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Info #67: While players are in the game, they do not feel the biological needs of their actual bodies. To protect your health, we have set a playtime limit of twenty-four hours.

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Info #68: As soon as your time runs out: the player will be forcibly disconnected, without a protective system in a form of a tent or any other device. In the “game” tab, you can check how much time you spent online. An hour before the shutdown, you will receive an alert.

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Blake dozed off and had a nightmare again. There he sat, bound in a dark temple. Black metal columns and walls surrounded it from all sides. On the right and left hand sat his comrades, who tried to escape, and cursed for all they were worth. All naked, pale, beaten. After a while, heavy footsteps rang through the hall. Someone was heading in their direction. Blake saw a being under ten feet tall with an elongated oval head in front of him. It had a small burning star instead of a face. It stretched out its hand, unclenched its fingers, and released a black sphere that hovered over its palm. A red-yellow color encircled its borders. The creature’s long bony limbs touched the ball and it burst. Blake heard the heart-rending sound of a comrade. He was choking on blood and holding his chest where the heart was. Everyone screamed:

“Save us, save us!”

Blake was turning his head. He did not know what to do and did not want to hear anything. His comrades died one by one. In the end, only he was left, tearful and scared. The creature stood in front of him and looked at him. It did not breathe and did not speak. It reached for Blake’s face. He could not move or turn away. In the next second, he lost his eye, which turned into a new sphere. The space monster got up and put a new object under the folds of the gray hood and returned to the darkness.

Blake opened his eyes and jumped off the bed as if shocked awake. Cold sweat drenched his body, and his breathing quickened. He went to the bathroom, ate pills, took a shower, and decided not to wait another three hours before the appointed time. And entered the VR pod and continued to play.

Ronnie came out of the tent and put it away. It was raining. Small drops trickled down the fallen leaves, branches, and the trees’ huge roots. The soil turned black, soaked with moisture. The air cooled. It was chilly. The white moonlight was fading in the sky. Hessataule trunks looked like an army of dark, silent colossi preparing for the battle. The branches intertwined with each other, creating a magical web. Hills, rocks, trails—everything hid in the thick fog. Ronnie checked the map and realized where they were—the most dangerous part of Elgoreombdon. The Nugrilavan thicket. AI reported it was here that the keeper of the forest Lantavril took the lives of the players last time. Yet even without it, hundreds of different dangerous creatures lived in these deserted places.

Barahu was sitting on guard at the owner’s tent, jumping up and looking around at every rustle, which was quite a lot. At its three o’clock, where, judging by the sounds of the stream, there were sighs and grunts. At twelve o’clock, Ronnie saw the eyes of an Illing—a wild cat-hunter the size of a rat, with yellow shiny whites, a curious look and pink scales. Barahu barked and drove the beast away.

Ronnie still had a couple of hours left before the other players logged in. He approached the dog and asked if it wanted to hunt, to which Barahu bared its teeth and roared. The sniper smiled and said: “I knew you wouldn’t refuse.”

The hunt ended with the capture of Dyeiis, a half–owl, half-squirrel. Ronnie gutted the carcass, threw the inedible entrails to Tina, and cleared the ground from leaves and any other flammable objects, laid out stones in a circle and placed fallen branches in the center and lit a fire. The risen phoenix, created by human hands, was blessed and strong.

Latludious entered the game before dawn. He came out of the tent and saw Ronnie:

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” he asked.

“They say Dyeiis tastes like rabbit meat. Don’t you want to try it?”

“No. I’d rather think about today’s route.”

Latludious looked at Barahu and saw the remains of intestines and blood flowing down in his mouth. Ronnie picked up the bloody hunting knife from the ground and cleaned the blade and put it in the case on his belt bag and started eating. The magician looked at him with disgust but could not resist and asked:

“How is it? Does it taste like a rabbit?”

“No idea. I’ve never eaten rabbit meat.”

While Ronnie was happily eating the carcass of the prey, the magician looked at the virtual map to the sounds of smacking. When the morning meal was over, Latludious turned to the party member and said:

“I’ll be brief. I don’t want you to talk about the dragon for the next week.”

Ronnie looked at the reddish flames disappearing during a powerful gust of wind and rising again in all their pristine glory.

“It’s a pity Maenad hasn’t returned to the game yet. Her flamethrower would have saved me a lot of time and effort.”

“Don’t forget, according to the contract, I decide what information to disclose.”

Ronnie looked around at his feet and saw a couple more thin branches and reached for them and picked them up and threw them into the fire. He was quiet for a while, feeling the magician’s incredulous gaze on him and answered him:

“You are interesting people, after all. You’re saying that you kinda working for the greater future and trying to look all honorable and shit. While it’s obvious that Top secret is ready to rip the throat of anyone from the Guild Alliances. It’s probably hard to live when you have to fuck over and lie all the time.”

