Haruki was on hunting duty this week.
He advanced quietly through the Deep Woods, flitting from perch to perch. The darkness cast by the tall trees shrouded his movements in shadow. His Cloak of Invisibility helped him remain undetected by the various mobs that inhabited the area, allowing him to stalk his prey unseen.
Haruki had long since learned how to make use of his skills to mimic the uncanny ambiance of the Deep Woods. It had taken him a while of learning from the best among the Chosen Ones, those who spent their time looking for exploits in their new world. It had taken a while, but it had paid off. Now even the leaves would not rustle in his wake,
High up in the air, above the dense canopy, Haruki could see the telltale outline of the timer in the sky. The neon red glow seeped through the leaves of the trees and dripped onto the branches like liquid copper. An ominous sign of what was to come.
07:12:10:19
The timer that had once only ever appeared during server maintenance had begun appearing in the overworld when there were 30 days left. Haruki remembered that day. It had been the same day that the devs announced the shutdown of the BR servers.
He had spent that particular server maintenance staring at the glowing words in the void, just as usual. It wasn’t like there had been anything for him to do. Unlike some other Chosen Ones, he had never met mysterious figures in the void.
The hours of staring had seemingly burned those numbers into his retinas, or so he thought.
As the moment server maintenance ended, those numbers had not faded from the sky above him like they usually did. Instead, they remained, glaring a vivid red, a reminder of how little time they had left.
That was the same server maintenance that had come with the notice of permadeath.
The subtle sign of movement in the undergrowth below pulled him back from his thoughts. His prey, a large basilisk, had begun to move. Its scaly surface was a mottled grey, the colour of the granite beneath it. It slithered quietly through the bushes. Despite its bulk, it left the greenery in its wake mostly undisturbed, leaving no trail indicating its presence.
Haruki followed silently behind, his keen eyes tracking every shudder of a leaf that indicated the basilisk’s progress.
It did not move fast, that was for sure. It slithered through the undergrowth at a cautious, meandering pace, occasionally inclining its flat head to listen for the movement of other creatures.
According to Trix’s previous encounters, the basilisk was able to detect even the slightest whisper in the winds. Once aggravated, it would burrow deep into the ground, out of reach. Its entire toolkit was built for stealth.
It was a good thing that Haruki’s skills had also been built for stealth.
After a while of tracking, the basilisk finally reached its destination. It circled around what seemed to be a small mound of dirt. Once, twice.
This was it.
Haruki equipped and drew his bow. An arrow of light coalesced at his cheek, fitting snugly into the crook of the taut string. He took aim, feeling the pressure of the bow against his palm.
And…
The basilisk reared its head.
Now.
The arrow of light flew free from the string with a loud twang. It streaked through the air faster than Haruki could see. Clearly, faster than the basilisk could see too.
There was a dull thud. The basilisk crashed to the ground, its fall broken by scattered leaves and twigs. The shaft of the arrow shone golden in its eye, having pierced through its skull.
Headshot and a crit. It was Haruki’s lucky day.
He jumped down from the branch he had been perched on and swiftly equipped his knife. With practiced movements, he gutted and cleaned the basilisk, taking only the edible parts and storing them in his inventory.
With that taken care of, he turned to the mound.
It was a small mound of dirt and rocks. The plants in the near vicinity had been cleared, leaving the bare mound popping out of the undergrowth like a pimple. With the tip of his knife, Haruki gently dug away at it, using the flat of his blade to leverage off stray pieces of rock.
A shiny, white surface peered out through the dirt. With more digging, the curved contours of several objects emerged. Seven, golf ball shaped eggs, sitting in a nest of dirt.
Aha. He had been right.
The Chosen Ones would have omelets for dinner tonight.
Haruki gently scooped up the eggs and put them into his inventory. The eggs parsed through the barrier and into the green screen like passing through jelly.
He then opened up another screen, the map, and warped to their Guild Hall in the Capital.
As he hit the button, the world shattered around him. For a moment, he could see the void that encompassed the world they were in, before the pieces of the world reformed, revealing the sight of the Chosen Ones’ Alliance before him.
The Guild Hall was the same as it had always been, cozy on the outside and imposing on the inside. The grey stone making up the foundation had been adorned with illusions of gold and silver, while the walls were lined with tall archways filled with black void.
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Haruki didn’t remember who had been the one to create the designs in the Guild Hall. What he did know was that someone had set a Territory skill over it, and proceeded to customize their “home” to how it was now.
The one difference was that the receptionist’s corridor had been repurposed into a mess hall. Ever since the nth last server maintenance, hunger and thirst had been added to the world, while mobs left behind corpses instead of vaporizing on death. A huge nerf, but some found it gratifying to finally be able to eat food again.
Haruki strode through the great doors, passing several Chosen Ones as they milled about the dining table.
“What’s for dinner, Haruki?” someone called out from behind him.
He lifted his hand as he made his way to the kitchen.
“Basilisk and eggs.”
There was a collective groan from around the dining table, followed by someone calling out, “why can’t you hunt something normal?”
