Chapter 27: Forestry Service

  Nicholas, Sasha, and Benjamin sat in shocked silence. After detailing their adventure in Nethy, it had been Elijah and Bo’s turn.

  They’d told the group as much as they felt comfortable with. The infiltration of the Reaper lair, Arturus’ dark history, and the destruction of the entire dungeon.

  “If Arturus didn’t already have a thing against you,” Benjamin let out a shrill whistle. “Then he really would now.”

  “He can’t possibly know that Elijah was the one who did it,” Sasha chimed in.

  “No, Benjamin is right.” Bo was shaking his head as he spoke. “First, Elijah outwits Bob and Tom twice, then he embarrasses him by sending him for a respawn in the dev room. Now his super-secret lair imploded.”

  Bo stood, stretching the tense muscles in his back. The duality of the death sickness mixed with the nausea from teleporting was finally clearing. “His ego won’t let him consider any other possibility than Elijah.”

  Elijah stood slowly, his eyes looked over his friends. They looked tired and worn down. Nicholas’ shirt still had a massive hole in the front and was scorched, Bo looked like he was about to drop at any second regardless of his arguments otherwise, and both Benjamin and Sasha looked tired and stressed. It wasn’t fair to them that he was the reason they were going through this.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Elijah suggested. “You guys would be safer without me. He’s going to keep targeting me, and you’re just going to get caught in the crosshairs.”

  Sasha got to her feet and crossed the small gap between them. For a moment he thought she was going to tell him goodbye or try to console him. Instead, she did exactly what he really needed her to do.

  She smacked him.

  “You don’t get to weasel out of this so easily,” she seethed. “You are stuck with us whether or not you like it. I still haven’t gotten you back for the party name.”

  She looked like she wanted to smack him again, but held herself back. “We’re a team, Elijah. We’re going to support you in any way we can. Especially since you are our only hope of getting out of this.”

  “Speaking of which,” Nicholas broke into the tender moment. “We need to get moving. Mara’s Bastion is still a few weeks away on foot.”

  Elijah stood and smiled at his friends. They were here for him, in a way that no one in his real life had ever been. This would not be an easy journey, but they would have his back through it.

  “Alright, let’s get started then.” He turned to face Benjamin. “Where are we? Do we have a teleport location closer to where we’re going?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “We’re as close as I can get us. About half a day’s travel from Nethy. I have another teleport a little further north that might be closer, but it’s a dungeon that people frequent.”

  Nicholas swiped his hand through the air. “We need to stay away from places where people congregate. The Reaper’s Guild will be crawling those areas looking for us.”

  Part of Elijah wanted to explore the Undying Library dungeon that they’d met up at. The gentle song from the portal still reverberated inside his mind. He could still feel the pull drawing him in closer. But he could understand his group’s insistence that they leave the area. He didn’t feel like getting into another imbalanced fight against them.

  He had the teleport code from the metadata, and he knew that his own teleport spell could target almost anywhere. There would be more chances to investigate; they just had to wait until the heat died down some more.

  Bo stood up, finally more sure of his footing. “Alright, if you guys are ready. I’m good to go.”

  Nicholas stopped moving for a moment, his eyes glazing over as he read a menu. When his eyes cleared, he had an angry expression on his face. Elijah cocked an eyebrow at him, but he shook his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

  The team headed out, working their way through the dense forest.

  In this low-level area, few monsters even tried to mess with the party. Their levels were high enough to trip a switch in their programming to turn their natural aggression off.

  It was an interesting mechanic that Elijah wanted to look further into.

  His curiosity got the better of him when a small group of boars came across them. They postured as if they were going to attack before getting a good look at the party. As if a switch had flipped, they went from aggressive to scared.

  “Elijah, no!” Nicholas tried to stop him, but Elijah took off after them through the trees.

  Nicholas and the party followed the sounds of squealing, grunting, and swearing to find Elijah wrestling one of the smaller boars to the ground. He didn’t need to hold it, but he was having fun wrestling with the creature. He let it go as Nicholas cleared his throat. The debug menu of the beast hung in his vision.

  He grinned wildly. Right there in the faction tag for the creature was his answer:

  Faction_Tag: NPC_FOE_BOAR && NPC_NEUT_LEVEL

  He smiled up at his party even while they stared down at him in a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Found what I was looking for,” he told them with a grin.

  One by one, they all turned away from him and walked away. Sasha was the last one standing. She shook her head at him, but a grin crept along her lips before she turned away from him.

  He caught back up with them after a minute. Nicholas was leading the pack while Bo brought up the rear, keeping their casters in the middle for safety.

  Bo grinned at him. “You know, as much fun as it was watching you tear off after that boar, you could have just asked me.”

  Elijah stumbled; he hadn’t even thought about that fact. Here he was with access not only to a developer menu, but to a developer as well. “I hadn’t even thought of that, Bo. How much information do you have on the backend of the game?”

  The rogue shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t a lead developer or anything. I was part of the team working on balancing player classes. The system AI likes to create them, but isn’t great at balancing them.”

  His eyes glanced up at Elijah’s name tag. “Take your class, for example. It generated it from scratch of its own accord, and it’s obviously completely broken in terms of balance. And that has more to do with the AI being screwy than it does with you having dev tools.”

