"You can call me Oak," the treant said. There was a rustle of leaves that changed from a musical tinkle to a whispery rush as the rest of its leaves turned back to greenery from their previous rocky state. "I am pleased to entertain the offer of the Mayor of Wilderven."
Cora forced her mouth to shut...again. It kept falling open from the shock. Dryads had been enough of a surprise without throwing in an honest-to-goodness treant.
"Are Ents real, too," Cora blurted out before wincing. She massaged her temples. "Sorry. That was probably very rude."
"Not at all," Oak said. Its wise eyes blinked. "I am sad to say that the Ents are sealed away. Only when the Queen of the Green is crowned will they awaken."
"The Queen of the Green?" Cora repeated, hearing a ding.
"But enough of ancient myths and legends," Oak said, turning its attention to the dryads clustered before it. Its expression saddened. "My children, why are you so few?"
"We suffered, but now you're awake," Daria said with a blithe wave of her hand. "Are we really moving, Great Oak?"
"It would be for the best. Now that I'm free from the spell, those who cast it will know and follow the trace. The sooner we leave, the better. Now go! Prepare for departure," Oak ordered the dryads who scattered to their little buildings.
Cora glanced around, feeling a bit guilty but also relieved. If she hadn't have told the dryads how to use the flowers, perhaps it would have been safer. The dryads would have taken a day or so to figure it out on their own. By then, that Lavcheg fellow might have taken a new tack to his search and bypassed them entirely.
Now they had to deal not only with that Lavcheg, but also with whoever these shadowy spellcasters were.
Cora thought of her ruined city and then brightened. She had a barrier over her town that only personages she approved of could enter. She wasn't sure if it was strong enough to keep out these new threats, but it would at least give the poor dryads warning that someone was coming.
She wondered if there was a way to set it so that people other than herself could let others in. Cora also wondered if the dryads would be enough of a population to lure Ufgar to her little town. Then she'd have–Cora paused to count–seven or eight more people in her population! The thought made her want to dance a little jig.
"Um, how would you move?" Cora asked Oak as the thought occurred to her. The treant was massive; its trunk was nearly bigger than her arms outstretched could encompass.
Oak chuckled. It was a strange, woodsy sound.
"Much like those vines in your bag, we can be transported." Oak said.
Cora pondered over that as the dryads ran around busily. Finally, Daria stopped in front of Oak and saluted like a cadet.
"Everything is read, Great Oak," Daria announced with a hint of pride.
"So few, so few," Oak murmured. It looked at Cora who had watched everything with a rather bewildered look. "All you need to do is exit the grove, my dear Mayor."
Cora nodded and headed out of the grove, pondering. She couldn't figure out how Oak was pronouncing mayor with that capital 'M.' There was no doubt that it was using a capital; it was actually heard. Cora found herself wondering if she could learn the trick. It would be fabulously intimidating if she could.
As she fantasized about using such an ability, she exited the grove. The moon was shining overhead, nearly completing its nightly travels as it hovered over the trees of the forest. Cora checked her status screen's clock. The small numbers showed that 'night' for the game still had another hour to go.
She hadn't thought that she'd spent so much time dealing with the dryads and the treant. She reached into a sack and pulled out a withered water berry vine. The timer floating above it showed that she had another eighteen hours to plant it before it vanished.
There was a flash behind her. Cora spun around to find that the grove had been reduced to a small green crystal ball. She scooped it up and peered into it. Inside, she saw a miniature version of the dryads' grove. Cora frowned and stuffed it into her inventory, not trusting the sacks. She just hoped that it didn't traumatize the poor dryads or the treant.
"This has got to be the most interesting game," Cora muttered to herself.
She glanced around the massive clearing. Without the dryads' grove, it seemed rather empty. The spot where the grove had been was just a mass of empty soil.
Cora summoned up her minimap. While it was useless in regards to showing her where she was, it did still have an arrow pointing her in the direction of Wilderven. Looking at the empty spot gave her the willies, and more importantly, it made her remember the shadowy spellcasters who were supposedly tracking where their spell had been broken at.
She had no interest in meeting those people and even less in meeting the rumored Lavcheg. It occurred to her that the wolf had been able to talk. If it could give its owner even a hint of where to start, it wouldn't be hard to track where she and Daria had left the road at.
The thought made her shiver. Lavcheg seemed like a very scary character to her. Without Spence, the friendly bear who'd driven off Glug, Lavcheg's wolf, Cora wasn't keen to encounter him at all.
Cora hurried through the woods, trying to stay true to her map arrow when possible. An hour later, she froze as she heard a massive explosion behind her. She glanced back, seeing a fiery glow through the trees. She tightened her grasp on the large sack slung over her shoulder and tried to move faster.