“The result justifies the means.”

“But you didn’t stop there and started drowning those on whom the success of the campaign depends, telling everyone on the forum that I had deliberately dealt with the WildDron’s const party,” said Ronnie and spat and scratched the stubble on his face with his fingers and smiled. “Although any of their group will confirm the opposite and blow your lies to smithereens.”

“Wipe that grin off your face and do as you’re told.”

“Or are you going to kill me and violate the terms of the contract you’ve created?”

Latludious looked away, sniffed and said:

“Fuck, I didn’t know that Maenad would do this shit.”

“Yeah... calm down. I know.”

Half an hour later, the others returned to the game. While everyone was getting ready, Ronnie raised his head and watched through small gaps in the crowns as a flotilla of white destroyers emerged from the darkness and sailed along the heavenly current to the east, where the first rays of dawn shone pink. The disorganized and disorderly flight of birds replaced the strange noises of unknown monsters. On the leafless branches of the trees, white and blue eyes flashed from the depths of the darkness that one could only contemplate, and immediately disappeared. Latludious lit a fire with a lighter and a fire element spell. They sat in a semicircle and listened:

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“We can cover about fifty miles in one day. Since everyone, except for me, is overloaded, we’ll walk for three hours, then rest for an hour in order to save as many recovery elixirs as possible in case of emergency, and so on, until evening. Then we’ll all go offline and the next morning we’ll get to the checkpoint.”

The Magician looked at the Sitting Bull and continued:

“About you. We have two options. The first: I’ll use a weightlessness spell and carry you until I run out of mana. This means that if we meet monsters on the way, then I’ll be useless. The second option...” Latludious paused and looked at everyone. “Faolandan will handle him, since he has the most strength. I’ll carry your backpacks. It won’t take much mana. Maenad will support the life of the wounded, pump him with painkillers and restoratives. This way, we’ll only suffer economic losses. Let’s discuss this issue now. Who thinks what?”

“Can we just kill him as he asks? And at the checkpoint, we’ll replace the machine gunner with someone else,” Ronnie said.

Faolandan jumped up and screamed so that drool flew out of his mouth:

“We don’t leave our comrades in trouble!”

“This is a game, and he is a ballast.” Ronnie replied without looking up and threw a branch on the fire.

“Nobody asks you, moron. Okay?”

“Shut the fuck up, both of you,” Latludious shouted. “Who is in favor of the first option? Raise your hands.”

Nothing.

“Then it’s decided.”

Sitting Bull looked at Ronnie with a knowing look, but said nothing. The group extinguished the fire, gathered the tents and set off to the sounds of rattling weapons. The first three hours were tough for them. Faolandan was getting tired faster than Latludious had expected. Small predators attacked them from the bushes now and then. As soon as they killed the aggressive animals, their bodies were scanned and then given to Barahu to eat. There were no trodden roads, so they had to move through the wilds over hummocks, pits, and hills. They walked with the speed of dehydrated sufferers. Yet despite the difficulties, the fighting spirit of the group was on top. Everyone was talking to each other, laughing. Ronnie alone walked detached at the end, with no desire to get close to anyone. He studied the information about the area, the habits of the monsters which they could encounter. He wanted to be ready for anything.

The moon sank below the horizon, and the sun rose higher. Visibility had increased. When it was time to rest, they settled down in a small gorge. Maenad was out of the game. Sitting Bull tried to keep his mouth shut and not burden his comrades with plaintive moans. Faolandan started playing with his animal, and when both were tired, Barahu lay down on its back and raised its legs. The owner smiled and scratched its belly. Latludious created an eye with the help of a spell and directed it upward and oriented himself around the area.

It was time to move on. The dead Hessataule trees were left behind. They were replaced by ancient Dormel oaks, tall and wide. The group went down the slope and skirted a lake, which seemed blacker than the night, or maybe it really was. Then they came to a clearing overgrown with glowing yellow flowers. After it, the trees parted and created a natural road of small gray stones. Faolandan almost fell several times, slipping on them, and walked along the side of the road through branches and mud instead. Maenad confidently walked ahead of everyone. After a couple of hours, the road led the travelers to the hills in the valley of Torill. There, the group moved along a gentle slope. Once at an altitude of five hundred yards, the gravel road stopped twisting and turned into a straight line with a steep cliff on the left hand.

Maenad stopped at a section of the path disfigured by a landslide, where broken dead trees were rotting in the neighborhood with several boulders half buried in the hard sand. Now there was a magnificent view of the valley. She held her breath and then screamed with delight. Down on the plain between the low mountains was a clearing with glowing blue lakes and red flowers. They each took out their binoculars, and together they watched the landscape for several minutes.

