Underground Cave System

Eventually, Roland made it to the corpse of the snake. Most of its scales had already fallen off, and giant chunks of flesh were torn out of its body.

Blood was splattered all over the grass painting it red.

'Now what?' he asked. By now, the system seemed to have calmed down a bit.

[Cut open its head]

Roland looked back and forth between the corpse and the bright blue screen in front of him.

'Are you kidding!? I don't want to do that!'

[Too bad. Get to work.]

Roland sighed, flying up to one of the heads of the snake. He looked around, trying to find a good place to start.

[No, the other head]

Roland was confused. Was there anything different about the other head?

[Just do as I say]

Round sighed, giving up. He decided to follow the system's orders, lest it struck him with another bolt of lightning.

Flying to the other head, he cut it open with a few blades of wind. After the snake died, its defenses had become a lot weaker, so he could easily cut through the scales. The

'Huh?' Roland looked more carefully at the opening he made it the snake's skull. He could see something inside, glittering like some sort of gem.

[So you found it. Take that out]

'What? The thing in its skull?'

[Yes. What else would I be talking about?]

Not wanting to touch the object, Roland used Basic Mind Magic and pulled it out.

When he was done, he quickly put the object on the ground so he could look more closely at it.

It was a round ball that looked like it was made of glass. He could quickly tell just from looking at it that it contained a lot of mana. It was strange that he never noticed it when he was fighting.

[Its mana signature was hidden, so it would be hard to notice it]

Roland accepted the answer and placed it in the storage space. He wasn't sure what to do with it right now. Without him asking, the system had already told him what to do next.

[Walk into the forest over there]

Roland looked around him. What forest? Everything left was burnt to a crisp. There was nothing left, except the charred trees that dotted the area.

[What remains of the forest]

The system quickly corrected itself.

'Then where do I go?' Roland asked, 'I'm surrounded by a giant forest.'

[Look, I'll just show you on the MiniMap]

Like what happened previously, another map appeared in the corner of his vision.

A new marker was placed on the map, and it was just a small distance away from Roland's current location.

Deciding there was nothing better to do, he went in the direction the map told him. He flew over the burnt forest, making his way towards the marker. After a minute or two of travel, he made it to a depression in the ground. It almost looked as if a meteorite had landed there. Nearby, there was a large cave. It was dug out of the ground, heading almost straight down. The marker on the map was pointed at that cave.

Roland gulped. He didn't feel like going down there. It was so dark that he couldn't see the end of the cave. Who knew what horrible creatures lay down there.

[Hurry up]

Roland was still hesitant, unsure if it was truly safe.

[Oh for heaven's sake, I'll give you a push]

Suddenly, Roland felt a force pushing him from behind, and he fell into the hole. A few moments later, he hit the bottom with a loud thud.

[Achievement Completed]

He ignored the notification and looked around groggily. Besides the meager light that came from the surface, there were no light sources nearby, so he couldn't see the surroundings very well.

However, what he did see was a bunch of corpses piled near the entrance. At the very least, they had been dead for a while, and there was just a pile of bones left. Still, it didn't make the situation any better. Besides the animal corpses, he could see a few human skulls mixed in as well.

He turned away, not wanting to look at the scene any longer. Trying to distract himself, he asked the system what to do next. It had to have some sort of plan.

'So... what now?'

No reply came.

'Hello?'

[Be quiet, will you? I'm trying to update the map over here]

Roland narrowed his eyes. Normally, the system wouldn't use any of his SP if he was just talking to it. However, when the system used his SP earlier, it was clearly used to do something he couldn't do. After all, he hadn't known what to do next and the system had found out by using his SP. He could also fill out the map just by walking around, but now the system was doing it for him? It felt a bit strange...

He looked at his system points and it was just as he expected. The system was using his SP!

His already meager supply of it was slowly dwindling until eventually, not a single point was left.

'Why did you do that! I could've just filled out the map myself!'

[Would you like to head out into the darkness and explore? I've already recorded the locations of 17 beasts down here with a level over 30]

The moment he heard that, Roland hurriedly shook his head. Seventeen level thirty or higher beasts?! If he ran into any one of them he would probably be doomed.

[In other news, I've already updated the MiniMap to include the entire underground area. You can now head to the indicated area. And try to get more SP. I need those for my functions]

Roland was confused. If this was a part of the actual system, then why did it need SP to work? It was supposed the one that gave it to him, not the other way around.

Seeing that the system didn't respond, he assumed that it wasn't always reading his mind and decided not to ask the question. Forcing people to reveal their secrets wasn't his style.

He looked at the MiniMap again. Now, he could see the whole underground tunnel system that stretched beneath the entire forest above. Every monster the system had found was recorded by a triangle, that was a different color depending on how dangerous it was. Red meant it was very dangerous, a bright green meant it was safe, and so on. He also found that he could switch what layer he was looking at using his thoughts, so he could look at the surface right now if he wanted to.

Speaking of the surface, something had changed.

A few parts of the map had suddenly disappeared.

'System, can you scan the surface?' he asked.

[I can, but you don't have any more system points]

'Give me a moment,' he replied, going to check the achievement he had completed.

[Achievements]

[Fall 100 Feet] [Collect]

[Go 30 Meters below sea level] [Collect]

He collected both of the rewards immediately.

[20 System Points obtained]

[30 System Points obtained]

'Do I have enough now?' he asked.

[Barely. Give me a moment]

Roland waited patiently for the results. After half a minute had passed, he found the map of the surface had updated, and he noticed a group of five orange triangles was coming towards the cave.

'What are those?' he asked.

[People. Each around level 25]

Roland frowned. He had been doing that a lot recently. He doubted monsters would find anything strange about him, but humans would be far more perceptive, so they would almost definitely notice something off about him. It seemed every time he was doing something, humans always came in to interrupt.

He would have to be more careful.

Quickly, he checked how many system points the system had used.

[SP: 0]

'Hey! Why did you have to use so much of my SP!?!'