[You’ve gained Flutterpoison Crystal Wings from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) serpens from a monster!]

Krow paused, fingers drumming on a leg, listening.

Nothing sounded.

Assured, he stood and moved to the next collection of item drops.

[You’ve gained two (2) pouches of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) serpens from a monster!]

[You’ve butchered a monster to acquire its Golden Silky Fur!]

[You’ve gained one (1) serpens from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) serpens from a monster!]

It was near one of the flameburst-shattered rock-crystals, so there were a few more drops.

The Golden Silky Fur was in good condition, which was lucky. The other rock-shatter sites had given him Tattered Golden Silky Fur – using bombs was not conducive to good hunting.

Gathering all the items he could, Krow stilled again to listen before moving. His eyes checked every crevice and every dark shadow.

He was almost done with gathering item drops from the mothmarmot monsters.

As for the ringbell flowers, he was conflicted.

His quest progress was just 7/20.

And he didn’t have any way to protect himself other than the crude stone knives.

When checking his supplies earlier, he found that he’d inadvertently used stun-rounds somewhere. His bullet count had been off.

As it stood, he only had one flameburst round and four stun-rounds remaining.

He’d used all 30 non-enchanted bullets, 9 flameburst bullets, 6 stun-rounds.

All that, and nearly half the item drops fallen to the gorge below. Then there was the fact that some of the pack of mothmarmots still lived.

He hoped the stunned ones were the ones that had fallen off the vines.

It was likely, actually.

But what if they didn’t die in that great fall and climbed back up?

His HP was still ticking lower ever so slowly.

Krow gave an exasperated sound as his thoughts spiraled. “I’m scaring myself, at this point.”

Be cautious, be unnoticed, be patient.

Move swiftly, strike unwaveringly, run away when needed.

Six things a forester in the foothills of the Hallagon mountains must understand.

Listing them calmed Krow.

“This is a game,” he muttered, a second later. “You can buy yourself out of death.”

Krow flinched even as he said that.

Aha.

That…memory was, unsurprisingly, stronger under the skies dominated by Enilhadrad. He’d thought he’d moved on from it.

Apparently not.

He looked up, through the vines, to see the great gas giant, the sky-mother, the moon called Enilhadrad, implacably moving along her ancient heavenly path.

“I’d rather not die at all,” he huffed, bending down to touch the items strewn on the rocks.

[You’ve gained three (3) pouches of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained two (2) pouches of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) serpens from a monster!]

He stood, sharp gaze studying the surroundings. Those looked like the last of the drops he could acquire. The rest were on crags he couldn’t access without greater STR and DEX or were still covered in poison dust.

He took a glance at his Inventory, and his countenance lightened a bit.

Not bad.

Eighteen items all told, excluding coin. Most of it was Flutterpoison Dust, but he already knew that was useful. Compared to what he gained on his first quest as a Swordsbearer….hah!

As for the coins, he’d made over twice the starting cash already.

After the revolt in Zushkenar, with wright skills he had needed at least a week of hard work to make thirty silver serpens – that was enough for a month’s food and rent in a decent inn.

But there were thirty-four serpens now in his inventory, with over twenty made before the morning was over.

Krow shook his head.

In comparison, it was too easy to make money in Redlands.

Of course, thirty serpens still wasn’t nearly enough to buy a good weapon in the game, and when converted to Earth cash was barely enough to buy a candybar.

“Profligate revel-seeking wastrels,” he declared with half-hearted mocking.

Because in any world, Earth, Redlands, or Zushkenar, the more money you had the more you spent. The more you knew how to spend money, the more you think you needed.

Krow, at the moment, had nearly 400,000 golden drax in his game account.

And he knew it wasn’t enough.

Profligate wastrel, indeed.

He stretched, relaxing.

A month of continuous exercise allowed him to get used to feeling ache in his muscles.

The artificial sensation in this virtual world was truly incredible, but pain and discomfort at 60% realism were mere suggestions of the real thing.

Still, even at 100% in the game, the pain of dying by being chewed by a dragon would probably be less debilitating than the fear of the experience.

