Chapter 21: With Wusu’s Words, the Secluded Forest Stirred, Faint and Unseen

The sound was extremely faint.

But it was there.

“Wild Fox! Ignorant of the Eastern Han!” Cold Autumn, who had taken the alchemist quest, waved over the two players he’d only just friended. “My alchemist level should be the highest here, so the system defaulted to asking me first. I just checked: the shop pays taxes to the lord based on its books, but it can run a set deficit for a short time. The Alchemy Workshop has plenty of materials. I’ll go make red potions and blue potions now; in a bit, you two notify everyone else that anyone at all can come collect potions from the Alchemy Workshop. I’ve done the math; within the limit I can probably make a few extra…”

Players had long been used to sorting their supply potions into reds and blues by whether they restored health or stamina. Before Cold Autumn’s freshly researched rambling could wind down, a soft little voice behind him said, “No need.”

“…Then this batch should just about cover it.” Cold Autumn’s mouth couldn’t brake in time. Only after the words were out did he feel something was off, and he glanced back.

Whoa!

Their young lord was standing behind them hugging the big black ball, with the formidable Grand Knight Alana following at his back.

“My lord.” Wild Fox spoke past Cold Autumn. “What did you just say we don’t need?”

Wusu’s slow little voice rang out, each word popping loose one by one, his little face rather solemn. “Until it ends, the Alchemy Workshop’s potions may be used freely.” Then his big eyes settled on Cold Autumn. “Embezzle, and Alana puts you in solitary.”

Cold Autumn’s eyes met the calm grand knight behind Wusu, and he swallowed hard, throat bobbing. So their lord wasn’t actually a naive little fool, he thought, a bit stiffly.

Wusu went on petting the Big Ball.

That was all the lines Alana had taught him.

His little body draped over the Big Ball, Wusu murmured to himself, very softly, “Makes sense.”

Wusu wasn’t dumb.

He nodded only after listening and finding it reasonable.

“The attack has begun.” The grand knight’s words were cool and distant. Her voice wasn’t loud, but just as with Alana’s tide-turning rescue when the Fallen Corridor had erupted, this time her words, too, reached every single person in the territory, clear as a bell.

The lively territory went cold and still for one instant. The people who had been playing around scattered at once, each hurrying to their assigned posts. The makeshift commanders who had stepped up (Wild Fox included) all rushed off for an emergency huddle.

[The eyes lurking in the darkness can no longer hold back and are moving to assault the territory. As subjects of the territory, such defilement shall never be tolerated! Take up your weapons and fight to defend the territory!]

As the system notification chimed, a papery rustling reached their ears as well.

In the players’ eyes, the territory’s grounds were probably just this one patch in the middle of the forest. The divine temple’s side was off-limits, but the open ground around the former ruins (the Fallen Corridor) honestly wasn’t large; it could fit a few more streets at most, a size no bigger than a newbie village or an ordinary little town.

Back in the day, any trip to mine or chop wood meant carrying torches deep into the Secluded Forest. The mine wasn’t far from the woods where they felled trees, and everyone was used to shuttling back and forth.

But as the quest began, around the low walls they had raised, the strange, eerie sounds of the forest swelled louder and louder, and even the paths they had walked a hundred times seemed to warp.

It sounded more like something traversing the woods, its body whipped again and again by branches.

Wild Fox pressed his lips together. He remembered these trees were all extremely tall; you shouldn’t be able to so much as brush the branches…

Crack!

The snap of branches twisting off. Rats poking their heads out… no. Wild Fox swallowed his revulsion: it was more like a fusion of human and rodent, a person’s expression and face mounted on a colossal rat, its twisted limbs vaguely humanoid, letting out low guttural hisses. The shrieking winged creatures were nearly skin and bone, eyes glowing ominous red, pinned on the humans… and the kinds that came after were twisted and grotesque to the uttermost. Fishy, reeking saliva splattered through the woods, and the greenery withered and rotted where it fell.

Yet inside that unbearable stench of rot, an inexplicable scent of ripe wheat stirred too, drifting faint as breath through the field. Struck all at once by a wrongness beyond imagination or nature, the adventurers could barely breathe.

Someone couldn’t hold it down and threw up.

That was how real it felt.

In ordinary games, kobolds and goblins were old hat, but that was always the third dimension reaching in to touch the second; however polished the 3D, an ill-fitting falseness clung to it, nothing like the nausea of now, of facing human beings twisted against nature itself.

[Dawn’s Blessing: Within the domain the territory shelters, its subjects shall be granted eternal sanity and eternal blessing.]

A cool clarity washed through Wild Fox’s head. Watching the human-faced rats, or was it rat-headed humans, practically fling themselves onto the low wall, he grabbed the area megaphone and bellowed, “Quick, quick, quick! Statuses up!”

He drew his weapon and leapt down from the low wall, chopping viciously onto a human-faced rat’s skull in the strobing light!

Players reacted a beat faster than the NPCs. True, they had seen less of the world than the NPCs had, but in the players’ eyes all of this was a fake game: frightening, yes, but once you pushed through the first wave of fear, you handled it with room to spare.

And no matter what happened, they could respawn.

So the players reasoned, conscience entirely clear.

The battle had begun.

Wusu hugged the Big Ball, sitting on top of a stone pillar.

This was the spot with the best view, so three minutes into the battle, Wusu, who had only just come down, came pitter-pattering back.

