"I guess that's fair. I'll think about it."

While she's thinking about it, she stress-architects, trying to figure out if she can build up the bark from her Infinite Bark Hack into something solid enough to make walls out of. She's going to have such stories to tell, if she... no. Let's be real. She's never going home. She's never going back to either of her homes.

Stress-architecture will continue until morale improves. (Or until somebody serves lunch.)

It will take a lot of bark to make something thick enough to  build with but she can do it. Eventually the woman comes around, "Would you like to eat?"

"That'd be great, thanks."

She leads April back to the treehouse and to table set with fruit juice, tea, cooked duck, soup and pizza. The guide is already sitting at the table.

Okay cool there's—

Pizza.

That's a pizza.

She is going to take a deep breath, refrain from bursting into tears, and ask with an admirable attempt at nonchalance, "Where'd that come from?"

"Hoplites and Medusas drop slices when the die sometimes. Same sort of thing as the fruit dropping from trees. As for why, I think the beings that created the world decided to put foods they enjoyed into the world."

"... What do you know about the beings that created the world? Where were they from? What was it like there?"

"They were people, extravagantly powerful people but people. To them this whole world was a game, a game they put a lot of effort into but a game... We weren't as aware back then, we grew over time. As for where they came from it was a civilization that stretched between worlds... we don't know whether it's still out there but we haven't had any visitors in a long time so either some disaster befell them or we were forgotten."

Does she say it?

She's gonna say it.

"...some of the food is familiar. And like, weirdly familiar. Familiar in ways that seem like they wouldn't happen by coincidence."

"It's possible that it's related to your world somehow, some of our visitors spoke of patterns. They said that natural worlds often has strange similarities that were hard to explain. Some were apparently reflections of earlier times on another world."

"...that's less of an explanation than I was hoping for, but thanks."

"I'm sorry I don't know more."

"It's not your fault. I assume."

"Indeed it isn't. I noticed you've been using bark for a lot of things. Is there a reason for that?"

"It's easy to get a bunch of in a hurry and I'm not gonna run out, I can just keep peeling it off trees and growing it back forever. Why?"

"Trees grow pretty quickly around here. Or well they grow to full size quickly and then stop."

"...huh. Should I be planting a bunch? How?"

"If you stick acorns in the ground they'll sprout into saplings in a few minutes and grow to full size in a day or two."

"How 'bout that."

She finishes her lunch and then digs through her assorted bags of tree goodies to collect up all her acorns, whereupon she finds a flat space nearish home base and plants them all in a more or less tidy grid (accounting for the occasional interruption by a preexisting tree).

...then she sighs, because that was definitely her stalling to avoid thinking about the pillar, and comes back to home base and sits on the ground and stares at it. Stupid inanimate object with mysterious powers which she will have to either trust or not trust. Doesn't it know she hates trusting things?

The saplings pop up exactly as she was told they would.

...she wants to sleep on it, and finish mapping all the parts of the island she can reach without falling off a cliff. But is that a good idea, or is it just more stalling? Is she going to learn anything actually useful out there? Is she going to encounter anything that will change her mind about whether she can trust these people, or anything she can use to verify their story? If they are in fact lying to her somehow, they've had time to build a world that backs them up in every particular she's seen so far. More stalling is unlikely to make a difference there.

Fine then. Best get it over with.

She touches the pillar.

Immediately she feels a rush of energy, she feels stronger and somehow healthier. She has as promised a new sense and she can somehow see in all directions within a bubble she can see through trees and rocks to what's behind them outside that bubble this new sight is blocked like normal sight. There's also two new interfaces in her mind a bit like the map bracelet one feels like a number of spaces without anything in them and the other is like a well of energy which is small but full.

...well. Okay. She did it. She sure did do the thing.

"My next ambition is to beat up a monster. Any advice?"

"You might want your starting equipment... or at least the sword. I can hold onto the rest if you want. Otherwise, the first monsters you'll run into are slimes and my main advice there is don't let them jump on you. They cover you in gunk that takes about ten seconds to fall off and makes it harder to move."

"Sure, I'll take my starting equipment."