Did the forest changed? We asked ourselves.

That was the first thing I noticed once we left the clearing and started down the trail that led deeper into the belly of the beast.

It was supposed to be a taiga thing, darkish, thin tall trees that's easily found in snowy weather, with crunchy grass on uneven ground.

Yet the farther we went, the more wrong it felt. The trees were… too green. Their needles looked almost waxy, the smell was heavier, humid, like moss.

We started moving in a more proper formation now, with Akira leading the group, Marc guarded the rear. While Hailie stayed dead center, sandwiched between me and Rina, with me being the one standing behind Hailie just to catch glimpses of the three women's behind.

"Strange… We're supposed to be in a taiga region, the atmosphere and map suggested so," Rina muttered, brushing her hand against one of the trunks. "But these look like pines."

"Not just that," I said, stepping beside her as I completely forgot my shame not two minutes ago. "There hasn't been a single spawn since the bears that the outside team handled, Not even the low-level wolves that should spawn when a player spends too much time in a forest and for too long."

"The Sacrilegious Druid Of The Deep Tree…" I started explaining, more to fill the silence than anything, "If you guys didn't know, it's actually considered a miniboss. The community coined it a Chaser-MiniBoss aka a subcategory minibosses that isn't confined and can be difficult to locate. Basically not in a dungeon or a quest, so it makes sense it would be next to Worsetingale's tower.

"Now, if the theory were to be believed and this boss is residing in this taiga/pine forest. Then I should tell you to treat it like the entire forest is a boss encounter. The gimmick of this said Druid is environmental control, he can reshape the forest however he wants, trees, animals, weather, everything."

"Even animals?" Hailie asked curiously as the three of us now walked side-by-side, barely dodging trees.

"Yeah," I said, lowering my voice. "He can make a bear into a deer, a deer into a bird, a bird into a wolf… Yadi yada and they'll all still try to kill you in different ways as long as he controls them. The thing is, the Druid can't just spam transformations forever because it eats through his mana like craaaaaazy. He's also a kind of environmentalist who's morally bound by the idea of 'the circle of life' where changing too much would mean imbalance in the ecosystem."

"Honorable," Marc commented from behind us.

"Yeah, that's a good word," I said. "He's not god-tier or anything. The druid is… weirdly honorable... Like, he won't just turn every ant in the forest into bears because that'd break balance, he'd rather watch things eat each other naturally. He could've been a cool little hermit type of guy but every creation of Worsetingale had a bit of lust for killing in them"

"Hm~" Rina hummed. "Sounds philosophical."

"More like annoying," I said, grinning faintly. "When I fought him during the Early Access… Uh, you know, top 50 players type shit? Worsetingale was buffed to shit and he was like our #2 biggest threat in the Western continent, so his nineteen little assholes were too. I was already an official Knight class by then, and was allocated a team of NPC knights to bring the druid down, Oh, man… do you guys wanna hear that story?"

"Not really," Akira said without turning back.

"Too bad," I said. "It's lore time."

I started rambling before anyone could stop me.

"So, picture this," I said, waving my hand dramatically. "I'm with these NPC knights, right? We were all in shiny armor with different colors and designs… For some reason? Why should you even paint already heavy armors? Anyways, they were full-on chivalric types of lads, the kind that say stuff like 'For the light!' every time they sneeze and is religious for no good reason other than indoctrination and patriotism but yadi yada."

"We're trekking through this swamp that used to be the Druid's domain before he got corrupted, and the devs forgot to optimize the water shaders back then, so my eyes were bleeding everywhere I look, exaggeration but you get the point, it's hard to explain ugly texture in VR when everything in the official release you're playing right now feels so right."

"Do we need to know about the water shaders?" Rina sighed.

"No, but like, uh- it's…" I stuttered. "It set the mood! Anyway, the Druid didn't spawn where we expected. The scout report says he would be showing up near the Tree of Binding, it was this massive, glowing oak in the middle of the swamp that house a witch hut inside, yet instead, he ambushed us halfway through the swamp using these freakish elk hybrids."

