Chapter 003: Black Woods

  "There is also another... mission we will have to finish during this trip." I said, with a wry smile.

  "What is it?"

  "Well, I found a great treasure in the library." I brought out a thick book from my Equipment. "BEHOLD. An illustrated guide to Dragonspine Mountains' fauna. A foundation of my alchemical might." Thankfully, it was one book that the Screechers had failed to devour. I believed this was hardcoded in the beginner sequence, to allow me to learn the basics of herbalism and, by extension, alchemy.

  "Are you telling me we will go gather mushrooms and other stuff like that?" She made an almost terrified face.

  "No. I will go gather mushrooms and other stuff like that, you are just going to make sure nothing murderous will sneak behind me when I'm doing this." Her lack of enthusiasm, though not unexpected, was still saddening. "Also, before we depart, I will spend a while in the alchemy lab. While most of the tools are ruined, there should be things I can make without them."

  Alchemy was another thing DFI seemed to be in love with after religion and unspeakable depravity. It was easy to become an alchemist... but damn hard to be a good alchemist.

  All you had to do was extract beneficial (or poisonous) elements from, for example, plants. Unfortunately, the only slightly enchanted mortar and pestle was just enough to make the lowest grade potions. You had to mash a plant or mushroom into a concentrated and purified form, then dissolve it in a liquid. Easy peasy. The result was a potion that, for example, restored your mana pool in an hour or two. To say they were weak would be an understatement.

  To become a better alchemist, you had to gain better tools, better ingredients, and improve your skills. The most powerful alchemists (in most cases NPCs rather than players) reached almost metaphysical levels of their trade, even creating life.

  Beginning your journey to the land of alchemy could be a problem, though. To create even the lowest grade potion you had to know what the ingredient was useful for. Eating them and observing the symptoms was something I preferred to avoid. Which is why I was so happy when I found the Illustrated Guide to Dragonspine’s Surface Flora. Most of the uneaten ingredients in the Tyrant's Hold were those inorganic, but there were still some plants remaining. Time for experiments!

  ****

  I created three antiseptic ointments, two mana potions, three painkiller potions, one painkiller ointment, two antipyretic potions, one sleeping potion and three anti-bleeding ointments before running out of ingredients I could identify. All of them were of Improvised grade, which meant lowest of low. Mana potion of that grade would refill my manapool in approximately 90 minutes.

  I hoped for something that could purify water into drinking water but, unfortunately, no luck there.

  “Finally. Done with it?” Leria seemed bored by waiting for me. Ha, wait until your life will be saved by my glorious creations! Alright, it wasn't possible with how weak they were, but they still could make our lives easier.

  "Yep. Let's go." Time to explore the newest world of DFI.

  ***

  "Wow. That's... beautiful." The Dragonspine Mountains were a rather... scenic view. Modern VR was capable of creating landscapes and locations more beautiful than everything that could be found in Earth. Which was already a beautiful planet. Human hands sculpted these mountains to make people go WOW in amazement... and it worked.

  "What exactly?" Oh, right. She saw them pretty much every day. Even such views could get boring.

  "Mountains. I forgot them. They are beautiful when you see them for the first time." She seemed unconvinced. Damn, these NPCs are complex.

  Tyrant’s Hold entrance was on a cliff. Quite high. There was a meter wide path sculpted in the rocky slope that allowed people to go in and out.

  Damn, it looks like an entrance to some dungeon. No way that pathway is natural.

  Due to how high the entrance was, the look from there was... memorable. There was a vast valley in front of me, surrounded by mountains and covered in forests. Mountains were in large parts covered in snow. It was hard to say how high they were, but at least a few thousand meters.

  This forest should have most of the common alchemical ingredients I needed to perfect the basics of alchemy. Not to mention that the place was an untamed wilderness with no real civilization in sight. This meant lots of killable things to get better. Perfect. I'm not moving from here until I get at least fifth level. Maybe even tenth, but that depended on too many factors.

  “If you say so.” Yeah, well, I guess showing some enthusiasm would have killed her. “Alright, follow me.”

  ***

  “I have a question,” I asked. Leria looked at me curiously. "Why are we heading into an aetherwarped location? I thought we would train in a... safer environment?"

