“What’s up with that forest, Liana? There were only crop fields here, but these trees look hundreds of years old!” Myke was pointing at the forest couple of hundred meters away.

They were walking almost a day now on the road around the forest.

“This is the Great Forest of Northdryad. The forest spirits made this forest possible.”

Myke looked puzzled. “The forest spirits?”

“Yes, the dryads, they were heavily hunted in Northfolk so lots of them migrated after the Fusion to Europe.”

“Why were they hunted?”

“You see the freaking big trees?” Liana pointed at the forest. “This magic is perfect for agriculture. Unfortunately, the dryads are not interested in the damn agriculture, so they were hunted down, enslaved, and forced to do it.”

“This is terrible! How come they came here?”

“Here they were declared as endangered species and hunting them is punishable by death.”

Myke was even more confused. “By whom?”

“You see after the metamorphs appeared the damn elves and the rest of the other northfolk races officially left Europe and recognized it as sovereign territory of the survivors.” Liana looked at Myke. “Except Mediteranea Europe is now divided into many damn small countries, but when the dryad’s negotiator group came with a plea for sanctuary, they were all freaking united and declared them in no time to be under protection.”

Liana sighed. “Now almost half of Europe is covered with a dense impassable forest full of deadly creatures.”

For a short moment, Myke thought about the kindness of the human heart, but quickly he realized the truth.

“Let me guess. The biggest part of this forest is to the north.”

Liana smiled. “You guessed it right. The forest is used as a natural barrier against a possible invasion from Northfolk. There are only three passageways clear of the forest where travelers can safely come to Europe.”

The road they were walking on was a dirt road around the forest. It was made naturally by the many people who have walked on it.

Looking at the long way around the forest they had to walk, Myke said. “Hey Liana, why is the road around the forest? Wouldn’t it be much faster through the forest?”

“Entering the damn forest is a stupid suicide. There are many damn magical beasts that can tear you apart and eat you in no time. To survive in there, you need a party of at least three A ranked and five or six B ranked adventurers.”

Myke thought about the dryads. From what he knew they are forest spirits hidden in the trees and very hard to find.

“And there are people willingly hunting dryads in the forest?”

“You would need a very big party for this. This can be freaking expensive and also will attract damn troubles.”

Liana sighed.

“The best practice is to hire goblins to do the job though. The bastards are cheap and usually use amarok wolves and sometimes even damn fenrirs to track their prey.”

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“Goblins and ogres heh? There are all kinds of mythical creatures in the world now!” Myke muttered.

“It is almost noon, let’s have lunch here.” Liana changed the subject.

“Sure, I’m also hungry. Let’s eat.”

Myke took two cans from his backpack and opened them with his new toy. After he saved the routine now he was able to activate the vibro-blade in under a second.

“I’m looking at it right now and still can’t believe the damn thing. This magic is amazing!” Liana was excited to see Myke’s magic again, even though he used it already multiple times in front of her and she had to be already used to it.

Myke smiled. “Now look at this!” At this moment a fork appeared in his hand.

After creating steel it was a child’s play to add some chrome and nickel to create stainless steel.

Myke handed the fork to Liana. “Please, just remember to put some mana to it or it will disappear.”

Liana took the fork with a shaking hand and wide-opened eyes. “It looks so real!”

“Yes, the virtual atoms have the same properties as the real ones.”

Liana looked at him confused. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Myke smiled. “Let’s eat!”

After they finished Myke looked with curiosity at Liana as she placed the fork on top of the empty can and observed amazed how it disintegrated.

“Amazing, I’ve never seen such magic!”

Myke smirked picturing her reaction when she sees the magic he’s working on now. With the supercomputer Akira, which was linked to his brain, it was easy for him to develop in parallel new magic programs.

He already developed the magic operating system.

The system he was aiming for was a standard four-tier model.

1. The system kernel with the basic virtual matter and energy creation and control.

2. The library tier with basic functions to create complex matter and forces.

3. The application framework to support parallel magic execution, inter spell communication, and magic application management.

