As Mei and her new party exited the gates of the town, she finally understood why the place was called the Greylands. Outside, there was no plants or trees in sight, only barren cracked land covered with a strange grey moss of sorts. It felt especially ominous as it was night, with minimal light shining from the crescent moon.

At the very least, it was cooler outside the walls. Not as good as the 'air conditioning' from the shop, but the howling wind was a good substitute.

"Where are we going?" asked Mei.

"I spotted a grey crawler nest a few days ago," said Alzeth as he took out a lantern. "I'm not sure if any other players took them down yet though; there are a lot of higher levelled players."

He then took out a bottle of clear liquid. It was the type of bottle his sister was buying earlier, realised Mei. Alzeth unscrewed a compartment on the lamp and poured the liquid in. Kerosene?

"Emerr," Alzeth poked his sister who was filling her lamp too. "Fireball."

Emerr glared at him.

"I'm not your lighter," she grumbled.

"Aw, come on!" laughed Alzeth.

Shrugging, he spammed a button on the lamp rapidly, making annoying clicking noises. Each time, sparks appeared. A built-in flint lighter! Mei was surprised by how the devs bothered to make items work realistically. Or at least as realistic as things can be with magic flying around everywhere. If it was her, she would have programmed the lamp to light up at the press of a button.

A dozen seconds later, his lamp was lit. Not as fast as Emer's however; the wick of her lantern was lit with a toss of a tiny ball of fire.

"Weapon!" chanted Alzeth.

A huge rod dropped onto his outstretched palm with a dramatic bang.

It was a set of four bamboo poles held together by metal bindings on both ends and cloth in the centre. The weapon was gigantic, spanning 2 metres in length. Alzeth tied his lantern into one of the ends, then propped the weapon onto his right shoulder. Since the weapon was so long, however, he let one of the ends rest on the ground.

"Emerr, you ready?" he asked.

"Ever so," she replied.

In her hands was a staff with the front sharpened into a deadly point. Despite her wearing only simple brown robes and sandals, Emerr managed to look regal with her looks and pose alone. Mei wondered how long Emerr spent tinkering with character creation. 

"Good to hear. Let's go!"

With Alzeth in the lead, Mei and Emerr followed. His weapon continued to drag noisily, leaving a path of torn moss. Apart from that, there was only silence. Except for Alzeth stopping to pick up rocks, snails, weird insects and grass he found on the ground occasionally. Mei found that rather weird but didn't question it.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

As minutes passed, Mei thought of trying to say something to Emerr to break the silence but couldn't muster up the courage. She was just... too aloof and quiet? Mei worried that her presence bothered Emerr. The whole time she had been around, Emerr had been rather silent, not saying a word to her, only Alzeth. 

Emerr turned around suddenly, having sensed the eyes trained on her.

"What are you looking at?" she asked.

"Ah! Oh um... nothing!" Mei panicked, waving her arms.

Alzeth cleared his throat.

"Now now. Please be silent. The nest is right up ahead!" he pointed ahead.

Mei looked and saw that there was a gigantic tree, the first one she had seen all this while. It didn't appear to be in good condition, however. Its branches were devoid of leaves and looked somewhat withered. From the dim light of the moon, she could see there were greenish-yellow fruits hanging from some of the branches, which Mei found rather strange on such a dead-looking tree. A few strange creatures were on the branches too, but there wasn't enough light to see their form clearly.

"Those are the grey crawlers," whispered Alzeth.

A rock suddenly appeared in his right hand. He then threw the rock, accurately hitting one of the critters on the head out of luck. It hissed. Several other crawlers hissed.

"Hell yeah, headshot!" he shouted. "Time to run!"

Emerr took off first, leaving the two in the dust. Mei was agape. That was like... Usane Boot speed? And she was wearing robes too! Alzeth started to run next, around half as fast (but still really damned fast). If they were going to aggro the bugs anyway, why were they acting like they were going to sneak?

"Wai-Wait for me!" shouted Mei.

She ran and found to her surprise that she was a lot faster than she was in real life. Not fast enough, however. The siblings were far ahead in the distance. 

"Dammit!"

She turned around, only to see metre tall monsters that looked like giant pill bugs slam onto the ground from the tree with a thud. But when she looked closer, she realised they were not like the typical pill bug. The insect-like monsters had the body of a pill bug, the mandibles of an ant and two huge mantis scythes protruding from the sides of their shells.

'Well... at least they're not going to be very fast on their tiny feet are they?' Mei reassured herself. It was a ridiculous thought though. As her party members had run away as fast as they could, there was a very good chance these things were pretty fast.

As if in response to her thoughts, the bugs curled up into balls, leaving only the scythes outside. With the sound of buzzsaws, the Grey Crawlers spun like sanic the edgehog, shooting forward at insane speed.

Out of reflex honed from dodgeball, Mei jumped before she realised what was going on. The monsters zoomed underneath her feet. Half a second slower and she would have been sliced into half by the scythes or crushed into a paste. What type of name was 'Grey Crawler'? They were more like... 'Grey Ultra Speedy Rollers'!

Despite knowing that this was a game, Mei was covered in cold sweat. The realism of the game made it terrifying!

She landed on the ground, feet already tensed to jump again. But to her pleasant surprise, the pillbugs didn't turn back to chase after her. It clicked to her at this very moment. The Grey Crawlers were aggroed onto Alzeth since he threw the rock, not her. It still irked her however that they forgot she couldn't run as fast as them.

Oh well. Mei decided she should head back to Greyland Town and wait for them.

'Map!'

[ ? ]

You do not own this map.

Buy the Greylands Map for 2000G?

Yes No

Well, great. Now Mei was lost in a wasteland with no directions whatsoever.