Merlin hardly wanted to seem or sound petulant. In a sea of sand, they had found water and greenery. He should be happy, glad, joyous—whatever other word that signified the exhilaration that came with ecstasy. However, somewhere deep down, he couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed that they had not just stumbled upon an abandoned house instead. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have to comb the woods for what Sofia had called hosta leaves—large leaves that were shade tolerant, extremely hardy, and required little maintenance. They would be serving as the shades for the homes the party crafted after all.

  If it was any consolation, Sofia was with him. Apparently, she and her father were quite the hiking and camping duo. In other words, she knew all about sleeping in forests. For what it was worth, despite their current circumstances, Merlin did think that camping was fun, and he would have loved to have done something like that with his family. But he couldn’t be greedy now, could he? Who was he to request for a bit of fun when his parents were saving lives.

  “You don’t like this, do you?” Sofia asked as Merlin reached for her hand and helped her over a log.

  “What do you mean?” Merlin asked with a slight frown.

  “That.” She pointed at his face—his expression in particular. “Your face has been alternating between furious and frustrated ever since we came to the woods. No. Ever since we found this…weird place.”

  Merlin chuckled. “You know it’s a crime to spy on someone, right?”

  Sofia’s cheeks turned red a bit, but the tint disappeared as soon as she cleared her throat.

  “I was not spying,” she said in her defense. Merlin gave her a wry look. “I was just curious.”

  Merlin shrugged. “Well, truth be told, I was hoping we’d find abandoned houses instead. Crafting our own homes just feels—”

  “...Crazy,” Sofia completed Merlin’s words. Merlin blinked owlishly at her. Perhaps his thoughts bled out, because she added immediately, “My father and I went with tents. We didn’t make our homes out of wood and leaves.”

  Merlin pursed his lips. “Oh. Then how did you?”

  “We were hiking one day when rain suddenly poured down heavily. We weren’t with umbrellas, so we sought out shade beneath a hosta tree. He told me then about how they were very good shades,” Sofia narrated with a smile, and Merlin listened attentively. “So that’s how I know.”

  “I see…” Merlin nodded when Sofia was done. “It’s nice that you do,” he said. “I wonder what we would have done without you.”

  His words did what he had intended for them to do, which was fill Sofia with a sense of usefulness, because she blushed even harder now, and finished it off by pushing him by the shoulder. They both laughed and continued their searches. At the end of the day, they didn’t find hosta leaves, but they found a different type. Which exactly, they didn’t know, but Sofia compared them to the design and texture of hosta leaves, and they went ahead with it.

  Maybe they had been way in over their head expecting to find the exact type of leaves that grew on Earth in a Tower. But, anyway, all’s well that ends well.

  They were the last of the shared groups to arrive back in camp—a small space near the center of the forest they had found, just close to the bank of its stream—and everything was set for their house crafting process. Sun-Hee, Park Yuri, and Man-Shik had gone wood gathering, while Senior Hyunwoo and Daniel had gathered vines instead. With the presence of everyone and the materials required, they got to work.

  Their home crafting process was simple in theory. Set up the thin trunks of wood gathered in a cone like shape, and bind them together with the vines, then cover its spaces with the leaves gathered. That way, they would be protected from rain, and have some privacy.

  No one said anything about the homes being perfect, but it would serve them, at least until they found something better, or just cleared the first floor of the Tower. The quicker they got that done with, the faster they could go back to lying on their beds.

  “The sun’s vanishing?” Merlin noted as he slapped his given leaves onto his wooden tent. He had decided to call the hovering golden sphere above them a ‘sun’ even though he was certain it was not. After all, he didn’t have any other name for it.

  “I think it’s changing color,” said Sofia from beside Merlin. She had taken it upon herself to set up her tent close to him.

  Merlin wouldn’t say he didn’t like the company, but the presence of Blue made him a bit wary of someone being so close to him. It was why he had moved a bit away from the group, so that when he got into a bit of a tussle with the dragon, no one would know. Sofia had followed him, and it was not like he could shoo her away. For one, it would seem rude. And, secondly, it was not like he owned the land.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  As for what she had said… Merlin looked closely at the golden sphere in the sky, and she was right. It wasn’t vanishing, it was just changing from its golden color into a lighter blue one, while the sky turned dark.

  Merlin scoffed. “You’re right. Weird.”

  “I’m curious what the history of this Tower is. I think it'd be quite interesting.” Sofia added, deftly making sure her tent was stuck into the softened ground correctly.

  The whole process looked so smooth when she did it that Merlin wondered if she had really not done anything like this before; could one know how to set up such a primitive tent from learning how to set up the modern ones?