Krow looked down at the knife he held in his dominant hand.

The crude rock knife would be good for some time yet; its durability was low but not enough to be unusable. Krow had enough knapped and raw shards in his inventory to replace it several times over.

Just thirteen flowers more.

He could do that in less than an hour.

Instead of heading across the Vine Ladder Gardens to the village, he retread the rocky path upward, to the lip of the gorge.

In the upper reaches of the Gardens, there were fewer walkways and more flowers.

Krow relaxed in the pleasantly scented air as he searched for the elusive ringbell flowers. But he didn’t completely let down his vigilance.

He was certain he hadn’t finished the hidden quest.

The forums said that the reward for completing the hidden quest was Reputation Points.

Where were his points?

He hadn’t finished the hidden quest the first time around either. It was only given once, and the player had no second chance to take it again if they failed.

Some starting villages had more than one hidden quest. Rumors said all starting villages did.

The point was, there was a ton of monsters around starting villages.

A player could gain similar Rep by killing enough of those, probably.

But Krow was already on this quest.

If he couldn’t finish it, how different was the him from Before to the him today?

And that thought, he couldn’t stand it.

So he tried to get into the relaxed readiness that he’d seen career hunters in Zushkenar wear like a cloak. In this new body, and with low stats, it wasn’t that effective.

Finally, he peered over the top of the gorge. Craggy rock formations, a few grassy patches, some trees that were more shrub than the stately timbers in the foothills.

His lips curved up.

The last of the ringbells he needed entwined with the branches of the trees he could see.

A final wary glance around, he scrambled up, pulling himself upright on the edge of the gorge.

Looking down at the massive green web of the Gardens, Krow marveled.

He hadn’t seen it in its entirety, layers and layers suspended between two walls of the gorge, going on and on even as the yawing crack in the mountain turned sharply.

The approach from Gremut had necessitated coming from a lower walkway – it was only now that he grasped the massive scope of the web of walkways and vine ladders.

There was likely a whole shadowed vale under the Gardens.

He recalled the faint impression of boulders he could see from the long implacable drop.

Maybe they were spiders, vine spiders, who wove together the Gardens, then went to sleep to incubate their large boulder-like eggs – each boulder containing thousands of possible spider-young. The Gardens were meant to entice prey to the sweet-smelling flowers for when the eggs hatched.

Krow laughed at his suppositions.

He’d heard too many stories around a campfire. Now, looking at places like this, his brain went to possible legends.

Vine spiders? Impossible.

In the first place, the draculkar had planted the Gardens.

But there were creatures that thrived in shadow, so it was unlikely that the game-makers placed an empty valley under such a beautiful place.

Krow wasn’t curious enough to investigate, lest something jump out and try to eat his face.

With his low levels, he’d die without a face.

Right now, he was more concerned with flowers than possible shadowy lurkers.

It was easier to harvest the ringbell flowers in the trees than the Gardens or the rocky mountainside. He could hack the stone knife against the rigid branches – something he didn’t dare do in the vine-garden, and doing it against stone would break the knife.

He started working and only paused to listen to odd noises warily, until the notification sounded and a frame appeared.

[You have acquired 20/20 Ringbell Flowers! Find Velinel in Gremut Village to turn in the Quest.]

He grinned as the flower dropped into his hand, the last fall of the knife parting it from its stem.

First quest!

He stowed the last flower with a flourish, and prepared to make his way down the gorge walls.

A glance at his status told him he was still bleeding HP.

HP: (73%)

MP: (94%)

Debuffs: Minor Poison, Minor Exhaustion

All that remained of his bullets were already loaded.

Five bullets more and his weapon would have all the effective battle-worthiness of a rock.

“Oh, for the times when all you needed was a sharpening stone,” he muttered.

He shook out his hands.

No time to regret.

He up-ended a stone so its flatter side would face up, and took out the last two stone shards. He pulled some vines from the trees and stripped them of leaves.

