The dark forest turned out to be surprisingly dark. Who would have guessed it, right? What was interesting about that was that it wasn’t dark everywhere. Small patches of sunlight were sparingly littered throughout the forest and they functioned as resting spots for humans, animals and monsters simultaneously.

The map that Everic had provided us had a lot of these lit-up areas marked on it in the form of inky blotches, which allowed Emeri and I to plan out our route in advance.

As we traversed the hot, damp jungle, it became increasingly apparent why that precaution had been the right move, because even with the resting spots marked on our map the forest managed to get us lost numerous times in between each spot.

We had been traveling for about half a day, yet we were only at the outer edge of the forest still. The trees were getting taller, to be sure, but it was more the other vegetation that stood out. Roa and its neighboring countries mostly had spruce, oak and mixed forests, all of which I had grown up with.

The moment you left Roa’s southern border, however, you would find yourself here, in a forest so strange, dense, and full of life that I had never seen before. The increased temperature would have been crushing for any ordinary citizen, but thankfully it didn’t have much effect on me because of my stats. Constitution went a long way in dealing with extreme temperatures.

It even helped protect us from the swarm of bugs that lived here, which I nice, since I didn’t recognize even a single one. Even the leaves and branches seemed to have legs here, which made it all the more odd.

Unfortunately, an increase in plant- and animal life usually also meant an increase in monsters of all kinds, and this place was no different.

We hadn’t taken two steps into the dense treeline before a rainbow-colored frog and a blue wasp had attacked us simultaneously. Fighting them off had been a disgusting, albeit easy, affair, since most monsters on the outskirts were tier 1.

In the beginning, my companion and I hadn’t conversed much, scared to miss the sound of an impending monster attack, but eventually, we became comfortable enough in this alien environment to not care anymore. It turned out that Emeri knew more about this place than I did, so I decided that she would be the one to satisfy my growing curiosity.

As I wiped the green blood off of my sword and cut a thin-looking vine in half, I turned to her.

“So since you did your due diligence and studied about this place, do you have any idea why this area is so different from anywhere else on the continent? All the monsters we’ve encountered so far can’t be found anywhere else on the mainland.”

Emeri nodded.

“I learned about the different countries years ago, Arthur. This isn’t exactly the same as studying the holy commandments, of which there are many, I promise you. As for the dark forest, the truth is that not only this forest, nearly all of Alterian used to be part of an island, which joined the mainland after a great battle many years ago. Why do you think Alterian’s borders are so mountainous?”

Oh. That made more sense. So Alterian’s monsters had lived secluded from the rest of the continent, until a certain point.

“So why did the Helios church decide to post up here? It seems a bit out of the way of everything else, no?”

“It’s easy to defend.” Emeri simply explained, with a devious smile, as if she wasn’t telling me something.

Nonetheless, we had no time to discuss this further, since we were about to come up on a small resting spot. I could already see the light pilfer through the trees and illuminate a pond resting at the base of a tree. It was just around noon right now, which meant that it was time to go to bed. After all, at night all of the resting spots would turn into battlegrounds. The monsters that didn’t like light would start hunting, and with their prey having nowhere to run, they would start eating, too.

For that reason, Emeri and I decided to sleep during the day and travel at night. At least we would be able to fight back if anything happened.

Both of us had some proper equipment, so a few self-building tents and hunted animals later, both of us tucked in, hoping that no monster would think to attack us while we slept. For good measure, I brought out Revan to guard us. He seemed interested in this new environment, so I was sure he wouldn’t be bored in the meantime. He was so interested, in fact, that I felt the need to warn him not to wander off from the lit-up area.

About eight hours later, both of us woke up feeling well-rested, though we had little time to wake up in peace. Night was falling.

Unfortunately, Revan was too big to ride through the forest, and not big enough to just knock over all the trees that stood in the way. As a result, we once again started traveling on foot.

A few hours later, we entered the middle part of the forest, where tier 2 creatures hunted. After night had fallen, the tier 1 creatures at the edge of the forest had gone on a frenzy and attacked everything that moved. This, unfortunately, included us, so we had to wade our way through hundreds of battling mobs to make our way forward. Because they were so weak, I hadn’t even gained a single level.

Now, though, the difficulty of traversing this green hell was about to increase, because while the monsters’ tier was increasing, their quantity was not. Sure enough, tier 1 creatures were quickly being replaced by their older, more powerful variants. The rainbow frog grew two horns, each having a different colour. The wasps became green instead of blue, and grew to triple their previous size. Furthermore, they travelled in groups now. That, along with a plethora of insect, reptile, plant and amphibian monsters turned the otherwise pitch-black forest into a firework display. Emeri had brought some dark-repelling pellets in the city to get a limited form of night vision, but it seemed, in hindsight, that her efforts hadn’t been necessary. The forest only seemed to be dark when it was peaceful.

This wasn’t even the worst of it, we were heading towards the inner area of the forest, where tier 3 creatures lived, in search of a liana. Thankfully, we wouldn’t have to cross into the core area of the forest, where tier 4 creatures lived, until our journey to the south of Alterian started.

Slowly but surely, we traversed the forest, cutting our way through hordes of small monsters and plants. Eventually, after hours of fighting, the monsters seemed to calm down and retreat to their alcoves. We soon found out why, because the next alcove we reached was lit up, if only slightly. From its rough shape on the map, we could tell we had gone the wrong way at some point.

“See this here? We’ve gone a little too far to the left. We should be at this one.” Emeri pointed out, sliding her finger over to a vaguely owl-shaped resting spot.

“We’re not that far off…” I replied, somewhat defensively. I had led the way through the mob of fighting monsters, so this was kind of my fault.

Emeri seemed to notice my guilt, because she quickly apologized.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to blame you, I was just saying…”

“No, no, it’s fine. Let’s head a little more right next time. This cloud-shaped spot should be a decent way back to our previous plan.” I explained, not having been offended in the first place.

Emeri took my response in stride, though she couldn’t help teasing me slightly.

“Sure, that works. Let me go in front, though.” She said with a smile, taking pleasure at my hesitant nod.

After eight more hours of sleep to recover from the night’s battling we were off again.

Turns out Emeri was better at following directions than me, because we reached the cloud-shaped spot in record time. To be fair, I had been navigating us through a small monster war, while she had only had to lead us through a calm, albeit confusing forest. How she would fair at night was still up in the air.

In preparation for another rough night, we rested for an extra hour at this spot, before heading out again, trying to make it as far as possible before the last bit of light disappeared from the forest.

Sure enough, that night we faced another monster outbreak. Tiring as it was, not a single monster managed to even scratch us when we worked together, so we still made it back to our intended path before the sun rose. That situation couldn’t last, however.

After a few more days of traveling, we entered the inner part of the forest, where we stood face-to-face with dozens of tier 3 monsters. All. At. The. Same. Time.