by D Wolfin
‘No wonder this forest seems so empty of people. Nobody would go to this much effort for so little experience.’
I continue to casually walk through the ankle high grass with everyone else following closely behind me.
“This forest is inconceivable.” Mason speaks up after a twenty minute period of silence, “I have lost all sense of bearing. Everything looks the same no matter where I am.”
“I understand what you mean.” I sigh while agreeing with him, “But we have been walking in one constant direction this entire time. We must be making some sort of progress.”
Fen gives me a strange look, but continues to stroll along side me without so much as a word. She isn’t attached to my arm, but neither is she particularly far away from me.
I have seen plenty of wildlife in the forest, especially elk with large antlers of ivory. I broke off from the party at one stage to kill one of these creatures. While I managed to kill it and harvest a few meals worth of meat from it, I was surprised to find that their antlers were classified as shields under the game system. I could not use my speed to nullify their defences, just like with the ‘Thèr Deer’.
I also got the innate feeling of when an area of herbs was nearby a few times. But I refrained from traversing to them in fear I would completely lose my bearing and end up walking back the way I came.
Another half hour passes with absolutely no change to the surroundings. Occasionally we walk up slight hill and other times down them, yet the ground and the forest around us refuse to show any signs of changing.
Suddenly, I notice a bright yellow light shining through the trees in the distance. revealing a clearing to the trees.
“Finally, we can look at the sun to discover our orientation.” I breath out slowly, relief spreading through my chest.
It only takes us five minutes to reach where that light was shining through the trees. As soon as I enter it. Not just me, but everyone else as well must be as shocked as I am right now.
We have exited the forest from exactly where we entered it from.
Turning around stupefied, everyone except for Fen is staring back at the forest in confusion.
“I think I understand why everyone assumed there was some spell on the forest.” I speak to the others about my thoughts. “It isn’t just that the forest is misleading and causes you to get lost. To exit out of the forest exactly where we entered from is simply inconceivable.”
“I agree,” Mason talks while staring into the trees, “There is definitely something amiss here. But I don’t know what we should do. I doubt that these scrolls we have will work considering how we couldn’t even tell when the illusion began. It must be a top tier illusion to be able to do that.”
“Hmm.” I think about what he said for a moment. At the very least, there must be some way to get past it. The issue is that with a million players in the game and three hundred thousand of those in the kingdom of Forste, anything we try has more than likely been attempted before. And that is only on my server. There are also another sixty three servers out throughout the country as well.
“We may as well try what we can. This forest is our best lead for finding that boy so we have to discover its secrets somehow.”
“Umm. How do we do that?” Matrix shyly asks in confusion.
“We will mark the trees with a knife as we pass by them, marking our way.” Mason answers his brother moments before I respond as well.
“We will also use our ‘Scrolls of Clearsight’ halfway through the trip. This time it took us about an hour to end up back here, so we will use the scrolls at thirty minutes in. There must be some way to succeed after all.”
“Pretty sure everyone thought that way at some point.”
I don’t respond to him. I know that this is probably a vain attempt.
Unfortunately, it is all that I have to go on right now with no alternatives.
Drawing both my ‘Reinforced Steel Kodachi’ and ‘Fire Imbued Meridium Scramasax’ I lead the way back into the forest cutting into the trees as I pass by them. When I stop and look behind me, I can see all the cuts lined up in a straight line.
I continue doing this for another half an hour, continuously looking back to ensure I am travelling in a straight line. If I am heading in a straight line, there is no possible way I can end up back where I started.
I turn around once more to check on the cuts, but to my astonishment, they are gone. Frantically looking all around me, they have completely disappeared.
“That’s strange. Maybe, if the illusion confused my senses and made me unconsciously change directions, I would understand. But this is almost like a teleportation disguised as an illusion.” I mumble to myself trying to find reasoning behind the tree cuts suddenly vanishing.
“Could it be the illusion is masking the cuts as well as confusing us?” Mason asks.
“It’s possible. At least, we now know we are under its effects and it is definitely here. I personally feel reassured to know that we were simply not getting lost ourselves in this forest where everything looks the same.”
“I guess we should use our scrolls now then.”
The three of us players each pull out a ‘Scroll of Clearsight’. Calling out the incantation, we all cast the spell that is to dissolve the effects of visual illusions on us. However, looking around me, I still can’t see the sword cuts I made on the trees.
‘Strange,’ I think in my head, ‘Perhaps we need to have everyone in the party cleared of the illusion.’
“Fen, stay still for a minute.” I say to the girl as I pull out another ‘Scroll of Clearsight’ and cast it with her as the target.
Even after having all of us clear of visual illusions, the sword cuts we made to track our way still refuse to return. Perhaps this is a teleportation technique instead of an illusion.
“Well, we had best move on for now. The light shining through the canopy is starting to dim. Meaning the sun is setting.”
