We followed the river for two days before we came across a road. It was a really nice one, with smooth gray stones neatly fitted together. From the look of it, I guessed it’d been running parallel to the river and, just like the river, run straight through the forest.

Hm, something about that didn’t sit right with me. A nice road like this, running through a cursed forest? Wasn’t that a bit… unwise? After mulling it over for a bit, I optimistically decided it must be enchanted. Since the forest didn’t want me to leave, maybe it prevented me from ever getting the road.

Yeah. That must be it.

Haha.

We followed the road, and after a few hours of winding and gentle slopes, we started up a steep hill. I hoped they had cars on this world, otherwise any poor creature tasked with pulling a haul had their work cut out for them on this hill. It was ridiculous.

Once we were at the top, I pointed excitedly at what I saw in the distance: A CITY. Specifically the one I’d seen on the tree top earlier.

Dignity let out a “woohoo!” in excitement.

We were still pretty far away, but the clear day and lack of trees gave us a very good look at it (especially with my improved eyesight): fortified with a high wall and tiered so that the buildings (while shorter than a modern city) stacked like a pyramid.

Just like the road, I felt something was a little off. I stared at it hard for a minute trying to put my finger on what was bothering me, but gave up. Perhaps when I got closer I’d figure it out.

We marched on!

It took us another two days walking to get to the city. And as it progressively loomed larger and larger, I felt more and more uncomfortable. Still, I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me.

Until we came to the city gates. They were set in a huge arching light grey gateway and wide open, as if inviting people in. But, see, that was the problem.

There were no people.

In fact, I hadn’t met a single person on the road. I felt like a huge idiot for not noticing it sooner. The road itself should have hinted: it was pristine, as if it’d never been heavily traveled on. The city was the same way, beautiful and clean… unused.

Who builds a whole city and a road to it but never lets anyone in? And who runs the road through a cursed forest?

Right. Right. All obvious signs things weren’t normal.

I sighed deeply and put my face in the palms of my hands.

Dignity looked up at me in surprise, asking, “What’s wrong?”

I laughed hollowly. Of course he didn’t know, he’d never seen a city. Anyone who’d been in a city knew that a quiet like this one wasn’t natural.

Should I turn back? That would be sensible. But back to where? I had no idea where to go. If I turned around and followed the road out, I’d end up back in the forest. And now I doubted that the road was enchanted. It being cursed likely had something to do with the city being empty.

Feeling deflated, I explained. “This city is empty. Something this big should have people coming and going, guards. There should be some kind of noise. But there’s nothing at all. It’s as if someone build a city and forgot to put people in it.”

His eyes grew round with fear. “Is it possible they forgot the people?”

“No.” I chuckled weakly. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s clear this isn’t—”

I whipped around, my sword out and stance ready. I’d heard something strange, very strange, and I knew instinctively it wasn’t friendly. I was right.

There were three… things. Big things. They were humanoid in shape, with creepily long arms and legs and big fat bodies. But what really got me was their faces: where eyes, nose, and a mouth should be were three holes. There was nothing in them, just big gaping holes.

A shiver ran up my spine and I felt Dignity grab my pants. I knew without looking that he was freaking out too.

I was thinking about how I should attack when their mouth holes widened and they… I don’t know what you would call it. It wasn’t talking or screaming, just a sound. A really loud, horrifying sound aimed directly at me.

I heard something like thousands of voicing wailing in agony mixed with all the strange sounds you hear in horror films. Every hair on my body stood up and I probably looked a bit like a frightened cat at that moment. My mind went blank and all I could think of was I needed to run.

Without a thought in my head, I hauled Dignity up by the middle and ran. I ran right into the city.

How long I ran, I don’t know. I just kept going, unable to shake the feeling those… things… were just on my heels. It wasn’t until I was totally exhausted and couldn’t breath anymore that I finally came to a jerky stopped.

Still scared, I looked behind me, but there was nothing there. Relief washed over me and I collapsed in a heap on the ground, dropping Dignity as I went. Gasping, I tried to catch my breath, while at the same time staying on high alert.

Dignity was gripping tightly to my arm, his thin tail wrapped around his right leg, quivering. Since he hadn’t run, he still had plenty of energy.

“Is this—is this civilization?” He asked in a shaky voice.

Poor kid. He didn’t deserve this kind of trauma.

I shook my head as a negative, gasping. “This… isn’t… normal.”

After a few minutes of rest my breathing finally normalized. I took a good look around me and groaned. Hands in my hair, I pulled slightly in frustration. I’d ended up going the direction I didn’t want to go.

I was far into the city. And it was just as disturbingly quiet inside as outside. In fact, it was even more obvious something was terribly wrong now that I was inside. Everything was too clean and sterile. All the buildings were made of the same grayish white colored stone as the road. It was all fake.

I’d walked into some kind of trap, I was certain.

Standing up, I dusted myself off. Dignity took my hand and held on tightly, his eyes zipping around in fear.

“I think I walked right into a trap, Dignity.” No point in pretending with him. What had I said earlier? ‘Ignorance is worse than death’ or something like that.

“T—trap?”

“Yeah… this isn’t what cities are suppose to be like it. It has the form of one, but there should be people. And buildings shouldn’t all be made of the same material and be so clean. I mean, there’s not even a rat here.” There’s nothing alive at all, from what I could tell. “Those monsters before drove us into the city for a reason.”

“Those weren’t monsters.” He protested quietly.

“They aren’t? What were they then?”

“Monsters are alive. Those were… they were like ghosts but they weren’t ever alive.”

Hm? Do ghosts exist in this world? I pushed my curiosity aside, there were more important things to be thinking about.

“So, like, a spirit then?”

