Chapter 6: NEW MISSION
Joseph was worried.
His niece, Joan, had been missing since that morning, and there was still no sign of her. He knew the dangers of the forest better than most people in the village. Those who became lost in its depths rarely returned. The wilderness was unforgiving, and even experienced hunters could fall victim to the creatures that roamed among the trees.
Yet Joseph held on to one last hope.
Joan was strong.
Perhaps she was even stronger than he was.
Unfortunately, she was still a little girl. In Joseph's eyes, she was like a child carrying a legendary sword without understanding how dangerous the world around her could be. Strength alone would not protect her if she wandered into the wrong place.
He could only hope that she had not.
Joseph had learned to fear the wilderness long before Joan was born.
Before the cataclysm, he and his brother had served in the army. They had known discipline, danger, and the hardships of military life, but none of that had prepared them for the disasters that followed the beginning of the cataclysm.
When everything began to change, the two brothers started making their way back to their village.
The journey was a nightmare.
They encountered disasters they could scarcely have imagined. Farm animals went mad and attacked the very people who had raised them. In some places, forests appeared overnight, transforming familiar landscapes into unfamiliar wilderness. Roads and routes they had once known could no longer be trusted.
At one point, they even had to flee from a group of mice.
Mice.
It was difficult to believe that something so ordinary could become a threat, but the cataclysm had made ordinary assumptions useless. The world they had known was disappearing, and survival depended on adapting before the next disaster arrived.
By the time Joseph and his brother finally reached their village, only a few hundred people remained.
In the first years after their return, the survivors had hoped to find their missing relatives and other villagers. They wanted to bring everyone back together and return to the capital, where most of the military had been stationed.
They tried several times.
Each attempt brought disappointment. The villages surrounding their own had already been destroyed, and the nearby city was gone as well. Perhaps the city that had housed the army had managed to survive the cataclysm, but it lay a long distance away—even before the world had changed.
Travelling there was no longer a simple journey. Every attempt meant risking their lives in a wilderness they barely understood.
Eventually, they accepted the truth.
They would have to build a new life where they were.
The survivors began organising small hunting groups. They trained the younger villagers and taught them how to move through the forest, find food, and defend themselves. Slowly, through effort and cooperation, they began creating a life from what remained.
It was not the life they had once known, but it was a life they could protect.
Ten years earlier, when Joan had just been born, Joseph's brother and several other people had accidentally entered the territory of a wind wolf pack while hunting. The pack had attacked them.
They did not survive.
The loss had left a deep mark on Joseph. His brother had been part of his life for as long as he could remember, and the thought that his family had been taken from him by the wilderness was difficult to accept.
After that tragedy, Joseph made an oath.
He would protect his brother's family as if they were his own.
He had kept that promise ever since.
Now Joan was missing, and the memory of his oath weighed heavily on him.
When Agnes, Joan's mother, had told him that the girl was gone, Joseph had immediately organised several groups of hunters to search for her. They spread out through the surrounding forest, calling her name and examining the places where a child might have wandered.
They searched for hours.
Nothing.
Eventually, the hunters had to admit that continuing into the night would be too dangerous. The forest became far more threatening after dark, and losing more people while searching for Joan would only make the situation worse.
They decided to stop for the day and resume the search later.
Joseph hated the decision, but he understood why it had to be made.
Then one of the hunters returned with unexpected news.
They had found Joan near the village.
Relief washed over Joseph, but it did not last long. The hunter explained that when some of the men had been returning to the village, they had seen Joan with a half-naked man following her.
Their first thought had been that the stranger was chasing the girl for some sinister reason. They had wanted to kill him immediately, but they had decided to wait for Joseph before doing anything.
Joseph hurried back to the village.
When he arrived, he found a half-naked man lying in front of his house, surrounded by villagers who had gathered to watch. Joan was nearby, trying to wake the unconscious stranger.
Joseph pushed through the crowd and went straight to his niece.
"Joan, what happened?"
The girl looked up at him.
"Uncle Joseph! This uncle is a good uncle. He brought Joan back. He even promised never to talk about the bad doggie."
Joseph paused.
"Bad doggie?"
Joan's expression changed. She seemed to remember something important.
"It's a secret."
Before Joseph could ask more, Agnes approached them. She had been worried sick about her daughter, and now that Joan was back, her relief was mixed with the determination to find out exactly what had happened.
"Joan, why didn't you say anything about the doggie before? What did you do?" Agnes demanded.
"Mom, I didn't do anything."
