Walking back to the tree trunk I hid behind, I picked my spear back up, making sure to strap it firmly to my back and intending to keep it that way this time.

Despite smelling of freshly cut grass, which I had to admit that I enjoyed, the goblin blood was quickly drying and crusting over, which I enjoyed less.

With the sun still high in the sky, I wandered aimlessly through the woods, my wonder at just how real the recreation of the world around felt only continuing to grow.

Everything about my surroundings was perfect. From the noise the leaves made when they rustled in the wind, the way the slightly moist dirt gave in with each step, to even the birds that chirped a song I could’ve sworn I’d heard before in the real world.

I stopped, the faint, but still distinct sound of a rushing river reverberating diagonally to the right of me.

Beginning to speed up, I finally broke out into a sprint, only reaching the water source after over a dozen unknown things had stabbed my feet.

Gingerly stepping onto the rocks that surrounded it, I stared with fervent passion at the raging river before me.

Though, I wasn’t just excited because I would be able to clean myself. I was also so enthusiastic because where there was water, there was both plant and animal life.

First washing my used crossbow bolt, I splashed water all across my skin, taking care not to soak my clothes.

I didn’t know if it was possible to get sick in the dream; Rat hadn’t mentioned that, but even so, it was better to err on the side of caution. I detested falling ill with every fiber of my being.

Being stabbed or cut hurt orders of magnitudes greater, but at least I had something to direct all my anger to if that were to happen: the enemy.

I couldn’t blame anyone for my getting sick.

Dipping my bare feet into the water, I sat on one of the many moss covered rocks that lined the banks of the stream and read from the 7th compendium on my lap.

A myriad of different plants grew near bodies of water, though less grew near flowing bodies of water, and going off of the temperature of the air, even less could be harvested during spring-time.

But it’s not like there weren’t any at all.

Getting back up, I stretched, looking up to the sky.

It was probably a bit past noon, so I still had hours of daylight left.

And luckily enough, after walking for an hour downstream, I found what I set out for.

In front of me, a patch of ferns grew on a bare patch of dirt just to the side of the river.

Giddy with joy, I dug through my satchel, pulling out the 7th compendium and my knife, and began my harvest.

Purifern was a fern recognizable by it’s distinctive, sickly yellow color, and it’s singular stalk that split into three blades of leaves.

Having already cut ten of the stalks and gathered them into a pile, I stopped, deciding instead to dig out the dirt surrounding and from which one purifern plant grew.

In all, by the time I finished, I had harvested about twenty stalks of the purifern, and one still enrooted plant.

Holding one purifern stalk above it, I tapped my golden ring twice, and within five seconds, the sickly yellow plant had disappeared.

Storing all of my picked crops, I checked the amount of space I had left.

About 75%.

“Hey,”

Suddenly hearing a voice, I quickly turned around and pointed my crossbow at the person standing in the forest that bordered the stream.

He was about a head taller than me, with dark, almost black brown hair.

Wearing only a shirt, pants, and pair of boots, he was armorless, but not defenseless, as a scabbard was tied to his hip.

Panicked, I broke into a cold sweat. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears.

I didn’t know how long he had been watching me.

For all I knew, he could have spotted me as soon as we were transported to the dream, and had been observing me for all this time.

Hell, he could have even seen how miserable I was with my crossbow, and knew that my pointing it at him was more performative than anything else.

I was completely in the dark in terms of how strong he was.

“Easy,” he smiled, raising his arms and cautiously approaching me, “I don’t mean any harm.”

I raised my crossbow higher, and he stopped.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” the brown haired boy stated, “It’s just, you’re the first person I’ve seen, and I wanted to say hi.”

“Well, you’ve said hi. Now leave.”

“Hey, hey,” he attempted to step closer, stopping once again as I gripped my crossbow tighter, “Surely it’s possible for a … friendship to develop between us? After all, is there not safety in numbers? To start off, how old are you? I’m 13, going on 14.”

As I stayed silent,

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“That’s fine,” he sighed, “But is it not dangerous to be by yourself? Thankfully, nothing’s tried to kill me so far in here, but outside? Completely different story. Just this past week, I’ve had to fight two duels, and I’m only low A grade. You know, I’ve heard-”

“Fine,” I nodded, “I’ll work with you.”

“Really?” He asked, his face visibly surprised.

Seeing me nod, he slapped his face.

“I think I might be stupid,” he exasperatedly exhaled, “I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Abetra.”

***

“Sol,” Abetra sheepishly called, “How do you store things aga-”

“Two taps to start, two taps to stop.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, “And how do you take stuff out?”

“Three taps, a translucent rectangle should be shown in the air over your ring, tap the filled in portion, what you’ve gathered will show up, then you just touch what you want to take out, then three taps on the ring again to stop.”

“Fuck,” he cursed, scratching his head, “That’s too much to remember.”

“Not really.”

Abetra suddenly cradled his stomach.

“By the way, do you have any food? I haven't eaten, and I guess it must’ve transferred over.”

“Here,” I dug through my satchel, and passed over a strip of jerky.

Deciding to go into the forest, we had already travelled together for a couple hours already and the sun had begun to set, with the world around us becoming darker and colder as it did so.

From what I had seen of him so far, Abetra most definitely wasn’t the devilishly competent stalker I had thought of him as. In fact, I felt supremely stupid for painting him as such.

Suddenly stopping, I stared in barely suppressed excitement at the red leaves I noticed sprouting from the ground.

