Before the sun rose over the horizon, all five Overkill members stood outside the small city gate, looking at the imposing line where the empty grasslands ended and the never ending bruised knees began.

They had searched all over the city, and found no sign of the invisible man. It was what they all had expected, as the person they had been pursuing had been invisible and had all opportunity in the world to disguise themselves in the large city. Even so, the frustration was palpable, as was the slight humiliation.

They all acknowledged that the hooded man had likely been at a much higher level than themselves, but that didn’t change the fact that they’d all been bested by a single person.

After five hours of continuous searching, the party had decided to give up the hunt. Karsten had almost died at Henry’s hand in his attempt to dissuade the angry spearman from continuing, but in the end they’d stopped the search and headed towards a lesser known Inn to get a few hours sleep.

Karsten couldn’t bring himself to be angry at Henry over snapping at him. He had lost his sister, and saw no chance of getting her back; It would have been weirder if the man had stayed calm through it all.

Karsten had known the Kerdan siblings for only a handful of days, yet he felt much of the same outrage and grief as Henry did. Medoly had saved his life, and gone out of her way to help him get started in this world. She’d helped him get his bearings in a time where his mental state was at an all time low.

What saddened Karsten further was the fact that she died before they could actually get to know each other. Not in a romantic way, of course, as Karsten leaned the other way, but as friends. He thought they could have had a long lasting friendship if there had been more time.

The rest of the party, Haressy, Malek and Otis, had never met the kind Ranger before, but they didn’t need to to understand the two ‘cousins’ feelings of having lost a family member. They all knew what that felt like, and felt a sense of kinship as they combed through the city for the suspected murderer.

Therefore, it frustrated them as well not to be able to find him.

After calming down Henry, in the end having to use a Song of Rest, Karsten and the rest of the party talked about what to do next.

They all agreed that the safest course of action was to leave the city. There was no chance they would find the hooded man after all this time had passed, and there might have been someone who witnessed Henry kill his father.

Regardless of whether they were in the wrong or not, there was a dead body outside the Kerdan house, and Medoly’s blood on the floor of the living room. There had been no witnesses, as far as the party knew, but even if there were, what they saw was likely only what happened outside the home. They would have seen Henry killing the head of the Kerdan house, not Medoly being murdered in cold blood by her own father and some stranger in a hooded cloak.

From Karsten and Henry’s perspective, they couldn’t see a way to salvage the situation either.

Henry had a level of infamy in the city that would offer him little to no benefit of the doubt. The court would likely think that he’d gotten drunk one day and killed the man in a rage. Everyone knew that his father beat him, so it wouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.

In addition, Goliaths were known to have rather loose morals; Anything that aided the tribe was good, anything that went against its interests was bad. Therefore, they would be met with a high amount of skepticism in any court. They would almost certainly be counted as accomplices, which they basically were.

Dwarves in general did not have a very bad reputation, you could even say it was the exact opposite that was true. Dwarves were known as stubborn, yes, but everyone knew that the most loyal friend one could have was a Dwarf.

It was the same with a Goliath, Karsten thought, but the general public did not share his open-mindedness regarding the mostly gentle giants.

Not even mentioning the Dwarves’ mythical craftsmanship, just their company was almost sought after. They were mood-setters in any Tavern.

With all that being said, though, Otis specifically did not have a particularly good reputation.

He took the stubbornness of the Dwarves farther than even most of the Old Dwarves, as was evident with his blazing obsession with Pinkies over the years, how he was willing to sacrifice his life for just a chance at killing one.

He was also disliked for his ‘other eccentricities’. Karsten didn’t know what that referred to, but he took his words for it.

Karsten felt like he himself was likely the biggest liability, however. Technically, he was an illegal immigrant without even a single paper of identification to prove his identity. If this world had been the one from ‘Papers Please’, he’d get detained instantly.

The name ‘Karsten Myhr Kerdan’ wasn’t even in the Kerdan family’s register.

Not only that, but Karsten wouldn’t even be able to point out the town he was supposedly from on a map even if his life depended on it. Speaking of which, he hadn’t even seen a single map of this place yet.

Karsten sighed, shaking his head.

It was a wonder he’d even been allowed to join the Adventurer’s Guild in the first place. It was probably only because of Medoly’s trustworthiness and goodwill built up with the Guild over her years as an Adventurer, but she was no longer there to vouch for him.

For these reasons, none of them felt like they really had much choice but to leave the city, even if it was only until things calmed down.

Therefore, after sleeping for only a couple hours in the lesser known Inn, the party registered with the Guild that they’d be going away in search of wild dungeons - dungeons that were yet to be discovered - and haggled their way to a cheap few days worth of rations and miscellaneous items from an incredibly sketchy 24 hour store in the city slums, leaving the city from the south-eastern Ballans gate.

During the time they had spent preparing for their departure, the group had been discussing what their next steps should be.

In the end, they had come to a simple and unanimous decision.

They all wanted to get stronger. They would spend the next month out in the wilderness, raiding wild dungeons.

