I

“Hey, Eva,” Marie said half an hour later. “You ok?”

“Yeah, all fine.”

“We’ve got to head back to town to meet up with some friends. You wanna come?”

“I think I’ll pass this time,” she decided after giving it some thought.

A nice walk through the trees would be a welcome distraction from people.

“Alright. Catch you later!”

Eva waved to the team while she sat for a few minutes longer. Finally, she got up and picked a random direction to head in: towards a point slightly south of where the forseli town was. While she wandered, she paid attention to the forest like she hadn’t before. It was quiet. There were no birds and few animals. Upon close inspection of the forest floor, there were no insects either.

What she did notice were all of the strange plants that were growing. They were fantastical and at the same time so mundane. Many of them bore fruits of some kind, though she assumed much of those would probably be poisonous. That was the one lesson she’d learned from her grandparents, so she made sure to look but not touch.

Minutes later, Eva smacked her forehead. She had resistance to poisons! Not only that, she also had copious amounts of health potions in various rarities. Even if they were poisonous, what did she have to worry about? She could gain immunity towards it and maybe find something delicious along the way.

The first candidate for consumption was a small red berry growing on a vine that snaked its way up one of the tree varieties she couldn’t identify—and of which Observe★ was no help. She plopped it in her mouth and bit down. It was sweet, sour, and a bit bitter as well, kind of like a sweet, unripe blueberry. She wasn’t a huge fan of them and moved on to other interesting plants she passed.

A few of them turned out to be poisonous—at the Basic▲ level according to her status screen—but nothing she was unable to overcome. In spite of those bad plants, she discovered quite a few that were edible and of those, a handful were actually rather tasty!

While looking for more things to eat, she heard guttural sounds and two different screams. She snapped to action and Charged★ towards the noise.

As Eva got closer to the sounds, she heard a second scream that sounded more like a pained wail than the first scream had been. She picked up the pace, Charging★ as quickly as she could and as long as her stamina—and potions—would allow. Eventually, she came to a small clearing where a few downed trees left an opening to the sky and the newly growing saplings hadn’t yet filled the gap in the canopy.

In the clearing were two forseli. One looked to be dead or dying with the other doing its best to protect its fallen comrade. Surrounding the pair were three omyeskadi and two landwalkers. The group of five looked like they were taunting the surviving forseli as if they were toying with their prey. It was sickening.

With the landwalkers being part of the hunting party, she knew which side she fell on. Eva Charged★ into the clearing and towards the closest of the aliens. One of the omyeskadi raised the alarm to the others, but it was too late to save the landwalker she had her eye on. Its head separated cleanly from its shoulders as it fell limply to the ground.

Eva Dodged★ back to avoid some kind of magic from the omyeskadi opposite her. It was some kind of dark-elemental skill, but it wasn’t a ball like she was used to seeing. All the same, she would rather not get hit by it.

Next came the attacks from the remaining landwalker to her left and the omyeskadi to her right. She Dodged★ to her left while blocking the landwalker with her shield. With her sword hand, she lit a Fireball★ and pushed it into the omyeskadi, killing it and dealing a small amount of damage to both herself and the landwalker.

Eva immediately had to Dodge★ another magic attack from the omyeaskadi that had shot the first spell at her. It clipped her a little bit, but etween her resistance and her estimation that the spell was of a fairly low level, she didn’t suffer much damage.

She Charged★ the landwalker and pushed it to the ground with her shield. A fire Infused★ slash of her shortsword was enough to end its life. With only two aliens left, she Charged★ the closest of them. It tried to defend, but she Pierced★ into its body and slashed through its leather-based armor. While it was not cut cleanly in two, its body made a decent impression of Pac Man. It was dead before it hit the ground.

The final omyeskadi turned to flee, but it took a Fireball★ to the back as soon as it was out of range of the forseli. Eva wiped the soot from her blade and sheathed it before going to see what had happened to the forseli.

The forseli on the ground was unmoving, her Observe confirming its deceased nature. The surviving alien was lightly injured and crying. The world became blurry as she approached. She wiped her eyes and spoke to the forseli in front of her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Fer whit? Seein as ye savit me an aw”

“I’m sorry for your friend there that didn’t make it.”

“Ay. He wis kin tae me.”

The forseli tilted its head, as if confused.

“Hau come urr ye greetin'?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

“Hau come ye cryin’?”

“I’m not sure why.”

Eva began to think. Why was she crying? It hit her harder than it had the first time when she was shocked by finding Hideki’s body. She’d held it back for days, and she’d distracted herself by killing monsters—alien, human, and dungeon—hoping that she’d bury the loss and not have to face it. She’d been wrong. It was happening whether she wanted it to or not, and she would have to deal with the fallout.

“I know why,” she said finally. “A friend of mine was killed by landwalkers and other humans. If only I’d been there…”

“Thir's hee haw ye kin dae aboot it, noo. Same wit me.”

