, with the rope and bucket both looking the worse for wear. The brickwork was likewise dilapidated, with mortar crumbling at the touch. He stuck his head over the well to look down. To his surprise, iron rungs had been affixed to the inside of the well, leading into darkness below.

New Quest: [Secrets of the Well]

You have discovered a ladder descending into the well. Do you have the courage to explore the depths?

• Objective: Explore the well 0/1.
• Reward: Awakening stone.

• Bonus objective: Don’t die 0/1.
• Reward: Essence.

“Don’t die? What kind of quest objective is don’t die?”