It was believed that most dungeons in the world were undiscovered. The reason for this was, for the most part, because there were so many of them everywhere that the Adventurer’s Guild didn’t have the capacity to find and manage them all by a long shot. Still, there was a permanent quest listed by the Guild itself to go out into the world and search for undiscovered dungeons - This was commonly referred to as ‘dungeon hunting’.

There were even Adventurers that specialized in dungeon hunting, commonly dubbed Dungeon Hunters, or Hunters for short. This subgenre of Adventurers was the one where, statistically, the most deaths occurred.

Raiding wild dungeons posed an extreme risk to anyone, regardless of their level. The simple reason was that even though the entrance of a dungeon could be quite telling of what lay inside, there was simply no sure-fire way for most Adventurers to completely accurately assess the difficulty of a dungeon without just entering it and finding out. For this reason, typically speaking, only Adventuring parties that had crossed the unofficial level cap and were above level 6 specialized in this area.

Karsten’s Adventuring party, although the individual members were all highly talented Adventurers in their own right, was severely underleveled.

The Guild had, at some point in the past, had rules against newer Adventurers going dungeon hunting. The problem was, however, that the number of Adventurers that chose to forgo registering with the Guild completely and simply set out on their own kept going up as people complained that the Guild’s rules were too strict.

In the end, the top brass of the Guild Officials decided to remove the restriction entirely, as they believed they should prioritize decreasing the amount of unregistered Adventurers. This was the decision that had changed the Guild irrevocably for the worse.

After the rule was removed, the Adventurer’s Guild gradually started to adopt a new policy where, as long as you were legally registered, they largely wouldn’t meddle in Adventurers’ affairs.

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This change, as a whole, caused many things to change within the Adventuring sphere.

Perhaps the most important change was that organized crime groups made up of legally registered Adventurers started popping up, the Guild not having many ways to push back against them without redoing their entire policy.

While doing so technically would have been rather easy, it would only have led them back to where they started, and unregistered people with superpowers would flail around in the wilderness without them bing able to lift a finger.

Over the years, not only did the city of Cerdansk start to experience societal root-rot, but the entire region - maybe even the entire world - started seeing a shift in attitude. It was like a wave that started with small, localized Adventuring circles, then rippled to even the highest of places - the royal courts.

The top brass were rather driven to keep gangsters out of their midsts, of course, but the Officials with good intentions acted too late. Many of the older and greedier of the bunch started seeing the shift as not a dooming of their organisation, but an opportunity for individual profit.

As a result of this, many different factions spurred to life within the Guild itself, and for a few unsteady years, countless decisions were made by one side and vetoed by another. It was a bureaucratic hell for everyone involved, until finally, the person that was to this day the Head Official stepped into power.

He was an ass. He was truly, irrevocably, a complete ass. Terrent Telliberry was like Kerdan senior on drugs, yet he, remarkably, was well-liked by the populace.

He presented himself as an incredibly happy-go-lucky man, and, for the most part, this act succeeded.

Behind closed doors, however, he took the side of the greedy, and had many dealings with the sort of people that the original founders of the Guild would have outright killed if they were to meet.

Under Terrent’s ‘rule’, the Guild had become more unanimous. This was, of course, because he fired everyone who disagreed with him and his associates, and who didn’t share his greed.

There were a number of benefits a more relaxed system could offer them, and they capitalized on them remarkably well. Thus, in time, the Guild and the Adventurer crime circles reached something like an equilibrium.

If you were to call it complete corruption, you would be correct.

In a way, that one original decision, meant to create more order at the same time as creating a more ‘free atmosphere’, had caused a butterfly effect that in the end had caused the Adventurer’s Guild as a whole to become less like the original vision of its founders, a neutral and organizing force, and more like a corporate company that served its own interests.

The more Karsten thought about it, the more he felt this place was extremely similar in nature to his homeworld. It was disappointing, in a way, as someone who had always somewhat wished to go to another world.

As it turned out, regardless of what world, wherever Humans were, there was a bureaucratic nightmare simmering under the surface.

“Haahhhhh…” He exhaled a long, doleful sigh, and turned his thoughts back to their future plans.

Just because the newly formed Adventuring party now could enter wild dungeons, that didn’t mean that they should.

In truth, what they were about to do was so highly warned against that the rest of the Adventuring community would likely dub them all idiots if they were to find out.

Would that stop them, however? Of course not.

Overkill had already decided on their path the moment they gave themselves that name, and they would only live up to it.

Either way, it wasn’t as if the party had much of a choice in the first place, at least not until the potential backlash for this incident had - hopefully - blown over.

They didn’t know whether they would be blamed for Henry’s father’s death or not, but the chance of them not being implicated by this whole thing was so low that they felt they had no choice but to prepare for the worst.

Even then, though, the party didn’t expect to have to hide for long. They planned to remain in the forest for a month before heading to a small, remote Guild Office where the chase of them potentially getting caught was low, and checking in with the Guild to see if there was something they could do to salvage the situation in a peaceful manner.

It was a good thing Henry’s father was as hated as he was in life, if not there might not have been a shot at redemption at all.

“Won’t the Guild send Adventurers after us?" Haressy asked.

