Getting out of the Valley was easier said than done. You just needed to walk due West, and sooner or later you either found the river or the border of the Valley, yes?


    Wrong.


    Walking due West wasn’t the problem itself, even without Prof’s high [Navigation]. Most people could walk in the vaguely right direction even in unfamiliar places.


    Most.


    Some searched for a "You are here" dot on a flyer, but those folks got lost even in a shopping mall…


    The problem was the constantly shifting fabric of space in the Valley. Prof''s Mental Map was utterly useless in this regard, obviously, he had to have a connection to already known places for the map to display his position. Or the spatial shenanigans of the Valley itself made the map display only a grayscale blob of nothingness.


    That being said, they had not the faintest idea, of where they were at any given time, how far the river or the border was. At times they could have been just around the corner (that is, around some bushes), or right next to the Eastern borders. Or not far from the sea…


    To use the time they had at hand, Prof came up with an idea for training their language [Skills]. He knew Bergian and Elven, Mini Forestean and Bergian, while Sharpclaw was good in Reptile and Bianca in Gerulian. They could teach each other! The language workshop consisted mostly of a few common phrases and pointing at stuff and learning the name of it in a different language. Forestean was actually quite easy for Prof, there were a lot of Bergian and Elven words and phrases in that language, although both in a somewhat archaic version. Mini told him, that it was only true for the Western Forestean dialect, the Northern, Eastern, and Classical dialects had other influences, but the dialects were mostly understandable for everyone.


    Gerulian was a bit harder, while Reptile – or Seaspeach, as Sharpclaw called it – was mostly unpronounceable for the Humans. Their tongues simply weren’t made for it. A further problem was Sharpclaw’s low [Speech: Bergian], she simply did not know a lot of words and was unable to give the equivalent for them in Seaspeach.


    After a few days of slogging through the seemingly endless forest, and traversing a couple of creeks and brooks, Prof had an idea.


    “You said, the main river is somehow locked in space. What about creeks and brooks? “


    “I don’t know. Maybe? Creeks usually flow into rivers, so…”


    “Worth a try. Next time we find flowing water, we follow the flow. At least, if the water is going due West or South.”


    “Why only West or South?” Mini asked. “With us not knowing where we are in respect to the river, East would be also a good choice.”


    “Simply. Neither of us knows the exact hydrography of the Valley, or that of the Eastern borders of it, so heading back East could land us back in the Domain as easily as finding the river. I don''t want to risk it. I''m fed up with Elves."


    Of course, it took them another few days to finally stumble on a creek, heading more or less West. It was actually a wonder, they found one so fast – looking for something going West while you head due West is not easy. Creeks usually don''t overtake pedestrians…


    Whatever monster repellent they had previously, was now gone, and they had to fight quite a few more inhabitants in the week they finally found the creek. More of the same, they already encountered: wolves, and some medium-sized cats (they looked like a mix between a lynx and a puma. They probably had a name, but no one in the party had a high enough [Zoology] or [Monsterology] to know it, and [Observe] also returned only "Valley of Torment Feline" and Level, so they went with just Valley Cat), snakes and a small herd of those wrongly named dinosaurs. Luckily, no true monster was encountered.


    The fighting itself was both easier and harder. They finally had a true defender – and Bianca was really good at it – but also one party member less. They also much more mules to look after – that particular problem solved itself in the fangs of the attacking wildlife, in one week they lost four mules to attacks, and one to poisoning.


    Or sickness, or whatever. Everyone was bad at [Animal Husbandry]…


    Finding the creek was well and good, but unfortunately, it wasn''t a nicely maintained ornamental decoration for a park, and neither was it a regulated canal. Instead, it was a wild and untamed piece of water, you would expect far from Human influence. Like a place as, say, the Valley of Torment. That meant, that instead of nicely cropped grass with a few strategically placed willows, the party had to contend with fully overgrown banks. After Mini joked about Man-Eating Weed, they had even less inclination to try their hands at walking on the banks.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Since, hopefully, the creek was spatially fixed too, they had to walk near it, in order to not lose it. Or, as it were, in it.


