Now that I was all statted and decked out in my swanky speckled owl armor, I walked past the tree and hopped over a shoddy wooden fence that seperated the save-waqa from the rest of the area.

Location Discovered - The Torturers' Orchard

When I crossed over the fence I immediately came upon a dusty ditch that dipped before the cornfields up ahead. In this dry depression was a pack of three mangy-looking grey dogs, their heads topped by a strip of thick, white hair which resembled a mohawk. The three of them growled and tore at a long femur bone, baring their fangs at one another in a teetering tug-of-war. As I approached they halted their bitter struggle, and once I came into their agro range they each peeled off from one another and rushed to surround me.

I sprinted up to bash the closest one I saw and bore down on its skull with the cane-staff for -95 damage.

The dog's HP shrunk to a sliver, and, side-strafing to manueveur myself around its encroaching collaborators, I light-attacked the hound's side and dropped it down another -93 damage. The hound keeled over on its side, dead.

The next hound came at me, baying and drooling, and just as I was about to bash it back with another jab of the old owl-man's cane, the third dog leapt up on my shoulders and knocked me down to the ground.

My attacker began to bear down on my limbs. -96! -99!

Then the other oncoming dog charged in to maul me as I sputtered around on the ground, ripping its teeth into my arm and drawing another -107 damage. I had only begun the area and already I had lost more than a third of my HP!

I mashed the dodge button, waiting seemingly endless seconds for some opening in the animation to roll back on my feet. After I had eventually leapt up and found my bearings, I knew I had to be quick to meet their next attack.

I had not expected to have my ass handed to me this early into the game.

The second dog again barreled towards me, but I managed to deck it in the face with my quick slash at exactly the perfect moment, dealing -101 damage, which I followed up with another two slashes in a fast combo. -94! -92! The viringo collapsed into the dirt.

While I had taken the time to dispatch my second attacker, the final hound managed to rip a chunk out of my heel, hitting me for -103 damage. I grunted in indignation as I slapped down a chain of light attacks for -91, -89, -95, and -101 damage, vanquishing the last of the dogs.

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+ 195 Blood-Drops Gained

+Item Gained - "Gnawed Bone"

LVL - 1 MACE WEIGHT - 3.5 DURABILITY - 45 PHS ATK - 80 MAG ATK - 0 FIR ATK - 0 LIG ATK - 0 STR-BON - C DEX-BON - NA INT-BON - NA FAI-BON - NA PHS-DEF - 45 MAG-DEF - 10 FIR-DEF - 30 LIG-DEF - 30

The lore read: 'This cast-aside bone looks suspiciously large for it to have come from a human... but it's long and thick enough to hit some back walls.'

It dealt a little more damage than the Puku-man's cane, but I equipped it and swung it around a bit, and felt like it was too slow. I'd have been toast against those dogs if I'd tried to bat them away with something this cumbersome.

I was down to 189 out of 594 HP, so I took bit into some of the Uyuchu fruit to restore my health to full.

I knew I needed to be careful. I hadn't taken the first encounter seriously enough. This game doesn't fuck around.

I began to walk towards the next stretch of the path which led through the tall green cornfields I had seen in the distance. Looming over the entrance into the stretch of maize was a slouching black scarecrow made of straw and flax, hung up on a high wooden post. I looked up into the scarecrow's vacant, sewn eyes.

Like everything else in this game, it was creepy and macabre almost to the point of self-parody. What was the deal with the characters in the game? Is my character dead or what?

I entered the lush cornfield, noticing two more scarecrows perched above the field to either side of me. I took my time to appreciate the exceptional detail that the developers had put into the stalks. The leaves crunched and folded in exactly the right way that they would in real life. The stalks swayed subtly in the breeze and I marvelled at the long shadows by every individual strand of foliage.

Then I looked up again and noticed something was different... the straw figures... no longer hung over their scaffolding, and from my left I heard an inhuman shrieking that made my heart skip. I drew out my weapon and prepared for attack.

Then the scarecrow I had walked past when I entered the field came up behind me and stabbed me straight in the back while I hadn't been looking, knocking the wind out of me for massive -345 damage.

The two scarecrows from my right and my left approached, sinking their daggers into my head for -200 and -230 damage each.

'All is Lost' bled out over the blackening screen.

Fuck. Don't know how I didn't see that one coming.