Chapter 7: Prince or Magician, who am I?

The Mangora forest was named after one of its most dreadful inhabitants, the giant golden back Mangora spider. The Mangora spiders on earth were small, about the size of human’s thumbnail, and yet it could inflict so much terror to a man. But, the Mangora spiders in Reign of Chaos, they were at the size of a grown English Mastiff, big and intimidating. They could kill any man with Arachnophobia with their appearance alone.

The Mangora spiders of Reign of Chaos weaved webs, but not the kind of normal cobwebs like that of the city spiders in Earth spun to wait for any unfortunate preys to get stuck and trapped in them.

The golden back Mangora spider on the planet Escana, they actively searched for their prey, moving among the thick branches of overgrowth trees with a ghostly silence. Only when they found a target, they spun an orb of sticky web, then soundlessly crept in, slowly stalked down their prey one-step at a time, and dropped the orb of web on the unaware creature, trapping it inside the sticky orb and completely sealed its fate.

I still remembered vividly of that one scene from a Reign of Chaos game trailer where a small unit of elven scouts was ambushed by the golden back Mangora spiders along with the dramatic music and eerie noises in the background. I understood that getting out of the Mangora forest alone by myself would not be easy, especially for a city dweller like me.

The first thing came to my mind was magic. Maybe I can use magic?

I had never thought about that during the entire time I prepared the funeral service to those 108 souls. I grabbed a magic cane, tried and failed magnificently.

I prayed to Sinintee, the God of Destruction and Civilization, that warmonger. I prayed to Wonten, the Faceless God who ruled over strength and justice, that blind dude. I prayed to Eogaill, the Goddess of Truth and Wisdom, that shut-in, and I felt like I was an adult with a serious mental disorder. I knew that I would fail, but still, I tried anyway.

Then, I hoped, maybe, just maybe, Niwdar the goddess of nature and freedom would aid him. I hoped that I was special like the-Chosen-One-kind of special. Niwdar did not answer my prayer. Niwdar only answer to the prayers of women, Of course, she would not aid me, I should have known better. Then, for a brief moment, a truly strange, random and bizarre question popped up inside my head like an annoying internet-advertising window, If I allow that tigress to chew off my dick back then, is there a chance that Niwdar would bestow me her magic?

I had no desire to test that theory or ever seen that thought resurfacing my head again, blocking it out of existence.

In the world of Reign of Chaos, there was no teleportation magic, only rare divine relics that granted that effect on a very limited range. From that knowledge, I have deducted that the deceased Greyscale mages must have traveled to the tomb of the dark god on foot since I found no horse or wagon around the tomb…, which is a strange thing on its own. Why wouldn’t they use horse or wagon to travel? Most of those Greyscale folks whom I had cremated were old and middle-aged people, their kind should not be able to travel far with that amount of luggage… Fuck that, who care? Not my problem…

I asked myself a single question, "How did these magic casters manage to reach this tomb without being attacked by the spiders?" I speculated that the answer to that question had something to do with the stacks of bronze gongs with a carving of the Goddess Niwdar on both sides stored in a storage room. In the lore, there was a myth telling a story of Niwdar being involved with a spider-like being. Maybe those gongs had something to do with the spiders… Why don’t we have something like this in the game?

Never before had I had such a strong urge to make a phone call to the Mythbusters to clarify a myth for me. I pondered and pondered and came up with no better answer and eventually I said, “Fuck it,” like I always does when making a risky gamble, except this time, FY is not here to stop me.

Thus, I headed North with a magic cane on my left hand, a gong tied to my belly and Enfermé on my right and a bulky backpack behind me. I entered that sea of trees. The trees of the Mangora forest were as tall as a sacred cathedral, with branches spread wide and thick like massive canopies made of leaves. I carefully walked using the magic cane as a travel stick while striking Enfermé at the gong tied to my belly nonstop. My eyes darted around, my sharp ears trained, hoping to spot any of those stealthy spiders before it was too late.

Soon, I got what I wished for. My sharp ears caught them first before my eyes did. I managed to spot “a cluster fuck” of those fuzzy creepers moving from tree to tree, stalking after me.

I sounded the gong, hard and fast. They halted, keeping their distance from me. Then, one of the buggers decided to break away from its cluster and approached me with unbelievably nimble footsteps. I bang the gong for all it was worth and the bugger bounced away, retreated with creaking footsteps, shrieking as if suffering from intense pain.

I had never been happier since the moment I woke up in the world of Reign of Chaos. In the moment of sheer exaltation and happiness when adrenaline got the better of reasons, I yelled and chased after that one giant spider, striking at my gong louder and faster than ever. The bugger left its web sack behind and ran along with the rest of its kind.