  Merlin shelved his thoughts and nodded in response to her words. “Same here.”

  He was done slapping his leaves onto his wooden tent, and went ahead to gather the shrubs they had plucked, and scattered it inside his tent. That would serve as a bit of cushion from the ground, but thank goodness he had packed a bedsheet along with his stuff.

  Night came quickly, and everyone was done setting their tents. A fire was made at the center of their camp, where they all gathered to eat.

  Merlin had made sure to drop a piece of red meat for Blue, explaining to the dragon that he would have to make do with what he got for the duration of time they would spend in the Tower. Merlin wasn’t sure if Blue had listened to anything he’d said, since the dragon had been more focused on chomping down on the meat offered instead. But he hoped that the dragon had. After all, what else could he do but that?

  Senior Hyunwoo decided that they all rested up as soon as they were done with eating, as their journey through the sandy plains and setting up their tents had worn them out, and first thing at dawn, they would decide on their next course of action. No one argued against that reasoning. However, Senior Sun-Hee was against all of them sleeping at once. They were to share themselves into groups and keep watch. And thanks to their smartwatches being made to withstand whatever alien conditions existed within a Tower or Dungeon, they could set a time limit between watches.

  Merlin volunteered to take the first watch, and alone too, under the pretext that he was not yet feeling sleepy, and he wanted to read a novel. They had all respected his wishes and left him to be, all except one little dragon.

  “You’ve increased again, haven’t you?” Merlin muttered as he indistinctly slid his fingers on Blue’s head, inciting a purr from the dragon. It lay on the trunk Merlin was seated on, staring straight at the bonfire that had been made. “Don’t freeze it,” Merlin said immediately, knowing what the dragon was planning. “You’ll put me in trouble.”

  Blue glanced at him and scoffed, turning away.

  Merlin smiled and looked up at the sky, specifically the blue sphere that hung up there. His mind flew back to what Sofia had said about being curious about the history of the Tower in accordance to a Tower being, technically, a city, and he suddenly had a thought.

  Yes, he was well aware that the Cataclysm was the start of this never-ending war between humans and monsters, but, now, he couldn’t help but wonder if the monsters saw the humans the same way humans saw them. Just like monsters came out of the portals to attack humans, so did Mages venture into portals—into the world of the monsters—to attack them.

  Merlin heaved out a deep exhale.

  Were they, in truth, monsters as well?

  At that moment, Merlin’s neck felt a prick—a familiar freezing prick that stiffened him and widened his eyes. It was his Perception. He sat up straight on the trunk he was seated on and narrowed his eyes, flashing it in the direction of the woods, north-east of where he was.

  Blue jumped on his shoulder then, hissing slightly.

  “You can feel it too, Blue?” Merlin asked as he stood up slowly. “Something’s there.”

  He picked up one of the leftover sticks that had been gathered to make the tents and tightened his grip over it. It would have been better if he could have brought the bow Park Yuri had gotten crafted for him, but it would have been too risky. The Tower was being watched, and unlike with Blue, he would be found out, and it would be seized from him. It was better to be safe than sorry.

  Merlin checked his smartwatch. He had only spent thirty minutes on watch. He thought about waking the others up, but decided against it for now. His Perception went bonkers even when someone he was friends with tried to touch him; it could be anything from an insect to an animal that was bothering him at this moment. He would make certain of how dangerous whatever it was first, then he would either proceed to taking care of it himself or, well, waking everyone up.

  Merlin toggled stealth mode, and slowly walked into the woods, each step carefully placed before the other. That was, until Blue hissed even more ferociously and jumped off his shoulder, bolting into the woods.

  “Blue…” Merlin called in a whisper. Then spat, lost sense of his decorum, and hurried after the dragon.

  He tried his best to keep down the noise, jumping over twigs, and keeping his steps as light as he possibly could. He followed Blue, who was not bound by the same restrictions as Merlin, swerving past trees as he flapped his wings, and zooming more and more away from Merlin.

  Thankfully, it did not take long before the dragon came to a stop, because, anymore, and Merlin would have lost him.

  Merlin came up to Blue where he had stopped just beside a tree that served as some sort of border between where they were and another clearing, and was just about to reprimand the dragon when his eyes caught sight of what was on the other side from where he stood.

  There, seated with a spear in its grasp, and its back to a boulder, was a humanoid reptilian with red, scaly skin, a tail, and two curved horns shooting out of its forehead. It was dressed in a shabby attire and cloak, and more importantly, it had black blood flowing out of a gaping wound to its side.

  Merlin glanced at Blue who was staring curiously at the creature, then narrowed his eyes upon it. Only one word fit what he was looking at.

  “A dragonman?”