  DFI world was dual, being essentially a mix between Light - physical world of science - and Dark - metaphysical world of magic and religion. Aetherwarped locations were an adventure friendly environment where both worlds got mixed a bit too much. Resulting in all sort of fun things trying to chop your head off.

  There were also treasures to be found there. Which was the reason for people to still go there.

  "How do you know?" Leria looked at me with genuine surprise on her face.

  "These mushrooms grow only in areas charged with more mana than average." I showed her the boretus karhimeni I found. Name meant 'azure footed' mushroom of boretus family in a taxonomy used by writers of the Illustrated Guide. Magic changed them, making them draw free aether (a sort of magic-radiation) from air and store it in their tissue. Making them useful for low grade mana potions.

  "Oh. I see gathering mushrooms has its good sides."

  I sighed. As if a variety of beneficial potions and ointments wasn't a benefit on their own.

  "Well, the Black Woods aren't one of these murderous anomalies. Dangerous, sure, but we should manage as long as we don't go too deep. And that's the only reliable place for combat training I can think of."

  "Hmph,” I grunted. “I'd still prefer if you tell me such things earlier next time."

  "Alright, alright... well, expect daemons aligned with black magic, but not doom magic. The biggest problem will be navigating the place since the Black Woods are rather... intricate. One of the features of this place is that trees there are overgrown. The deeper you go, the narrower and more twisted the passages... and more dangerous the inhabitants. This trait makes navigation on its most basic level easy. If your surroundings keep getting darker and more narrow, you know you are going deeper inside."

  "Seems reasonable. Problem is that I have no knowledge about local flora. Which means I will have to resort to that dreadful method of learning about local ingredients." I sighed, seeing her lack of understanding. "I'll show you after we return. This isn't something you want to do in the wild. For now, I'll just put mushrooms and more original looking plants in my inventory." I explained its existence to her earlier as one of the 'Gifts from Beyond'. She believed it. She was surprisingly gullible.

  ***

  Yeah, well, there was progress, even if I was yet to see any enemies.

  Soon the forest got… more troublesome to walk through. Gnarled roots covered the ground. The trees themselves seemed twisted, their branches sometimes looked like hands, drawn towards us by some malicious intent. The magic of this place sucked daylight away - it was noon, yet the insides of the Black Woods were unnaturally dark. Something seemed to move in the shadows in our peripheral vision, never visible enough for us to even guess its nature. My inborn magic sense kept… tingling, not painful but certainly unnerving.

  Yep, that's DFI's magical anomaly. Not too strong, since not only were we still alive, we went so far unmolested. Experience from their past games turned out useful in the least expected moments.

  It also had a downside of making me complacent. We almost got ambushed. Almost, since Leria was still alert enough to spot enemies before one of them skewered her.

  There were two. Towering, with very thin prolonged limbs that made them look like two meter high stickmen made from dark wood. Instead of heads they had a twisted combination of branches gnarled together into roughly round form. Their upper limbs ended not with hands, but with sharp and nasty looking 'needles'.

  Creatures made from dark wood haunting an area that is literally called Black Woods. In a twilight-level lighting. Yeah, no wonder they almost ambushed us.

  Two Iron-II grades should be manageable. Copper graded creatures are glorified pests. Irons in DFI ranking are lowest ranked ‘normal’ enemies.

  The nearest Stalker tried to hit Leria's with an overhead swing, but she stopped it with her shield. She bashed him back, but... what?!

  Rather than being pushed back, he... bent backwards?! What is this magic?!

  Leria might not have had much experience in fighting, but she had good instincts. Seeing the strange movement of her opponent, she jumped back to reassess the situation. Just in time, since the daemon's next attack was an uppercut stab reinforced with magic. It would pierce through her shield. Or at least depleted her Aura a lot.

  Then I noticed what happened. The bastard's legs somehow fused with the roots on the ground. Rather than being pushed back he bent backwards... and then returned to its starting position. That's cheating!

  Now I wish I knew fire magic. I fired Life Tap, but the Stalker lost very few hitpoints. I tried an Arcane Bolt, but he dodged it.