  “So you aren’t going to just feed me information on what I need to get us out of here?”

  Bo rolled his eyes. “Trust me, I don’t want to be stuck in here any more than anyone else. If I had information that could get us out, I’d give it to you. But little stuff? If I can remember it, I’ll share it with you.”

  “What really scares me is that the neutrality tag was designed to be run within the faction handler, not as a tag itself.”

  “What does that mean?” The words were familiar to Elijah, but he lacked specific context in terms of the game engine.

  “I mean that the neutrality tag you described to me is supposed to run from within the NPC_FOE_BOAR tag, not as an additional tag. That means that either something has gotten screwed up with the mob generator, or someone got lazy when they coded it.”

  Elijah hoped it was the latter and not the former, though neither was a good option. Developer laziness wasn’t a direct threat to them right now, but if the game engine was struggling, then that could spell disaster for everyone stuck in the game.

  They walked for several more hours in relative silence when they came across a clearing in the woods. The sun was getting low, already hidden by the dense foliage.

  All around the clearing, the trees packed thick, creating a sort of natural wall. A stream fed into a small pond, though there was no obvious place for the water to empty. The air felt lighter in Elijah’s lungs, no longer bogged down with the heavy scents of the forest. It smelled clean and crisp, like dryer sheets marketed as smelling like a ‘spring breeze’ but never really smelled like anything natural.

  A bioluminescent fungus grew along the bank of the water, setting the entire area alight in a gentle green glow.

  “This whole place feels…” Sasha started, her voice trailing off as she looked around the clearing.

  “Alive?” Benjamin suggested.

  Elijah had to agree; this place felt like more than just a clearing. There was something about this place that felt like more than just a clearing.

  “Bo?” Elijah asked. “Any idea about this place?”

  Bo shook his head. “Like I said, I was on the balance team. I’m as in the dark as you guys.”

  “Guys?” Benjamin piped up, looking back the way they had come. “Where’d the exit go?”

  Elijah turned to look at the path they had used to enter the clearing. In its place was now a solid wall of trees. If they tried hard, they might slip past, but it wouldn’t be easy or quick.

  He reached out his arm and focused his mana on the scout spell, summoning his three ‘Dragontooth Scouts’ into existence. They took to the air, flying high in the sky. Through them, Elijah could see something moving amongst the thick trees.

  The voice they heard echoed through the trees, everywhere and nowhere all at once. The voice was feminine, with a rough, gravelly quality to it.

  “We have them here now, my sisters. In our mother’s home.”

  Nicholas and Bo drew their weapons immediately, and the casters prepared to sling their spells.

  “I see them too, my sister.” A melodious laugh followed. “They intrude on the palatial grave of our mother.”

  A creature made of wood pulled itself free from the thicket. It was vaguely humanoid, but with no joints in its legs. It stumbled towards them in a gait more reminiscent of a zombie than anything else.

  [TARGET INFO]

  Dryad (Level 15)

  HP: 150 / 150

  Nicholas’ grip tightened, but Bo warned him off attacking. “We’re surrounded. Don’t do anything unless they attack first.” He whispered in a hushed tone.

  Bo was right, as they watched more of the creatures pull themselves out of the trees.

  The first opened its mouth inhumanely wide, and the first voice they heard emanated forth from it. “Mortals come oh so rarely. Do you come seeking the mother’s bones?”

  Nicholas took a moment to look back at his party, who shrugged at him. There were dozens of these dryads; if they chose to attack, the party wouldn’t have much of a chance to survive. He took a half step forward, holding his sword loose at one side.

  “I don’t know what the mother’s bones are. We can’t exactly be searching for something that we don’t know exists.”

  The creature stumbled closer. Its manner wasn’t threatening, even if it was unnerving. “You speak the truth. I can sense it in your roots. We would teach you the ways of the mother.”

  Every dryad except for the one who was speaking to Nic approached the lake. The water began roiling and bubbling. From its depths rose what appeared to Elijah like a massive tree made of stone.

  Their attention shifted once more back to the dryad who spoke to them.

  “The mother awaits at the end. Dire consequences await if you should fail to appease her, or a glorious opportunity if you succeed.” As one, all the dryads returned to the thick trees surrounding the clearing and vanished into them.

  “What the hell was that?” Benjamin asked, incredulity straining his voice.

  Nicholas looked at the stone tree and then back at the party. “Whatever it is, it’s a distraction.” He looked over to the spot they’d come in. “What do you think, Elijah? Can you pull a trick like you did with the Fort?”

  Elijah walked over to the trees blocking off where they had come in. Touching the rough wood, he tried to activate his signature ability. After a moment of waiting, he realized nothing was happening.

  “It’s no good. My skill is just reading it as scenery.”

  “Teleportation?” Nicholas asked hopefully.

  Bo shook his head. “No good. Keeps throwing up an error before I can lock onto a target.”

  Nicholas gave a loud, annoyed sigh. “There's no point in continuing to ask. The game wants us to go through that dungeon, it seems.”

  He turned to face the stone tree. He lifted his sword and pointed with the tip, squaring his shoulders and standing tall. With an even, steady voice he commanded the party. “We go through then. Onwards Sasha’s Babysitting Service.”

  Sasha smacked him in the back of the head, breaking the illusion of seriousness.