I kneeled down, and pulled on the leaves that caught my interest, with an incredibly large, root vegetable similar to a radish soon being exposed to the air.

Colored a blood red, the plant’s surface was covered in what looked to be blood vessels that seemed to undulate with each second.

“What’s that?” Abetra confusedly asked, having noticed that I had stopped following behind him.

“Hemoroot,” I distractedly answered, running my thumb over it’s bumpy surface, “It can be used to brew potions.”

“Where’d you hear that from?” he asked, still chewing on his jerky, before he suddenly squatted down next to me, “Wait, I think I've seen those leaves before!”

“Where?” I frantically turned to him, dropping the large hemoroot on the forest ground as I did so.

“Upstream,” he looked up at the forest cover and rubbed his chin, “It’ll get dark soon, but tomorrow, once there’s sunlight again, I should be able to find my way back.”

“How do you want to split it?”

He thoughtfully chewed, eventually swallowing the rest of the jerky.

“You decide? As long as I get some, I’m happy.”

“How about 50-50?” I offered, “Since I wouldn’t know about it if not for you?’

“Are you sure?” Abetra tilted his head.

Seeing me nod, he stood up.

“I’m getting tired, so let’s rest early, then tomorrow, we can wake up early!”

Abetra immediately lay down on the dirt with his arms and legs stretched out, and within minutes, he had begun to snore.

With my back against the trunk of a tree, I quietly sat, resting my elbow against my knee, and blankly stared out into the dark at their faces.

The past year, but especially the last few weeks, had been a near constant series of events, each only further fundamentally changing my life, but through it all, through my being saved by Aurelia, through my meeting Thalric and being sent off to Celestia, through my beginning to cultivate, the only constant had been them. But while they had once endlessly wailed and filled my ears with cries of anguish, they now remained silent, just quietly watching me. Somehow, I even thought that they looked just the slightest bit less pained, more at peace with what had happened to them.

And I hated it.

I breathed in, letting the spring air fully dry my throat and stab into my lungs. It was only now when they were quiet that I could properly observe, and realize just how little I knew about them.

I couldn't even remember my own father anymore. While I still held love for him, and I felt that I always would, I couldn't recall a single moment we shared together. It was all faint, foggy, like those memories were just out of arms reach, such that my fingertips could barely touch them, but I would never be able to fully grasp them. I theorized that it was because he had left me so early on, before I was even made a slave, but if that was true, then what kind of a son was I, who couldn't even do the bare minimum of remembering his own father?

The man who stood before me, his cheeks slightly red, his eyes radiating a subtle warmth, his jawline covered by a full beard, I could barely even recognize him. As if I had seen him before, but I couldn't concretely identify from where.

But it wasn't as if I forgot my father's face. I could clearly remember that at the very least.

The way his cheeks had sunken in after denying food and drink for a week, the way his arms, once strong and muscular from work as a farmer had shriveled up, his appetite completely gone from the black rot. The pus-filled boils that suddenly appeared all across his body seemingly overnight, that when popped from the slightest bit of contact with anything, would leave a horrible, yellowish indent, as if a bit of his flesh had been scooped out. His flesh that eventually blackened, his skin first flaking off, then the flesh that began to rot, eventually turning into a gelatinous substance that slipped straight off of the bone.

I could remember it all. Some nights, I could still smell it, the acrid stench of rot. I could still hear it, the quiet prayers for death from a man who was once a god to me. But the man in the darkness who stared at me with eyes still so full of life, I didn’t remember him. He was a stranger, someone I would disinterestedly pass by on the streets of Frosthelm, someone I’d help Aurelia sell bread to.

I turned my head, and stared directly at the lieutenant, though I couldn't do so for even five seconds before needing to rub the corner of my eye.

I had heard from someone once, I think it was from another soldier. That time would heal all wounds. But he had died, and that was a lie. The wound had only festered, and the grief I felt for her death seemed to intensify with each passing day. The time she and I shared together was deeply imprinted into my mind, from the day we met, to that final shared bottle of overly sweet, saccharine wine.

It was only after she was no longer with the living, her light too bright for this mortal coil, that I finally realized. Had it not been for her, I would have gone long ago. Those moments we shared together, while they certainly weren't profound nor uplifting, with her just asking me something to the effect of whether I had eaten or whether I was recovering well from an injury I had sustained, I still loved them.

But I didn’t even know her name; I couldn’t even properly mourn for her, offer a prayer for her to the goddess. I didn't even know that she was a she until the day she had died.

I bitterly chuckled, before cupping my face with my hands, and staring at the final man.

The tribesman I had stabbed in the neck, I knew the least about him, having met him the same day he died. We hadn’t ever even shared a conversation, but I had killed him. He surely had a life outside of war, a family he cared for, his own desires he so desperately wished to see fulfilled.

I had once thought I felt nothing of his death. It was either him or me, and even now, if that situation were to repeat itself, I would still make the same decision. After all, in the words of Lunia, why should I have to give it all up, when that which I desired for so long was finally within reach?

Even with all that I had done, I was still human. I was selfish, I still dreamed.

And just because I didn’t regret it, didn’t mean I didn’t look back with bitterness.

Fantasized about what might have been.

Not just for him; for all of us.

I stared at Abetra.

I had originally planned to shoot a crossbow bolt pointblank through his throat while he slept.

Not only would I get 50% of an A grade’s points, but I would also be able to take his boots for myself.

But I decided against that.