Eva shook her head.

“If I had been there, he wouldn’t’ve died. You saw what I did to those fuckers just now. I torched their town for what they did. Killed hundreds of ‘em!”

She balled her hands and struck the ground as hard as she could.

“And you say there’s nothing I could’ve done?!”

“Nae anymair. Ye didnae ken it wid happen.”

She sighed. The forseli was right. Even if she wanted to go back and protect her friend, she couldn’t. She’d massacred the landwalkers in reprisal. The humans, too. For the first time, she felt guilty for all that she’d done out of rage and loss. She’d massacred them; reaping souls as easily as wheat.

For all she’d tried to convince herself about how she would turn over a new leaf and leave the past behind, it had to properly be put to rest before she could move on. First on that list was Hideki. He’d been avenged as best she was able to—and then some—but she still hadn’t accepted that she couldn’t have done anything to prevent his death. The truth was that she couldn’t have without forewarning. There’d been none. As tough of a pill as that was to swallow, it was something she would have to do.

Next, and probably even more important, was the actions she’d taken after. The humans of the fort were trash in general, but that did not mean all of them had been; and yet, she’d barred the doors and burned them all, even the innocent and coerced ones if there had been any.

What she’d done to the landwalkers, she did not regret in the slightest. They had proven hostile several times. Their destruction was to the benefit of humanity. The part that made her stomach twist was the lives lost in their retribution against the village for her actions. Maybe there were things she could have done differently that would have led to fewer humans dead, but she didn’t know what those could have been. She would have to carry the hopes and dreams of the dead for the rest of her life. She hoped they would understand her actions, even if they might not have approved of it.

Then there was how she’d looked at the forseli the first time. Despite being told multiple times, and despite seeing their actions echo the same sentiments multiple times, she hated them for being aliens. That wasn’t to say they’d done nothing wrong—they had taken advantage of the human towns to gain access to their dungeon—but they hadn’t deserved hate. Seeing the forseli in front of her crying at the loss of its friend just like she had for Hideki brought the reality of the situation like a clap of thunder in her mind. They felt like humans did, and they really did appear to be invading Earth so they could make money off of whatever came after the Tutorial.

Eva stood up and punched a tree as hard as she could. She broke her hand in the process, but the pain overshadowed the pain she felt from what she’d done. She looked at her broken hand and closed her eyes. In that moment, she promised herself that she would not let fear or pain or loss turn to unquenching rage. She would not take an innocent life if she could reasonably avoid doing so. She knew that she would have to kill in the future—the world had changed—but she wasn’t going to be a heartless murder machine either. She also promised herself not to judge the aliens she would encounter for being alien. Rather, she would judge them for their actions and agendas.

“I’m sorry,” Eva said to the forseli. “The landwalkers attacking you and your friend is probably my fault. I drove them from their town—the ones that survived, anyway.”

“Na tis nae. They've bin attacking us sin th' Tutorial began! Ah shuid ta fur killing sae mony o' thaim. Th' pressure haes bin less in th' lest few days.”

“That’s a relief to hear,” she said, letting out a long breath. “How do you handle the dead?”

“We burn thaim. Ah will hae tae carry him back tae toun, bit tis nae tae far.”

“Are you sure you don’t want any help?”

“Na, a'm braw. Ta.”

Despite understanding exactly nothing the forseli just said, Eva knew what it had meant. She looked at the loot she was leaving to the forseli, but it all appeared to be in a terrible state after she’d blown the aliens apart. She turned back towards town. She had a lot to think about along the way home.

II

Besides going over the same events in her mind as she walked slowly, she thought about the dungeon she planned to take over. She would still take it over, she decided. That was part of the system quest and not negotiable. What she did with that control was up to what happened with the forseli. She would go back to their town and see if she could talk to their leaders. Maybe she could strike a deal with them to gain control over their dungeon as well. There were two others she still had to find, and only around half a month to do so.

Halfway to her destination, Eva pulled a Health Potion✦ from her backpack and downed it in one gulp. She grimaced when her hand popped itself back together. She figured that she could handle the pain in her heart without the distraction now.

She quickened her pace as the sun settled below the horizon. Eva lit a Fireball★ for light and let it float over her head. She had to move it around branches now and then so she didn’t accidentally set the forest on fire. That would be a travesty!

Soon, the walls of the town appeared in the moonlight. Eva extinguished her Fireball and walked through the gate, greeting the guards outside on her way in.

Dinner had already finished by the time she made it to the central firepit, but she wasn’t very hungry anyway. Instead, she was ready to sleep off the day’s worries and recuperate for the difficult negotiation she had in mind for the next day. There would be a dungeon run as well, for which she would need her energy.

When she arrived at her lean-to, she found the others already asleep and the fire running low. Usually, the others stayed up later, but maybe they had been tired from running the dungeon or hanging with their friends after the monster wave. She shrugged and readied herself for the night.