As I continued to spend time with the shadows, the days started to blend together. Each morning began with a bowl of some plant-rich breakfast and a cup of kash, and then it was time to train.

The only major difference in the training was that there were spectators now: Having seen me flail about on the second morning, the shadows that had been sparring had spread the news. Now the area was lively and loud, with the occasional spectator on the side and twice as many sparring on the field.

Rock, in his usual way, thanked me. “Look at that! More people are training these days than ever, and it’s all because of you! Your mediocrity is good for something after all!”

Luckily, not all of my time was spent with Rock. True to her word, Hartha actually was more than willing to go hunting again, and we ended up going on an outing most every day.

The first few days, some of the fights I got into still scared me shitless, but as Hartha had said, it was starting to feel a bit more routine. Who would have guessed? I was getting used to nearly being killed by freakishly large arachnids.

Between the hunting and all the skills I earned, my experience skyrocketed, and I ended up easily nabbing my fourth level. At last, we were now just two days out from the expedition.

I pulled up my character sheet, smiling at how much it had updated in such a short time.

Name: Tess

Age: 26

Race: Human

Class: None

Level: 4

Experience: 1784/2750

Prestige: 503

Health: 160/160

Mana: 120/120

Stamina: 110/110

Constitution: 16

Strength: 15

Endurance: 10

Dexterity: 14

Intelligence: 14

Wisdom: 12

Perception: 23

Charisma: 10

Luck: 20

The only damper on my mood was the stat distribution I got: An entire five of my six stats had ended up in Perception this time around, with the remainder going to Strength.

On top of that, I was told to expect my leveling speed to start slowing down now. Not only had the experience threshold jumped up to 2750, but also, a lot of my growth so far had come from skills. As each new skill level was harder to get than the last, the steady stream of experience they’d generated from me was tapering down.

Still, I’d gained a lot. I pulled them up, surprised how many I’d been able to pick up in such a short period.

Skills

Weapon & Armor

Spears: 3

Swords: 3

Small Blades: 2

Archery: 2

Hammers: 2

Staffs: 2

Medium Armor: 2

Unarmed Combat: 1

Axes: 1

Resistances

Trauma Suppression: 4

Poison Resistance: 2

Detection

Identify: 3

The new additions were mainly from weapons training with Rock, although the two weeks training period hadn’t managed to bring any of my weapons skills as high as Trauma Suppression. I wasn’t sure what it said about me that that was my highest skill, but so be it.

As a small bonus, I’d also picked up Poison Resistance. I’d initially been surprised that it took so long to get, but apparently it had a prerequisite of 15 Constitution, which I’d only gotten at level 3.

With the limited time I had left, presently I was back in the woods with Hartha. It was a long shot, but we’d agreed to push me today and tomorrow to see if I could eke out one last level before we left.

To that effect, we were doing pretty well: 8 Mature Spiders lay on the ground before us, four of them slain by my own hand. I’d managed to hit two with arrows before they closed in, and the other two, I’d speared down.

“You’re getting pretty good at this, you know. If you could figure out how to stop snapping every twig as you walked, you’d almost be shadow material,” Hartha chuckled.

“You just wait,” I warned. “One of these days I’m finally going to get some stats besides Perception, and then I’m going to be a super spider-killer. The spiders will tell their kids stories of me to scare them at night.”

She gave me an odd look. “Spiders telling bedtime stories. Ridiculous. Almost stranger than a spider wearing pants. Not quite, but almost.”

I would have laughed had I not been fighting back a few last waves of pain. Despite my leather armor and my best efforts, the spiders had gotten a few bites in, and the mature spider venom was considerably worse than that of the spiderlings. I grunted as it ran its course, and once it had, Hartha healed me up to full health again.

We looted the spiders, their meat going to Hartha to feed the tribe (and while I had to admit it had a nice taste to it when prepared well, I still was a bit squeamish at the idea of eating spider), and I popped the venom glands into my bag.

Without further delay, we continued on.

For the next few hours, everything went without a hitch. On the few occasions we found groups of spiders too large for us to safely handle, I was able to sense them well before we ran into them, and we never had any close calls.

Despite that, something was wrong.

While I couldn’t say exactly what was wrong, a vague sense of unease hung about me as I walked. My skin prickled with each breeze that came my way, until, with a start, I realized what the sensation was: It felt like someone was watching me.

Had I been back on Earth, I might have dismissed the feeling as a strange wave of paranoia. From what I’d read about Perception, though, once it hit 25, I would be able to detect that exact sort of thing. Seeing as I was still a few points off, I hoped it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but I imagined it was better to be safe than sorry here. I was already focusing intently on my surroundings, but I dialed it up one more notch.

In case I was right, I tried not to look too conspicuous as I shot glances in all directions. We continued in this fashion for another half an hour, the sensation bugging me the entire time, until I finally saw it.

One of the trees was moving.

I only saw it out of the very corner of my vision, and it was well into the distance, but unmistakably, the bark on one of the trees seemed fluid, shifting ever so slightly. Even with my Perception high as it was, from this distance and this angle, it was hard to tell, but was that… a face?

“Hartha,” I whispered. “Not to freak you out or anything, but I’m pretty sure I just saw one of the trees move, and it had a face on it.”

Without warning, Hartha spun on me, her face taking on an almost zealous kind of fervor in an instant. “Point to it! Now!”

Taken aback by the outburst, it took me a second to compose myself. I pointed to the distant tree in question, and Hartha sprinted away from me, leaving me in the dust. I started trailing her, baffled and slightly worried.