“Fuck you,” I laughed and vented my stress on the runaway spiders. I laughed like I had never got the chance to laugh before. I gambled with my life on the line and won.

When night fell, I decided to camp. While I learned how to make a fire in the wild, I have never become good at it, using the hand drill, the bow drill or fire plow method. I was terrible at those methods. I tried those methods before, trying to impress Alice during one of our camping trips with my questionable self-proclaimed man-of-the-wild-skill sets. After two hours, Alice had enough of her insistent laughter of watching me failed hard. She decided to use her lighter to start the damn fire instead.

Learning from my past failures, I am no longer the Fearless of yore, I entered the forest prepared. A great man once said, “With great challenge comes great innovation.” I found a flint stone back in the tomb. With Enfermé , I then chipped and damaged the edge of a knife, which I looted from the Greyscale mages, and transformed the damaged knife into my makeshift firestone. I put aside Enfermé and his gong, striking the chipped edge of the knife against the flint stone together to create sparks.

My ears picked up a soft creaking noise, a small inaudible snapping of dried leaves from a distance. I immediately stopped striking the knives and held my breath, training my ears toward the source. There was nothing, no sound. The forest was dead silence, without a soft rustle of leaves or a faint chirping of insects. A dark chill invaded my body when I started to realize just how bizarre this silence was. There was certainly something lurking behind this unbreakable veil of darkness like a ghost.

My quick flickering eyes could hardly register anything aside from the shapes and shadows of the overgrowth trees. My instinct told me that there was something out there watching me and yet, my exceptionally sharp ears suggested otherwise. They could not pick up any more sound from the surrounding. I have trusted them with my own life thus far, yet I doubted them now.

A chill surged as if there were an army of red ant crawling up my back. I quitted thinking and dove for Enfermé by a sheer force of instinct, hitting the damn gong with Enfermé as if my entire life depended on it.

The gong went twang inside my hands and with that twang, an explosion of noises and chaos. The entire Mangora forest erupted with loud piercing screeches of wailing agony. It was as if I have just foolishly woken a giant monster from its long slumber with the sound of my gong and I was right inside the belly of the monster. Thick branches, twigs and leaves snapped dryly and plummeted on the ground as if the forest was hit by a tropical storm.

The spiders were here even if my eyes could not see them through the thick veil of darkness. The spiders never truly gave up. They stayed in the shadow and waited for their moment, and still waiting.

I sounded the gong for the whole night, without stopping once, or taking a moment to rest. I lit up half of the torches, which I brought with me in the end.

When the first ray of morning sun pierced through the forest, I started walking with the pace of a man being possessed. I slowly became comfortable with the rupturing pain on my two temples and the scorching pain in my drying up eyes. My jaws exhausted, as soft as blocks of tofu because I have gritted my teeth for the length of an entire night while sounding the gong. My neck bones were on fire due to the number of time that I turned my head around in a 360 angle to check for an invisible enemy.

I still felt that haunting chill on my nape, with it, the vivid presence of a thousand of starving eyes trained on my back, always, refusing to let go.

Pick something else to eat, I cursed the spiders inwardly and forged ahead.

My legs hurt but it was a good thing. It was a kind of prickling pain that kept a person wide-awake, and I welcomed that pain into my system like a cup of hot cappuccino. My arms, I was confused if the twitching feelings that I felt from them was pain or not. They felt almost alien to me. I kept switching Enfermé from my right to my left and left to right repeatedly while sounding the gong with the flat of the blade. I have become so used to the task that I could probably sound the gong in my sleep like a robot, not that I have the stupidity to test such stupid theory.

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I had no idea how long I could keep going on like this. However, one thing became clear to me, if I stopped sounding the gong while still being inside this accursed forest, I would become spider’s food.

Occasionally, I heard a familiar phantom whisper among the rustles of the leaves. "Get it done," I did not turn around to search, knowing whose voice that was. I kept walking without taking a minute off to rest.

My ROC knowledge told me that the Mangora forest was a vast forest. The place where I began my journey was right within the depth of the forest. I knew it was huge, but I did not know how huge it was, simply because I had no reason to care about it, until now. Unlike Misery and FY, I played ROC solely for the competition, challenge, fanfare, and above everything, I was needed.

I started to regret not using my time to invest more on the lore of ROC like Misery and FY.

Fuck that, how on Earth could I predict that I would be tossed into this world? If you have to toss someone into this world, toss Misery or some ROC lore nerds… why me? I cursed whomever or whatever beings held responsible for the reason that I was tossed into the world of ROC. The more I tried to think of positive thoughts to motivate myself out of the current situation, the larger the weltering cloud of anger inside my heart became.