They all nod their head. Regardless of whether we will be returning to where we entered or break through the illusion, either will be fine right now.
We start walking but stop as soon as a girls voice catches our attention.
“Why… are we… going back?” Fen asks curiously while looking directly at me.
“What do you mean Fen?” I ask curiously.
“I thought… you wanted to… keep going… forward.” She states monotonously.
“F-Fen. Are you saying that you know which way we came from and where to keep going forward?”
The wolf girl gives my words some thought before nodding her head. Just like me, the others are also at a loss for words.
“Fen,” I break the silence, “Can you please lead the way?”
“…Okay.” She says before turning around to walk back the way we came.
Without anything else to rely on, we all follow behind the wolf girl. After about five minutes, she is suddenly walking off to the left. I hurry to change my direction and catch up with her.
This process repeats every minute or so. She will be walking in one direction and then a blink of the eye later she will be walking in another direction completely. Through the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of a cut on a tree, the scorch marks around the incision show that it was made by a blade with a fire attribute. Strangely enough, the moment I focus on the tree the mark disappears, as if it was never there.
A low groaning of wood stretching reverberates throughout the trees and even Fen stops in her tracks, looking around her. I spot a glimpse of movement off to my right, but when I turn my head I only see trees and grass. The only movement is that of a few sparse leaves drifting down through the air.
Mason behind me moves to a nearby tree and quickly scales it and sits up in the low branches, looking around for danger. Matrix is looking around him as if he had seen a ghost or something.
Everything turns eerily quiet as I focus my concentration on the surrounding through my five senses. I can’t hear, see, smell or fe
el anything wrong. Yet a strange foreboding is telling me otherwise.
With a few cracking sounds, four of the trees in the surroundings suddenly rip up their roots and start travelling over the ground towards me at a speed that completely takes me by surprise. It isn’t necessarily all that fast, but these are trees we are talking about.
One of those trees is the one Mason is currently situated in. The rapid movement causes him to lose balance and be flung off.
“Creature Analysis.” I quietly call out. Focusing my sight on one of the moving trees. The creature analysis skill may have been absorbed into my class skill. Yet it still had the same activation words.
Name: Forest Guardian
Level: 75
Health: 1450
Magic: 100
Stamina: 200
??
The bad presage I was feeling before dissipates as I see the stats of the enemies coming towards me. This would definitely be an issue for a low level player or perhaps even someone my level who didn’t train their stats at all. But this tree in front of me is completely out of its league.
‘I wonder if it even has a consciousness, or simply attacks anyone nearby it. No, surely there must be some kind of thought going on. They are all clearly affected by my aggravation after all.’
Leaning forward and kicking off from the ground, I dashed towards the closest one at top speed. Fen also launches some large ice bolts at a second one at the same time as my attack.
Raising my ‘Fire Imbued Meridium Scramasax’ in front of me and holding it horizontally, I use my speed as the driving force to cut through the forest guardian.
The creature clearly doesn’t have a mouth to cry out in agony as the short sword makes a deep smoldering grove on its body, but the forest guardian’s roots start to thrash about in a defensive mechanism as over half of its health is removed. One of those long roots happen to unexpectedly land across my back as I pass by, causing me to lose balance and heavily collide with a nearby tree.
In my carelessness, I even manage to connect my head with the tree with enough force to cause a five second ‘dazed’ status to appear and my head to spin. I also lost nearly a quarter of my health from that one attack.
‘The monster is of a lower level, yet still does so much damage in a single attack!’ I cry out in my mind. I definitely need more armour so I can take a hit or two.
I look back at the battle to see Fen dancing around launching her speciality ice javelins at one enemy while Mason and Matrix gang up on the other.
The monsters are still under the effects of my aggravation and heading in my direction. But they have roots of a length between five and ten meters, which they use to attack the others despite still travelling in my direction.
Almost as if they had somehow communicated with each other and preplanned. All four nearly dead forest guardian’s simultaneously light up in an earthly green colour, particularly their roots.
“Not good!” I call out as my dazed status effect wears off, “They are using a sacred art, get back! Multi Mirage!”
Every single root dives straight into the ground. They instantly resurface anywhere up to twenty meters away attacking everything within range. I use my own sacred art in time to create multiple mirages of myself and prevent the roots from coalescing onto my real body and killing me. I may be fast but even I know that a perfect omnidirectional attack like this one could easily be my bane.
The others get off rather lightly as well, considering the attacks were mostly focused on me from the beginning.
With the daze effect gone and still fifty percent health, I lunge back into the fight. Being less reckless this time, I quickly finish off two enemies while Fen finished hers and the brother do the same likewise.
“They dropped half decent experience and move relatively slowly. I only wish they weren’t so well suited for surprise attacks.” Mason laughs off the battle now that it is over.
