“Nice... to meet you... mother...” I stammered. I felt the words choke up my throat as they tried to get past my thumping heart. Having Urvi around all this while, I had forgotten how nervous I would get around other women. Especially around those I am attracted to.

Xanthia looked at me surprised before her expression melted into a warm smile. She put her tome aside and said, “How are you feeling? I see you are able to walk now.”

I took in a deep breath and said, “Yes, I am doing well.” Urvi tapped on my back, and I could see her shake her head from the corner of my eyes.

Xanthia rose and stood before us. She reached to my chest and looked up to talk to me. She quickly examined the wounds on my chest and said, ‘The wounds have healed, though you must be in a lot of pain.”

I scratched the back of my head and said, “Well... not that much.”

“No pain is better than any pain, right? Come to the spring. It will soothe your pain and should help you regain health.” She held on to my left arm.

“I will return to the hut. I am guessing you know how to get back there?” Urvi asked.

“I think I should be able to,” I replied.

She looked back at me with a sly grin as she walked away. “Don’t worry take your time...”

Hmm...

“Come on. This way.” We walked through the garden as the people from the village quietly continued to work. Away from the direction of the village, the forest got thicker and thicker, for a moment making me believe she was going to sacrifice me to the forest gods. Of course that was not true, because I managed to run into an old friend.

On the side of the narrow path, Tuskers was lying down on the soft grass lazily. “Tuskers!” I called out.

The big, beautiful boar popped his head up and immediately started snorting on seeing my face. It rolled over and got on all four feet before charging towards me. For a moment I thought it was going to tackle me down, but it came to a screeching halt right before us. I squatted down before rubbing it under, what I assumed was its chin.

“You have got a very smart companion with you,” Xanthia said.

“I know right? Pigs from my world aren’t even half as smart as he is.” I didn’t mean to sound rude to the pigs and boars of our world, but Tuskers was on a different level.

“Is that so?”

“Say. Is it magical by any chance? Maybe it is a human transfigured into a beast!”

Xanthia chuckled. “I don’t think so. I can tell when a beast is born of nature. But it is special. I think it belonged to someone before it met you.”

I looked at the bugger in awe. It never crossed my mind that it might already have had an owner. “Is that so big fella?” I turned to Xanthia who stood just behind me with her hands clasped. “Could it have been another player?”

“Perhaps. But I couldn’t tell if that was the case.”

“I guess we just wait until they come looking for him.”

Tuskers returned to doing nothing while Xanthia and I continued deeper into the forest. As we approached the stream, I could hear the sound of water trickling over pebbles. In an instant, the thicket disappeared, and I found myself standing on the bank of a small spring.

Clear water flowed over the forest floor, cutting through the thicket. The bed was made up of small pebbles and coarse sand with moss covering the rocks in patches. It was a small spring, whose bank was at an eyeshot’s distance. In the middle was an enormous hole, big enough for a human, like me, to sit in.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Please. This way,” she said. Her voice was soft as silk and every time she spoke, it felt like someone was pouring honey into my ears.

She led me to the hole whereupon she instructed me to remove my pants before getting in.

My cheeks burned red as I shivered nervously. “Yeah... is it okay if I get in with my pants on?” I asked.

She wore a soft smile and said, “No need to be shy. No one will walk in here unless I allow them to.”

Easy to say, hard to do. I unzipped and dropped my pants into the water underneath me. I picked up the damp pants and placed them on a stone that was jetting above the flowing water. All this while Her eyes were transfixed on me, while still wearing the same smile. I am sure she was just being considerate, but the situation was awkward enough for me to just jump and drown in the spring.

I got down into the hole, whose water reached up to my thighs. The moment I stepped in, my anxiety just vanished. All of a sudden, I let a flood of calmness sink into my soul. I quietly sat in the cool water, my eyes shut, my mind empty as a void, lost in a trance.

I did not know how long it took for me to return to the real world. But by the time I did, I found myself exactly where I had left off. The shadows seemed to have shifted but there was still plenty of sunlight.

Water splashed abnormally to my left, making me turn and see that Xanthia was sitting on the edge of the hole, with her legs dipped in the water. She playfully kicked the water forward but stopped immediately when she realized I had woken up.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up,” she said.

“No. It’s alright. I didn’t expect to fall asleep so fast... again.” I rubbed my eyes, trying to adjust to the light.

“You have been low on energy for quite some time, so your body craves sleep. Other than that, how are you feeling now?”

“Better. Way better. It doesn’t hurt to move anymore,” I said. I lifted my right arm up and saw that the health bar was about eighty percent full. “But I think I will stay until my health has filled up.”

“Feel free to stay as long as you need. But you may want to put something into your stomach for it to fill up completely.”

“Really? That is interesting. You seemed to have a good amount of knowledge about players and how we work. Is it like inherent knowledge?” I asked as I turned to face her.

“Inherent? No. Everyone understands who and what players are. But the rules that players work with, it is only understood by those who interact with them.”

“Oh. In that case, you must have interacted with a lot of them.”

“Quite a few. For the past two hundred years, we have seen close to a hundred and thirty-seven of them.”

“That is it?” I was shocked by how small a number that is. I expected one to pop up every few weeks.

“Well, unlike with you and your partner, only one appears at a time. The gap between each varies. Sometimes it is just a few months, other times it can be years. But I believe this is not the only place from where players begin their journey.”

We did land up in Terra Silva. There could be other training grounds in other domains. “Well... thanks for healing us. We don’t know what we would have done without you.”

A bright smile appeared on her face. “Oh, you don’t need to mention it. I see it as my duty to serve the living.”

That was an odd way of putting it. Speaking of which. I wished to ask her something more personal, but I was afraid I would be crossing the line. Urvi said to be careful when the villagers were around, but we were alone now. “I wished to ask you something. But I am not sure you would like to talk about it...”

“You want to ask me if I am really a god, right?” She interrupted.

“You are a forest nymph, aren’t you?” I asked. A nature spirit born from one of the five elements. When Urvi first mentioned "God", my mind immediately thought of an elder woman. But when I saw the fairy-like appearance with clear white skin and green hair, I was confident that it was a nymph.

“Yes, I am. Although I like to call myself the daughter of the Forest.”

“Daughter of the Forest. How did you end up becoming the god of these people?” I asked.

Her serene face melted, replaced by melancholy. “It was a time when fear ruled these lands. The tribes of the forest were in a war against each other. People were constantly at each other’s throats. This was how the forest was when I was born. I do not remember how long I spent my early life, isolated from the world outside. But when I stepped out, as a mere child, all I could see was blood.”

“Must have made you want to return to living alone,” I added.

“It did. But that is when I ran into one of the tribesmen. A healer. In a time where everyone was on the edge, someone foreign like me wasn’t exactly safe among them. But the healer stood by me. In order to protect me, he made up a lie. Easier to tell people I am God and that my wrath can destroy them than that I am a nymph with special powers who can be abused.”

“And nobody questioned it after that?” I asked.

“At times. By then I had matured enough to understand how to get out of such... tricky situations.”

We fell quiet as I retreated to try and process. After all that Urvi and I had witnessed, this ain’t some gamer paradise I wished it was.