I had no idea since when that spider was no longer bothered about masking their presence. They crept through the thick branches of the trees with bold grace and screeching chatters, announcing their numbers and presence to my sharp ears from a hundred meters away. Either they have become bolder and careless with their steps or my ears have gotten used to pick up their noise.

Let’s see how long you can keep following me, I cursed the spider inwardly, devoting to save my energy to outrunning them. Millions years of evolution have granted us, human with the ability to outrun most beasts in a long run. My tenacity or your patience, let’s see which will run out first?

I kept forging ahead with an even pace, knowing that with every step that I took, I had a chance of dissuading the spiders to turn their head on an easier target. While I cannot negotiate with a bunch of dumb spiders, I can dissuade them with my action.

I was grateful for the South pointing compass that I found. It helped me navigating through the forest without losing my bearing. Occasionally, I heard daring creaking noises of the fuzzy creepers’ legs approaching my back. I sounded the gong with all of my strength. Most of the time, it was just paranoia. However, once in a while, there was a giant spider testing its luck, willing its body through the pain to approach me until the sound of the gong made it changed its mind.

Around three in the afternoon, I started losing most of the spiders, most. I carefully trained my ears while holding my breath, picking up a twenty of dozens piercing screeches trailing after my back. I kept walking, determined to lose the rest of the persistent creepers by nightfall.

I thought that I had this trip carefully planned out. My plan was full of holes from the beginning. This was not supposed to be a trip for a single person.

When the sun sunk beneath the sea of trees, I trained my ears to listen. The moment my ears could no longer pick up the noises of the creepers, I dropped flat on the ground, heaving a sigh of relief.

Nighttime, it was the moment where fear and paranoia become dormant inside a person’s heart. However, this time, I was a little braver and more experienced than the night before. I used my limited stock of torches sparingly, making do with dried twigs and tree leaves to fuel the campfire. I chewed on the moldy and hard-as-a-brick bread, while keeping sounding the gong on occasions for safety. I wetted my parched throat sparingly with my stock of water supply, and I realized that I had depleted a fifth of my entire stock.

In my original plan, if I have succeeded to chase away the spiders with the gong, I would have the luxury to forage for food and water as I traveled through this accursed wood. I did not expect that I had to keep sounding the gong without stopping even when I ate, drank, or made a campfire.

As I stared into the campfire, exhaustion overcame me and slowly, my concentration faded into the red flying embers and the billowing orange fire. Then, within the blurriness of exhaustion, a sudden chill on my back jolted me wide-awake and I struck Enfermé against the gong as if it was my second nature.

The world drowned within an insidious cacophony of shrieks and creaks. Leaves fell and twigs dropped. Again, I sounded the gong for my dear life in a rush of adrenaline, listening to the sound of the spiders backing off into distant shadows.

I desperately sounded the gong as my entire body broke into cold sweats and my erratic heart spiked my entire body with adrenaline in a rushing hurry. Then, slowly, realization hit me like a truck, I nearly die while dozing off. The spiders’ shrill clicking and shrieking noises from the distance entered my ears like laughter.

I cursed and banged the gong in frustration, no longer holding myself back from the vulgarity and profanity. I shredded off my princely shell, cursed and swore at the stalking creepers in all sort of language, starting from my mother tongue Vietnamese, to Mandarin, French, Russian, English and back to Vietnamese again when my foreign vocab ran out.

I wished that I brought enough fuel and alchemical poison with me to burn down the entire forest, with it the god damned spiders. I broke into tears as I banged the gong louder than ever.

Fuck you, persistent bastards, I felt extremely miserable. I did not have a moment of respite to think of Alice or my best friends or my dad or any of my fondest memories to keep myself positive. It took me everything to keep myself alive from these creepers.

The sun went up once more time and I set north. My legs were heavy as lead, my arms a bundle of wet shoddy noodle, and my eyes were balls of molten leads. The only thing that kept me going was my tenacity, and I realized it when that familiar phantom whisper, “Get it done,” became louder and more recognizable inside my ear canal. I repeatedly told myself that I would crush these persistent spiders with the sheer force of will power alone. I would make you all give up.

I walked, never slowed down to rest, never stop unless my legs stumbled on their own. There were moments when I could not even feel his legs anymore like they belonged to someone else. I could not even feel the pain, and yet, I was still heading north. I could still hear the occasional clicking and creaking noises came from behind me.

Then, a question dawned on me, “Why are they so adamant on eating me?” It was like a trigger. This question was the beginning of everything. I immediately realized that I did not just underestimate the spiders.