Joseph glanced at the unconscious stranger. Whatever had happened in the forest, the man had brought Joan home. The villagers might have misunderstood the situation, and he did not want them to make matters worse before they knew the truth.
"Agnes, let's wake him up first. We can talk about it later."
For the moment, he needed answers from the stranger.
And while Joseph waited for the man to regain consciousness, something was happening inside Hari's mind.
"DING."
A familiar system announcement echoed through Hari's mindscape.
"CANDIDATE PASSED TRAINING MISSION."
Hari had completed the training mission.
The next announcements followed in quick succession.
"DIVINE EMPLOYEE SYSTEM ACTIVATING..."
"NO GUILD BUILDING IS PRESENT IN THIS PLANET. COMPLETE ACTIVATION IS STOPPED."
"BASIC SYSTEM FUNCTIONS ARE ACTIVATING."
"STATUS PANEL IS OPENED."
"MISSION PANEL IS OPENED."
"CONNECTED WITH DIVINE INFORMATION SYSTEM."
"CONNECTION IS NOT COMPLETE."
A stream of further messages appeared.
"ADDING LOG ENTRY SAFE ZONE: NIRVANA MOUNTAIN;
ADDING LOG ENTRY RAINBOW DEER;
ADDING LOG ENTRY RED EYED RABBIT;
..........
..........
ADDING LOG ENTRY WIND WOLF."
Hari had barely begun to process the information when another announcement appeared.
"NEW MISSION RELEASED."
"MISSION: BRING VILLAGER TO SAFE ZONE
REWARD: COMPLETE ACTIVATION OF SYSTEM; GUILD BUILDING (DIVINE ARTIFACT); SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF APPRENTICESHIP."
Hari stared at the message.
A new mission? He had only just survived the training mission, and now the system was already giving him another task.
Before he could think too much about it, another announcement appeared.
"SIDE MISSION ACTIVATED."
"MISSION: SHOW YOUR LEADERSHIP
KILL WIND WOLF PACK WHO BLOCK YOUR PATH TO SAFE ZONE
REWARD: RESPECT FROM VILLAGERS; 1 STAR STRENGTH."
Hari's thoughts came to a halt.
Bring villagers to the safe zone.
Kill a wind wolf pack.
The system had managed to turn his relief at finding a human settlement into a fresh source of anxiety.
He decided to inspect his status first. Perhaps the system had given him some powerful ability to help him complete the mission.
A status panel appeared.
NAME: HARI
GUILD MASTER LEVEL: APPRENTICE
STRENGTH: 0 STAR
Hari stared at the screen.
"What is that all? What happened to the divine employee, Godhood?" he thought.
He had assumed that completing the training mission would make him a proper divine employee—or at least a demigod with enough power to protect himself. Instead, he was still an apprentice with zero-star strength.
The most painful part was remembering Joan.
Even an Aboriginal little girl was stronger than him.
She had killed the red wolf with a single stone while he had been preparing himself to die. If that was the difference between them, how was he supposed to fight an entire pack of wind wolves?
Hari looked at the status panel again, hoping that he had missed something.
No such luck.
On the right side of the status tab, he noticed two additional tabs. He selected the first one.
Three options appeared.
LOCAL MISSION — 2 missions available
WORLD MISSION — grayed out
DIVINE MISSION — grayed out
The two available local missions were the ones he had just received. Their rewards were displayed beneath their descriptions, but reading them did little to improve his mood.
The world and divine missions were inaccessible.
Hari moved on to the divine network channel, hoping it might provide information that would help him understand his situation.
Instead, the system displayed another set of messages.
"NO GUILD BUILDING IS FOUND IN THIS PLANET."
"DIVINE NETWORK IS LIMITED."
"ONLY LOG ENTRY IS ACCESSIBLE."
A list opened in front of him.
It contained records of places, trees, animals, birds, fish, and other things he had encountered since arriving in this world. Apparently, the system had been recording the things around him. Some entries contained information he had never noticed while travelling through the forest.
Hari had no intention of reading every single record. He had seen plenty of trees during his journey, and he did not particularly care to learn how many different types there were.
He needed useful information, not a catalogue of everything he had passed.
A few entries caught his attention, however.
The first was SAFE ZONE: NIRVANA MOUNTAIN.
Hari opened it.
"SAFE ZONES ARE PLACES THAT ARE PURIFIED BY DIVINE ENERGY FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. ONLY INTELLIGENT CREATURES CAN ENTER THERE."