During this time, Maenad discovered a group of wolves lapping up water, green grass covered their bodies, and small deer horns decorated their heads. Ronnie saw, fifteen hundred yards away at the foot of the hill, a creature resembling a lion, overgrown with branches and protected by tree bark. The creature looked in his direction, but whether it saw the troublemakers, it was hard to say. The bizarre inhabitant of the wilderness turned its head away and rushed into the invisible wilds. Latludious, Faolandan, and Sitting Bull could not take their eyes off a small flock of leopards with an ashen body and glowing yellow spots. When one of them yawned, opening its mouth, flames burst out of the mouth.

The road directed the travelers to bare stone peaks, on which they sat and stared at blue-white mockingbirds, Nibenfiligod, the size of a fist. Their little wings glowed with a fluorescent, iridescent rainbow color. In the sky, directly above their heads, a flock of unknown crow-like birds of slate color flew by, leaving behind a magical trail of powder haze with small blue-white crystals. After walking a few more miles forward, cobblestones replaced the small stone, mired in mud, as in a swamp. The crowns of the low trees intertwined with each other, as if it were old friends hugging. The group could no longer observe the local fauna from afar. Nothing ahead, nothing behind. It darkened under the canopy of the majestic ancient forest. From above, they could not see even a piece of the sky, nor the rays of the sun. Even the wind had died down. Peace and stuffiness surrounded the wanderers.

Half an hour later, the path led to the junction of two hills, between which a crack formed, deep and black. Latludious concentrated and touched the ground and created a bridge with the help of revived tree roots. Maenad was the first to step onto the uneven surface of the magical structure and grabbed the handrail with her right hand. Passed. Faolandan, with Sitting Bull on his back, followed her. Then Barahu ran at a trot and sat down next to its owner. Ronnie and Latludious were the last to pass, and the bridge disappeared at the snap of fingers.

For the next hour, they climbed a winding road strewn with sharp rock fragments. In the middle of the way, at a turn, they saw a roughly worked stone similar to a menhir or a tombstone without inscriptions. Yellow flowers with pistils like windmill blades and a stem covered with thorns grew around it. Ronnie stopped at the mysterious monument and saw below it on the ground a glowing red symbol with a sword piercing a crescent, with a circle at its bottom, four smaller circles stood at its edges at equal distance, their rays joined in the middle and flowed down with water, forming the same letters as on the FuruGoverest amulet. The paint was dry, drawn a long time ago.

Ronnie looked back. The further down the slope the trees were, the bigger they seemed. Everything was green, the crowns were thick. The leaves were like tufts of tassels. During the day, this mysterious kingdom teemed with life in every nook of a huge unexplored space filled with the ringing of monsters, the chirping of birds, and the rustling of foliage. With the onset of darkness, everything changed. Harmless creatures hid in their burrows and caves, using the murky and suffocating fog as protection, and cruel, starved predators, forest demons and wild ghosts came out.

While Ronnie was watching the beauties from above, the group had already gone ahead a few minutes ago. He looked at the red sign on the menhir again and approached it and squatted down and took a screenshot. The mark pulsed and released a magical red-purple mist that wrapped around the sniper’s body, and then dissipated.

The group took the third break only when they reached the middle of the slope. On a round empty spot near to an abandoned house that looked like a temple, they watched as rain clouds gathered over their heads. They rushed forward like a flock of possessed spirits in search of rest. Twenty minutes later, the shining blue peaks of the hills turned into black semicircular domes of the temples of the world beyond. It rained. Latludious created a magical waterproof dome over the heads of a small detachment and continued to look into the distance. Ronnie took out his binoculars and saw several Dormels come to life for two hours a thousand yards away and bent down. Maenad shouted:

“Look!”

Everyone turned at her voice and then looked behind them and saw how the tree branches intertwined with each other and formed a dark figure of a forest monster. Sharp spikes protruded from the back and occipital region of the head. There were no eyes, no nose, no mouth on the face. It bent its arms and turned on them. Ronnie pulled out the Barrett, removed the safety and took aim. A flock of moths with burning wings flew out of the creature’s hands and flew behind bushes and trees.

“AI.”

“At your service.”

“What kind of monster is this?”

“You are the first to encounter it. There is no available information on this creature.”

The trees nearby also came to life and turned their astonished faces towards the group. They, hooting like owls, pointed to the road that led to the northeast, and then again plunged into a state of deep sleep. The roots went underground and the body of the monster disappeared.

“What was that?” Maenad asked.

Ronnie looked at her, said nothing.

“They want to show us something,” Latludious replied.

“Isn’t this a trap?” Faolandan clarified in a trembling voice.

“I don’t think so. If the monsters wanted to kill us, they would have attacked.”

“Iron logic,” Maenad laughed and picked up a flamethrower. “Come on, let’s see what’s in there. Still on the way.”