4. Magic application layer to run magic applications (or in short, mapps).

He almost finished the first version of a high-level CAD mapp for rapid magic development and was eager to start working on some defensive and offensive gear mapps.

The sky was clear, and the sun was high heating the ground. It was almost twenty-five degrees.

They walked for a couple more hours under the hot sun.

“Liana, do you know what day of the year it is?”

“It should be mid-January. “

“Pretty hot for winter but I suppose we are now in the Subtropical climate zone.”

“The other survivors said the same damn thing, but I have no idea what it means. What I know is that the climate changed a lot after the damn Fusion.”

Myke looked at Liana. “Liana, what do you think, which form has the Earth?”

“It is a damn ball. I know that now but I’m still not sure how it is freaking possible. What is it standing on and how is it possible to walk on the other side without falling?”

He smiled and started talking with Liana about the Earth, the solar system, and the universe. While walking they talked for hours and time flew by.

Myke used this time to work in parallel on his magic gear. after finishing the CAD mapp the fun part began. With the ability to reproduce any structure on the molecular level, the possibilities were endless.

With the warm weather and the wide green open space far away from the zombies, Myke enjoyed the walk. Looking at Liana she was also laughing and the tense expression on her face was gone.

With a smile on his face, he finally felt happy. The world he knew may be gone but at this moment it didn’t matter.

They continued happily walking and talking until late in the night until they found a great place for a camp. It was a small hole in a rocky hill with only one side left unguarded.

Sleeping in shifts for a couple of hours they were again on their way before dawn.

It remained less than a day left until Postgard and they were eager to reach it. Myke wanted to see and learn more about this world and Liana wanted to sell the chainsaws as soon as possible.

Energized by the good weather they walked happily and enjoyed the journey.

Then it suddenly happened. A loud explosion sounded in the forest couple of hundred meters from Myke and Liana.

They stopped and looked at the forest. A loud sound came from the direction of the explosion.

Something big was crushing through the trees.

Around thirty seconds later some of the trees at the border of the forest were blown away and some creatures came out.

Myke couldn’t believe his eyes. These were over five meters tall ugly giants equipped with leather armor and big clubs as weapons.

“Get ready to engage them! For these bastards, we are just food! Be aware of the goblins. They are never far behind the ogres and they usually come with their bloody pets.”

Liana was screaming at Myke. She already had her sword unsheathed and prepared to attack the enemies.

The ogres were around two hundred meters away and closing. A couple of seconds later lots of small green creatures followed them. They were armed mostly with spears and swords but some of them had bows and some of them were riding on big scary wolfs.

The surprise was all over Myke’s face. They looked almost exactly as in the fantasy books.

With a grin on his face, he put the sword and the chainsaw on the ground.

“What the hell are you doing Myke?”

“This is a perfect opportunity to test my new gear.” He responded with an excited voice. “These monsters are the perfect test subjects!”

At the next moment, Myke was instantly covered in black armor.

This was the blackest black Liana had ever seen. She gasped in amazement.

Myke smirked at her. “Do you like my carbon nanotube armor?”

He then raised his left hand a bit and a big dangerously looking object appeared. It was over two meters long and was connected with an over five-centimeter thick cable to a big backpack on his back. He was holding the big gun with both hands and pointed it at the enemies.

At this point not only Liana was speechless. The enemies did finally notice him and slowed down looking at him surprised.

Myke knew she couldn't understand but he was too proud of his creation to just use it without any explanation.

“This is a carbon nanotube coils gun powered from the ultracapacitors on my back. It can accelerate five grams of virtual aluminum powder to over two and a half kilometers per second muzzle velocity. The virtual particles can exist without mana input only for about zero point two seconds but at this speed, this is over five hundred meters.”

Myke grinned at the monsters.

“The kinetic energy of every shot is over fifteen kilojoules. This should be more than enough to deal with you guys.”

Looking at him the monsters slowed their advancement even more.

A buzzing sound came from Myke as he started to load the capacitors.

He pointed the gun at the first ogre and pulled the trigger.