The day after the party passed uneventfully. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to level in a single day, I opted to be lazy instead, sleeping in, taking a few walks, and playing with my new spells. Mentally recharging before the expedition just seemed like a good idea, and it definitely had nothing to do with me sporting a raging hangover.

When the next morning rolled around, I felt considerably fresher, and the expedition force gathered at the edge of the village. Shadows trickled in one after another, fully geared, exuding a casual air of danger. Even with the nearly 100 incredibly stare-worthy, impressive figures, however, it was still Hartha and I that attracted the most attention.

Oddly enough, a lot of them openly stared at us, as if for the first time. My memory bolstered as it was by God’s Mind, I was also surprised to find I recognized fewer of the shadows than I expected to.

I gave Hartha a nudge. “Is it just me, or are there a lot of new faces here? Were all these people really in the village with us?”

She shook her head. “You can think of this village as a sort of capital for our people, but there are far too many of us to all live in one place. Many of the ones you see now live in smaller groups that are spread out throughout the entire forest. It is also why you have not seen any children: They tend to live elsewhere, raised together.”

Once again I was reminded of how little I’d ended up learning about the shadows in the past two weeks. Maybe once things settled down a bit, they’d let me do a culture tour? Something told me that the tourist industry around here wasn’t exactly booming, but it was worth a shot.

Hartha and I exchanged some idle chit-chat for a while until the stream of newcomers slowed to a trickle and a booming voice sounded over the crowd.

“We move out in ten minutes! For the forest!” Rock stood at the head of the group, decked out in a wide array of weapons and thick leather armor. As he finished, the crowd responded in turn, bellowing out “For the forest!”

I made the mistake of making eye contact with the brute, and he made his way to us, somehow silent even covered as he was in weapons.

“Well met, Heart.” He lowered his head towards Hartha, somewhere between a nod and a bow. “In a moment, we split up into groups. Scouts will range ahead, and small clusters of our forces will be split evenly in all directions to form a perimeter around us as we move. I’ll be in the front group of the perimeter. You two are in the center group. While you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself,” he said, clearly addressing only Hartha, “we won’t be having you fight unless absolutely necessary. There’s no point in gaining a Heart just to lose her immediately, and the same goes for a Protagonist, I suppose.”

With that, he returned to his position at the front of the crowd. After a few more minutes saw the last stragglers finally join the force, we departed.

The trip to the deadlands took two days.

As expected, the journey was entirely uneventful. The shadows had lived in the woods their entire lives, and whenever we did run into any trouble, the perimeter groups dispatched the threats immediately.

With nothing else to do, I passed the time largely lost in thought and occasionally in conversation. While the latter was mostly with Hartha who was similarly unoccupied, once in a while the other members of the roughly 20-strong central group spoke to me as well, although the topic was usually related to being a Protagonist or meeting a dryad.

At night, sentries were picked to stand guard, and we fell asleep on the forest floor. In the mornings, I silently bemoaned that my usual shower and cup of kash weren’t in the cards, already having grown a touch too used to the creature comforts of the village. At the very least, however, I was thankfully able to wash my face each night with the Conjure Water spell I’d picked up from Elphaea.

I’d been using the spell periodically as we walked as well, trying to level it up. It had even paid off, in small part: The spell had hit level 2. I didn’t notice any visible changes, but progress was progress.

Just like that, the trip passed in a blink, and the deadlands lay before us.

As the Elder had shown me on my arrival, the forest truly did end abruptly. Up ahead, the treeline cut off in a neat line, and immediately past it, the soil grew dry and cracked. For as far as the eye could see, there was an expanse of nothing. At the very least, if we were attacked, we’d see it coming well in advance.

The entire force assembled, and once again, Rock addressed us.

“Once we move forward, you’ll feel a drain on your strength. Power through. The bugs will also start showing up, although they’re mostly lower leveled and haven’t shown any signs of complex strategy. Keep your head on your shoulders, and you should all be fine.”