Henry, breaking his silence that had lasted for hours at that point, answered, his voice slightly hoarse.

“No. The Adventurers that are at a high enough level to pose a problem to us wouldn’t be working for the Guild. It’s true that there are tons of Adventurers working for them, but the reality is that they’re all at most level 3. Usually, anyway. Either way, they won’t risk sending their higher level Adventurers after us and risk them potentially being killed, or not available in case of an emergency. The higher leveled ones all act as the top brass’ bodyguards, after all. Anyway, my dad wasn’t exactly well-liked. It’s honestly more beneficial to them that he’s dead. They’ll likely send out a small team of level 3’s as a token effort and we’ll receive a small bounty, but that’s it.”

“What did your dad do exactly? If it’s alright to ask.” Karsten interjected. “He must have been a menace for not just the Guild, but the Council as well if we can really get away with it with such little backlash. Oh, that’s right, there’s the Council too. What do you think their reaction will be?”

Henry answered in a flat tone, saying, “First of all, my dad did a lot of things. He often acted as a middle-man between local crime lords and some nobles. He thought he was a very important man, but the thing about being a middleman is that they’re the first to be blamed whenever something in the transaction goes wrong. It’s a wonder how he wasn’t arrested a long time ago. Anyway, the Guild doesn’t dislike middlemen per se, only bad middlemen. A lousy middleman would only soil their business, after all, and my dad was as lousy as they came. He was more of a liability than a boon, I’m guessing. Second, the Council is even more tired of my dad than the Guild is. I even doubt whether they’ll react at all. Hell, they may make it a minor national holiday. Anyway… I think the only ones we’ll have to think about are the Guild Officials, and as I said, we don’t have to think much of them.”

“I see… Well, that’s good, then, I guess,” Karsten nodded.

Breathing in the grassy air deeply, Karsten looked up at the night sky, a reminiscent look on his face. Then, he and the rest of the party started walking directly towards the treeline.

After taking a final glance at his family home with hardened eyes, Henry followed after the others into the dark forest.

~~~

Looking around at the familiar tall, black trees spotting the terrain, as well as the ground that was steadily becoming more and more uneven, Karsten couldn’t exactly call himself overjoyed.

His first encounter with the mystical woodlands had been, well, mystical, yes, but it had also been the most exhausted and desperate Karsten had ever been. It had been an existential flash-bang.

Even now that a few days had passed, the Bard felt some trepidation at venturing back in. Karsten could feel the knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach twist as he walked, and he feared that his trauma from his initial experience in coming to this world would linger for a long time.

What came as a pleasant surprise to Karsten, however, was that his leveling up had done marvellous things for his Stamina and physique. As they walked on and on, he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

This change became even more obvious as the group entered the deeper parts of the woods, where the tree roots arched up into the air and spinning leaves tried to slap them in the face. Oftentimes Karsten found that he could easily vault over the gigantic roots that had given him so much trouble previously, and effortlessly cut the spinning plants down with his sword.

He didn’t know just how much the increase of his shortsword Proficiency had affected his swordsmanship, but judging from the clean cuts and the miniscule amount of energy expended with each swing, he judged that he had become quite a lot better.

His armour was surprisingly comfortable to move in as well, and Karsten was grateful to his past self that he had put the Expertice point in it.

The forest, which Karsten had only now found out is called the Primeval Forest, was hauntingly beautiful at night. Illuminated by the stunning beauty Azzy, Karsten’s favourite Eldritch friend.

The stark contrasts and dimmed colours made for an uncanny atmosphere.

“This place is great,” Haressy stated, breathing in the cold night air.

Karsten turned his head over to her, “You two lived in this forest before you were kicked- Ah, I mean, left, right?”

Haressy glanced at Karsten oddly before explaining, “Y-yeah. We did. Our farm is a few days walk from here, though.”

“Speaking of homes, where do you live, Otis?”

The Rogue Dwarf, out of breath and at the back of the group, answered breathily, “Haa, haa, I, live, in, the city! It’s a, oh, it’s a shed at the, edge of town."

“A shed?”

“Haa, yeah. I was kicked out, by the tenants, of my house, after my… after my wife died,” He explained, an old pain filling his voice.

Karsten hesitated for a moment, not quite knowing what he should say. The two had only met yesterday, so there was still some distance between them. Karsten didn’t know if asking about the man’s deceased wife was the best way to break the ice between them.

Before he could think too deeply about it, however, Otis spoke.

“Where do, haa, you live?”

“I… don’t live nearby. I come from a town called… uh…” Looking to Henry for support and receiving a cold shoulder, Karsten sighed and returned to his default settings.

“It’s a town called Mandal, in the… Er, in the south of the north?”

“‘Mandal’… Hmm… I feel like I have heard the name before. Where is it on the map?” Malek asked from the front of the group.

Karsten chuckled. “Are you sure? It’s very far away. It might not even be on a map… Pretty sure no one in the region has heard of it, anyway.”

Malek turned contemplative, but let the matter go after a short while, seemingly not remembering anything.

As the sun rose fully over the horizon, shedding golden light through the leaves far up above, the party moved further and further into the depths of the magical forest.