I did not understand them. There is a world apart between underestimating something and completely not understand something. That was the decisive difference between losing and winning, death or alive.

This kind of persistence was extremely abnormal for low intelligent animals like spiders.

They kept following me, waiting for a perfect opportunity while they could just give up and search for different preys, something much easier, something less persistent.

This kind of persistence is a human-like, like an obsession.

All of a sudden, the biggest knot inside my head in the regard of these spiders became unbound. I started spinning my thought while pretending the spiders were human instead.

These fuckers were not just all about size. They were definitely smart. They were definitely not stupid from the way they constantly had me surrounded.

I trained my ears again, this time trying to listen to the noises rather than hear. The clicking noises and shrieking, which these creepers produced within their chitinous mouth, started to feel less like just some meaningless sounds. This is a language, my ears confirmed to me of the patterns within the cacophony of seemingly meaningless sounds. These spiders are conversing and exchanging information with each other. Since when spiders were social animals?

With that discovery, a door of hope appeared and I could not help but smiling.

These golden back Mangora spiders do not just travel together as a cluster of spiders and use their sheer numbers to overwhelm their prey. This is a pack of intelligent spiders, Yes, a pack like a pack of wolves, not a cluster like dumb earthling spiders. If they were smart enough to develop such a hunting strategy and their own language, they must have a leader, a very strong and smart leader to unite this many of them.

The curve on my lips started to get out of my control, slowly widening. If there is truly a leader among these spiders, I don’t have to kill as many spider as I can to dissuade these intelligent spiders that I am beyond them. One spider’s life is all I need. Without the head, the entire body cannot function.

I felt lucky to be alive even after making such a stupidly elementary mistake, “War is all about preparation, deception, and execution,” Those were the words of my favorite lecturer when I attended college for a Bachelor in history.

You should have capitalized on my mistakes and ended me while you could.

I had screwed up two out of those three important aspects. I was ill prepared for this conflict. I was deceived by his opponents’ appearance, believing that they were just stupid spiders. It is just dumb luck that I managed to survive thus far.

I had no need to look through a mirror to see how wide my grin has become. I am already grinning from ear to ear.

This discovery made I realized that my understanding of this world of Reign of Chaos was too little and incomplete even after playing it for over a decade. The world changed entirely within my mind, no longer “Just a game.”

It was like that moment when Galileo rediscovered that ‘the Earth is not flat’. Unconsciously, I stopped walking. I stuck my walking stick to the ground and searched for the familiar touch of my magic coins.

The spiders they spun their web, I spun my thought. The magic coins disappeared and reappeared within my palm in repetitive cycles. They were folded into two and then returned whole again without fail. My mind became cold and quiet like a surface of a tranquil frozen lake, peaceful and calming, devoid of the hapless fear that haunted me for the last two days.

You really should have capitalized on my mistakes and ended me while you could.

The magic coins into the air, rotated and the moment they reentered my grasp. They disappeared into thin air, this time, never to be seen again.

It was high noon and I decided to camp. I took out the apothecary sachet that was packed full of lifesaving salves, deadly alchemical poisons, and expensive concoctions.

Then, I unloaded the bag with the cheap enchanted items and the one bag that was full of essential items. I sounded the gong every once in a while in between my tasks, just enough to remind the spiders that I have not forgotten about them. I heard their morbid clicking voices from the distance and smiled once again.

“Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m thankful for the lessons you have taught me during the last two days. Let me return a favor by showing you a magic trick as a token of gratitude. I promise it will be spectacular and memorable. Please, if you can be patient for a moment. I promise that you will not be disappointed.” I spoke boomingly with the help of my diaphragm muscle. I stood and bowed with class and style like a performing magician.

With my sharp ears, I heard a stir among the spiders. I smiled contently and returned to my unfinished work, preparing the stage for a magic show. I could not care less if they understood my words. I have given them my only warning, if they could not understand that, they could always blame themselves.

When the golden Rolex on my wrist pointed four, I have completed my preparation for the grand stage. On my belt, a bandolier of deadly alchemical poisons and alchemical concoctions, which I understood their use from reading titan runes with my limited knowledge of Titan’s writing, readied. On my dominant hand, Enfermé.

I wiped the sweats on my face and stopped sounding the gong completely. “Ladies and gentlemen, I, Fearless, The Prince of The Alliance am very thankful for your patient, without any further ado, let’s the magic show begins.” The Magician within me grandiosely announced and bowed to his spectators, dropping two clay jars in his hands to the ground and faded into the smoke that the exploded jars created.

My turn. If you can still follow me after this, I truly deserve to die.