“I like my dinner spicy!” Haruki called back as he stepped through the door to the kitchen, the black membrane stretched between the doorframe abruptly cutting off the boos of the crowd.
The Guild Master herself was on kitchen duty today, busy chopping up a variety of legumes that Haruki didn’t recognise. In her hand was a hunting dagger, the blade moving up and down swiftly as it shredded stalks and leaves alike.
An SSR weapon reduced to a kitchen knife. This was the irony of the Chosen Ones’ situation.
Haruki reached into his inventory and pulled out the remains of the basilisk, its skin secreting slime all over his hand and dripping to the ground. The basilisk itself was rather long, landing in coils across the floor.
“Don’t put the food on the floor,” said Marge without looking up from the chopping board.
“You’ll wash it anyway,” Haruki replied, hefting the slimy pile of coils onto the countertop. He then took the basilisk eggs out of his inventory and placed those there as well, making sure to position them so that they wouldn’t roll off the surface.
Marge glanced to the side.
“Basilisk again?”
“They’re easy to hunt,” Haruki shrugged.
“Fair enough,” Marge vanished her knife into her inventory and began dragging the coils of the basilisk into a metal tub. Pulling out another SSR item from her inventory, she summoned gallons of water from thin air. The water splashed into the tub, submerging the basilisk’s body. She didn’t turn to him again.
Haruki could tell that this indicated the conversation was over, but he still stayed where he was.
“So…” he remarked as Marge pulled out a brush and scrubbed at the slime on the basilisk. “Any luck with the exit?”
“None,” Marge grunted. “We found nothing today either. About to head out after dinner for another look.”
“I’m starting to think that there is no way out.”
“Starting?” Marge laughed grimly. “You sure had a lot of hope left in you.”
“I mean, didn’t we have a lead a while back?”
“That was almost a year ago,” Marge said sullenly. “As you know, that Chosen One is in a coma, and nobody has been able to find the mysterious kid who gave him the lead.”
“I can try talking to him again.”
“So that’s what this was about,” Marge shook her head. “Oh alright. You have my permission.”
She raised her head and looked up. Past the walls of the Chosen Ones’ Alliance, past the Great Oak, at the timer high in the sky.
“I doubt it’ll make much of a difference though. There’s not much we can do in 7 days.”
Haruki said nothing, except bow and leave through the door. In the hall, more Chosen Ones were arriving for dinner, making him the only one leaving through the gates.
Taking a right at the entrance, he scaled the steps all the way to the top of the Great Oak. He’d taken this route many times in the past, yet each time felt as fresh as the last.
As his foot crossed the last step, he felt the nature of the air shift. As if something embedded in the essence of the world had switched. The difference was like coming out of a warm room with a radiator and breathing in chilling mountain air. He couldn’t quite place what exactly was different, but he knew that something had changed in the very essence of the space he was in.
Just from how the boundary remained solidly at the top of the last step, he knew that the Chosen One hadn’t moved today either.
Sitting at the top of the Great Oak was a figure clad in red and gold. He sat slumped against the rough bark of the branch, not moving an inch. All around him, the air seemed to shift and warp unpredictably. It would seem as if the very fabric of the world was looser around him, causing Haruki to see hospitals, bedrooms, and silver beaches all layered on top of the scene before him.
Haruki walked over to the figureremained unfazed, and sat down cross legged in front of him. Leaning forward, he prodded the still man’s shoulder.
“Hello again, Luck,” he said. “Marge says hi too.”
The figure did not respond.
“We had a good haul tonight. Basilisk. And eggs,” he took a deep breath. “Because uhh…”
“Because we’re all hungry. Cus of the… hunger update. Yeah. I told you that last time, didn’t I?”
He stared at his reflection in Luck’s round glasses. His reflection stared back, looking hopeful.
But there was nothing from Luck himself.
“Good thing we tested what was edible before the permadeath update dropped, huh?” he said. “Would have been a sad way to go.”
Haruki continued like this for a while. Idly engaging in one sided chatter with Luck, hoping that he might respond. A few months ago, he might have been more aggressive. Reporting updates, emphasizing the urgency of the situation, trying to prompt a response, any response, from the silent Chosen One. But after long periods of nothing, Haruki had run out of things to say, and just resorted to talking.
Then again, if Luck had understood, or was concerned about the urgency of the situation, he would have woken up long ago.
As he spoke, he tried his best to study the changes in the surroundings that Luck had incurred. If what Luck had told Marge all that time ago was true, then he, too, could work this kind of bizarre magic.
Yet observation could only take him so far. Try as he might, he still had no idea how Luck had figured out how to work magic, let alone do it in his sleep.
“You sure you aren’t going to wake up today, either?” he asked, when he finally ran out of things to say. “That lead you had almost a year ago… that was essentially our last hope. Well, maybe not our last, last hope. But I don’t think we’re going to find the magic kid anytime soon.”
“You really can’t tell us anything?” he asked insistently.
Still, nothing.
With a sigh, Haruki turned and headed back down the steps towards the dinner hall. By now, dinner would be ready. After dinner, it would be back out into the Deep Woods to hunt for clues.
Hidden behind large glasses, Luck’s eyelids twitched.