“They may have a slower movement speed than most monsters their level, but their attack speed is incredibly high. Those roots were fast enough to catch even me.” I state with a mild surprise. They wouldn’t have touched me if I took my hood off, but I can’t say for certain I would be able to fight properly if I did take it off.
“Indeed. I would hate to be a low level player who just accidentally ran into one.”
“That would be a terrible encounter for the player.” The image of some newbie getting whipped by countless tree roots suddenly enters my mind. “Fen, do you still remember which direction we were heading in? I would like to continue if we can.”
The now dead trees left holes in the canopy of the forest, allowing us to get a clear look at the sky and find our bearing. It should work like that at least, except that the sun is slowly sinking onto the horizon where we cannot see it and the fading light still somehow shines directly down through the gap. We simply stand under the open sky while a soft golden light falls down on us.
“I… know where… to go.” Fen nods her head while speaking in a monotonous voice.
We go back to following the wolf girl and encounter three more groups of the forest guardians. Being more aware of the creatures and their attacks we weren’t as surprised by them suddenly appearing from the forest. We took a little bit of damage when they revealed their magic to launch innumerable leave blades in a forty five degree arc which could not be blocked, but that was only the first time.
In front of my eyes, the forest abruptly comes to an end.
In the dying light of the sun, I stand at the edge of a clearing approximately two hundred meters in diameter with a reasonably sized river winding through it. The strangest thing is that inside of this clearing is a large town. There are no pathways through or around the town, yet the grass in the entire clearing is short to the length one would comfortably walk on.
Each of the houses in the town are made out of a strange arrangement of wood and foliage. Each and every one appears to have been made out several different sized trees that seem to grow into the house with a thicket of sticks forming the rest of the walls. The roofs are formed by the trees foliage which creates a perfect blanket over the top of the house and even stretches slightly out, creating an small area of shade around each house.
Throughout the village, there are a lot of NPC’s walking around with laundry and other goods. Some are smoking freshly cooked fish while others were sitting around and talking to each other. There were even a few kids picking on a smaller kid off behind one of the structures.
My eyes widen as when I focus on the group and scope my eyesight on them I see a familiar face. The boy that the others are picking on is the ‘Mysterious Boy’ we have been looking for!
I also take note of the appearance of the townsfolk. The men are tall and slender, with narrow shoulders while the females are slightly shorter and have petite bodies that carry a natural elegance to their curves. They all have hair of gentle greens, except for the elderly whose hair is completely silvery white.
The most notable feature beyond anything else though is their narrow pointed ears that stick out horizontally from their heads.
“E-E-E-ELVES!!” Matrix cries out behind me without any warning.
All the movement and noise in the village comes to a halt as everyone’s eyes look over at us.
“HUMANS!” Multiple shouts of melodic voices echo throughout the village in alarm. People who hear it start running away as fast as possible. Some try to grab some personal belonging while others hastily grab their children before fleeing in the opposite direction. There are a few of the men who grab their bows but they all have complete and utter fear on their faces.
“Everyone, I don’t know what is going on. But we need to quickly capture that boy and get out of here before anything too bad happens. Don’t worry, we will shout back at them that we will bring him back. Unfortunately, this is the only way I can think of solving the quest right now.” I hastily call out to the rest of the party.
“Lost. I think kidnapping th
e kid is a little bit much, isn’t it?” Mason frowns behind me in response, not agreeing with the plan.
“I know, it is. But if these elves flee from here. They will probably not only never return but we will never find them again. The continent on this game is enormous and we are not likely to find them ever again. If that happens, we will fail the quest.”
“I still don’t quite feel right kidnapping a child. Can we not just give up on this quest?”
“I don’t know about you. But I am not in a position to simply abandon quests. Don’t forget that this is only a game.”
“I know, I know. Well we better hurry up about it, I still feel uncomfortable though.”
Mason finally gives in, but by now half the residents of this town have already disappeared into the forest. There are around twenty bow wielding guards nervously prepared to defend the outskirts of the town but the other half are frantically still trying to gather up their kids.
“You guys wait here, they look prepared to fire those bows and everything I have ever heard about elves states they are highly adept with them. They shouldn’t be able to hit me though.” I tell the others as I dash towards that small group of children who are now in a panic.
Just as I suspected, those few guards are incredibly adept with their bows. Each and every arrow converges to a single point on my chest. Unfortunately for the elves, they are only firing at an illusionary afterimage. As soon as the image of me is pierced and dispersed, I immediately create another one, confusing the archers even further.
I reach the kid I want in a few seconds, throwing the now petrified child over one shoulder as my afterimage merges with my real body now that I am no longer moving. I prepare to escape when a stunning middle aged elf lady blocks my way. She doesn’t hesitate to drop to her knees before prostrating before me.
“P-please. Spare my son! Take me instead if you must! I will do whatever you want!” She cries in voice completely distraught. Seeing the child I have over my shoulder, the guards also hesitate to fire any more arrows, probably afraid I will use the kid as a shield.