THROUGH THE WOODS [Q/C]

Eris scowled at the cloudy, dark sky. She usually loved rain, but she had a suspicious feeling this was not going to be as pleasing as rain in the real world. Something about the little details that had programmed into the game irritated her. It was so achingly close to being realistic, but just this side of fake. It felt like a nightmare that you couldn't quite put your finger on. She closed her eyes and sighed. Everything about this game was making her irate. She stuck her hands in the small pockets of her basic clothes and looked around. She had been walking in the woods for a while now. She wasn't lost, of course. She was only getting a lay of the land in her mind for later use.

She yawned and started walking again. If the game followed regular weather patterns like the real world, she estimated that she had about 30 minutes before it started pouring rain. She shrugged, keeping her hand sin her pockets. It would take her about 10 minutes to get back to the town from her in she walked briskly. Plenty of time for a little more exploration. She went casually tromping through the fallen leaves, each footstep crunching softly as she moved forward smoothly. She hadn't ventured enough out of the towns up until this point. She hadn't even gotten any quests done yet.

She heard some voices, and slowed her pace, feet making almost no noise against the ground now. She chastised herself for not being able to get that hiding ability yet. It would come in handy at times like these. Being able to spy on people was a prospect she desired for the future. She peeked around a tree at the scene and scrunched her mouth to the side. The player was too cheerful. And far too chummy with the NPC. Wait, did that girl . . .

Eris sighed and started walking over to the pair, making no attempt at being quiet. She crossed her arms and leaned a bit tot he side, applying much more snark to her voice than was needed, "Don't tell me you think that NPC is an actual person. Like anyone would hide in a log like that, come on."

She suddenly realised that this was one of those quests she needed to do, and she let a small smile replace her scowl, "It's giving you a quest, right? You'll need someone else to take it on, I'm pretty sure. Quest out here in these deep dark spooky woods."

"Well," Eris craned her neck and made a show of looking around. It was getting darker now, "I don't see anyone else out here. I guess you'll have to take it with me, huh?"

Eris felt her eye twitch a bit. She thought the woods were annoying. This girl was just so . . . happy. She watched the girl fluster about both in body and in speech. Her eye was threatening to spasm out it was trying to twitch so badly. she could feel her heart burning with indignation at this display of a porous skulled fool. She pushed down the feeling and shook her head a bit, letting out a calming breath. She would get no where if she acted on these emotions.

Eris began to respond, hoping her eye wouldn't twitch noticeably, she pointed casually to herself, "Eris. And I guess if there's no one else out here to help you, I'll have to."

She flicked through her menu with choppy, angry motions, reaching the social menu and sending out a party invite to the boisterously cheerful girl. She cocked her head to the side and ran through the mental map she'd made of the woods so far. She pivoted on her foot and pointed towards where the closest path was located, "That way is the nearest trail. Monsters spawn a lot less on well traveled paths, I've found. Probably our safest bet to get this NPC back to Horunka. Let's get started then."

She clicked on the accept button for the quest notification and began walking towards the tree line. The same path also lead to the mountain top. She'd have to remind herself not to go the wrong way when they reached the path. Eris had a lot of faith in her sense of direction, though. The only worry she had was this girl. She mentally shrugged. If anything, Eris would enjoy watching the girl flail about later.

Eris scoffed a bit as August locked arms with the NPC, "You know it'll follow us pretty closely, right? It's a program that won't lose us randomly in the woods."

She shook her head disdainfully as she continued walking through the trees. The path wasn't far, if she was remembering correctly, and the math behind the lower spawn rate was pretty complicated, but effective. She found herself admiring how heavily the developers had worked on this. then, she found herself wondering if all of the developers knew what Kayaba had been planning. No, there was no way it wouldn't have leaked out if all of them knew.

"Yeah, lower spawn rates means safer travel for little players like us," Eris found herself responding a little too quickly to the girl. god, the friendliness everyone was having was starting to rub on her, "The path should be relatively close . . . oh, here it is."

The trees parted into a little opening for the road. It wasn't fancy or very wide, but it was large enough to allow trader wagons to travel along. Or at least, that was Eris' assumption. She had never actually seen a caravan of NPCs in this game yet. She'd have to keep an eye out for that. If she could find travelling NPCs that might sell some better equipment, that would be helpful. She got her bearings and pointed down on side of the dirt path, beginning to walk back towards Horunka.

"Huh?" Eris had been quiet for a while, and only just now realised August had asked her a question, "Oh. I uh. I was just kind of walking around, I guess? I kind of mentally map everything I can for later. Let's me plan escape routes or whatever."

