In another part of Blue Moon forest a group of three – a swordsman, a mage, and a cleric – faced off against a giant ent.

...

The ents were a large race of humanoid tree creatures. They mimicked the human form to some degree, but they were shoddy imitations at best, although only a fool would think that made them any less of a threat.

For the most part —with some rare exceptions, ents had four limbs, a torso, and a head. This ent in particular had long gnarled arms, a short torso, and long legs that were just a bit shorter than its arms. Its long neck placed its head right in the middle of its abdomen, and the creature hunched over on all fours as it fought.

The ent’s long limbs gave it an overwhelming advantage; however, the swordsman fought from beneath the ent, constantly chipping away at its limbs while nullifying the range advantage its limbs gave it. The ent tried to stomp on the swordsman, but the large beast was just too slow and kept missing. Eventually It tried to move away, but the swordsman kept pace with it.

“Fireball!” Yelled the mage of the group as a red hot ball of flame blasted the right side of the ent’s body— causing it to sway and burn. Meanwhile the cleric stayed back, chanting the occasional heal spell or blessing on the swordsman.

Soon the ent’s health began to dwindle. The way it was limping and guarding itself indicated that it was badly injured and the fire on its side had been spreading to the rest of its body making its injuries worse. The ent began to droop more and more as it lost its strength.

Then it trembled.

The cleric shouted, “Get out Rickart!” But Rickart was still underneath the beast hacking away. The beast had fallen enough to obscure Rickart’s body, but Rickart wasn't moving— and then it hit the ground dead.

“Rickart!”

“Rickart!” They shouted.

The impact of the ent hitting the ground caused a loud cloud of dust to rise up, and neither the cleric nor the mage could see Rickart so they rushed forward.

They might not be able to see anything but every second was precious. The ent was heavy, but its weight alone wouldn’t kill Rickart— the pressure on his lungs however, would cause him to suffocate.

Luckily, the cleric's reminder was timely and Richart had managed to roll out from underneath the ent before it was able to pin him to the ground.

“I’m fine!” Rickart yelled as he fought off a coughing fit.

Te mage and the cleric both let out sighs of relief, then the cleric said,

“Good. The last thing we need is for you to get trapped under an ent corpse again.”

“Damnit Byron, that was one time.”

“Yeah well ents aren’t easy to move, so let's keep it that way.”

“Quiet you two.” The mage of the group interrupted. “We can’t waste time here. Check the ent for loot Rickart.”

Rickart looked at the mage, his long red hair covering his black eyes. “Yes, your royal pain in the ass...” He replied.

“What was that!?”

“I said, YES. Your royal pain in the ass, would you like me to repeat myself?”

The mage grumbled, “Just get the loot Rickart.”

Rickart moved towards the ent, its still smouldering body gave off a fair amount of heat, but not enough to cause any damage.

Rickart placed his hand over the corpse causing the contact area between the ents body and his hand to glow a weak shade of yellow... which Rickart’s hand quickly disappeared into.

After a few moments of rummaging, Rickart pulled out a green glowing orb wrapped in vines. The orb pulsated with magical power, but Rickart seemed fairly unimpressed.

“Just another [Ent Heart].” He mumbled, but the mage didn’t seem to mind, responding, “Well that’s better than nothing, I suppose.” And then walked away.

...

The trio moved their way through the forest, killing any and every ent they came across. That is until Rickart couldn’t help but voice how unfond he was of repeatedly killing ents,

“Look, isn’t there anything else we can kill? Why ents?” He asked.

“You already know why, Rickart.” The mage responded, but Rickart shook his head. “Remind me.”

“No.” The mage replied, but Rickart insisted. “Remind me, Melissa.”

“Fine. We need to kill ents because the guild wants to force the [Elder Ent] out of hiding, good enough?”

“No, not good enough. I’ve never seen an [Elder Ent], and you know damn well no one else has either.”

“Yeah well, when has the guild’s information ever been wrong Rickart?”

Rickart stopped in his tracks, put a hand on his chin and stayed silent for a moment. Melissa waited, and just as she was about to open her mouth to make a snide remark, Rickart raised a finger.

“The guild said there was supposed to be a goblin lair near here, but I haven’t seen any. Have you seen any Goblin lairs?” He asked.

“Well… no.” Melissa replied.

Rickart then raised another finger. “The guild said that it would only take a day or two at most to coax out the [Elder Ent], but we’ve been here… what? A week?”

Melissa began to speak, but before she could get a word out Rickart raised another finger, interrupting her. “And!” He said. “The guild also said tha…” BOOM, the forest shook. Interrupting Rickart mid speech.

“Wha..”

BOOM, trees cracked and bent out of shape in the distance.

“What the hell!?”

“…”

“…”

Rickart and Melissa stopped their arguing and stared.

“What was that?” They asked in unison.

Byron stood behind Melissa and Rickart, his back to both of them. His hand was shaking, and eventually he dropped his staff— his jaw wide open.

“El…” he said.

“What?” Rickart asked.

Once again Byron repeated, “El…”

This time Melissa stood in front of Byron, and shook him.