She thoroughly didn't want to meet any spellcasters at all.
*****
Lorenz wandered through the starter village, absentmindedly avoiding the hordes of new players like himself. Every so often, he'd encounter a fan of his college team and do the awkward autograph dance. None of them ever seemed to realize that there was nothing to write with in their inventory. Once, he'd even scribbled his name on a white piece of cloth with a bit of charcoal.
He hadn't said anything when the fan had clutched it to his chest and stumbled away. Lorenz had learned a long while ago to just go with the flow. He'd just walked away, hoping that the fan didn't have any friends in the same village.
"Oh, sir! Please, stop!" A young girl's voice sounded from an alleyway.
Lorenz stopped and looked. Standing at the mouth of the alleyway, a girl held an empty basket with a distraught expression. The other players looked at her before scurrying away.
"Don't do it, man. That quest is insane and doesn't have a good reward," one of them kindly said as he walked past with a couple of companions.
Lorenz watched everyone avoid the girl and sighed. The girl was watching the other players with bitter eyes and tears. Lorenz shook his head. He walked towards her.
"Do you need any help?"
The girl looked at him, tears still shimmering in her bright green eyes. She was dressed in a simple homespun dress, the stitching ragged. Lorenz kept his face straight. He remembered Heidi showing off a similar dress to him a couple of years earlier, bragging about her poor-schtick. That dress had cost somewhere in the high four figures. Lorenz was still shocked about that.
"I need flowers, but I can't go myself. If I don't have them, my master is going to be so mad," the girl said, wiping off her tears. "I can't give you much if you help, just like they said."
"It's okay. I have some time to help," Lorenz assured her.
The girl offered him her basket as he heard a 'ding.'
*****
'Mission Quest: 'Flowers for Megan -
Description: Megan needs flowers for her next day's class. Help her gather them.
Requirements: Gather 20 blue stone flowers for Megan. Conversely, gather 20 mottled daisies for Megan. See Megan for details.
Reward(s): Varied.'
*****
Lorenz frowned at the quest description. Then he mentally shrugged. He truly didn't have anything to do, and the forums had said that the more you moved in the beginning, the faster you would acclimatize to the game's controls.
Lorenz found it all fascinating. He wished for nothing more than to drag his capsule to his college laboratory and cut it open to see how it worked. While that would invalidate whatever warranty it had, it would satisfy his curiosity. However, his mother had already forbidden him from doing so. His mother was a scary woman when she was mad.
"What kind of flowers do you need?" Lorenz asked as he accepted the basket. It was a simple, worn wicker basket.
"My teacher wants blue stone flowers, but my mentor really would like some mottled daisies." The girl paused. "Oh! My name's Megan. What's yours?"
"Lorenz. Pleased to meet you," Lorenz said politely. It never hurt to be polite to people, no matter who they were. "Is there a flower that you wanted?"
Megan paused, her eyes widening. Then she glanced around nervously before pulling Lorenz into the alleyway.
"I do need a flower. If you could, could you bring me five red datura flowers? They're sort of dangerous to harvest so you have to be careful." Megan reached into a pocket of her dress and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. "This is the map to the area they're in. Be very careful there."
Lorenz took the paper and nodded. Then he frowned.
"How do I tell which are the flowers you need?" He asked. Lorenz hadn't bothered doing many of the beginner quests in the town so far, not wanting any of the eventual class paths they led to.
"Oh!" Megan said, startled. Then she glanced around again. "If you bring me the flowers, then you don't have to bring any stone flowers or daisies." She made a quick gesture with her fingers and a glowing orb flew from her fingertips and between Lorenz's eyes.
'Ding! Analyze skill acquired!'
"There! Now just analyze whatever looks best, and then bring me my flowers, okay?" Megan said. She looked towards the entrance of the alleyway. "Bring them to the entrance of the red mansion at the end of the town no later than sunrise tomorrow."
"Okay," Lorenz agreed.
Megan scurried out of the alleyway in the opposite direction from where they'd entered. Lorenz frowned at the strange behavior before remembering his new skill.
"Analyze," he said, holding up the basket.
[Baby basket (0/500 - 1/10) - "I feel so empty!" cried the baby. "I need something filling!"]
Lorenz felt his cheek twitch at the description. He almost had an urge to hit someone, preferably whoever had had the sheer cheek to write it.
Lorenz sighed and opened up the folded map.
'Ding! Hidden Dungeon - Charlize's Greenhouse Found! Map updated!'
Lorenz noted the alert and dutifully opened his minimap. Glowing near the very edge of the beginners' area was a large green dot.
He couldn't figure out just what everyone had been talking about. At least they got to explore a dungeon.