“No. Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening. Absolutely not. Pass. Hard pass.” Ascilla was, to put it mildly, having a nervous breakdown in the middle of the woods.
The spirit that had started to float away from us and into the woods had stopped about fifteen meters ahead and had turned back. Its yellow eyes were staring back at where we were standing, as if it was begging to be followed.
“It’s probably just a quest…” I said. I wasn’t the biggest fan of following spooky things around in the woods either, but, since it didn’t attack us it was probably some sort of scripted event. It would be worth checking it out.
“Well, if you’re too scared, then I guess I’ll catch you later.” I said, turning and walking after the spirit. Before I’d moved more than a step a hand reached out and grabbed my arm. I turned to see Ascilla looking at me with a stern expression.
“Don’t tell me you’re seriously going after that thing?” She asked.
“Yeah. I wanna make sure I don’t lose the thread.” I said. Ascilla frowned at me.
“And what’ll you do if a boss appears out of nowhere like it did before?” She asked. That gave me pause. This felt like a pretty rare quest, and since I didn’t know how we’d gotten the ghost NPC to spawn in the first place, of course I wanted to chase after it right away and investigate. But Ascilla had a point… if something like that did show up, would I be able to get away? My instincts said yes but you could never be too sure.
Quests oftentimes ended in big fights, whether that be a special boss monster unique to that quest, or even in a dungeon or raid. If I found something like that then there was no way that I could just walk in and do it on my own.
That being said, it wasn’t like I needed to complete the quest right now. Usually when it came to stuff like this accepting the quest would add it to your quest list, and then you could finish it whenever you wanted.
I hadn’t done any quests other than the one for Sonnson in Origin, but from what Mari had told me, most of the quests in this game still worked that way. So unless this was a timed event, I could just pick up the quest and leave it for when I could either find more party members, or for when I was a high enough level to do it myself. If it turned out that it was a limited time thing, it was unfortunate, but I could let it go…
Hell, I could probably even sell the location of the quest to someone in town and make a quick buck.
“I’ll just go until a quest appears in my journal. Then I can come back to it if it seems too dangerous to do now.” I said. Ascilla let out a sigh and shook her head.
“You’re a piece of work.” She said, but the next minute, the familiar ping of a party invite chimed in my head. I looked over to her with a surprised expression on my face.
“What? You really think I’m just going to stand here and let you run off into the woods chasing after a ghost all alone?” She asked.
“Well, given how scared you were a second ago-“ I said, earning me a quick elbow to the ribs.
“I- Im definitely not scared. Not at all.” She said with a huff. “Let’s go!” She began to march off towards the ghost that was still waiting for us off in the distance.
“H-hey! Wait up!” I said, taking a few big steps to catch up with Ascilla, who was walking forward with such conviction you almost couldn’t see her knees shaking as she approached the spirit.
As we got within a few meters of it, the spirit once again turned and continued deeper into the forest. I looked around, but even with my enhanced survival skill I wasn’t able to see even a single monster in the woods.
There was no wind. There wasn’t even the sound of birds chirping in the treetops. The only noise at all was the sound of two pairs of boots trudging through the underbrush. The silence was killing me, and Ascilla seemed like she was using all of her focus to not be scared off by the haunted atmosphere
“I never pegged you as someone who was weak to stuff like this.” I was going to say, but immediately thought better of it. In all honesty, the eery quest of the woods was giving me goosebumps as well.
After about five minutes of tense walking, the ghost stopped and looked back at us for a moment before fading away into the air.
“What happened?” I asked, looking around. There was nothing around us but a bunch of trees…
“Look out!” Ascilla yelled, she leapt back and drew her axe. I wasn’t about to wait for whatever she’d seen to get the better of me and so as fast as I could I did the same.
A second later, one of the trees that I had stopped to look at bent over and slammed one of its branches into the ground where I was standing. As I looked over, another one had done the same to Ascilla.
Two trees pulled their roots out of the ground and lumbered towards us. The bars above their heads marked them as “Corrupted tree spirits” and they were level five. A part of me sighed in relief. There was no way we couldn’t handle something like that.
“I’ll focus on the one on the right!” I called. Ascilla voiced her assent and we leapt into the fight.
The first thing that happened was an axe flew from my left and into the tree that had attempted to attack me. After a moment, it was sucked away and impacted the other tree before being retrieved by it’s owner who spun around and landed another strike using her momentum.
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The right tree, the one that had spawned near me, immediately turned and used its roots to creep towards Ascilla, the source of the attack that took out seven percent of its HP.
The tree I’d been attacking died first and without much struggle, though that was to be expected. The left tree, the one that had originally started out over by Ascilla, was only getting hit by the occasional attack that Ascilla threw it’s way to prevent it from wandering off and attacking me so it was still sitting at about thirty percent by the time its partner died.
I turned to the side and watched as Ascilla sliced a branch that was coming down to crush her out of the way and then swung taking another chunk out of the remaining tree. Twenty percent.
The tree reeled back and raised its canopy up, this was the only attack that the monsters seemed to know. It raised its branches up high and slammed them down in a one hundred and eighty degree semicircle in front of it.
Ascilla crouched down and I assumed she was about to jump back to avoid the attack. “Go in!” I yelled. She immediately adjusted her posture and instead of rolling away from the tree threatening to fall on her, she dashed forwards and loaded up a horizontal slash.
