Much like the Forest, everything was huge in the Deep Woods. Huge trees towering over us, huge leaves stuck to those trees, huge toadstools, you get the gist of it. However, unlike the Forest, the Deep Woods were dark.

Not pitch black dark, or Ruler’s Grave dark, but still dark enough to blot out the sun, leaving no traces of light to shine through the leaves and onto the forest floor. The trees were all tall and crooked, with oddly shaped holes in their trunks that drove your imagination wild.

More than once I’d thought I’d seen a face in one of those, staring down at me with slanted eyes and razor sharp teeth. Didn’t help that the lower branches of these trees didn’t have any leaves, making them look like little grabby hands that you’d fully expect to reach out to snag on your clothes.

Light moved weirdly too. Patches of them would appear where they logically shouldn’t, while shadows slithered around like they had a life of their own. Sometimes one or two shadows would creep up from their resting places and follow behind you, stalking you from a distance, before merging with another shadow when you turned your head.

In the Deep Woods, it was deathly silent. There was no twittering of birds, no rustling of animals, no looped sound files of wind. Just dead silence. Once in a while, there’d come a loud rumble in the distance, the sound of chanting and something way too large stampeding through the woods. Then it’d abruptly fade back into nothingness, leaving the Woods quiet again.

The mobs here were tougher than the mobs in the Mounds, about Level 30 and Level 40. I was starting to fall behind a little in terms of damage output, but with the right teamwork, they weren’t too bad. Rue’s binding spells were potent, after all. He was usually able to hold them in place long enough for me to finish them off one by one.

I leapt over a Level 35 vampire as it flailed at me, dodging its attack which brought me behind it. I stabbed it in the neck. The vampire howled and clawed upwards, trying its best to throw me off, but to no avail. It soon disintegrated into dust as its HP was drained, leaving nothing but a churning feeling in my stomach.

I was starting to have second thoughts about this whole fighting thing. If this was a real world, and not just a dream, didn’t that mean that I was actively hunting down and killing sentient beings for sport? I mean, I’d still have to do it if I wanted to level up and join the efforts to get out of here, but knowing that this wasn’t a game still put a queasy feeling in my gut.

After about a day-night cycle of grinding, we decided to take a break.

“How are you holding up?” I asked, sitting down on a fallen log.

“Fine. I still have plenty of MP,” Rue replied, poking the air, seemingly checking a status screen that I couldn’t see.

“Plenty? There were a lot of mobs though,” I remarked. “My MP bar is nearly depleted.”

“Mine is still about half full,” he replied. “My MP recovery rate is quite high, you see.”

“Half? Those must be some ridiculous rates if you’re still chugging along after all that.”

“I did tell you that I had better gear, after all.”

“True, true…” Hmmm… “Care to tell me what they are?”

“I… would rather not.”

“That’s fine,” I said, a little disappointed. I might have been able to figure out why he was so familiar looking from his kit. “Was just a tad curious.”

Instead, I turned to my skill window and opened it up. I’d advanced by another five Levels since the last time I’d checked, giving me the option to pick yet another skill from the skill tree.

By this time, my MP usage was increasing at a rapid rate, making it difficult for me to continuously use MP spells to buff my attack damage. While the Jade Sash was doing a decent job at keeping me afloat, I still needed more MP.

I scrolled out of the Kobold skill tree and picked a Briar Elf skill.

Peace of Mind (3)

Passive.

Increases MP recovery rate by 50%.

There, that would do it. More MP, more damage dealt. The recovery rate wouldn’t be as high as it ought to be for the really big damage skills, but it was still good enough for now.

I’d like to say that I felt the rush of MP surging through my veins, rejuvenating me and relieving me of any fatigue, but no. It was just the increased recovery rate of the blue bar at the top of my vision, with no physical feeling whatsoever.

Since this was a real world and not a dream, shouldn’t I logically be able to feel something while levelling up? It was still weird how I never got tired, and hadn't had to sleep at all since I got here. How many days had it been? 4? 5? I wondered if my boss was thinking about me. I certainly didn’t miss him.

My thoughts were interrupted by Rue calling out all of a sudden.

“Luck!” he hissed. I turned to find him crouching beside a rock.

“What’s up?”

“Come!”

I hurried on over to the rock and crouched down next to him, peering around the edge to see what he was looking at.

“What’s did you see—“

“Shh,” he pressed his fingers to his lips. “Here she comes.”

Slowly, the leaves of the trees began to rustle. At first it was barely noticeable, just a quiet rustle in the wind, then gradually increased in pace and sound, faster and faster, louder and louder. The wind began to pick up, its quiet whistle turning to a raging howl within seconds. The trees groaned. The grass hissed. A swirl of red-brown leaves were whirled up into the vortex of wind and swept around and around as if inside a cyclone.

