Chapter Fourteen

The Obsidian Forest

“Would. You. Just. Die?!” Rayna punctuated each word with her fist, beating down on the snake’s scales rippling with all her strength.

The Trena had snuck up on Rayna while she was busy with another fight, wrapping its body around her leg and dragging her away. The Pyria she had been fighting took off at the sight of the giant snake.

The amulet was the only thing keeping Rayna conscious as the bones in her leg continually broke and mended.

“Damn it!” Rayna yelled, checking her Inventory once more for anything she could use as a weapon. She had lost her pike when the snake first grabbed her and now she wasn’t even sure where it was.

The snake hissed, tightening its hold on Rayna’s leg.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Rayna opened her mouth and bit down on the Trena, her inhuman teeth sinking through the monster’s scales much easier than she had been expecting. She pulled away, spitting the chunk of flesh out of her mouth. She almost threw up at the acidic iron taste of the creatures blood. It burned the inside of her mouth badly enough to trigger her amulet.

The Trena released her, hissing angrily as Rayna stumbled away, spitting to try to clear her mouth of the painful substance.

The snake narrowed its eyes at Rayna, its forked tongue tasting the air. It turned around and left, the green glow of its scales vanishing into the dark forest.

Rayna sat down hard. The hour deadline to leave the forest had come and gone, and now she didn’t even have a weapon to fight with.

At least the penalty title wasn’t as bad as she had been expecting.

You have been issued the penalty title Failure to Comply. To remove this title, please return to the tutorial area as soon as possible. The penalty will grow more severe over time.

Failure to Comply I — you have not returned to the tutorial area, even though the trial ended more than an hour ago. Until you return, your stats will be negatively impacted.

-3 Dex

Time until the penalty grows: 46m 29s

If the title stuck to three points per hour, she had a while to go before it impacted her ability to fight, assuming it didn’t pull from her already low Endurance.

Rayna checked her notifications, confirming that the acidic taste was, in fact, acid. Rayna had been lucky that it hadn’t eaten right through her face. She took her water canteen out of her Inventory, rinsing out her mouth until the burning sensation stopped.

Her amulet repaired the last of the damage and went dormant.

“Lerian one, Trena zero,” Rayna muttered as she stowed her canteen.

Rayna was coming to appreciate this new body of hers, even if it was much younger than it should be. She was finding that the Endurance problem wasn’t nearly as severe as the System had made it sound, and as long as she kept herself from bleeding, she could take care of most injuries before they became a problem.

Rayna yawned. It hadn’t even been an hour and a half and she was already ready to tap out. Unfortunately, as illustrated by the Trena a moment ago, there was nowhere in the forest that was safe to sleep.

Rayna had killed almost thirty monsters in the last hour and a half and she wasn’t even Level 7 yet. She had severely underestimated how much the Experience requirements would increase after each level up.

This isn’t working, Rayna thought. At this rate, I’m going to lose all my stat points before I even come close to beating that damn mini-boss.

But based on the distance she had traveled on the map, it would take her days to reach the edge of the forest. She just couldn’t see any other options besides forging ahead.

Without a weapon?

Rayna pulled up her map, keeping one ear on the forest in case another ambush was incoming. The red dots were sparser in her area—thanks to her hour of hunting—but she didn’t even know where to look for the remaining monsters. They were either in the canopy or underground.

A strange dot on the map caught Rayna’s eye and she zoomed in on it. No information came up when Rayna focused on it and it seemed to be moving, which was unusual for most of the monsters in the forest.

More importantly, the dot was green.

Rayna turned on her notifications for a moment and pointed at the dot. “What is that?”

A green dot on the map indicates a being that is part of the System. In other words, it is a resident of Ember.

Someone who might be friendly? If they were in this forest, then they were probably strong enough to face off against most of the monsters here. But what if they were hostile?

“Why can’t I get any information on them?” Rayna asked the Liaison.

System privacy rules dictate that sentient beings within the System have a right to hide their race and level if they wish.

That made sense. It didn’t really matter, anyway. A low level native is probably better than a lost Level 6 foreigner anyway.

Rayna turned her notifications back off and closed out her map, heading to intercept the unknown player.

* * *

Daria glanced nervously at the timer, waiting for her skill’s cooldown to end.

Night Vision — allows the player to see in the dark.

Proficiency: 100%

Duration: 1 hour

Cooldown: 1h 10m

Current Cooldown: 1m 19s

She kept her ears open for any monsters in the vicinity, but she knew that they would probably kill her long before she heard them coming. Why had she decided to go to the Obsidian Forest? There was hyler moss in some of the mountain caves and at least those were lit with glow stones.

The thought of meeting a Wyrm on her travels had kept her from attempting that particular journey. But even though the monsters in this area were all low level, most of them could kill Daria easily.

She checked to make sure that her cloaking spell was still active, hiding her scent from predators. That, at least, made her life a little easier.

Especially after she had gotten herself lost.

Wind brushed past Daria’s face, and she resisted the urge to scream. Not even a shadow passed her in the pitch black forest. She would have brought some sort of light, but that was tantamount to suicide. Not all of the monsters in the Obsidian Forest were blind, and she would stick out like a sore thumb in the inky black landscape.