“Where? I can’t see it! Is it still there?” Her voice sounded frantic, and while I wanted to question her, her urgency made it clear that it would have to wait.

Before I could answer, an airy laugh sounded through the forest, like rustling leaves blowing through wind chimes. Pinpointing the direction of the sound, I spun towards it, catching sight of the face once more. “Hartha! Over there!”

She followed my gaze, bolting off before I even had a chance to point. “Follow!” she commanded.

Easy for you to say. Nowhere near to being able to match her speed, especially while lugging around a spear, I trailed behind her.

From there, things grew infuriatingly repetitive.

Over and over again, we ran after the wooden face until it would vanish from sight, and over and over again, I would spot it, beginning the process anew. The entire time, it continued to laugh at us, its very voice seeming to stir up a breeze. The strange airy laughter joined the sound of crunching leaves and frequent curses as we barreled through the forest.

Unfortunately while I seemed to have the necessary Perception to keep the chase up, my Endurance lagged far behind, still sitting at a measly 10. With each round of the chase, my stamina flagged more and more, and my lungs started to burn. Despite Hartha’s numerous cries for me to hurry up, there was only so much a can-do-it attitude could do.

Right as I was certain I couldn’t go on, blissfully, things got much simpler. Our quarry reappeared on a tree a good forty meters away from us, and as we ran towards it, I fully expected the timbered visage to sink back into the wood once more.

Instead, however, it did the exact opposite.

The face pulled itself from the bark, the surrounding tree rippling like water as the figure of a woman soon materialized behind it. She stepped forward, completely separating herself from the tree, and the sight of her nearly froze me in place.

The wooden woman was tall and willowy, her skin a light green and her hair made of thin vines bearing small leaves and all varieties of different flowers. Her clothes, if they could be called such, consisted of thick roots coiled around her. They melded into her skin, and by her feet, they sank into the earth.

We’re chasing… a plant lady? I hit her with an Identify even as I continued to run, and it informed me that this particular plant lady was a Forest Dryad.

Sadly for my jello-y legs, just because the dryad was out in the open didn’t mean she was standing still. As soon as she fully left her tree, she was off, the roots by her feet churning through the ground with every step she took.

On the plus side, however, I was no longer needed. Not only could Hartha clearly see the dryad, but also, her destination was immediately evident: The ground opened up only meters away from the tree she’d stepped out of, marking the entrance to a cave. Well before Hartha could catch her, she dashed to the opening and slipped inside.

“I’m going ahead!” Without waiting for a response, Hartha sped up, no longer concerned about leaving me behind. Only seconds behind the dryad, she threw herself into the cave.

“You… You do that,” I panted out. “Be with you in just a moment. Or two. Or three.” Trusting Hartha to be able to take care of herself, I slowed to a walk, hoping to regain some of my spent stamina. By the time I made my way to the cave, my lungs had gone from burning to simply uncomfortable, which I counted as a win.

Um, should I be worried? Really seems like the magical tree lady just lured us into a cave.

I thought about it for a few moments before entering with a shrug. It wasn’t as if I was just going to twiddle my thumbs and wait outside for Hartha.

The tunnel was narrow and slanted harshly downwards, and as I kept on, I realized it was surprisingly long as well. Alone and in the cramped confines, I felt uncomfortably vulnerable. I held my spear out as I advanced, ready at any moment for something to jump me.

The one saving grace was that it wasn’t pitch black. Strips of bioluminescent moss clung to the cave walls, imparting the space with a damp, earthy aroma and a green, alien glow.

I heard Hartha before I saw her: Heavy thuds resounded through the cave, interspersed with grunts and an assortment of curses. I sped up, initially worried that she had found her way into a fight, but the truth of the matter was slightly less urgent.

Up ahead, the tunnel expanded outwards into a large, circular cavern, about five meters high and twenty in diameter. On its far end, it tapered down once more, forming an exit tunnel.

It was there that lay the problem: Fully covering the exit was a dense wall of thick roots. Hartha, having thrown her spear to the ground and switched to a sword, was attempting to hack away at the tuberous obstacle. Even from a distance, however, it was clear she was making no progress.

“Harth? You good?” I entered the cavern and called out, worried by her single-minded intensity.

Seeming to register the futility of her actions, she pulled away from the root barrier and turned my way. She appeared haggard, as if each swing had tired her as much mentally as it did physically. “She ran ahead and blocked the tunnel off. Can’t break through. You don’t have a fancy Protagonist power that can smash through this, do you?”

I shook my head. If Hartha couldn’t brute force it, I had nothing.

Seeing as she’d finally stopped sprinting away from me, I figured this would be a good time for some questions.

Life, however, had other plans.

As I stepped halfway into the cavern, a low rumbling sounded from behind me. Whirling about, I watched in horror as a mass of roots shot from the earth by the cavern entrance, forming an identical seal to the one barring the exit.

“That’s… bad. Right? That’s very bad?” I scanned the room looking for some third way out, but all I saw were solid walls and a rocky dirt floor.

Hartha turned from exit to entrance, studying the two barriers, her shoulders tensed and her tongue pushed against her cheek. “Well, at least I won’t have to give up and exit the cave now. Just as easy to go forward as it is back. Here, help me saw through this. As long as we have enough time, I’m pretty sure we can cut it down.”

Before I could say a word, however, the rumbling returned. Only this time, I could hear it all around us.

“Uh. Harth? Hate to say it, but something’s telling me we’re not going to have enough time.”

And then, without further fanfare, the ground exploded.