“You must be joking.”

“You want me to be, but I’m not.” hissed the planet-sized snake.

“I have a job to do, you know. She should be dead by now.”

“So should the Forest Guardian, and yet you said it yourself that you intended to kill her instead of it. Seems a bit like you’ve been taking bribes.”

“I’ve done no such thing!”

“And yet you’ve been throwing a few villages and people no shortage of bones. Should I send my complaint any higher up the ladder? Maybe get that old ex-God involved?”

“You wouldn’t dare. It would cost you more than it would cost me!”

“You underestimate my pettiness.”

“FINE! I’ll just… deal with it… secretly extended the date or something?! I don’t know! What the fuck do you want me to do, anyway?!”

“Oh, I just want you to stop being such a sleazy little bastard and taking bribes. Just remember that I’ve got my eye on you, and I’ll be telling others to do the same. You’re going to be on thin ice from now on, so do behave yourself.”

“Yes, yes. Thanks for that.”

“Do your job properly this time. Or would you want this time to end up ending like the last one? Pretty sure you got your ass thrust into a fire when that happened.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be better.”

“Do so, or I’ll make sure that you find out why I’m known as a nightmare for your kind.”

“Fucking hell…”

“Exactly. Now piss off.”

…

Lyrhea looked up at the wall in front of her and could not help but wonder how the fuck it had been built. Obviously, it was there, so it had to have been put there by someone, but there was no way that such a structure came about naturally or by normal human hands.

Then again, she had never known normal humans to be able to pound a drum in such a way as to be a weapon, so maybe this wall wasn’t so unnatural in this altered world. She looked to the side while also looking up and noticed something that struck her as rather odd.

About two-thirds of the way up and around fifty meters to the left, there was something embedded within the wall, partially exposed from inside it, that didn’t look like it belonged. The wall was pure wood, though of what kind she could not guess, but the thing sticking out at an odd angle from inside the wall was anything but wood.

“Is that…” Lyrhea tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “It is! Lucky me if it actually has something useful in it!”

She dug her nails into the wooden wall and began to scale it, moving both upward sand towards the out-of-place object sticking out of the wall’s side. She needed to kill the core of the true Forest Guardian, but that could wait for now.

She was hoping beyond hope that something was in that object, and she was hoping that what was in there was still somewhat useful. She had no idea how much time had passed since the fog first fell and how long it had taken for her to wake up and be discovered, but she was praying that she found what she wanted in there.

She finally reached the target and entered through a long-since broken sliding door that hung out at an angle. Slithering inside, she began to search, and once she saw what she was looking for she nearly wept tears of joy.

“Fuck yes!” she laughed as she picked up a box. “Now for the moment of truth. Please, please, please don’t be-.”

She cracked the box open and a stink of unimaginable proportions spread out and forced her to drop it.

“Damn it!” Lyrhea spat as she kept herself from screaming in anger. “Can’t I just have one chance to eat that brand of cookies without something stopping me?!”

Now she had another reason to be irritated with the current world.

“Well, nothing can possibly make this worse.”

She shouldn’t have spoken up.

Announcement

Because both of you fuckers are taking too damn long to finish this, I’m imposing penalties on you both. I’m dropping you both down to Level 5 and locking you both into the area until one of you dies or submits to the other. Anything you have right now will be kept, but you will be unable to level up again until one of you is beaten. Get this thing done NOW! Oh, and you have an audience now, so don’t fuck around. Fucking damn bitch snake making me do this bullshit…

Objective: Forest Guardian Killed 0/1

“Wow…” Lyrhea said in astonishment. “So that’s… a thing... I guess…”

She used her finger to slowly push the screen aside and checked her body. She didn’t feel any weaker, but she hadn’t noticed herself getting any stronger over the course of her past few days of slaughter, either.

“Where are you?”

The voice of the Forest Guardian came from everywhere, but Lyrhea stayed silent.

“You… you cannot be in this place already, can you?!”

Again, Lyrhea stayed silent.

“TO ARMS! ALL SERVANTS OF THE GOD KURENIS! A HERETIC HAS COME TO KILL YOUR GUARDIAN!”

Lyrhea slowly felt a smile come upon her face.

“Found you.”

….

They were halfway through the forest when they heard the call. An assassin had come into their homes, and to kill their Guardian, no less!

The gathered mob turned around and tried to retreat back to their town, but they found themselves stopped by the very people they were at first coming to attack.

“You’ll pay for chasing out our diplomats, you fanatics!”

“We don’t have time for this! Our Guardian is in danger!”

“Your master is in danger, you sleeping slaves! Open your eyes! Your God just wants you to stay stagnant and never question it! What do you think happens to the children you send into the shrine?!”

“Silence! Though a blade is at the throat of our Guardian, we will not stomach such sacrilege! We were right to come here; now fall, enemies of the God of Harvests!”

“Dark God of Harvests!”

“No! The ONLY God of Harvests! Die now, and be silent!”