The carriage had finally neared the forest, and I didn't dare take a rest this time around.
'Can't say when some f*cked up bandits come and try to rob the carriage, only to get beaten by the coachman who suddenly goes all god-mode.'
The old coachman had really given me PTSD. I kept my guards up all the time as we finally entered the lush green forest.
'Oh well, now that ended quickly.'
As soon as the forest started, the road that led to this place ended immediately. And according to the deal, the horse carriage guy would only drop me at the end of the road.
"Sir, your stop has come."
The green-haired guy said as his eyes gestured for me to get down.
"Yeah, okay. Can you take me a bit deeper, I need to go at least 3-4 more kilometres inside according to the map. The forest is clearly less dense on the outskirts, so your carriage should be able to enter till quite some distance."
"Sir, you are an adventurer, and I am just a coachman. I don't have a death wish, and I just married my second wife. Now, 80 silver please."
The green-haired coachman left no room for discussion, as he directly asked for his fees. As if in a hurry to run away from here as soon as possible.
I didn't feel as offended by the fact that he was trying to run away, than by the fact that he was already married, while all I had were bad relationships in my whole life.
"Here you go."
The coachman took the money, counted it, and immediately hit his horses with a lash. The horses turned with the carriage as the coachman went further and further away from the forest.
Sigh
Sighing, I turned around, only to hear a shout.
"Sir! Sir!"
Looking back, the coachman was shouting from a distance.
'Maybe he finally wants to take me inside the forest?'
"What is it?"
I asked, trying to play it cool.
"Just wanted to let you know. I f*cked yo mama! HAHAHAHA!"
The coachman laughed like a maniac after saying that as he ran away.
Did he just go a bit far so that he can shit talk to me and I can't even catch up to him?
I stared at him for a moment before taking a deep breath and shouting back.
"I don't think so! My mom was allergic to peanuts!"
"F*ck you!" The green-haired young man replied. For some reason, he was more irked by my response than by the lack of his own brain cells.
I frowned. I didn't like the use of such coarse language. So I asked, "You suck for mom's d*ck with that mouth?"
The guy paused and just continued to ran with no response.
-Sigh
Another long breath escaped my lips as I tried not to think about what just happened. Turning around again, I saw the endless forest and took out the map from my inventory.
The game had a map system, obviously. But it only said what was visible to the normal world. It was very clearly noted by the developers that there can be hidden paths, hidden zones, dimensions, and many such things, which won't be on the map and the players have to discover them themselves.
One such thing was the trees of 'Fruit of Separation'. Its location on the map was unmarked and the only way to follow it was to follow the map given by Lucas while matching it with the real map.
Not to mention that there wasn't just one place that Lucas had marked, there were a total of six places, and all of them were vaguely marked, so it was going to take a tremendous amount of luck and effort to find any of these trees.
I shook my head, and began to head for the forest. It was still at some distance from me.
My mood was still ruined, so I couldn't help but hum a song about that nuisance who just ran away.
🎵
As his pompous air deflated
In the pause my quip created,
My rejoinder resonated
'Round the forest and spread.
The whole world surrounding
laughed to hear my swift, astounding,
cunning quick-response, compounding
all his shame and dread.
'So,' I spoke, with smug demeanour,
Smiling, I whispered, crueller and keener:
'Do you kiss your mother's wiener?'
'... yes,' he sadly said.
'... yes,' he sadly said.
🎵
"I should have become a singer. Hopefully this trip, becomes a brand new start to my awesome future!"
I took in a deep breath and smiled. Although I had already been shown the results of a positive mindset, I couldn't help but lay my hopes on it again. After all, some random wise man once said.
Positive anything is better than negative nothing.
And hence, relying on the power of infinite positivity, I put my first step forward into a wonderful future, I mean the forest.
-Phach!
My first steps entered into something unpleasant and squishy.
"F*CK! WHO THE F*CK TOOK A SHIT IN A F*CKING FOREST!"
My first positive step into a wonderful future ended up landing in a puddle of poop.
Looking at the color and amount of the shit, I could guess the culprit, which just made this whole experience worse.
"I. Am. Not. Going. To. Enter. This. Forest."