A minute’s search, and Krow hefted a likely rock in his hand. He only needed to chip and grind away the sharp edges on the shards to make a tang, so the stone didn’t have to be large or durable. It just needed to fit comfortably in his hand.

He shrugged, and returned to the make-shift stone table.

He’d done this before, of course.

The weapons and tools that Findrakon gave its workers were always poor quality.

An older local, a dwarvir, taught him-as-Scare how to do it by eyes and touch as he was apparently stone-deaf – which to the dwarvir meant he didn’t have a natural feel for stone-working, he couldn’t ‘hear’ what it wanted to be.

His draculkar fingers were longer than before, not as sensitive to changes in texture as human touch – but maybe that was the VR system.

It made things more difficult.

But this, doing things by hand, making things – it was calming.

He hadn’t realized he’d be so rattled by being in Redlands, focusing only on the exhilaration of returning to a familiar place.

Zushkenar was, at this point, more ‘home’ than Earth. Earth was the hometown that had been ripped away, the land of his blood and heart, and he was so very very grateful to see it again.

But Zushkenar was where he learned who he was, where his soul was forged.

This virtual reality Redlands, this game…

It was confusing.

Sometimes too similar, sometimes too different.

The repetitive concentrated undertaking of chipping away at stone, trying not to crack the crystal, smoothing away too-rough edges, soothed in a way that Krow hadn’t expected.

It gave him time to think.

In the end, he still added two more knives to his weapon loadout.

Going down the gorge was easier, the path delineated by disturbed plants, scored stone, oozing vines where mothmarmots claws or rock shards had scratched and torn.

He was halfway across the Gardens when he heard it.

Chk-skreee! Chk-skreee!

He stopped in his tracks, leaned over the vine balustrade, eyes searching for the origin of the sound.

There!

On a ladder one level down, a flash of gold too quick for him to Scout.

Krow unholstered his gun and ran toward the ladder the mothmarmot was climbing.

He had the advantage of height, before the monster could use its poison dust.

This wasn’t a fight he could avoid.

Not if he wanted to win the hidden quest.

He leveled his revolver on the golden fur and dusty wings, still climbing, cylinder cycled to a stunround.

[Mothmarmot Lvl 1]

“Oh, now you appear?!”

Great jumping clowns, why?

The revolver lowered.

Krow couldn’t help it.

A level one ratbug who only appeared at the end of a fight after everyone else died, just didn’t deserve the flipping last of his precious mage-bullets.

He looked around, holstering the revolver.

The mothmarmot nosed over the top of the ladder.

Krow sliced a seedball from one of the orchid-looking plants and hurled it at the head of the mothmarmot.

It hit right between the eyes.

Skr-cheee!

The monster puffed a ball of gold dust and fell antennae-over-claw backwards.

Success.

A small grin formed on Krow’s face as he leaned down over a vine to see golden fur bristled in outrage, and a racket of furious chittering.

He threw another seedball. It thunked on the mothmarmot’s nose, but no puff of golden dust appeared.

Cheee! Chk-skreee!

The mothmarmot charged the ladder.

Krow backed up and waited, knife in hand, flipped the charging monster up with a toe, and stabbed it in the throat.

[You’ve gained one (1) pouch of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

No coins?

Hmph.

Chk-keeee! came the call from nearer his destination.

Krow frowned, then reached toward another plant to take its large seedpods.

The seedpod suddenly burst out with tiny spikes.

He withdrew his hand quickly, stared speechless at the bristling mass of needles he’d been about to grab, a chill at the narrow escape crawling up and down his spine.

The needles slowly retracted into the pod, having impaled nothing.

“…it’s usually a good thing when random animals pluck the seeds of plants, you know, to spread your offspring to other places,” he said earnestly. “It lessens competition within a single geographical area and increases species survival.”

The plant didn’t acknowledge, so Krow only made note of its gently spotted appearance so he’d remember it was shy and needed great personal space.

He turned to a plant that looked very different, then reached out with the knife and tapped the seedballs cautiously. It didn’t move.

Krow stared at the seedball. It still didn’t do anything.

He dropped his face into a hand. “What am I doing? Fight imminent, idiot.”