Eris nodded idly as August spoke to her. 'Never too careful' was a phrase her old friend would use literally every time Eris did something stupid. Which was more often than she would like to admit to. She sighed and continued down the road. She was pretty sure the Nepents the NPC had mentioned would only spawn off of the road, but she didn't like the chances of it happening anyway.

"Learn a thing or two?" A bit of venomous intent filled Eris' face for a moment, and she turned to give August a small, evil grin, "The things you would learn from me would require you to not be so nice, girl."

Eris let  out a low pitched, hearty cackle, much like one would expect from a witch form an anime or something. She lifted her arms a bit and flaunted her poise by spinning around entirely, "Terrible things, dear! Things that make the bravest of men wet themselves in terror!"

She calmed down almost instantly and shook her head. It would seem like she was overacting for the role of a villain in a B rank american film about magic. She raised her hand to be in front of her nose and she waved it as if shooing a fly, "Sorry. I get a little overdramatic, sometimes. I don't know if anything I'm capable of would even scare a mouse, if I'm being honest."

Eris smiled at August, a shadow still plaguing her expression, "Sure you can~ It just takes some decent emotional trauma and awful experiences. You got to get ready for that later, though. This game is going to warp a lot of people who are like you, you know. Great minds and kind hearts are going to warp by the end of this game. If we don't beat it, it will be because the players are too busy ripping each others' throats out."

With a nonchalant shrug, Eris kept walking down the path. She wondered just how well this kid would fare later on when things actually hit the fan. Sure, they were stuck in a game where death was permanent, but they hadn't all completely lost their minds yet. It was bound to happen eventually, it was only human nature. She found a piece of herself hoping that August never had to face such things that would harden her, but she ignored that little piece of herself.

She stiffened a bit as the girl patted her on the shoulder. Being touched was certainly a strange thing in this game. She shook her head in response with a frown, "Even if we do catch up, some players like myself won't be very connected to others. I don't know if you've realised or not, but I'm not the kind to make friends with people."

Eris' ears twitched. Was that something squealing towards them? She furled her eyebrows and whipped around, instantly pulling her sword out. Her lips flattened out seriously, and she raised an eyebrow at August, "Let's kill it."

Eris was ignoring everything August had to say to her. There wasn't enough money in the world to make her appreciate the conversation she was having with an upbeat naive little brat. She mentally scolded herself for being so mean in her thought process, but decided against changing her mind on the matter. The pig was bearing down on them, and Eris smiled wickedly at it. She hadn't been able to test out this sword for herself yet, and she was rather excited about being able to fight. She gripped her sword and pointed it at the swine. And then it barreled right into her. She felt a pain in her stomach and saw her health bar deplete a little more than she thought it was going to. This was bad.

"Changed my mind!" she panted out in a panic as the pig moved back a bit and started preparing for another attack, she turned completely around and aimed for the direction the nearest town would be, "RUN!"

With that, she bolted with no regard for either August or the NPC. The encounter suddenly made her realise that she was definitely not fit for combat in this game. Not in the slightest. She'd have to practice later when she was in the town, but that thought wasn't very important to her. Trees whipped past as she sprinted, a grimace forming on her face.

Eris was panting after that long sprint, slowing down to a slow walk. Thinking back, she realised it was a rather cowardly thing to do, but she hadn't come out here to fight. She hadn't been mentally prepared to take damage. She couldn't tell August that, of course. Still panting, Eris stopped and turned to watch August catch up. Eris bent over and put her hands on her knees, breathing heavily.

"Sorry about that, I just saw a couple more coming out from the woods, and I don't think we could've handle them," she lied through her teeth. She sighed and stood back up straight, nodding at August, who still had the NPC, "Well, with that out of the way, we should get going, right? Or-..."

Eris' eyes widened as a shadow loomed behind August suddenly. There was a sickening, acidic smell upon the air around them. Certainly it was coming from this shadow. It almost looked like an eggplant. It was turning slowly towards them, and she saw something akin to tentacles whipping around it frantically. They had stopped right in front of another, more powerful mob. She gulped and then motioned for August to run, flicking her hands frantically towards the direction they needed to go. And then she bolted.

This pattern of running into mobs and running from them continued until they reached Horunka by some miracle. The lower spawn rates of the path combined with their low level not alerting the game to spawn more enemies probably had something to do with their luck. Perhaps one day Eris would do this quest with equipment and manage to actually do it properly. Maybe.