Nathan's fishing rod twitched.

  The sun cast down its rays overhead directly onto Nathan. With his wig on, his forehead was something of a miniature oven. Despite that, there was enough of a breeze to keep him relatively cool.

  His rod twitched again. He pulled sharply up and resistance hit his grasp. He reeled it in faster and faster and the fish struggled harder and harder.

  He finally reeled it all the way up and snatched the fish out of the air.

  Except he couldn't really do that because the fish was twice his size.

  "Another giant fish," he said. "That's lucky."

  Nathan grabbed it with both hands and somehow managed to stuff it into his inventory window—albeit with a lot of squeezing and shifting around.

  Nathan was at the end of a pier that stretched for what felt like a mile into the distance. Back the way Nathan came was the village that him and Charity had arrived at. He was all the way at the end, so far that the village was nothing more than about the size of a postage stamp.

  A few villagers who were also fishing stared at him with wide eyes. One person reached up, took her glasses off, rubbed her eyes, then put it back on.

  She probably needs new glasses, Nathan thought.

  He doubled checked his quest requirements.

  Ocean Biome Fish Caught: 7/22

  He'd been at it for the past several hours. However, that seven had been caught in the first 30 minutes.

  "I probably caught every single kind that I can get in this location," he muttered. "It looks like I'll have to move elsewhere."

  With nothing for it, he decided to head over to the local village common area to see if he could get more information about where to find other fish.

  He packed away his fishing rod and began the long walk back to the village.

  It was a tavern.

  Of course it was a tavern.

  "Seriously, there isn't, like, a country club or something?" he said. "Or maybe a fitness center?"

  "Nathaniel!"

  Charity shot out of her chair and waved him over. A small group of villagers—fishermen based off of the lures and hooks attached to their belt—had gathered around Charity on one of the larger tavern tables.

  Nathan shrugged and sat on an open chair. "What's all this?"

  "I was telling them of the Holy Patch Notes! They don't have a church, so I decided to hold a sermon here."

  A woman off to the side nodded up and down. "The priestess is very wise."

  Nathan furrowed his eyebrows together.

  The spreading of organized religion among isolated people groups... where had he seen this before?

  Eh, it probably isn't a big deal.

  "I'm looking for fish," Nathan said.

  All of the fishermen at the table turned at him at the exact same time.

  "Preferably fish other than the same seven I've been catching out in the pier over and over again," he said.

  "I'm afraid that that's the only fish we know of," one of the fishermen said.

  Okay, that was a little bit concerning.

  "Is there another ocean or something on the other side of the continent?" Nathan asked.

  "No, it's well-known that the northeast is where the ocean is. Past that on the other biomes, you reach the end of the circle."

  "The end of the circle? What exactly does that look like?"

  "An endless abyss from whence there is no return."

  "Okay, so don't go there." Nathan massaged his forehead. "I know that there's got to be more ocean fish out there. Is there some kind of rare location that you guys would be willing to sell to me?"

  The fisherman who had spoken earlier shook his head. "There is no such thing."

  "...Do I have to do a magic shrine in order to restore the fish supply or something?"

  "Shrine? Are you speaking of the strange black monument that comes and goes out in the far ocean?"

  "Yeah, that thing."

  "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

  "You mean that you're not currently experiencing a fishing crisis that requires an outsider to go to the shrine and use it in order to save everyone?"

  "No?"

  Huh.

  So Nathan didn't have to feel guilty about avoiding the shrine. Sweet.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  But that still didn't solve the lack of the other fish.

  "How far have your people gone?"

  "In the ocean? Not very far. Fish is always plentiful, there was never any reason for us to head out beyond the pier."

  Maybe that's it. I'll just put together a raft and head out to the deeper ocean.

  Nathan stood up from the table. "Okay, that answers my questions. Thanks."

  "Watch out for the deep sea! There's an old fish in the area who's eaten a few people."

  Nathan nodded. He wasn't too worried. "Okay."

  Charity stood up abruptly. "Can I come with you?"

  "No."

  Nathan sped out of the tavern before she could catch up.

  Nathan chopped down several trees using blades made of water. He then bought some rope from a random villager and used that to tie his logs together.

  From there, he was ready to hit the open sea. As soon as the boat touched the water with him on it, power flooded up and down his body. [Ability to Ride a Boat] had activated.

  The boat propelled itself forward like somebody had strapped a motor to the back of it. Ocean spray went off to his sides as a fine mist.

  It was only five minutes of sailing when he came across the shrine.

  It protruded out of the water like a sore thumb. Even though it was so distant that the color turned a little bit blue, he could still tell that its shade up close was a dark gray.

  Nathan then turned his boat to the left and resolved to never go that particular route again.

  Good thinking, me, he thought. No need to touch it, no need to go near it. I refuse to play into this stupid role B32 cast for me more than is absolutely necessary.

  He squinted his eyes. Something was ahead. A black monument—

  Nathan's jaw dropped. He looked back in the direction he'd come from. No more shrine. He looked forward.

  Yeah, that was definitely a shrine.