With that, we entered the deadlands. As each of the hulking shadows moved from the forest into the plain, they let off a grunt and hunched over as if suddenly carrying a great weight. I gritted my teeth and winced as I passed the threshold, and the debuff slammed into me with full force.

You are afflicted with Cloying Darkness.

-2 to Strength, Constitution, Endurance

I cursed, my already low Endurance not needing more of a handicap. If nothing else, it was an ominous start to our entrance.

Once we were all firmly into the deadlands, everyone spread out once more, reforming the perimeter and scouting groups. What good they’d do in a flat endless plain, I wasn’t sure, but I suppose it never hurt to be cautious.

“Wonder how long it’ll take before we find anything,” Hartha mumbled.

I shrugged. Then we began our journey into the deadlands.

Dirt. Dust. More dirt. Some sweaty, unhappy, camo giants. These were my companions in the eerily silent plain. Thus far, they’d made for poor company.

We’d marched for a day, slept through the night on the cracked earth, and continued on with hardly a word. As we’d progressed deeper in, the darkness debuff had worsened, and now it was draining four points instead of two.

Whatever magic was responsible seemed to be affecting the lighting as well, which grew dimmer as we got deeper in. The end results were a perpetual dusk and, for me, a rather aggressive rapid-onset seasonal depression. If bug people didn’t end up killing me, I was convinced that the gloomy atmosphere eventually would.

Speaking of bug people, we’d yet to encounter a single one. Whether that was by coincidence or design, I couldn’t say, but perhaps they’d realized that if they didn’t attack, we’d die from the sheer blandness of life out here.

I sent a few pokes into Hartha’s arm. “Heyyyyyy. Do you know any games we can play while walking?”

Frowning, she craned her head downwards to address me. “You know we’re in the middle of a dangerous territory being bogged down under the weight of some mysterious unknown power, right?”

I hit her with the full brunt of my best puppy-dog eyes, watching dumbfounded as she somehow didn’t cave under the force of my devastating attack. Evidently, my Charisma needed some work.

“I do!” One of the nearby shadows, a small-nosed thirty-something man, jumped in, and Hartha turned her frown on him. It lacked any real energy, however, and he kept on.

“Ah, lighten up, Heart. It’s the scouts’ and the perimeter groups’ jobs to be the ones worrying. Might as well take some of the edge off while we walk. We could all use a little fun right now.” He shot her a winning smile, and under our combined assault, she buckled.

“Fine. What are we playing?” As she acquiesced, others in the group turned our way, eager for a distraction from the stifling monotony.

“We’ll do a round of Witch’s Mystery, yeah?” Everyone nodded.

One of the women further off chimed in. “Does the Protagonist know the rules?”

I shook my head, and the man began to explain as we walked on.

“There are ten rules, but really only three you need to know before the game starts. Basically-”

I froze. Something wasn’t right.

“Stop. Stop now!” A panicked sensation built up within me, a deep feeling of unrest leaching into my bones.

Everyone stared at me with mirrored looks of confusion, and the man who’d been explaining the rules winced, evidently afraid he’d offended me somehow. “Did I say somethi-”

“Something’s wrong. Stop everyone. Stop the other groups! And be quiet!” I drowned them completely out and focused my senses on the area around us, searching for the cause of my rapidly growing unease. Not seeing anything, I closed my eyes, straining my enhanced hearing to its limits.

The gentle rustling of a light wind. The now-quickened heart beats and breaths of everyone around me. Confused conversations from the perimeter groups. Nothing seemed out of place.

As the seconds ticked by, I started to doubt myself. Could it have just been a panic attack? A case of shaky nerves from the pressure? I was about to open my eyes and apologize to everyone when finally I heard something.

Barely audible, hiding beneath the rest of the noise, was a sort of grating sound. I tried to isolate it, figure out which direction it was from, only to realize that it was…

“There’s something below us!” I bellowed, hoping the other groups would hear me. Whether or not they did, I wasn’t sure. I briefly saw the wide eyes of everyone around me, and then, in an instant, the ground erupted.