It looks like a pretty ordinary forest, actually. The underbrush is a bit thin, and it's a bit empty, but there isn't anything obviously horrifying about it.

The forest doesn't appear to contain any demons. It does contain bunnies, though. And a few birds. The bunnies are very tame, but the birds are not. They fly away when Holly gets close.

"Hello!" says a strange man, from behind them. "I'm Jeff. I'm your guide. I am here to give you advice on what to do next. It is recommended that you talk with me anytime you get stuck."

"You are in a forest," he informs. "You can build a shelter by placing wood or other blocks in the world. Don't forget to create and place walls."

"Oh...kay... relative to Kuigao, where are we?"

... Jeff blinks, once, very slowly. "You are in a forest," he repeats.

"Can you be more specific?" Crystal asks, taking over with slightly better patience.

Pause. "Greetings, H-H-Ho-Cr-Cry-oll-stal-stal. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Greetings, Cry-Hol-Cr-Cr-olly-al."

"...You can call me Holly if that's easier?"

"Greetings, Ho-H-Cryst-ly."

"...Or skip it. Anyway. Have you seen our brother and his cohabitor?"

"There are many different ways you can attract people to move in to our town. They will of course need a home to live in."

"This isn't a town, it's a forest. What's the matter with you? How did you even sort of know our names?"

"They say there is a person who will tell you how to survive in this land... oh wait. That's me."

"I was thinking we'd keep walking until we found civilization, and you don't seem to be it," says Holly, taking over again. "Is there a town nearby?"

"You can build a shelter by placing wood or other blocks in the world. Don't forget to place walls."

"Are we going to run out of bunnies if we keep hiking? I didn't notice a shortage."

"You should stay indoors at night. It is very dangerous to be wandering around in the dark."

Holly squints at the sun. There's only one. "You're expecting a longdark?"

"If you want to survive, you will need to create weapons and shelter. Start by chopping down trees and gathering wood," he says. He produces a bag, and offers it to Holly. "You should stay indoors at night."

Holly takes the bag. "What's this for? And if it's so dangerous how did you get here?"

"My name is Jeff. I'm your guide," he says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Right. When your cohabitor wakes up we will find out why he pitied you enough to move in together," snorts Holly. She looks in the bag.

"What are you hoping I'll do with these?"

"If you want to survive, you will need to create weapons and shelter. Start by chopping down trees and gathering wood."

"Why? Then what?"

"When you have enough wood, create a Workbench. This will allow you to create more complicated things, as long as you are standing close to it."

"Look, where are we? Could you show me on a map, we have a map?"

"You are in a forest."

"The trees were a clue. Where did you come from? Where do you live?"

"I'm your guide. In order for a room to be considered a home, it needs to have a door, chair, table, and a light source. Make sure the house has walls as well."

"...Do you want me to build you a house. Is this your extremely stupid way of asking me to build you a house."

"Two people will not live in the same home. Also, if their home is destroyed, they will look for a new place to live."

"Housedweller. Idiot housedweller. Why are you wandering around in the forest if you're such a housedweller?"

"I'm your guide."

"You're a loony. Who's supposed to be looking after you? Look, will you fall asleep soon so we can talk to your cohabitor?"

Pause. "Two people will not live in the same home."

"Good luck with that. Ugh, something's going to eat you if we just wander off, won't it. I don't think I can build you an entire shelter before you're going to sleep, though."

"Start by chopping down trees and gathering wood," he advises, trying to be helpful.

"You should be kept on, like, a leash. I'm telling your cohabitor to put a leash on before he falls asleep in the future," says Holly, and she picks up the axe and takes a swing at a tree.

"You can build a shelter by placing wood or other blocks in the world," says the assumed partially-eaten soul.

Holly reaches for the cubes, shivering.

The cubes, upon coming in contact with each other, get pulled together and become a single object. There is a something, polite and present in Holly and Crystal's mind informing them that they can place eight blocks of wood within a certain radius. You just have to pick where the blocks go, and then you can put them there. As long as it's in the radius, of course.

The tree turns into cubes. The cube in her hand... Is an ordinary cube of wood. No 'you may place a block of wood' feeling. Just - tiny cube of wood. In some sense, it's wasted now.

Experimentally, she puts down the non-cube cube and hits it with her axe.

Mr. Mangled Soul Jeff has nothing to add to this. He does wander around, aimlessly. He runs into a tree.

"How do I make those?"

"Once you have a wooden sword, you might try to gather some gel from the slimes. Combine wood and gel to make a torch!"

"Slimes?"

"There are many monsters that roam the land. Most at night, but some, like slimes, are out and about during the day."

"Is the only way to kill slimes with a wooden sword?"

"There are lots of different kinds of weapons. A wooden sword is often considered the most basic."

"Can I kill a slime with my axe or will that just turn it into slime cubes?"

"There are lots of different kinds of weapons," says Jeff.

She's so glad she doesn't have to actually use the axe every time she wants to cube a tree. She cubes some more trees. She makes household objects and outfits the houses. She makes a wooden sword. She fences in a bunny pen and starts catching bunnies.