“El what?” She asked, “What are you trying to say?”

“[Elder Ent]!” he yelled as he turned and ran away.

Melissa shot her gaze towards were Byron had been looking, but Rickart turned around slowly as if he’d just heard a joke and was in no hurry to see the punchline.

However, off in the distance amidst the trees a huge shadow was rising up. Five meters, Six meters… Eight meters… 15 meters… and it wasn’t stopping. Unlike the ents they had fought before, the [Elder Ent] wasn’t just tall. It was thick and burly too.

Eventually its height stopped at 30 meters. But that was no consolation for Rickart and crew because the [Elder Ent] was so tall they were able to make out it’s large green eyes in the distance... and they knew it was looking right at them.

Rickart stared at the [Elder Ent], then at his hand, he put down a finger, stopped for a moment. Then brought it back up.

“Well… they did say it would only take three of us to take it down.” He muttered.

But Melissa and Byron looked back and yelled, “Shut up and start running Rickart!” as the [Elder Ent] began its charge in their direction.

...

Back at the boulder Capra was finishing up his first enchantment attempt. He really had no idea what to expect of the rabbit hide after it was enchanted —but he had to try something, and this was more effective than trying to enchant copper hammers all day.

He knew there was a lot of power in enchanting organic material, someone just needed to learn to control the process, and he was determined to be that someone.

As the Rabbit hide was being enchanted Capra watched on, entranced, attempting to gleam whatever information he could from the process.

...

Back in the forest, as Rickart, Byron, and Melissa ran, they noticed that the [Elder Ent]’s movements were actually pretty slow, however due to its massive size it covered a lot of ground quickly so they still had to run for dear life. They knew they didn’t stand a chance in a direct confrontation and this was more and more apparent with every tree the [Elder Ent] easily barreled through as it chased after them.

Luckily for the group Melissa was a quick thinker— and their crew had spent an entire week in this area so they knew it fairly well.

“Run left!” She yelled, but the noise of the collapsing trees made her hard to hear and Byron and Rickart just looked on in confusion.

“I said, turn left!” She yelled, but this time she gestured and began moving left as well.

Rickart and Byron still couldn’t hear her but they quickly understood what she wanted to do, so they followed her lead.

The [Elder Ent] tried to maintain its pursuit but its large body and the momentum accompanying it forced it to skid forward through a few trees before it could stop and turn to give chase.

Up ahead of Melissa was a large boulder, about two and a half meters tall. She recognized it as a landmark and ran towards it, but she was focused on the [Elder Ent] so she hadn’t noticed the player on it; however, Byron did.

“Melissa! There’s someone on the boulder!” He yelled.

“What!?”

Melissa looked forward, and she noticed that Byron was right. At the very top of the boulder was a player deeply focused on a piece of rabbit hide. The player looked new. He was still wearing gray starter robes and Melissa could tell he was an enchanter by the spell he was casting on the rabbit hide, but she didn’t have much time to consider her options— especially not if it was just to save some nobody foolish enough to become an enchanter.

“Fuck him!” She yelled, “Keep going forward and split when I say so!”

…

As Capra focused on enchanting he could hear some muted noises in the background. At first it didn’t bother him, but very quickly those noises became deafening and he was forced to break concentration. The first thing he noticed when he refocused on his surroundings was a group of players running his way.

There was a brown haired man gesturing wildly for him to get out of the way, a swordsman who was running for dear life, and a mage who saw him but didn’t seem to care that he was there.

Capra wasn’t sure what they were running from, but he had a bad feeling.

The mage yelled, “Split now!” And their group split up in different directions. The mage and the cleric went right, and the swordsman ran left.

Then Capra saw it, but it was too late.

A big wooden beast ripped through the trees and crushed a few rabbit warrens. Its footsteps made the ground tremble and left large indents wherever it went. Trees flew through the air like confetti, and all manner of birds flew away in its wake. Whatever this thing was, Capra knew it was bad news.

It was obviously chasing the group of players Capra had just seen, but when they split it became confused. It didn’t know who to chase, and that moment of confusion cost it dearly. By the time it noticed the chasm ahead it had built up too much momentum to make a clean stop.

It slammed into the boulder Capra was sitting on, knocking both Capra and the boulder into the abyss. Then it slid over the edge.

Its arms tried to hold on to the edge of the chasm but it had too much momentun. Its weight was too much for the ground it held on to, so the ground crumbled and it plummeted into the abyss.

Rickart, Melissa, and Byron slowly walked to the edge of the abyss and looked down. Near the edge of the chasm they could hear some noise, the roaring of the [Elder Ent] for one, and what sounded like furious cursing, but they couldn't be sure... They waited for a while to hear the impact at the bottom of the abyss, but minutes passed by and they heard nothing...

With a fall that long even a zone boss might die, and as long as they had hit it they would get exerience, but then Melissa remembered. She knew it was pointless to ask, but she held on to hope.

She looked at Byron and Rickart and asked, "Did any of you hit that thing?" And then she waited...

But she was only greeted with silence.

"Damn..."