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Daria’s ears swiveled toward the faint sound of footsteps crunching in the silent forest. Her heart sped up. This was it. She was doomed to die in this System-forsaken forest.

She hid herself behind a tree, hoping that the monster hadn’t noticed her.

The footsteps grew louder, and Daria frowned in confusion. What monster would make this much noise?

“Aw shit!” a young female voice snapped.

A person? Out here? She didn’t sound older than a child! What was she doing in the middle of a monster-infested forest?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, you’re big and scary. Look, I lost my weapon a bit ago and I don’t feel like tasting you, so if you could kindly run away so I could go about my day, I would greatly appreciate it.”

What was she talking about? Daria still had thirty seconds left on her cooldown, but her curiosity got the better of her. She snuck around the tree, trying to use her hearing to figure out the girl’s location.

She didn’t need to. A girl stood about twenty feet away from Daria, her snow white hair glowing with a light blue tint, lighting up the forest around her for several feet. Standing in front of her, with its back turned to Daria was a Level 3 Forest Gecko.

Daria froze. It didn’t matter how low its level was, you do not mess with a Forest Gecko. The girl was already dead the moment the monster noticed her.

And so was Daria.

This reality seemed to be lost on the girl, who faced the monster like it was some sort of house pet.

“Look, I’m kind of meeting someone, so—”

The Gecko lunged, and Daria flinched as it wrapped its jaws around the girl’s arm.

“Ow! Damn it! Was that really necessary? It’s not going to work anyway, so just scram!”

The girl beat her fist on the Gecko’s head before it could jump away.

It hissed, flicking its tail and waiting for the paralysis to take effect.

Daria looked from the angry Gecko to the insane child. She shouldn’t have a counter for Paralysis this young. She didn’t look older than ten or twelve years old, though Daria knew that looks could be deceiving with some of the longer lived races.

She glanced at the girl’s head, and as Daria expected, she had a name tag.

[Rayna — Level 6]

[Lerian]

Name tags were a way of marking the weak. Not to shame them, as some of the more zealous warriors believed, but to call people to their aid when they got into situations they couldn’t handle. Daria had just lost her name tag last year, and it wasn’t uncommon for those who had them to eschew leaving their villages altogether. There were safer ways to level up than hunting monsters.

So how, in the name of Ember, had a Level 6 Initial ended up in the middle of the most notorious forest in Helia?

The race wasn’t one that Daria had seen, either. But there were thousands of races on Ember, some descended from the Chosen, others going back so far that it was believed they originated on the planet.

The girl grabbed a rock off the ground and started pounding it into the Gecko’s skull.

Daria watched dumbfounded as the child literally bludgeoned a C-6 monster to death with a rock.

Daria’s timer finally finished, and she used her Night Vision skill, making the world around her visible again.

The girl leaned down and touched the monster, her eyes glowing briefly.

Daria frowned. What was she—?

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” the girl said suddenly. “I just need to finish this.”

Only several days in the forest kept the squeak from exiting Daria’s mouth. The girl hadn’t made any indication of seeing Daria before she had spoken.

She must have been using some sort of acid attack, because the Gecko’s body dissolved, seeping into the underbrush. That was sensible, as the corpse could attract other monsters, but where the girl had learned such a spell, Daria wasn’t sure. The rich nobles had access to things like spell books and skill scrolls for learning outside of one’s Class, but they were all far too sensible to let their young out unattended.

The girl dusted her hands off and turned to Daria with a broad smile. “Right, sorry about that.” She stuck her hand out as if expecting something. “I’m Rayna,”

The gesture almost looked like a knight’s greeting, but the angle was wrong.

Daria didn’t know what to do with the proffered limb, so she just nodded. “I’m Daria. Umm… what are you doing here?”

Rayna pursed her lips. “That’s a bit of a long story. I’m trying to find an open space so I can teleport out of here, but unfortunately, this place is a monster pit, and I lost my weapon. Do you think you can help me?”

Daria was suspicious of the girl’s story, but her name tag confirmed that she was at least part of the System. Races outside the System weren’t identified by name.

Daria wasn’t in a position to help the girl, though. She didn’t even know which way to go to get out of the forest. She was tempted to use her teleport crystal, but she couldn’t do that for the same reason that Rayna couldn’t: there were too many monsters.

“Do you know the way out of the forest?” Daria asked, trying not to get her hopes up. If the girl knew how to get out, why would she be this far into the forest in the first place.

“I have a map,” Rayna said, pulling up her screen to show Daria.

Daria’s brief glimmer of hope died when she saw the sheer number of monsters that surrounded them. She had been walking through that for days? Were the monsters in the forest uninterested in her, or was the cloaking spell she was using even more effective than she thought?

“Do you think you could help me kill a Level 12 Arachne?” the girl asked out of the blue.

Daria blinked. “That’s suicide.”

