Aug had no combat abilities or dungeon gear, but now, with renewed enthusiasm, he was determined to better himself. The next day, instead of sitting at home waiting for a job, he drove outside the city wall, to the wilds, to take on low-level monsters.
The convergence, the major event that changed everything three hundred years ago, brought four worlds together as one. One world bought dungeons, the second bought the wilds, the third bought all the exotic races, and the last contained humanity. Each world got broken up and scattered among the others, brought together as one super-world.
In the early days, humankind, and the exotic races waged war. If a dungeon remained unconquered, it would spill over with monsters, endangering the nearby populace. Raids on villages by monsters from untamed regions were common, motivated by territorial expansion or the search for food. During this period, many people died, and cities burnt. This resulted in a chaotic mess that lasted for fifty years until a power balance was established.
Now, in the modern world, all cities had walls to protect them from the wilds. Additionally, clearing out any dungeons inside these fortifications was a requirement. History had shown them that any city that did not have these two features simultaneously would eventually have to be abandoned. Thankfully, the wilds around Aug's city, Mystica, were not as dangerous as others were, and they had not seen a new dungeon appear within the walls for a generation.
With a truce now in effect, humanity, and the exotic races coexisted in relative harmony, banding together to face the menacing threats from the dungeons and the wilds.
As Aug arrived at his destination at the edge of the wilds, he checked his inventory, making sure he had all the essentials. He had brought with him some leftover healing potions, shield potions, food, water, a machete, and a single shot flare gun.
In contrast to city dungeons, the wilds were unregulated and more hazardous, but there were benefits to this as well. The open spaces of the outdoors provided you with greater room to operate. There were no limitations on how many people could be in a party, so you could come alone or with a large group. Lastly, there was no red tape around ownership or licensing, meaning no tolls or obnoxious rules.
Aug hadn't been out to the wilds since awakening two weeks prior. He had dedicated the first few days to paperwork and then immediately entered the dungeon with his old group.
Given that the area outside the city walls was level five, known as the [Beginner's Forest], Aug hoped his lack of a combat class wouldn't prevent him from defeating monsters.
The area he had come to was quite a popular place for new adventurers; there were sure to be many people around. So even though he would be alone, he would never be too far away from help.
As he set out, he passed several people just hanging about, waiting for monsters to spawn near the wall. Aug wanted to go deeper into the wilds. He wanted better corpses, and near the wall he would be competing for the rarer monsters.
Around an hour after they're slain, corpses in the wilds decompose and disappear, which means he could only pick up fresh kills. Like dungeons, corpses found in the wilds aren't items. Thus, the same item retrieval rules apply, and preservation is impossible, unless you were Aug.
As Aug ventured further into the woods, the crowds thinned, and the forest became silent. Thankfully, he had a GPS, so he was not worried about getting lost.
As he pushed past a few bushes into a clearing, he encountered his first monster up close.
The creature was an enormous, deep green, plant-like entity. Originating from the base, it had vines that flicked, whipped, and slithered, protecting its immediate area. If the vines caught you, the beast featured a colossal Venus flytrap-shaped mouth that could swallow you whole. The mouth secreted a fluorescent green substance which hissed as it met the forest floor. The monster seemed to be very active and somehow in distress.
Ready to put it out of its misery, Aug pulled his machete and charged at it. As he got closer, he noticed something strange: it began to glow from inside. At first, this was a faint red, but that red grew in size and intensity quickly.
Aug realised something was off, so he turned around and ran for the treeline, but it was too late. The vine monster exploded, and green blood and vine bits covered the clearing, splashing Aug lightly.
A young woman, heaving loudly, stood at the epicentre of the explosion. She looked pissed off and was covered from head to toe in green blood.
"Are you okay?" asked Aug, smiling at the woman who had not noticed him yet.
The woman looked around and saw Aug standing there. She panicked and covered herself as if she were indecent, but after a moment, she realised he was not hostile and calmed down.
"Yes, I am fine, thank you. That damn monster had magic nullification, so I had to wait till it ate me to escape its vines," said the woman timidly.
Aug kept his distance so as not to alarm her. His large stature was threatening to some.
"Did you need anything?" asked Aug, trying to be friendly, as the woman wiped green blood off herself with a towel from her inventory.
"No, I have everything I need. Thank you," she smiled, appreciative of the offer.
"No worries, I will leave you to it then. Good luck," said Aug, keeping his distance from the woman.
As he got to the edge of the clearing, he looked back once more, and the woman had mostly cleaned herself off. She had long purple hair that was now stained slightly green, with matching violet eyes. She was tall, pale-skinned, and in amazing shape. By her weapons and armour, she was a mage of some sort, as she wore violet cloth armour and had a sun-shaped focus for casting.
He smiled in her direction, hoping she did not get into any more trouble, and continued onward.
After a few more minutes of walking, Aug came across a giant forest spider. This would be his first victim, well, at least he hoped.
Concealed by a bush, Aug readied his machete to launch a surprise attack on the spider as it approached. Unfortunately, as he pounced from the bush, it reacted quickly and jumped backwards.
It then instantly went on the attack and charged at Aug, jumping at him, fangs first. Aug's only option, unless he wanted to get bitten, was to dodge. He leaped to the side and then rolled to regain his footing, facing the spider once more.
The spider took the initiative and attempted to attack again, but this time as Aug dodged, he swung his machete at the spider and cut one of its legs one section shorter.
The spider shrieked in pain as its leg expelled a dark green fluid that smelled toxic. Unfortunately, this did not slow the spider down, and it was now enraged. Wary of the machete, the spider shot webs at him, trying to hold him in place. Aug blocked with his machete, but the webs wrapped it and stuck it to a nearby tree.
Now without a weapon and running out of options, the spider charged him once more. Aug, not wanting to lose this fight, used his trump card: the flare gun. As the spider lunged at him, he whipped his arm around just in time to shoot the spider at point-blank range into its mouth.
The spider stopped in its tracks and ran in circles as the flare burnt it from the inside, and soon enough it keeled over and died. As the spider stopped moving, he breathed a sigh of relief and dropped to his knees. Thankfully, it was over.