"You ever seen a moose with six legs and bird wings? Horrifying. Anyway, we had 3 healers but one KO'd immediately, so it's just me, a bunch of confused and breedabl- I mean, ahem, cool looking knights, and this boss who's shifting the ground on us with heavy rock rain that damages even his own creation, causing the mud and swamp water to rise up to my tits."

"So not that high." Rina commented.

"Ouch." I said.

"So what did you do?" Hailie excitedly asked, which made me realized I've swore a lot around her today.

"I improvised," I said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "The Druid's weakness back then was kind of undocumented since, well, you know, it's Early Access and the 50 of us had to rewrite everything from scratch on the wiki. Now, after we retreated, camp and came back the next day, then another day, we realized that his weakness was his anchor system."

"He tied himself to three 'life roots,' kind of like mini-cores scattered through the forest. Destroy one, and he'd start losing his ability to morph stuff. Destroy all three, and he'd finally show his shriveled old man self… Though I think he only becomes old after we destroyed his roots and he was kinda normal-looking otherwise."

"So you went and destroyed those roots." Akira asked.

"Well, not me, per se." I said sheepishly. "The knights destroyed two while I defend them against more abominations… Then on the last one, I uh, kind of blew up the third one accidentally because I forgot I had the this one sap equipped. The third one had the effect of [Pure Invisibility] where you just have to guess, you can't feel it, you can't interact with it, you can't locate it by any means necessary."

"It turned out the sap reacts with flame spells by another knight and then boom ba boom kadoosh! The whole place went white. I surely thought I accidentally wipe out an entire branch of Danielle kingdom. But I guess it wasn't that strong, but turns out the explosion can actually target the Pure Invisibility trait despite us being able to physical touch or arrow it.."

"So you won by accident?" Marc asked from behind us,.

"I strategically won by mistake," I corrected. "Anyway, after that, he got weaker, but then came the weirdest mechanic… He started talking. He said, and I roughly quote because it was so insignificant I don't really remember, something something uh… 'The forest remembers what you forget.' Which, you know, sounds super deep, but nothing really came out of it."

"That's kind of cool though," Hailie said softly.

"Yeah, until he turned my entire party into trees."

"...?"

"I'm serious, The NPC knights just froze mid-animation. Bark spreading up their armor, then there were leaves sprouting from their helmets… I managed to defeat the druid but yeah, they're stuck like that for good. Though the kingdom did managed to rescue them by hiring a witch from the Southern continent… After like a month that is, you know how hard it is to get orders and informations up those fat bastards."

"Heh," Rina shook her head. "You have the weirdest stories."

"Old people am I right," I said proudly.

We walked in silence for a while after that, boots crunching on damp dirt.

The deeper we went, the denser the forest became., with ranches knitted overhead, blotting out the sky.

Hailie was getting bored and hyperactive with using her legs, so she started skipping again, randomly swing from branches or hug a trunk and spin around it, all while I kept a close eye with a grin.

She overtook us and walked right next to Akira, before turning around and walked backwards.

Then, her eyes suddenly widened, as shock were audible in her voice.

"Um… Guys… why are there only four of us?"

"What?" Akira paused her steps.

"Where's Marc?"

My head snapped around.

"Oh my fucking god…" I muttered.

"Marc?" Rina called.

No response.

I opened the party tab to see that his name was still lit green. So he was online, but his location marker on the map was gone.

"Can you message him?" Hailie asked.

Rina tried, but we received no response.

Akira swore under her breath and raised her shield.

I stared at the spot where he should've been, the forest suddenly feeling wrongly still.

"Well," I muttered, voice low. "That's new."

"New?" Rina turned to me, brow furrowed. "You've never seen this before?"

"Nope," I said, forcing a shaky laugh. "A member missing is not the trait I would assign to the Sacrilegious Druid Of The Deep Tree… But not any of the other Worsetingale I could think of right now either."

What do we do now?

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