Exploration

Meanwhile, Roland landed at the base of the cliff. He looked up, saw a few creatures jump off behind him, and sighed in relief when he saw that the others didn't follow. Hoping the fellows that jumped down after him were dead, he faced the area in front of him. He had more important things to worry about. Yet another forest was stretched out before him, likely full of more strange and unknown creatures. Far in the distance, he could see another pillar that held up a part of the ceiling. However, there was something embedded inside the pillar that glowed with a golden light. The ceiling was far above him, and he saw a flock of large, bright yellow birds above him.

"Ding!"

[Quest: Investigate Your Surroundings]

[Requirements for completion:]

[Discover at least 20 different species in the cavern]

[Expand the MiniMap to show at least half the cavern]

[Fight 50 creatures in the cavern]

[Rewards:]

[???]

[Time Limit: N/A]

[Description: Learn everything you can about this new environment]

'Looks like I'll have to postpone finding an ally until I finish this quest.' Roland thought. This looked like it was going to take a while to complete.

Not wanting to waste any time, Roland immediately set off to explore.

. . .

In just a day, the entire forest was shown on the map. Luckily for Roland, he didn't attract much attention in this forest, due to the high amount of mana contained in his surroundings. Even the thin veil of fog that cloaked the forest had a small amount of mana contained within. Every time he rolled or flew by another beast, they just gave him a strange look before turning away. Flying rocks must have been a common sight in the area or something, otherwise, Roland wouldn't have finished so quickly. Still, the forest was huge, and it took a while to map the entire area. He had also found seven different species in the forest already, although some of them were too high leveled for him to learn anything about them. Thus, he only actually knew the names of four different species, and that reflected on his quest progress too.

On a side note, he had also seen the foolish monsters that had chased after him and jumped off the cliff. When he saw them just an hour ago, they were held in the talons of many large, winged creatures. There was an entire flock of them, and Roland could see them fighting over their newfound prey, pecking and scratching each other. The creatures kept flying further away, and Roland had watched them head deeper into the fog until they disappeared. Who knew where they were headed.

Anyways, Roland came out of the forest, shaking the mud and leaves off of him. Finally, he was done exploring the forest. He now found himself in a savanna of sorts, a large grassland that stretched further than he could see. He was starting to realize the sheer size of this cavern he had found. And considering how high up the ceiling was, he must have been pretty far underground.

Since there was nothing exciting to see here, he just flew in a straight line through the savanna. He only needed to fill half of the map anyways, so he was allowed to skip past some parts.

After the savanna, he reached a large desert. Instead of the fog, a sandstorm was happening in the area. It didn't seem like it was stopping anytime soon, and even the speed at which he could fill in the map was reduced due to the decrease in visibility. In fact, when he turned around, he saw that the desert was starting to expand into the savanna he came from. He didn't want to stay any longer in the area, so he quickly went back to the savanna and decided to choose a new direction to travel towards.

Behind him was the savanna, and the desert was in front of him, so he could only go left or right. Roland looked around. If he walked left, he would just run into a wall, but to the right of him was even more desert. De using to go for the better option he flew in the direction of the wall. At the very least, he could follow the wall and map out the size of this cavern.

Without a hitch, Roland arrived at the wall, and he immediately began flying alongside it. Since he was just going around the perimeter of the cavern, it wouldn't take long, but that was only in comparison to filling the entire map. After half a day of non-stop fly, he hadn't even finished one-fourth of a circle yet. Although, the cavern could be in an irregular shape. That could mean that he was already done with most of the perimeter, but it was also possible that he was done with a lot less than he thought. Even just exploring half the cavern like the quest told him to do would be hard.

After a few more hours of that with no results, he gave up and started wantonly flying around. Anything that he found interesting he went towards, and anything else was ignored. As long as he explored half the cavern, he would be done either way. If he found a monster, he just used his skill [Appraisal] on it and left if it was too dangerous. If it was weak, he would just go over and kill it.

And so, the first day passed quickly.

. . .

[Form: Mana Conducting Rock] [Lv. 18]

[EXP: 293/1800]

[System Points] [984]

[Stat Points] [12]

[HP: 20/20]

[MP: 200/200]

[Def] [11] +

[Mana] [30] +

[Skills]

[(II)Spirit Sense Lv.10] [(II)Basic Mind Magic Lv.8] [(II)Pure Mana Lv.11] [Wind Blade Lv.10] [Appraisal Lv.6] [Basic Language Understanding Lv.N/A] [Thunder Beam Lv.7] [Raincloud Lv.7] [Water Orb Lv.6] [Mana Barrier Lv. 1]

Both he and his skills had gained a level or two. By now, he had made quite a bit of progress on the quest. Still, he estimated it would still take about five more days to complete, considering how large the cavern was. Still, the other two conditions were pretty easy to fulfill, he just needed to find a few beasts nearby and fight them for one, and he had already completed the other since he went to a lot of different areas and took the incitive to head towards anything he found.

Days two and three passed similarly, and he finished the part of the quest that needed him to fight fifty creatures. It didn't require him to kill them, but he got some SP and experience while he was at it.

One day four, he discovered he could name the places he found on the map. He had quite a bit of fun naming all the places he had explored, including the ones above ground. Of course, he gave them all sorts of cringey names, so bad I don't dare to list them.

.

.

.

What? Don't believe me? Fine, you asked for it. I'll rewrite the paragraph if you REALLY want me to.

...

Of course, he gave them all sorts of cringey names, for example, 'Frostbite Mountain, 'Kins peak,' and 'Burning Abyss.' Oh, and you couldn't forget about the legendary 'Abbysal Forest', named for the dark environment there.

Yeah, he was simply making a random name for places based on the environment there. It had no purpose, it definitely wasn't accurate, and it wasn't the actual name of the place, so it was only temporary until he could find some sort of real map for this place that had the names of places labeled.

'I came up with some really good names this time around though,' Roland thought excitedly. He was the most creative person he knew, and he was very good at naming people or places. Or at least, that's what he thought. His friends never understood him.

And all the pets he owned seemed to hate him for some strange reason as well. Every time he walked over to his fish, Bubbles, it seemed to glare at him before turning away. And his cat muffins wouldn't even play with him anymore after he bought it from the pet store and named it.

'Sigh, such is my life.' No one could understand him and they all laughed at him whenever he told them the names of his pets. Still, they couldn't be the ones to talk. All their pets had dumb names like 'Clyde', or 'Snowball', all of which sounded ridiculous to him.

'You know what they say,' he thought, 'great minds think alike. Perhaps I'm just too smart.'

(Are you satisfied now?)