Fog covered the muddied creek, the sweet scent of petrichor caressing his sinuses as he waded through the mud on the water’s edge. Whitebark trees were densely packed together here, the roots of sometimes two to three trees entwining themselves with one another. It was a beautiful forest, but as a man of the outdoors himself, Cole knew that a forest like this in the dead of night was a dangerous place to be.

He didn’t want to wander through here. It was dark, and the foggy conditions only made visibility worse. He didn’t have much of a choice though. The sun wouldn’t rise for another twenty years, and the fog didn’t look like it’d be clearing any time soon either. They couldn't exactly wait for better conditions; after all, they'd probably spend the next decade waiting if it came to that.

“Did you hear that?” His companion, Athena asked. She looked toward the bushes, her silver ponytail flicking him like a whip as she turned around. As he stood there, listening for a moment, all he could hear was the horrible screeching that they’d been following for the past thirty minutes.

“Sorry love, but I can’t hear anythin’ over that fuckin’ mandrake,” Cole replied.

As sticks crunched underfoot, they wandered closer to the screams. With the horrid cacophony of that ethereal two-tone ringing in his head, Cole made sure to fasten his headphones carefully. They did little to stop the noise. As he drew closer, he pulled out his phone, and opened his quest log.

Quest: Silent Night

A mandrake appears to have made its home in the wetlands of the Albersar, its screams during the nights driving many in the local community mad. There have been at least five adventurers who have disappeared in search of the beast. Many in the community would be in your debt if you were able to defeat it and return peace and quiet to the town of Tonnick.

Quest Objectives: Defeat the Mandrake in Albersar National Park (0/1)

Bonus Objectives: Uncover the Reason for the Other Adventurers' Disappearances (0/5)

Rewards: 1,000 Gold, 1,250 EXP

He figured the mandrake probably wasn’t the only thing lurking in these forests. Mandrakes were very weak creatures, and there was little chance that a stray weed like a mandrake would be able to eliminate five adventurers. Besides, Mandrakes were Level 7 monsters - and no level 7 monster he’d ever heard of had a thousand gold bounty on its head.

"You sure about this quest, Athena?" Cole said. "I ain't ever heard of a thousand gold mandrake before, somethin' seems fishy about it."

"Cole, we're nearly level 25," she replied. "What the hell do you think it's going to do to you? Nibble your toe off?"

"Just bein' cautious," Cole said. As he stared out over the river across from them, he sighed as he muttered under his breath. "Since when did I end up being the cautious one, anyway...?"

As the flashlight on his lapel lit up the way before him, he took the pair of cleavers from his belt as the screams beyond the fog grew closer. As they reached the top of the hill, the densely packed Whitebarks began to part, and a oval-shaped field of wet grass unfolded before them. He could see a small hole in the dirt at the field’s centre, and around it, a bulbous green humanoid figure with a leaf sprouting from the top of its head wandered in an almost perfect circle - screaming constantly as it rounded the divot.

"What's it doing?" Athena asked.

"Screaming?" Cole responded.

"Other than that," Athena said. "Why is it walking around that hole? Do mandrakes usually do that?"

"I don't know. Maybe you should ask it? He sounds like he's in the mood for a spirited discussion." Cole answered sarcastically.

"Ha ha," Athena said with zero intonation, annoyance written upon her face.

As they watched the mandrake from afar, they studied its movements - it didn't seem to drift from that same circular path, wandering that tedious route like some robot stuck in a loop. They knew enough about mandrakes to know that wasn't entirely uncommon. Mandrakes tended to linger around the location where they were uprooted, longing to return to their soil as they screamed for being taken from their home, but even still - they acted with caution. Athena chanted something under her breath, and as she finished, she turned to Cole.

"Are you ready?" She said.

As he made sure that his earbuds were fastened in his ears, he flipped the cleaver in the air.

"Yeah, I'm ready," Cole replied.

As the cleaver came down from the air, he gripped it with all his might and flung it forward as he whispered some arcane mutterings to the air. The cleaver flew forward, landing squarely in the creature's back. The mandrake screeched as it turned to face him, and as it did so, Athena's ice storm began to pelt it from above. Mandrake sap sputtered from the wounds across its body, and as it continued to scream - now louder than before - Cole and Athena both gripped their ears.

"That fuckin' noise!" Cole yelled. "We've got to shut it up!"

"Not much I can do, Cole," Athena replied. "If you want to shut it up, then go do it yourself!"

Cole charged forward, yelling arcane words to the sky as the mandrake's dissonant screams continued to claw at his eardrums. As he finished screaming the incantation, his hand glowed, and a vine extended itself from his outstretched hand. He tried to keep his concentration as the mandrake's screams continued to wear away at him, and as the vine stretched out, it began to wrap around the mandrake's mouth - silencing it for the moment.

He wouldn't be able to hold it for long.

He closed the distance between him and the creature as it struggled with the gag, the creature fighting to free its voice from the shackles of the vine, and just as he was about to bring his cleaver down upon it - the creature let out a horrific screech. It was muffled, but enough to disrupt him for that brief moment.

"Cole!" Athena screamed. "Get it together!"

As the creature continued to screech, he could barely hear anything besides the clamour in his own head. The creature lunged at him, jumping and sinking its strange mossy teeth into his arm. However, as it wrapped its toothy maw around his arm - it made one fatal mistake.