    It may or may not look like fun to wade through ankle to knee-deep water, for multiple days, but Prof definitely did not have fun. The mud wasn''t fun either.


    The minimal touristic value of the picturesque brook and untamed wilderness – and not much remained of those after having already spent days, weeks, months, years (or so he felt) in the Valley – went out the proverbial window two hours after entering the brook. Prof''s boots and pants were sodden, and because he managed at least one faceplant, all his remaining clothing was dripping wet too. At least it wasn''t raining.


    Till the second day.


    They spent the night at a small clearing, directly next to the brook, hoping, they will find it the next morning where they left it. The morning greeted them with an overcast sky, with the sun barely peeking out from behind the clouds. The rain started an hour later – at first with only a light drizzle, increasing to a deluge around noon.


    Actually, this was the first instance for Prof to experience precipitation on Arkadia. It was the same as on Earth: it made him wet and miserable.


    Since they were already wet from the drizzle and wading, they elected to continue on and not seek some minimal shelter. Not that there was anything that would have qualified as shelter: the forest was thick, but not thick enough to catch much of the rain. Leaving the brook also had the danger to lose it.


    They trudged on and on and on.


    Late in the afternoon – the deluge was still falling – they encountered their most dangerous monster thus far. Obviously, they rolled a 21 with D20 on the random encounter table, at least the hunchbacked, bone-thin, greenskinned older lady with a crooked nose and needle-sharp teeth looked truly terrifying. Partly, because she wore no clothes save for some dirty rags as loincloths. Prof would have called her a hag but was unsure if that was offensive to the elderly.


    The brook-dwelling senior felt offended nevertheless, throwing a handful of rotting moss at the party with her clawed hands. Prof did not take notice of what it was meant to do, he launched a counter-offensive immediately, as they had practiced previously: Bianca, holding her shield high advanced more slowly, albeit directly on their enemy, while Mini and Binky circled to the right. With the deluge still going on, Mini was unable to make use of her crossbow and had to rely on her saber instead. Sharpclaw was left behind to take care of the mules.


    Or so the plan was.


    The rotting moss probably landed between the mules and caused some unfortunate effect – judging by the pained neighs coming from behind. Prof couldn’t check, what was happening, because, well, he was charging forwards.


    The situation devolved from crappy to shit immediately afterward.


    From one step to another, Mini disappeared, followed by the faithful scorpionlizard. That was how a shortcut through the weak fabric of space looked from the outside. Prof was somehow disappointed, for some reason he expected cool CGI effects with unrealistic colors and psychedelic swirling forms. But no, reality had to be boring and colorless. How should the poor programmers make a living without all that unnecessary CGI?


    All those thoughts and questions flashed through his mind in a second or two, and he already made contact with the… let’s use an offensive and intolerant name, Brook Hag.


    He shouldn’t have.


    Even before he was able to engage his Trademarked Bash its Head in With Co-ordinated Double Axe Swing technique by swinging both his axes in the direction of the Hag’s head to bash it in while evoking the Heaven-rendering Critical Hit sub-technique (yes, he was a bit bored in the last couple of days and came up with a few names. No, he wasn’t good at it), he was hit in the face by a clump on rotting moss.


    That, in itself, wouldn''t have been a problem, even when swallowing part of it, if it had been normal rotting moss.


    Who would have thought, that magical rotting moss would be poisonous? Who would have thought, that swallowing magical, poisonous rotting moss wasn’t the best idea in all the multiverses?


    Well, Prof had a vague idea, that probably it wasn’t a brilliant idea, and maybe rotting moss wasn’t healthy, but when running into battle and a clump of said botany suddenly appears in one’s face, it is hard not to get some into the digestive system.


    Despite Prof’s relatively high poison resistance – and his magical anti-poison trinkets – he started to feel sick almost immediately. Dizziness followed right after. After only a few steps he found himself on his knees and hands, with the world spinning. It was worse than being stiff drunk – first, getting drunk meant that he had a good time before and secondly, it would not be in the middle of a cursed valley, fighting some kind of evil old lady.


    The last thing he saw was a stretch of muddy ground before unconsciousness claimed him.