He started gathering projectiles: stones he found on the vine-plots, non-aggressive seedballs, root vegetables.

“Buy gloves, stat,” he muttered, the third time he found himself looking suspiciously at a plant with promisingly large and firm pods.

The sound of chittering drawing close, Krow stuffed all he could into his pockets.

A golden figure scuttled out onto the walkway, fangs bared and wings flared. Krow hurled a seedbulb at it.

Puff! was the expected result.

Then several others nosed around the first mothmarmot, heads peering out through the dustcloud.

Krow spent one moment envying them the immunity.

Chk-kreeee!

[Mothmarmot Lvl 1]

[Mothmarmot Lvl 1]

[Mothmarmot Lvl 1]

“You’re just…really coming out of the woodwork now, aren’t you?”

He smiled widely at the advancing monsters, suddenly more confident. He started playfully tossing some kind of atom-shaped potato in one hand.

“Do the souls of your brothers cry out in vengeance?” He broke off a protruding bulbous growth from the atom-potato and started hurling pieces of the rootcrop at the advancing mothmarmots. “Come and get me!”

Puffs of poison dust thickened the air.

Krow stepped backward down the long walkway, measuring his steps.

Once the dust was no longer a concern, he waited and with efficient movements, met the attacks with a kick or a swipe of the cape.

[You’ve gained one (1) pouch of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) pouch of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) pouch of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) pouch of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

He waved away the notifications, eyes alert.

Cheee-skreee!

[Mothmarmot Lvl 1]

“What in the world were you all doing before now?” Krow flung a stone while retreating. “Spa day? Scheduled world-domination meeting? Drinking at the level-one bar to complain about how you’ve not leveled up yet, unlike that hussy sister of your neighbour’s cousin’s lover’s wife?”

[You’ve gained one (1) pouch of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

Krow walked steadily toward Gremut, his eye on the Minor Exhaustion debuff.

If it ticked up to Major Exhaustion again, he wouldn’t be able to fight back. The cuji pears he ate had lowered it to Minor, but he didn’t have any more food.

He glanced at the potato-looking thing in his hand.

Nope.

He wasn’t that hungry.

As long as he didn’t have to perform more stunt gymnastics to get through the quest, he’d be fine.

He slid down a ladder.

A flash of gold.

[Mothmarmot Lvl 3]

“Finally.” He drew the revolver and dropped the mothmarmot with a well-aimed stun-round. He walked toward it. “Are you the ringleader planning a revolt using a hundred level-one pawns?”

[You’ve gained two (2) pouches of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You’ve gained one (1) serpens from a monster!]

The rock-crystal knife broke as the monster dissolved into glowing blue motes. Krow quickly equipped another.

Skreee! Chk-Chk-keeee!

Three more level ones.

He was so close to the cliff now, he could toss a seedball gently and hit it.

He holstered his gun and started retreating. The same strategy of making them follow past the danger of the dust poison, then going for the throat.

[You have killed 50 Mothmarmots and gained 250 Experience Points!]

[You have finished the Hidden Quest: Dusty Gold!]

[You have gained 25 Reputation Points in Gremut Village!]

[You have gained (1) level to achieve Lvl 3!]

“At last.”

Krow huffed in relief, shoulders slumping, leaning against a wall of woven vine.

The debuffs were removed by the level-up and his HP and MP bars replenished to 100%.

He laughed, happy.

It had taken three days of grinding to get to Lvl 3 the last time.

He took a few minutes to rest, took the item drops, and stepped on the last walkway before solid ground.

Kreeeaar! Schkreeoaar!

What?

The vine walkway swayed as foot stepped on.

Krow stared silently for a long moment, turned his head to study the knife still in his hand, then looked forward again, dubious.

“Didn’t you read the weight limit sign on this vine?”

Behind three level one mothmarmots and a single level-two, lumbered a rhino masquerading as a cute ratbug.

Above the monster, an info-frame hung that swallowed all the relief Krow had at finishing the hidden quest.

[Armored Mothmarmot Lvl 9]