The bunnies are the most docile bunnies of all time. Also, fluffy. They are fluffy, too.

Holly places the bunny cube in the bunny pen.

Yeep. Axe time. If that doesn't cube it again they can have this one for dinner.

It does not cube it again. Instead, it kills it. The bunny-cube explodes into various chunks of twisted and broken and stretched bunny.

Well, that's... going to be sort of challenging to have for dinner. And it has yucked the interior of the bunny pen, and their outfit. Blech.

Well, such are the dangers of experimenting on live animals with foreign magic and then taking an axe to them when it turned them into a twisted mockery of a bunny whose every waking second was agony. A yucked outfit.

Anyway. Holly collects the meatier bunny chunks, and goes looking for a slime, because apparently those are useful for starting fires, unless she very much misunderstands. She has her wooden sword handy in case she actually needs it.

There is a slightly squished spherical green thing over there! It moves by hopping. Hop. Hop. Hop. It looks sort of like it's made of gelatin. It's likely the slime.

Does it hop alarmingly fast or anything?

It does not hop alarmingly fast. It's actually pretty predictable, it sort of scrunches up before hopping. Scrunch scrunch, hop! Scrunch scrunch, hop!

It is stabbed! And knocked back a little. And now it is an angry slime! .... Scrunch scrunch scrunch, it's going to hop at you!

She doesn't really want to touch it, so she sticks with the wooden sword method. Stab stab stab stab!

There is gel in collectible Platonic semi-solids! It is mostly solid, but also sort of squashy. There are also two copper coins.

That burns properly. And now there is fire!

Yay. Ouch. She visits the bunny pen and puts the sting on her hands into a bunny, then collects her bunny chunks. She's got a skewer in her bag for just this sort of situation. Roast, bunny chunks, roast.

The bunny chunks roast just fine! Mmm, delicious warped bunny cube.

It does not become cubed! It just gets shredded and disappears neatly, sort of like the yuck from earlier.

How irritating. She pulls up more grass and gets a wood cube and tries to cube some grass.

That works. There is now one magic cube of grass that can be placed!

Ha. Excellent. Now the grass is one thing. She touches a tree and swaps their sizes.

And now it is a large cube of grass!

And she places it in with the rabbits so that they may nibble it.

The rabbits are very grateful! Nibble nibble. Nibble.

There's a blueberry bush, right over there.

"Blueberries can be turned into blue dye at a dye vat," he says conversationally.

There's a slime over there, but it doesn't actually seem hostile. It's sort of just ignoring them.

It's not eyeing their bunnies, is it?

It's not! It's just sort of hopping along blissfully.

"If you want a merchant to move in, you will need to gather plenty of money. 50 silver coins should do the trick!"

It is a walking corpse, in some state of decay. It sees through the transparency, growls, and bangs at the wall. But the wall holds pretty neatly.

Holly puts the transparency back where it belongs. Nobody wants to see that. Eugh.

Well, seeing it's avoidable. The sounds from outside, less so. They're going to last the whole night.

Well, that would be highly inconvenient if they had any intention of sleeping. They exercise instead, in their little house, practicing footwork and swinging the wooden sword around for future slime hunts.

The walls and door hold just fine. The dead things do not break in, and they're free to exercise in peace. Well. Relative peace.

They pause to eat wood-turned-into-trail-food a couple times, waiting for a new sun.

They can tell there is a new sun when the banging stops.

Holly checks via spyglass troport anyway, just to be sure.

No dead things! They are all gone, it looks just as it was before the night.

The bunnies are fine. The dead things weren't interested in them.

And they've got plenty of grass and so on? (Crystal drowses a bunny.)

The grass block seems mostly intact, actually. The bunnies visibly nibble grass, but there's no - rabbit droppings.

Huh. Well, they're weird cubeable exploding bunnies, whatever. Crystal pens some more, since they don't seem overcrowded or hard to feed in this quantity.

The bunnies are pretty okay with being penned. They continue to be very fluffy and soft.

"...Okay, where do I do that?"

"You can use your pickaxe to dig through dirt, and your axe to chop down trees."

"Are there monsters underground?"

"Skeletons found deep underground usually carry hooks."

"Do wooden swords work on skeletons?"

"Your current equipment simply won't do. You need to make better armor."

"...With what?"

"Anvils can be crafted out of iron, or purchased from a merchant."

"But to get iron we need to go underground, where there are skeletons, versus whom the wooden sword isn't good enough?"

"There is treasure hidden all over the world. If you see a pot, be sure to smash it open. They contain all sorts of useful supplies."

She gets little blocks of dirt for her trouble! Digging a hole in the ground is surprisingly easy.

Yoink?

Holly collects as much as she easily can and then turns her wooden sword into the metal with one of its bits.

It is a much better sword now! Goodness, look at that.

"Now that you have some ore, you will need to turn it into a bar in order to make items with it. This requires a furnace!"

"How do I make a furnace," she sighs.

"You can create a furnace out of torches, wood, and stone. Make sure you are standing near a work bench."