Using my right hand, I traced the rune for Spark in the air and fired it into the monster. It froze with it’s branches held high and not long after the last of it’s HP disappeared as Ascilla cut into it with a well timed skill. It fell to the ground with a sickening crackling noise and everything in the clearing went still once again.
Once the monsters had both died, a popup appeared in front of me.
[You have received a piece of Corrupted Tree Bark]
Huh. So even quest mobs dropped items… or were those trees the kinds of enemies that normally appeared in the woods and we just had gotten lucky not to be ambushed by them before?
I was about to voice my concern, when Ascilla said something that took me by surprise.
“Hey, why aren’t they disappearing?” She asked.
I looked over to where she was standing and sure enough the two tree monsters had simply fallen over, seemingly returning to normal trees once we’d killed them.
Unlike the monsters we’d fought previously, these didn’t immediately turn into golden dust and fade away. Instead, a golden “!” appeared in the air above them. I smiled.
“I knew it!” I said with a smirk.
Ascilla gave me a strained look as I approached the tree. The “!” Disappeared, and a text box appeared in its place.
[A mysterious corruption has spread throughout the woods. Find the source.]
It seemed like there wasn’t a prompt to accept the quest, it just simply added itself to my quest log and I’d assumed based on the look on her face it had done the same for Ascilla.
I couldn’t help myself from smiling. This was totally a secret quest! “Come on! Just a bit farther.” I said. Ascilla gave me an appraising glance then shook her head.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” She said. Just as she did, the faint outline of the spirit that had led us here reappeared and once again pointed into the distance.
“If anything crazy shows up we’ll just run away.” I said, turning and continuing to follow the spirit once again through the woods. Even though she protested, Ascilla kept hot on my heels as we went.
After another thirty minutes of slowly following the ghost through the woods another change began to take place in the woods around us.
The once lush and green trees that we’d gotten used to slowly started to change from green to yellow, then deep auburn, then finally to brown, before the trees stopped having leaves on them all together.
If this weren’t summer, and if the heat wasn’t so intense, you could have told me it was winter and I would have believed you.
Not long after the last leaves had left the trees, the forest ended and broke into a large circular clearing. The spirit vanished as soon as it crossed the tree line and Ascilla and I hurried to follow it.
When we passed the last row of the trees and stepped into the clearing, my breath caught. I heard Ascilla suck in a sharp breath as well.
Laying in the center of the clearing on a small hill was a deer. It’s antlers were so wide that I was pretty sure Rain and Willow laying foot to head would be about the same length. Its short fur was a brilliant platinum that reflected the sun. In a single word, it was beautiful.
“Come on.” I said, taking a step into the clearing. Ascilla marched along just behind me.
As we approached the deer, it didn’t budge. Its eyes seemed transfixed on a far off location that I couldn’t see. After a moment, I realized why.
It was dead.
A hole the size of a baseball had been cut into the deer’s chest and out to the other side. From the wound, ichor oozed onto the hill and pooled beneath it, dying the golden brown grass and leaves that made up its final resting place a horrific black color.
“Urk.” Ascilla said, turning away from the gruesome sight. I had to fight every one of my instincts not to do the same.
This wasn’t some dead body used for a quest, this wasn’t some pristine game object coded for a specific purpose. This was just a rotting corpse. The tangy scent of decay tickled my nose and I stood up, feeling my stomach starting to flip.
“What the hell… is this?” I asked.
As if to answer my question, the snapping of twigs from the forest behind us caused us to spin and ready our weapons. What greeted us was the last thing I’d expected.
A precession of people stepped out into the clearing. They were all clad in pristine metal armor with antlers embossed on their front. The lack of markers above their heads meant that they weren’t players. They were NPCs.
“By the gods… have mercy.” One of the soldiers said, recoiling at the sight of the animal as it lay in the clearing. As if answering his cry, another voice called from the center of the formation.
“Make way! Make way this instant!” A shrill voice came from inside the formation of knights. A stick thin man with a hairline that had receded all the way to the middle of his head pushed his way to the front. Unlike those dressed in armor, he was dressed in fine robes and had an air of nobility around him. A priest?
As soon as he saw the scene in the clearing, his pale face nearly went translucent and his eyes widened in unmasked horror.
“B-By Marlika… no…” He said. He sprinted into the clearing and pressed his hands into the silver fur of the beast. As he did, a blinding light flashed from his hands and wisps of green light began flying overhead, gathering where he was applying pressure to the wound.
After a tense minute, the magics fizzled, and the deer remained lifeless on the hil. I was too stunned by the scene to say anything. The creature didn’t move an inch, but the priest who was knelt above it shuddered. Was he… crying?
“You!” He said, so much venom in his voice that I instinctually flinched. “You did this! You outsiders! You have defiled this place, and because… because of you..!” His voice was so strained through anger I was barely able to make out what he was saying. It was Ascilla who immediately rejected his claim.
“No! We didn’t, we just-“
“Arrest them! Arrest them at once! Cut them down if they flee!” The man said, waving his arm.
The knights that had entered the clearing stepped forward and four of them leveled crossbows at us. I looked over to Ascilla for any indication of what she wanted to do, but her face was frozen in fear. It wasn’t until I took a better look at the knights that I knew why.
All ten of the knights were level twenty... and next to all ten of their names were laughing skull icons…