It had stopped screaming.

"Son of a bitch!" Cole screamed.

As Cole winced in pain, he grabbed the cleaver from the mandrake's back and pushed it through the creature's back. Its jaw became slack, and as the mandrake began to fall to the ground, Cole took his other cleaver and sliced it cleanly through the middle - bisecting it in midair. As the two mandrake halves fell to the ground, Cole panted and wheezed.

Main Objectives for Quest "Silent Night" Complete

Defeat the Mandrake in Albersar National Park (1/1)

He put his hand against the mandrake's corpse for a moment.

Mandrake Looted

Yields: 2 Mandrake Seeds, 1 Mandrake Root

"You wasted way too much energy on that," Athena said.

"Too much energy?" Cole replied. "It fucking bit me!"

"You have 470 hit points," Athena replied.

"So!?" Cole exclaimed. "What's your point?"

"It did 7 damage," Athena replied. "You're being a wuss."

Cole looked up at the health gauge in the corner of his vision. 463/470, it read.

"Fuck..." Cole said, as he bent over panting.

As Athena wandered across the clearing, Cole slowly regained his stamina, and grabbed his cleavers from the ground. Athena peered down into the divot for the moment, before turning back to Cole and shaking her head.

"It's just a hole," she said. "Nothing special."

Cole stood up, wandering over in her general direction as he put his cleavers back in his belt.

"Well if that's just a hole, and that's just a mandrake, then what the fuck happened to the other five adventurers?" Cole said. "Did they just give up or something?"

Athena sighed. "Beats me," she said. "Anyway, we finished what we came here for, let's bounce."

While gearing up to leave, Athena and Cole looked around the clearing. They couldn't see anything of interest around the area - at least, not with just their lapel-lights anyway. They turned back the way they came, slowly meandering back down the game trail that they'd followed to the clearing.

Without the screams that dominated their ascent, the woodlands were surprisingly serene - the silence of night only ever interrupted by the calls of the owls in the trees. It was calm, quiet, the litterfall underfoot almost soothing in comparison to the horrific screams they'd been subjected to only minutes earlier. For a moment, it seemed nice.

"What do you think could've happened to the other five, Cole?" Athena asked.

"Probably got lost and couldn't find their way out," Cole replied. "Who knows? It's pretty easy to die if you get lost in a forest at night."

"I hope we won't go the same way," Athena said.

"Relax, we'll be fine, I've got pretty good directional sense," Cole said. "Besides, if all else fails, we've always got maps."

Cole whipped his phone out, and showed Athena the mapping app. As she looked at the screen, she could see that the phone had no reception. That didn't exactly inspire her with confidence.

"Whatever," she replied.

As they continued to descend into the forest, they trudged through the park in relative silence. However, after walking for about five minutes, Cole stopped Athena as he noticed something off beyond the trees. As he turned his lamplight into the forest, he pointed it at what appeared to be a building of worn stonebrick - and as he stood there, he pointed it out to Athena.

"What the hell's that?" He said to her.

"Looks like a building," she replied.

"I could've told you that," he replied. "I meant why is it out here in the middle of Albersar National Park? I thought this was a conservation area?"

"Well, let's take a closer look, shall we?" She said, recklessly wandering off the game trail toward the old structure. As she did so, Cole followed behind her reluctantly.

"Geez, why am I feeling like the responsible one today...?" He asked himself once again.

As they approached, they got a better view of the building. Before them was a cobbled-stone entrance which descended into a dark room somewhere beneath the ground, the old stairs poorly maintained and partly eroded by the passage of time. Cole took out a pocket flashlight and shone it down the entrance - revealing a musty and damp chamber about three or four metres down.

"It says here it's called Karimbi Dungeon," Athena said. "I haven't heard of it before."

As the word "Dungeon" left her lips, Cole's stomach began to knot and his throat began to seize. As he looked down at the unmaintained dungeon, years of neglect and disrepair plastered across its walls, he gripped Athena by the arm.

"Athena, we have to run," he said - his voice cracking with fear.

"What do you mean 'run'?" She said.

"We have to get the fuck out of here, Athena!" He exclaimed. "This is how the others died!"

Cole grabbed Athena by the arm, as he turned around and bolted like a sprinter. They charged forth, weaving across game trails and ducking under branches as they ran. Small droplets of rain began to pitter-patter against their hiking wear and against the soil as rain began to fall through the fog. As they moved down the hill, the paths slowly grew muddier and narrower - and each step grew more difficult. As Cole took one step a little too far to the left, however, the edge of the game trail gave way beneath his feet - and he began to slide down the muddied slope. Athena gripped him by the hand.

"Don't let go!" She said, as he dangled over the edge of the slippery knoll. As he looked up at her, however, he saw something emerge through the fog - standing behind her.

It was a horrific creature with a sharktooth grimace and a purplish black carapace, terrifying yellow eyes staring down at him. As he looked up at the creature, he could see a nameplate appear in his hud. "Nightstalker, Level 43," it read. The creature opened its maw, baring its fangs as it stood above the pair. Cole could see droplets of crimson staining the corner of its lips. It was blood... human blood.

Bonus Objectives for Quest "Silent Night" Complete

Uncover the Reason for the Other Adventurers' Disappearances (5/5)