"Where do I get stone."

"You should do some mining to find metal ore. You can craft very useful things with it."

"Is stone underground too?" asks Crystal.

"Some amazing things can be found deep underground!"

...They go back to the mine and keep digging.

They find stone pretty quickly! Just have to keep going down.

Furnace! She can now make a furnace.

Grand. She makes a furnace. Can she do things with her remaining metal blocks now...?

Yep! She can smelt those into - tin bars, apparently.

She smelts them into tin bars. Can she make an anvil yet?

Nope.

Okay. Digging more to find different metal it is.

Why would she do that? When she gets tired she drowses bunnies, when she gets hungry she goes and gets food. Otherwise, meh.

It's not fun, there are a lot of them, and they have flying eyeball creature friends, too. But she has a sharp metal sword, and none of them are very fast, so she makes it safely back to the house.

The dead things outside and their eyeball friends would like to offer this line of argument to augment the situation: moan bang bang, groan slobber, bang, growl growl. Bang.

Yes, well, to the pit with them all. They stay in the house.

Well, several hours later, the attempts at debate cease. Holly and Crystal are now free to explore. Again.

Holly checks for a sun, finds one - are they all the same color? And size? Peculiar coincidence - and goes back out. Crystal digs.

Well, is some of it iron? If some of it is iron, she's going to turn lots of dirt into iron instead of digging more.

Some of it is iron!

Great. Holly makes lots of dirt into iron and Crystal hauls it all to the forge.

Yep, that's enough to make an anvil.

Great. Now she makes an anvil.

And now she can make a lot of things! A suit of armor, a bathtub, a toilet....

Oh, that last will be more convenient than inflicting her discomforts on the bunnies. She expands her house to have room for those things and then installs them.

Are any of these metals upgrades that Holly can just do by herself? Is there any reason not to, such as conservation of materials?

Yep! The pickaxe and axe are just fine with being magically upgraded.

Great. That, then. And they make a suit of armor out of whatever they've got the most of and then Holly upgrades it.

And now they have armor that fits them perfectly and is made out of the strongest material available at the moment. That's convenient!

"You should focus on gathering more heart crystals to increase your maximum life," is what he has to say.

"Where are those?"

"Underground are crystal hearts that can be used to increase your max life. You can smash them with a pickaxe."

"Does that make them better at improving our - what even is max life?"

"If you run out of health, you die. Keep your health up by consuming healing items, staying near items that cause you to regenerate, or wearing certain accessories."

"Or I could just keep bunnies handy. Although I guess that doesn't work if I get caught outside in the dark. What is up with your suns shortage, anyway?"

"You should stay indoors at night. It is very dangerous to be wandering around in the dark."

"...Does 'night' happen regularly?"

"Oh spitting pit. What a waste of time!"

"Stars fall all over the world at night. They can be used for all sorts of useful things. If you see one, be sure to grab it because they disappear after sunrise."

"Useful things like what?"

"If you gather five fallen stars, they can be combined to create an item that will increase your magic capacity."

"Holly's already really good at magic."

"Magic is a skill, that's like saying - increase our art history capacity, what the - I mean, sure, we'll keep an eye out for 'fallen stars', whatever the hell those are," says Holly.

"If you see one, be sure to grab it because they disappear after sunrise," reminds Jeff.

"Does that mean we have to get five in one night?"

...... Very robotic head-shake. That would be a no, then.

"So they'll only disappear if we don't grab them. Okay."

Nod. "I am here to help."

"Of course you are."

Silence from Jeff! Apparently his feeble mind doesn't see anything else helpful to say at the moment.

Holly pats him on the head and goes out to see if she can find yet further improved metal.

Well, that's annoying. Eventually they call it a day and try building a set of stairs out of the wood blocks to climb up and have a look at what's in the neighborhood. They keep an eye on that lazy slacker sun lest it disappear on them; they want to be near enough the house to duck into it if "night" happens.

One becomes a grass block, the other becomes a snow block. That seems to work pretty well.

It is really quite disgusting! The grass is red and bloody and dripping. It would go squish, under their feet, if Holly cared to walk on it. There's a tree, over there - the trunk looks grey and diseased and the leaves look like gobs of flesh. There is what looks like an eyeball, sticking out of the ground, over there. It woggles and turns to look at Holly.

Holly checks on the sun. Time to loiter near her house yet?

Yep! Time to loiter, the sky's starting to turn purple.

She goes and parks with her armor and sword by the door to her house.

Dead things show up soon enough! And the flying eyeball things. They are here to try and kill Holly and Crystal.

Holly is here to try to kill them right back. Sword with one hand, emergency troportation ability to suck heat out of the monsters and into a woodblock in her other hand.

Okay. Cool. She puts it in her pocket. She nips around to where the bunnies are and tires one out. She goes back to her house door to see if more will fall, and incidentally kill dead things.

Reasonably sparse, actually. All of them make a beeline for her, instead of hanging around in any one place.

She makes a run for it.

Good. She heads back for the house.

She goes and gets a torch.