The sheer amount of feces under my legs was so enormous that it was already a wonder as to how I missed this filth and stepped on it. But the scarier thing was the monster who let out so much blue-colored shit.
I started running out of the forest, nauseated out of my wits.
20 minutes later.
I was already deep inside the forest, taking every step cautiously. I had already met with small monsters on the way, but good thing they were the type to not attack anyone unless provoked. Some high-level monsters would attack you no matter if you take the aggro or not.
[A/N - Aggro is a term used mostly in games where people attract a monster by taunting or attacking them, taking the monsters 'attention/aggressiveness' aka 'aggro' on themselves.]
Although I was scared of the monster who could shit so much, I was even more scared of not being able to pay the loan to my faraway aunt. I just can't take her harassing my mom at every chance she gets.
Thinking about her, my mood suddenly turned sour.
Looking at both the system map and the map given by Lucas, it was pretty clear that there were two different directions to proceed to. One that would lead me near a mountain and the other one towards a stream.
Since it was hard to decide as to which way to pick, I decided to go about it in a traditional way. I took out a copper coin for a toss, not taking out a gold one just because I can't afford to lose even ten cents.
There was the engraving of the Kashan Empire on the coin, with a crown being printed on as the head and a small plant printed on its back as the tail.
I threw the coin in the air, and just to be fair, I didn't catch it in my hand and let it fall to the ground. My generous self can at least afford to lose this much coin.
The coin fell and started rolling towards a tree, and after rolling and rolling and rolling, it finally came to a stop.
"...."
'Man, just how bad can a person's luck even get?'
I couldn't help but comment. The coin had gone away and stopped near the root of a tree. It was standing like a soldier on duty, without falling to any side.
'F*ck it, I don't need a coin to decide my path. I will decide my own destiny!'
I started stomping towards the mountain root. After a minute, I came back to the tree and picked up the copper coin, as I stomped back toward the mountain.
'Shouldn't there be any players around here?'
It was something I had been thinking about for quite some time now. Even if the forest wasn't a proper hunting ground, it contained all kinds of monsters and was beneficial for players who were looking to level up as long as they were in a party.
"AAAARRGGGHHHHH!"
A loud shout broke me out of my reverie. Looking around, I can't find the owner of the masterpiece of a scream that I had just heard a few seconds ago.
A foreboding feeling took over me as I slowly started to walk in the opposite direction of shouting. I didn't want to involve myself in someone else's mess! I had already learned my lesson from the incident with the old coachman.
"HELP ME! ARGHH! S-SAVE ME!"
The voice was of a girl, which was almost indiscernible due to how loud and coarse it sounded.
"S-SAVE— umphh."
Her voice seemed to have forcefully cut off as only a small whimpering can be heard at this point.
'Sigh. Why did God give me such a good heart?'
I started to go back in the direction the shout was coming from. It was in the direction of the mountain that was surrounded by the forest. Slowly and sneakily reaching the slope of the mountain, where the forest was relatively thin with very few trees and more open space, I saw a bunch of green-skinned, burly, and vicious humanoid monsters.
These were the races that were called orcs. Like in every fantasy story, they had great strength, a brute and crude choice of weapons, a very low amount of clothes on their big, monstrous, and green-skinned bodies, and a face that was fearsome with large canines sprouting out of their mouth, which would make you wonder how they kissed their female counterparts.
The orcs were known as a monster race that lived in a tribe and would do just about anything to live and have fun. They were a bunch similar to the barbarian race, with the barbarians having higher strength and lower intelligence than the orcs, and the barbarians looked more human.
My back was already soaking as cold sweat trickled down it. Although I was very kind-hearted, I was also sane. It didn't even take me minutes to realize who these orcs were. Especially after seeing one particular orc, whose skin color was more of greenish-grey than just the normal grey that these southern tribes' orcs were usually seen in.
He wore the raw leather of some beast as his cloth, with a necklace of canines around his neck.
His body had scars all over them and one of his long canines sprouted out if his mouth was snapped in half. He was the nightmare that I wanted to avoid at all costs. He was the reason behind my past trauma that made me give up on leveling up. He was….
'Zultan!!!'
...
//DreamNote//
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