  He sharply pivoted to the right and the centrifugal motion nearly threw him off the raft. He gripped the edges and just barely managed to hold on.

  Once that was done, he rubbed the sweat off his forehead and—

  Oh my goodness it's coming at him at mach speed—!

  He braked the boat and flew out of it with a cry. His body slapped against the shrine like wet food against drywall.

  He tumbled to the ground in front of the shrine. The pedestal mocked him from the side.

  He stood up and ground his teeth together. This was just getting ridiculous.

  The villagers did mention something about how the shrine was capable of moving, but they didn't say anything about it hunting him down like a deranged stalker.

  He walked over toward his boat and—

  The pedestal lit up. Words appeared on the top.

  Reward: Weapon Enhancement

  "Nope!" he shouted. "Not falling for it!"

  He jumped back onto his raft and reversed away from the shrine.

  He made it a point to keep the shrine in his sight until it was well out of distance. When he finally turned around, he half expected to see it behind him.

  Instead, he was greeted with the horrifying sight of an endless drop and an infinite black void.

  The blue sky faded down into the black like a gradient.

  Nathan sent his boat away from the edge and breathed a sigh of relief. He was far enough away that he wasn't drifting off toward the waterfall.

  "Okay, I think that's far enough. I can't get much more deep sea than this," he said.

  He pulled out his fishing rod and got to work.

  The shrine was ever present. Always off in the distance, sometimes a little closer, sometimes so far that he could barely make it out and half thought he was hallucinating it.

  But Nathan didn't care. Even as days passed, he remained focused on his objective.

  Namely, extracting every living sea creature out of the water and feeding them to the gods of progression.

  21/22

  He only had one left.

  He'd had one left for the past three days.

  He folded his head in his hands. So why was it taking so long to get this single damn fish?

  Nathan was on the verge of losing his mind. Much like the hilly biome, the lack of progress had steadily driven him a little bit insane.

  It didn't hurt that he was in the middle of the ocean, completely alone with nothing but his thoughts.

  "Whoever said fishing is relaxing needs to be thrown into a wood chipper," he growled.

  He stood up and paced around his raft, the object rocking precariously from his motions.

  "Okay, so I tried using the worm bait, I tried fly fishing, I even tried lowering a sword into the water to see if that would work. Nothing."

  Nathan was rapidly running out of ideas.

  The only thing he could think of was...

  Upgrading his fishing pole.

  He turned around. Had the shrine gotten closer since the last time he looked?

  He rubbed his eyes. "I think I've been out here too long."

  He turned his raft around and made off in the direction of land.

  As a consequence, the shrine got closer.

  Then closer.

  Then closer—

  He pivoted toward it.

  The raft bumped into the rocky platform and Nathan clambered onto it. The pedestal gleamed in response to his approach.

  He held his hand over the top.

  "It's no big deal," he said. "Nothing's gonna go wrong, I just make sure that absolutely nobody knows that I touched it, and things'll be fine."

  Yeah, the last several times he'd messed around with shrines and they'd caused him trouble, it was because he told people or implied that he was going to deal with it. This time, nobody knew! Heck, the shrine didn't even seem to give blessings or anything like that, and the people hadn't mentioned anything about a difference.

  So, as far as anyone was concerned, Nathan had never been there.

  He touched his hand to the pedestal. The door shuddered open, and he walked into it. It shuddered shut and the elevator lowered him into the main body of the shrine.

  The elevator came to a stop and Nathan stepped forward. What greeted him was an endless black void in the exact same style as the edge of the circle that he'd seen not too long ago.

  Nathan squinted his eyes. "What am I looking at?"

  A window popped in front of him.

  [System Error 404]

  [Dungeon Not Found.]

  Nathan couldn't quite believe his eyes.

  "Are you screwing with me?" he said.

  [A bug report is being sent to the system administrator at this moment. Please stand by.]

  [Loading... loading...]

  Nathan tapped his foot against the elevator floor.

  "I keep on comparing this to a buggy game, but this is just stupid."

  [No system admin found. Archiving bug report.]

  The window disappeared and Nathan was left with the empty void.

  Nathan grimaced. Of course there wouldn't be a system admin to send a bug report to—the system admin was dead, murdered by Nathan's own hands.

  Well, technically it'd been Mara who did the final blow, but still.

  Nathan reached his hand out into the void and tried to see if there was an invisible floor. He nearly lost balance and fell in.

  He drew back and toward the center of the elevator.

  "Okay, so how do I go back up?" he asked.

  No window arrived to assist.

  He jumped up and down a few times. The elevator scooted up by about half an inch then stopped.

  Nathan's eyes widened and he jumped up and down several more times.

  The elevator didn't move any further.

  As he sat there, a slow, dawning realization hit him. He'd felt the explanation more than he reached it by thought. He'd seen this exact event multiple times in the buggier dungeon-crawlers he'd played, after all.

  He'd just gotten soft-locked.

  He'd bricked his game.

  Except it wasn't a game, and it was real life, and he was going to starve to death in the middle of an endless abyss of black nothingness.

  "Screw my life, man."