End Online: Volume 3 (16 page)

‘Strange,’ 
I think in my head,
 ‘Perhaps we need to have everyone in
the party cleared of the illusion.’

“Fen, stay still for a
minute.” I say to the girl as I pull out another ‘Scroll of Clearsight’ and
cast it with her as the target.

Even after having all of
us clear of visual illusions, the sword cuts we made to track our way still
refuse to return. Perhaps this is a teleportation technique instead of an
illusion.

“Well, we had best move on
for now. The light shining through the canopy is starting to dim. Meaning the
sun is setting.”

They all nod their head.
Regardless of whether we will be returning to where we entered or break through
the illusion, either will be fine right now.

We start walking but stop
as soon as a girls voice catches our attention.

“Why… are we… going back?”
Fen asks curiously while looking directly at me.

“What do you mean Fen?” I
ask curiously.

“I thought… you wanted to…
keep going…  forward.” She states monotonously.

“F-Fen. Are you saying
that you know which way we came from and where to keep going forward?”

The wolf girl gives my
words some thought before nodding her head. Just like me, the others are also
at a loss for words.

“Fen,” I break the
silence, “Can you please lead the way?”

“…Okay.” She says before
turning around to walk back the way we came.

Without anything else to
rely on, we all follow behind the wolf girl. After about five minutes, she is
suddenly walking off to the left. I hurry to change my direction and catch up
with her.

This process repeats every
minute or so. She will be walking in one direction and then a blink of the eye
later she will be walking in another direction completely. Through the corner
of my eye I catch a glimpse of a cut on a tree, the scorch marks around the
incision show that it was made by a blade with a fire attribute. Strangely
enough, the moment I focus on the tree the mark disappears, as if it was never
there.

A low groaning of wood
stretching reverberates throughout the trees and even Fen stops in her tracks,
looking around her. I spot a glimpse of movement off to my right, but when I
turn my head I only see trees and grass. The only movement is that of a few
sparse leaves drifting down through the air.

Mason behind me moves to a
nearby tree and quickly scales it and sits up in the low branches, looking
around for danger. Matrix is looking around him as if he had seen a ghost or
something.

Everything turns eerily
quiet as I focus my concentration on the surrounding through my five senses. I can’t
hear, see, smell or feel anything wrong. Yet a strange foreboding is telling me
otherwise.

With a few cracking
sounds, four of the trees in the surroundings suddenly rip up their roots and
start travelling over the ground towards me at a speed that completely takes me
by surprise. It isn’t necessarily all that fast, but these are trees we are
talking about.

One of those trees is the
one Mason is currently situated in. The rapid movement causes him to lose
balance and be flung off.

“Creature Analysis.” I
quietly call out. Focusing my sight on one of the moving trees. The creature
analysis skill may have been absorbed into my class skill. Yet it still had the
same activation words.

The bad presage I was
feeling before dissipates as I see the stats of the enemies coming towards me.
This would definitely be an issue for a low level player or perhaps even
someone my level who didn’t train their stats at all. But this tree in front of
me is completely out of its league.

‘I wonder if it even
has a consciousness, or simply attacks anyone nearby it. No, surely there must
be some kind of thought going on. They are all clearly affected by my
aggravation after all.’

Leaning forward and
kicking off from the ground, I dashed towards the closest one at top speed. Fen
also launches some large ice bolts at a second one at the same time as my
attack.

Raising my ‘Fire Imbued
Meridium Scramasax’ in front of me and holding it horizontally, I use my speed as
the driving force to cut through the forest guardian.

The creature clearly
doesn’t have a mouth to cry out in agony as the short sword makes a deep
smoldering grove on its body, but the forest guardian’s roots start to thrash
about in a defensive mechanism as over half of its health is removed. One of
those long roots happen to unexpectedly land across my back as I pass by,
causing me to lose balance and heavily collide with a nearby tree.

In my carelessness, I even
manage to connect my head with the tree with enough force to cause a five
second ‘dazed’ status to appear and my head to spin. I also lost nearly a
quarter of my health from that one attack.

‘The monster is of a
lower level, yet still does so much damage in a single attack!’ 
I cry out in my mind. I definitely need more armour so I can
take a hit or two.

I look back at the battle
to see Fen dancing around launching her speciality ice javelins at one enemy
while Mason and Matrix gang up on the other.

The monsters are still
under the effects of my aggravation and heading in my direction. But they have
roots of a length between five and ten meters, which they use to attack the
others despite still travelling in my direction.

Almost as if they had
somehow communicated with each other and preplanned. All four nearly dead
forest guardian’s simultaneously light up in an earthly green colour,
particularly their roots.

“Not good!” I call out as
my dazed status effect wears off, “They are using a sacred art, get back! Multi
Mirage!”

Every single root dives straight
into the ground. They instantly resurface anywhere up to twenty meters away
attacking everything within range. I use my own sacred art in time to create
multiple mirages of myself and prevent the roots from coalescing onto my real
body and killing me. I may be fast but even I know that a perfect
omnidirectional attack like this one could easily be my bane.

The others get off rather
lightly as well, considering the attacks were mostly focused on me from the
beginning.

With the daze effect gone
and still fifty percent health, I lunge back into the fight. Being less
reckless this time, I quickly finish off two enemies while Fen finished hers
and the brother do the same likewise.