Then, a hand formed out of the leaves, then an arm, a shoulder, a face. Out of the leaves came a woman dressed in the red-gold of fall, auburn hair and skirts of autumn leaves. The wind whirled the leaves into shape, before dying down, leaving a lady standing in the middle of the Deep Woods, a red-gold glow emitting all around her.

“The Ghoul of Samhain…” breathed Rue as he watched her flit from tree to tree. “The mark of the end of Summer and the start of Winter.”

“Fancy running into a field boss here,” I remarked, beginning to pull Sorrow out from my Inventory. “Come to think of it, now’s about the right time for one of the Seasons to spawn.”

“She drops a Stain of Autumn Gold upon defeat,” said Rue, turning to me. “Do you have use for a craftable like that?”

“Yeah, definitely, but…” I stopped.

This was not a dream, I reminded myself. This was reality.

“But what?” Rue asked, looking at me with a curious gaze.

“Won’t she die?” I stared at the lady made of leaves, flitting from tree to tree on a gust of wind. A gentle smile adorned her face as she reached out to stroke the leaves of one of the trees.

Rue hesitated.

“What prompts the sudden question?” He asked. “You didn’t have issues with battle before.”

“It’s just…” I struggled with whether I should admit everything to Rue. “See, let’s say that I thought I was dreaming this whole time.”

“Go on…”

“And I thought that since this was a dream, I wouldn’t be causing any actual harm by killing things. Just, a dream stays a dream, you know? No consequences.”

Rue nodded.

“But then let’s say I was told that this world is actually real. All of a sudden, I’m painfully aware of all the murder I’ve been doing.” I thought back to the Redcap massacres in the Light Marshes. They were cursed Kobolds, true, but what if they could have been healed? “Just… Doesn’t feel right, you know?”

Rue nodded slowly, pondering my words.

“If it makes you feel a bit less hesitant, all these creatures that we’ve been hunting down are enemies of Briarwood,” he waved around at the Deep Woods. “All of them are creatures that encroach upon Briarwood’s land, making it unsafe for us NPCs to move around outside of our designated zones. They will respawn by the end of the day, but by slaying them, you are making Briarwood a little bit safer for the rest of us. It is the same with the bosses.”

“I guess, but…” I looked back at the Ghoul of Samhain, then shook my head. “Nevermind, I’m being silly.”

“You would not be the first Chosen One to have this struggle,” Rue nodded, and stood up. “But regardless of what it may be like in the human world, things are just different here in Briarwood. For the bosses and those that the world deems important, death is not permanent. We will come back as long as the world wills it. The world decrees that Briarwood will forever be at war. The Chosen Ones must slay the beasts, and the beasts must fight the Chosen Ones.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that…” Rue stopped, his mouth open, but not making a sound. I waited for him to continue.

“Nevermind,” he said eventually. “It is of no great concern. What matters is that it is alright to slay the bosses. No one will hold it against you, not even the bosses themselves.”

“I guess…”

I was still a bit apprehensive even as we emerged from our hiding place and sprinted towards the Ghoul of Samhain. Turning, she let out a piercing screech, and swiped wildly at us. Rue and I split up, with me drawing aggro over to the left and Rue getting in position to cast a spell.

The Ghoul whirled around to face me, her gold eyes gleaming through the dark forest. Raising a finger, she pointed in my direction. Swirling up out of her dress, leaves began to coalesce into a sharp, spear-like shape. There was a moment of anticipation as its tip homed in on me. Then it shot.

I dodged the leaf spear with a roll, and cast Throwing Knives. They smacked into the Ghoul’s body, taking off a chunk of her health. Another chunk swiftly dropped off with Rue’s follow up attack, black spears piercing up from the ground. The leaf spear disintegrated as it missed me, before arcing back around in an attempt to stab me in the back. I jumped over it, and it missed, rejoining the rest of the leaves in the whirl of the Ghoul’s skirts.

The Ghoul raised her hand to conjure another leaf construct, before she abruptly stopped, her head twitching. That was new. I skidded to a halt and leapt back, keeping my distance from her as she began to spaz out into a myriad of pixelated colours.

“Server maintenance in 30 seconds,” she glitched. “Server maintenance in 30 seconds.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I turned to Rue, only to find that he was undergoing more or less the same thing. His image glitched in and out of existence like a hologram, his limbs twitching unnaturally.

“It’s the server maintenance,” he responded, his voice garbled. “Brace yourself for a temporary disconnection.”

“Disconnection? From this world? Does this mean we get to go ho—“

The ground caved in beneath me, and I began to fall.