  Damn it, despite looking like naked scarecrows these guys are insanely agi... wait, these guys? Where is the second on...

  I dodged death by a hair's breadth. The second daemon kept his distance, and I forgot about him in the heat of the fight. Because of that, I failed to notice he wasn't a Stalker... he was a Bolt Thrower. Rather than stick-like upper limbs, it had clubs.

  When I looked at him, he was 'pointing' at me. I ducked right before two wooden needles - that in terms of size and power looked more like crossbow bolts - skewered me. Fired from its club-like protrusions.

  I was stupid. I didn't even conjure the Magic Shield. I was literally begging to get slain in first ambush. I fixed my mistake and then fired two Arcane Bolts at him. One shot connected. The impact pushed him back and had enough kinetic power to cause damage.

  10% of his lifeforce. Well, it was only a glancing hit. Their agility was almost idiotic. I'm going to run out of mana before he runs out of vitality.

  He fired several more needles at me. My magic shield dropped a lot. I retaliated with two Life Taps... and then I got an idea.

  I summoned a tentacle. It coiled around his leg, all the way up to thigh. He looked down and fired needles against it, but it failed to do anything.

  When he was immobilized, I hit him with a chain of six Arcane Bolts. He still avoided one, but the rest connected. One was a glancing hit... but the rest were on the border of critical hits, since it couldn't be pushed back or bent and arcane bolts were all about blunt hits.

  The Bolt Thrower collapsed after losing all energy he had for self-regeneration. I turned towards the Stalker that was still fighting with Leria. The two seemed pretty evenly matched. The daemon lost about half of his lifeforce while Leria looked beat up and had several shallow wounds.

  I cast another Tentacle and immobilized the Stalker. Leria saw it and went on an offensive. When the hex ran out of steam and dispersed it was already over. The daemon was almost dead, and making the word 'almost' disappear was child's play at this point.

  "Wow." Said Leria, almost gasping for air. "I didn't think they were so strong."

  Hearing the word 'strong' used to describe the creatures we fought sounded almost surreal. DFI's bestiaries were rather expansive and ranged all the way up to Black Crystal grade creatures that required combined might of millions of players to take down. It was less of a boss fight than a regular war waged throughout the entire game world. I might have been an average player in their last VRMMORPG but I still took part in a few of such battles as a simple footsoldier. My old character would stomp creatures like that without even noticing, and there were many players that could do the same to me.

  But yeah, fighting them on a first level was troublesome. High ranked Copper Grades (VI-IX) would have been a better idea for a start.

  "At least we won. " I shrugged. I took a mana potion from the Equipment and drank it. It was blue, of course. The taste... well, it tasted like mushrooms. Not the tastiest thing I ever drank, but I could get used to it. I didn't drink the entire bottle, VRMMORPGs were way past the period when you had to use items like that. "We shouldn't go deeper, just move around this place. Now we know that immobilizing them is the key, we should be able to take them down. As long as there won't be too many of them." She nodded. Well, the plan seemed sound. Let's see how long we will follow it until the game AI decides this is too much of the grind and we have to be interrupted.

  ***

  The game allowed us to 'grind' quite long. We spent two days in the Black Woods, taking down twenty-five Blackwood Stalkers and seven Blackwood Bolt Throwers. We used a similar plan - we moved around on the edges of the anomaly, fighting weak groups of daemons. Stronger groups we avoided. Or, to be exact, we fled from them. While agile, they weren't fast. We had to kill Bolt Throwers before running, to avoid getting shot, but they seemed to be rare.

  This was a rather weak anomaly. Stronger ones would have a much wider variety of creatures. The weakest ones sometimes had only a single type of daemon manifesting.

  We also proved that DFI said a truth when it claimed the game-time is sped up. Two days in-game and according to the clock in the menu only seven hours passed in real life. Since I started playing in the morning I had at least two more days before I will have to wake up. Neat.

  Unfortunately, the anti-grind mechanism (which I only guessed that existed) started up. It decided that we needed some... distraction. Some variety in our playthrough.

  On the third morning we found the first bodies.

  Yeah, just wonderful.