“They dropped half decent
experience and move relatively slowly. I only wish they weren’t so well suited
for surprise attacks.” Mason laughs off the battle now that it is over.

“They may have a slower
movement speed than most monsters their level, but their attack speed is
incredibly high. Those roots were fast enough to catch even me.” I state with a
mild surprise. They wouldn’t have touched me if I took my hood off, but I can’t
say for certain I would be able to fight properly if I did take it off.

“Indeed. I would hate to
be a low level player who just accidentally ran into one.”

“That would be a terrible
encounter for the player.” The image of some newbie getting whipped by
countless tree roots suddenly enters my mind. “Fen, do you still remember which
direction we were heading in? I would like to continue if we can.”

The now dead trees left
holes in the canopy of the forest, allowing us to get a clear look at the sky
and find our bearing. It should work like that at least, except that the sun is
slowly sinking onto the horizon where we cannot see it and the fading light still
somehow shines directly down through the gap. We simply stand under the open
sky while a soft golden light falls down on us.

“I… know where… to go.”
Fen nods her head while speaking in a monotonous voice.

We go back to following
the wolf girl and encounter three more groups of the forest guardians. Being
more aware of the creatures and their attacks we weren’t as surprised by them
suddenly appearing from the forest. We took a little bit of damage when they
revealed their magic to launch innumerable leave blades in a forty five degree
arc which could not be blocked, but that was only the first time.

In front of my eyes, the
forest abruptly comes to an end.

In the dying light of the
sun, I stand at the edge of a clearing approximately two hundred meters in diameter
with a reasonably sized river winding through it. The strangest thing is that
inside of this clearing is a large town. There are no pathways through or
around the town, yet the grass in the entire clearing is short to the length
one would comfortably walk on.

Each of the houses in the
town are made out of a strange arrangement of wood and foliage. Each and every
one appears to have been made out several different sized trees that seem to
grow into the house with a thicket of sticks forming the rest of the walls. The
roofs are formed by the trees foliage which creates a perfect blanket over the
top of the house and even stretches slightly out, creating an small area of
shade around each house.

Throughout the village,
there are a lot of NPC’s walking around with laundry and other goods. Some are
smoking freshly cooked fish while others were sitting around and talking to
each other. There were even a few kids picking on a smaller kid off behind one
of the structures.

My eyes widen as when I
focus on the group and scope my eyesight on them I see a familiar face. The boy
that the others are picking on is the ‘Mysterious Boy’ we have been looking
for!

I also take note of the
appearance of the townsfolk. The men are tall and slender, with narrow
shoulders while the females are slightly shorter and have petite bodies that
carry a natural elegance to their curves. They all have hair of gentle greens,
except for the elderly whose hair is completely silvery white.

The most notable feature
beyond anything else though is their narrow pointed ears that stick out
horizontally from their heads.

“E-E-E-ELVES!!” Matrix
cries out behind me without any warning.

All the movement and noise
in the village comes to a halt as everyone’s eyes look over at us.

“HUMANS!” Multiple shouts
of melodic voices echo throughout the village in alarm. People who hear it
start running away as fast as possible. Some try to grab some personal
belonging while others hastily grab their children before fleeing in the
opposite direction. There are a few of the men who grab their bows but they all
have complete and utter fear on their faces.

“Everyone, I don’t know
what is going on. But we need to quickly capture that boy and get out of here
before anything too bad happens. Don’t worry, we will shout back at them that
we will bring him back. Unfortunately, this is the only way I can think of
solving the quest right now.” I hastily call out to the rest of the party.

“Lost. I think kidnapping
the kid is a little bit much, isn’t it?” Mason frowns behind me in response,
not agreeing with the plan.

“I know, it is. But if
these elves flee from here. They will probably not only never return but we
will never find them again. The continent on this game is enormous and we are
not likely to find them ever again. If that happens, we will fail the quest.”

“I still don’t quite feel
right kidnapping a child. Can we not just give up on this quest?”

“I don’t know about you.
But I am not in a position to simply abandon quests. Don’t forget that this is
only a game.”

“I know, I know. Well we
better hurry up about it, I still feel uncomfortable though.”

Mason finally gives in,
but by now half the residents of this town have already disappeared into the
forest. There are around twenty bow wielding guards nervously prepared to
defend the outskirts of the town but the other half are frantically still
trying to gather up their kids.

“You guys wait here, they
look prepared to fire those bows and everything I have ever heard about elves
states they are highly adept with them. They shouldn’t be able to hit me
though.” I tell the others as I dash towards that small group of children who
are now in a panic.

Just as I suspected, those
few guards are incredibly adept with their bows. Each and every arrow converges
to a single point on my chest. Unfortunately for the elves, they are only
firing at an illusionary afterimage. As soon as the image of me is pierced and
dispersed, I immediately create another one, confusing the archers even
further.

I reach the kid I want in
a few seconds, throwing the now petrified child over one shoulder as my
afterimage merges with my real body now that I am no longer moving. I prepare
to escape when a stunning middle aged elf lady blocks my way. She doesn’t
hesitate to drop to her knees before prostrating before me.

“P-please. Spare my son!
Take me instead if you must! I will do whatever you want!” She cries in voice
completely distraught. Seeing the child I have over my shoulder, the guards
also hesitate to fire any more arrows, probably afraid I will use the kid as a
shield.