You head south towards the river. You bend down and take a sip. It is very cool and refreshing, you needed that! Just as you are exhaling appreciatively a bottle floats past. You pick it up and read the note inside

"Not in but thanks anyway"

You have no idea what it means but you feel a stat point raise +1 which isn't your strength dexterity or intelligence.

Unperturbed by this weirdness you carry on down the river, you hear a very feint sound in the distance. As you draw closer you can make out two people laughing.......

Hide behind a bush and listen from a safe distance what the two laughing men are discussing.

(As per this thread's rules the next poster should state the consequence of my action.)

You realize that those two are your competition. As you need to reach the nearby cave which covers the entrance of the ruin that you want to reach you need to take a decision: sneak past the men and hope that the ruin's traps will take care of them or assault them directly, disabling them and leave them to their fate. What will you do?

You decide to take them out but are in need of a weapon so you look around the landscape and your inventory to construct one. In your possesion is a book, a cylinder, and a bag (inside the bag contains diamonds and a vial containing a mixture of sulfur and potassium nitrate). Looking around you see the two hysterical men consumed by intoxication and their own dumb jokes; their backs turned to the well lit fire. You see a long stick in the fire glowing with charcoaled ember on the end. You quietly sneak from your position and take the glowing stick before retreating behind your bush. You quickly break off a piece of cooled off charcoal from the stick and mix it with the sulfur/potassium nitrate mixture to make gunpowder then pack the mixture into the cylinder and finally load the diamonds into the cylinder. You now have a primitive long range weapon. The men have stopped laughing and are looking toward your direction. There's no time to lose! You pop out of hiding, aim your weapon, and use the still lit ember of your stick to ignite the gunpowder.

One of the men dies. The other one runs off screaming in fear and jumps into the river to save himself. The path to the ruin is now clear! The writing on the book seems to have wavered, but you couldn't be sure.
You look back at how you just made up gunpowder on the spot. This uncovers a bit of your traditional amnesia back story! Turns out you crafted weapons once. You're really good at this!

You look down the river — it seems to continue for a few miles still.

You notice a random watermelon just floating down the river in your general direction! You manage to pick it up place it on the ground.

You put the watermelon in your bag (never know when a watermelon may come in handy) then search the remains of the man you just shot. Upon searching you find a 9mm handgun with 6 shots remaining, a lighter and a candy bar. You take all, create a torch out of some wood from the camp fire, and proceed into the cave.

Inside the cave is a man, a primitive looking man with raggedy hair who needs to shave. He looks startled by you and he reaches for a knife on his leg. He looks at you a moment longer, the hilt in his hand but the blade still sheathed.

'I am hungry. Do you have anything to eat?' He smiled a little as if he knows something that you do not know. 'Earlier I saw a watermelon, but I am not sure it was real.'

Well, you couldn't eat the watermelon without opening it! The man helps you with his knife and you share the watermelon — he was really hungry, he ate most of it! The man thanks you, and hands you a map.

"Thank you. I wouldn't advise you go in there! It's really dangerous, and I think I saw a dragon once. I lost most of my map, but you can take this piece here — I'm not caving anymore. At least not here."

Having said this, he walks away, and down the river. The map points a cobble crawl west into the cave, and a long westward path that eventually leads into a fork — you can go north, south, or down a staircase. The map says something about danger to the north in there! You put the map in your bag and begin the crawl.

Calm down, this isn't going to be wholly ADVENT-based.

You arrive at the fork in the road that the map had mentioned. You hear a low growling sound to the North. Aware of the warning the old man gave about a dragon and the map that said danger to the north, you decide to save that path for later. You try to go down the staircase but a door at the base of the stairs is locked with a simple pad lock (hmm if only I had the key or a good pair of bolt cutters) so that only leaves the southern path. You cautiously proceed south.

CLOSED!

Thank you all for playing! Really, really. I love the text adventure genre a lot and it was fun to see imaginations on display. Y'all have made my day!

I will announce the winner sometime soon-ish.

Cheers!

You are the winner!

PM incoming!

Thank you so much. I absolutely loved your giveaway idea. :D

It's a shame not many other people participated. Hope you do another like it in the future.