Rayna frowned. “I’m half its level, though. I thought you would be higher than that, seeing as you’re out here all alone… Then again, I almost got killed by a Level 3 Trena earlier, so maybe the numbers aren’t that cut and dry…”

Every word that came out of this girl’s mouth made less sense than the last. The idea that she would have met a Trena and lived to tell the tale was laughable. Had she gone mad stumbling around the forest? But she had managed to kill the Forest Gecko…

“Why don’t we form a party?” Daria asked, hoping to convince the girl to follow her out of the forest. With the girl’s map, they could get out in a few days. Then she could help the girl find her family or at least get her to a healer to see if she was all right in the head.

“How do I do that?” the girl asked.

Was this her first time fighting with others? That didn’t bode well for their survival, seeing as Daria was a craftsman Class with no combat experience outside of self-defense.

“Just accept the invitation when I send it, all right?” Daria created a party and invited Rayna to join it.

The girl accepted.

You have formed a party with the player Rayna (Level 7). You will now share Experience from monster kills and defensive, healing and support spells will be more effective when cast on a party member.

Note: the level of one of your party members is considerably lower than the rest of the group. It is recommended that you seek opponents appropriate to the lower level member to avoid serious injury or death.

Wasn’t she just a Level 6? She must have been on the verge of leveling up when she killed that Forest Gecko.

“So… how high does my level have to be to fight that Arachne?”

“I thought I told you that was suicide,” Daria said. “Even if you could somehow gain that many levels, you won’t be able to fight an Arachne before the First Ascension, maybe the second.”

Rayna’s brows knit together in confusion. “But it’s a Level 12. How does that even make sense? What’s the point of having numbers at all if most of them are useless?”

Daria was concerned for the state of the girl’s schooling. What imbecile had let her out before even explaining the monster categories to her?

“Why don’t we just find a way out of the forest?” Daria suggested, knowing that teaching this girl how stats worked would take far too long. “When we get out of the tree line there should be plenty of space to teleport.”

The girl shook her head. “Sorry, I’m a bit short on time. I’ve got a penalty title that’s ticking up every hour until I get back.”

“A penalty title?” How had a child managed to get one of those? The System barely gave them out anymore; it wasn’t worth the energy.

It was one of the first signs of the coming apocalypse.

“Why don’t you show me the title?” Daria asked. If it was given to her in error, they could petition the System to remove it.

The girl nodded and changed her screen, but it suddenly winked out of existence.

Rayna frowned. “It isn’t working. It says I’m not allowed to share personal information until I’m properly integrated…”

Daria frowned. Integrated? That word was used to describe when one of the lost races found their way back to sanity.

Could Rayna be…?

Fear knifed through Daria’s heart, but she pushed it away. The girl had a name. She wasn’t a mindless beast.

More likely, she had gotten lost and confused, and now she was making up stories to try to get Daria to help her out of the forest faster.

“Even if you fought in this forest for a month, you’re not going to get high enough to fight that monster,” Daria said. “The penalty title won’t take you lower than fifteen points per stat.” If it actually exists, Daria thought privately. “By the time it gets that low, we’ll be safely out of the forest.”

“Yeah, no. Sorry. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have a couple of days to waste. My friend is probably worried sick about me as it is. I’m just going to keep leveling up and try my hand at the Arachne. Thanks anyway.” She turned, paused and turned back to Daria. “Do you have a weapon that I can buy off you?” She grimaced. “Or trade for, actually. I lost my pike when the Trena grabbed my leg.”

Daria had a few weapons in her Inventory—most of them useless to her, as she wasn’t very skilled in their use—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to part with them.

But she couldn’t just let the girl go empty handed.

“I have some monster drops,” the girl said, misunderstanding the reason for Daria’s hesitation. “Umm… Pyria feathers, Forest Gecko teeth. I got a bone from something called a Terracot, though I don’t know why that would be useful…”

Daria opened her mouth and closed it. Terracots were C-7 monsters that burrowed in various forests around Ember. Their bones were great for making weapons and could be ground into a powder for potion ingredients.

Daria was interested in the second usage.

“I’ll take the bone,” she said, before her conscience could convince her otherwise. She pulled out her most expensive dagger. It had cost her a month’s earnings to have runes carved into the unimpressive metal. It had strengthening spells, damage enhancing spells and one to ward against rust.

It was still a fraction of the worth of the bone in Rayna’s Inventory.

“Are you sure?” the girl asked, pulling out the bone. “This seems like a pretty one sided bargain.”

And Daria was the one profiting. She promised herself that she would pay the girl properly when she could get home and explain to Elder Grana why she needed the bone.

“I can’t let you go without a weapon,” Daria said truthfully. “Even if you are pretty handy with a rock.”

The only indication of the girl’s blush was a slight darkening of her black cheeks. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said.

Daria tilted her head. It was an odd statement. She supposed the sentiment was correct, though she had never heard it said.

While Daria was distracted, the girl turned to leave.

“Wait,” Daria tried, but she was already gone. How high was Rayna’s Dexterity?

Daria activated the party tracker, following the glowing line on the ground that only she could see. She wasn’t leaving a child to fend for herself. Daria may not be a match for most of the monsters this deep in the forest, but she could at least try to talk the girl out of her suicide mission against the Arachne.