Nearly every stretch of the low wall had its own slaughter.

Watching the white flashes that lit up now and then, Wusu said lazily, “Travelers weak.”

Compared with the adventurers, the Travelers’ attack efficiency ran a little lower, even when both were the same level, the same class, the same race.

Had the players ever learned of this puzzle, the answer would have been self-evident.

It was only a game, after all.

Why try so hard?

“Alana, come up.” Wusu looked down at Alana, who stood below the pillar with her sword in hand.

Alana shook her head gently. “It is enough that you remain above.”

Alana truly was unwilling, but more than that… her sharp gaze swept across this Fallen Corridor, and she instinctively closed her hand around the Blade of Light.

For some reason, every time she drew near this great corridor, the grand knight had the illusory sense of being cowed, as if some invisible, untouchable higher-dimensional creature were coiled here.

It made the vigilant Alana reluctant to come close, but if Wusu wanted to climb the pillars, then of course Alana had to follow and guard him.

Wusu, though, was different.

The Fallen Corridor had been quickened into being by Wusu himself; nothing here could ever turn against him.

Wusu bobbed his little head and kept watching the low wall.

The low wall hugged the dense forest, ringing the clearing. From what Wusu could see right now, the players had all died at least once already.

They were racing nonstop along their routes: resurrection point to Weapons Forge to low wall, or resurrection point to alchemy shop to low wall.

As for the NPCs, “valiant and fearless” summed them up neatly.

Amid flying flesh and reeking, sickening carnage, they fought bathed in blood.

Wusu tugged at the Big Ball. Something looked a little familiar.

He squeezed the Big Ball again until it shrank into a slightly smaller Big Ball, then sat himself down, sprawled on top of it as he watched the defensive battle against the assault.

Those ugly, stinky things seemed just a tiny bit familiar.

But Wusu couldn’t place them.

And when Wusu couldn’t place something, he stopped trying. He pulled out the Semi-Transparent Frame.

Semi-Transparent Frame: Eep!

Weeping tears of joy!

Actively favored for the second time, the Semi-Transparent Frame set off fireworks across the whole screen, then trotted busily about knitting adorable little ears onto every single option.

Wusu flexed his fingers, eyeing the Illustrated Codex that had suddenly sprouted pointed ears.

Suddenly he didn’t feel like poking it.

Illustrated Codex: ?

What a hard life it led!

[Monster Illustrated Codex]

[☆ Human-Faced Rat]

[Fallen. Now and then they are found to possess a measure of ability, a grace left over from their pre-transformation memories. As Fallen beings, their saliva is innately corrosive, and their claws inflict continuous, lingering damage.

Yet as spawn of the deep earth, they fear the light.]

[☆ Shrieker]

[Their twin wings grant them the power of flight; the stronger among them can traverse the starry sky and even carry riders. The breath of the Fallen likewise surges in their bloodlines. They love to drink blood, and their shrieks can pierce the soul and drain sanity. Overlook their sharp claws and fangs on account of those scrawny frames, and you will easily come to grief.

For all their wings, they dread the ground.]

The monsters seemed endless; every time the defenders hacked them down, more came pouring out of the Secluded Forest without pause.

Mina was repairing weapons for people nonstop, nearly sick of it, but measured against Cold Autumn, busy next door to the point of madness, she felt pretty good about herself.

“When is this ever going to end?”

While reading the Illustrated Codex, Wusu also read its information aloud. Having listened, Alana passed the news to the front line still fighting in blood.

Mina got the message too, and her eyes immediately brightened. With a weakness to work with, things just got a lot easier.

Wusu went on hugging the Illustrated Codex and reading.

When the codex had first appeared, it had been quite large; Wusu liked to hug it in order to turn the pages.

But Wusu had only two hands, and hugging the codex meant, quite naturally, letting go of the Big Ball.

Big Ball: ?

The Big Ball launched an eye attack.

That unseen, untouchable, possibly nonexistent glare made the Illustrated Codex shiver for no reason it could name.

The codex shrank.

The codex kept shrinking.

The codex shrank, quiet and obedient, into a palm-sized book.

Then it lay down in Wusu’s palm.

Big Ball: !

Just as the Big Ball meant to keep up the intimidation, Wusu yawned and flopped down on top of it.

All right. The Big Ball went still.

Wusu murmured to himself, “Earth Mother Goddess?”

Unknown to anyone, the Big Ball twitched twice.

There was no telling whether it was pleased or displeased, but while Wusu stayed sprawled on top of it puzzling over what was going on, the Big Ball, naturally, kept perfectly still.

Wusu’s big eyes blinked.

He was still racking his brain over why he had suddenly said “Earth Mother Goddess” when the stone pillars began to glow.

The patterns lit with a faint shimmer, so very slowly, from the bottom upward, steady and unbroken.

The instant Alana sensed it, she leapt away. Only when she stood entirely outside the great corridor did she come back to herself and realize what she had just done.

In that moment she seemed to have lost consciousness of self under an unnamable pressure, her mind swallowed whole by the urge to flee.

The grand knight’s grip tightened on the Blade of Light as she noted the strangeness within the great corridor.

One. Two. Three…

The solemn, silent Fallen Corridor was lighting up.

Petting the Big Ball, Wusu tipped his head back.

Just as he had once coaxed the fallen stone pillars into being.

Just as if, beyond the Gloomy Forest that smothered sky and sight alike, something were watching.