He continued reading.
According to local legend, Nirvana Mountain was the place where a natural god had been born and attained godhood. Although the religion of natural gods had been eradicated several hundred years earlier, divine power still lingered around the mountain.
Hari remembered the strange absence of animals and insects near the mountain. At the time, he had suspected that the mountain itself was responsible for keeping other creatures away.
Now the system's information offered a possible explanation.
The mountain was a safe zone, purified by divine energy over thousands of years.
That explained why the surrounding area had seemed so strangely empty. It also made the mountain seem much more important than he had realised.
But knowing that a safe zone existed did not solve his immediate problem. He had to bring villagers there, and the wind wolf pack was blocking his path.
Hari opened the next relevant entry.
WIND WOLF.
The information described the creature as a pack animal mutated from an ordinary wolf. It also explained something about the pack's hierarchy.
Whenever a new alpha wolf emerged, the two alpha wolves would fight. The defeated wolf would leave the pack and become a lone wolf.
Hari stopped reading.
A lone wolf.
The creature he had encountered earlier had been a lone wolf.
He had already seen what that wolf could do. It had hunted him, attacked with terrifying speed, and possessed claws surrounded by blue flames. He had survived only because Joan had killed it with a stone.
Now the system was telling him that a pack of wind wolves stood in his way—and that at least one of them was stronger than the lone wolf he had encountered.
Hari felt his stomach tighten.
"Should I ask help from a little girl?"
The thought was humiliating, but it was difficult to dismiss. Joan had already proved that she could kill a wolf that Hari could not defeat. If the pack was even more dangerous, what chance did he have on his own?
He looked over the mission information again, searching for some hidden advantage.
Nothing suggested that his strength had suddenly increased. His status still listed him as an apprentice with zero-star strength, and the system's full activation remained blocked because there was no guild building on the planet.
He would have to find a way to complete the missions with what he had.
But first, he needed to understand what had happened after he reached the village.
"By the way, what happened to me? I should wake up first."
Hari opened his eyes.
He was lying in a small room built with mud walls and a grass roof. His head still hurt, especially at the back, where he seemed to have taken a hard blow.
He tried to sit up and looked around.
The room was simple and unfamiliar, nothing like the places he had known on Earth. At least, he was no longer lying in the forest beside the dead wolf.
A familiar voice came from nearby.
"Uncle, you woke up! Joan was worried. I'll call Mom and Uncle Joseph."
Before Hari could respond, Joan hurried away.
He let out a slow breath. He was alive, inside a village, and surrounded by people. That was a considerable improvement over his situation in the forest.
After a few minutes, a man who looked to be around forty entered the room with a beautiful woman who appeared to be around thirty.
The man approached Hari.
"You woke up. Hello, I am Joseph, the village leader and Joan's uncle. Sorry for the trouble we caused you. Our hunters thought you were chasing her."
Hari looked down at himself.
His clothing was little more than the hide garment he had fashioned in the forest. In the eyes of the villagers, a half-naked stranger following a little girl might easily look suspicious. He was fortunate that the hunters had waited for Joseph rather than attacking him immediately.
Joseph continued.
"And thank you for bringing Joan back to us."
Hari nodded. He was relieved that the man had at least begun by thanking him rather than accusing him of something.
Joseph's expression then turned more serious.
"Joan mentioned something about a bad doggie. Do you know anything about that?"
"Ah..."
Hari hesitated.
He knew exactly what Joan meant. The wolf had nearly killed him, and the little girl had saved his life by throwing a stone through its head. But if he told them everything, they would learn just how helpless he had been in the forest.
Would that change how they viewed him?
More importantly, would they still be willing to help him complete his missions?
Hari thought about the wind wolf pack blocking the path to Nirvana Mountain. He needed the villagers to reach the safe zone, but he also needed to survive the journey himself. If he revealed his weakness from the beginning, would these people ever agree to help him fight the pack—or follow him back to the mountain?
How was he supposed to kill an entire pack of wind wolves?
He had no answer.
"Agnes, we can talk about it later," Joseph said, interrupting Hari's thoughts. "Let him rest first."
The woman, Agnes, seemed ready to ask more questions, but Joseph guided her out of the room.
As they left, Hari felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders.
At least he had gained a little time to think.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling, considering his next move. He had finally found a settlement, but completing the mission would require far more than reaching the village. He had to lead the villagers to Nirvana Mountain and deal with the wind wolf pack that stood in their way.
And he still had no idea how he was going to do it.