He hesitated and I wondered if this was one of those things he hadn’t “willed” himself into knowing yet. “I think… maybe… they were demons.”

Oh great. Curses and demons! This world seemed bound and determined to give the worst first impression ever. I rubbed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, frustrated.

“Great. Great. Nothing good comes from running into a demon’s trap. How am I suppose to fight—” And then my mouth dropped open as I realized something important, something that I hadn’t actually put too much thought in up until now because I’d been focusing on surviving in the wilderness.

In the game, I’d picked a Knight Class, which had a bunch of sub-classes. The sub-classes were dictated by your moral alignment. Basically, certain quests let you finish them in different ways. Depending on how you finished a quest, it would push your character towards a certain moral alignments.

An an example, if you kept siding with villains or lying in your quests, you’d be pushed towards an evil alignment. Eventually the sub-class “Death Knight” would become available. Death Knights specialized in one-hit kills and status effects (like poison). A lot of people liked them because they had really strong attack powers and were partially or fully immune to any status effect they could cast.

On the opposite end of the moral alignment spectrum, and what I ended up picking, was the “Holy Knight”. Unlike Paladins, who focused on healing and defense, Holy Knights were all about quick attacks. Their magic was light and air, they buffed a party’s attack powers, and they were fast. Their defense was pretty mediocre, but they were incredibly hard to hit so it didn’t matter.

They were also exceptional good at killing anything aligned with evil. This included undead (like vampires), cursed (werewolves), and… demons!

But I hadn’t thought about magic at all since coming here. Did magic even work on this world? Well, I needed to find out.

I thought about my list of skills. I needed something that was harmless but would be easy to test.

Ah, I thought of a good one.

Even as I thought “This is the one I want to use”, information stumbled into my mind and my hand raised in front of me.

“Light against darkness, Light of the World, shine!” I spoke the unfamiliar words automatically. Just above my hand, a glowing orb grew until it was about the size of a soft ball. There was no heat coming from it, just light. I used it in the game to get through areas of darkness. (People who couldn’t use light magic had to use torches instead.)

Dignity gave a squeak of surprise and almost fell over. “What’d you just do?!”

“Ah, sorry about that, didn’t mean to surprise you.” I’d forgotten you have to specify a delay with any kind of skill. I lowered my hand and the light orb floated serenely in place. “I just cast “Light Orb”. It won’t hurt you, it just provides light.”

“Y-you can use magic!? Why didn’t you say before?”

“Honestly, I forgot I could do it.”

“You can’t just forget something like that!” He was waving his hands around and giving me some very accusing looks.

I blushed under my furry face. “You may not believe this but… I come from a place where there’s no magic. So I didn’t even think I could use it until just now. I’m just as surprised as you are.”

He seemed just a tad skeptical. “How can you cast a spell if you don’t even know how to use magic?!”

“Look, it’s hard to explain! I just—” I pointed an accusing finger at him. “You willed yourself smart! If you can do that, than why can’t I will myself magical?”

“But—that—” He sputtered before giving up. I’d stumped him. He folded his arms and sighed in defeat. “Fine!” He cocked his head. “What kind of magic can you do? Do you know?”

“Light and air, mostly.” I pointed to the orb. “Hm, I should probably turn this off, huh?” I thought a simple command and found my arm raising until my hand was underneath. I then snapped my fingers, and the orb vanished.

Hehe, cool.

“The important thing is that I can do light magic. And light works really well against demons. Or at least it’s suppose to.”

“Really?” He looked at me curiously. Something Mr. Smarty Pants didn't know! Ha!

“Yep! But I won’t know for sure until I try it so…”

“What, you’re not planning on going back?!”

“I am.”

He grabbed my pants and pulled frantically, eyes tearing up. “No! Those things are dangerous! They’re bad! What if you get hurt! Wh-what if you die?!”

“Woah, woah!” I knelt down to be at his level and gently pulled his hands off my pants and clasped them in my own. “Look, I’m not stupid. I’m not going to run in there unprepared. And if things get dicey, I’m running. You can come with me, if you want, just stay far enough away you won’t get hurt.”

He sniffed, looking into my eyes searchingly. I felt like he was trying to determine whether I meant what I said, or if I was even capable of doing what I was planning. He then gave a small nod.

“Alright!” I gave him a small pat on the shoulder and stood back up. I started muttered to myself as I planned. “Demons, huh? Let’s see, we need some basic defense…”

Better to play it safe than sorry. I opened my pack and looked through my armor. What I was using now was low-level generic armor, I needed something stronger but still maneuverable. My strongest armor had been unbearable because of it’s unrealistic design. Armor with some kind of magic augmented to it would be helpful too.

I had quite a bit of armor and it took me a bit to find something suitable. In the end, I picked something called “Quicksilver” Armor. It was a very stylized Armor, with silver-colored plates that covered the entire body, and a sleek helmet with a V-Shaped eye slit. Like the name implies, it’s designed with speed in mind, and had a wind augmentation to make a character even faster.

The sword-and-shield set I’d been carrying out got swapped for something stronger too. Since I couldn’t get light augment armor like I wanted (it was either too low level or too bulky in design), I’d decided my Sword/Shield should at least have it. Fortunately the designs for swords and shields were a lot more practical and I was able to use my strongest stuff: The Holy Grail Set. The sword had a white, shining (literally) blade, with a gold handle that had red jewel accents. The Shield was about half my length, v-shaped, with a engraved gold grail, accents, and border. Red jewels were set around the grail and the “background” was white (and shining).

The Holy Grail items were some of the most powerful in the game, and for Knights aligned on the “good” side, they were highly sought after. They had light and holy augmentation, giving a character the ability to deal extra damage against “dark” monsters and boosting defenses against “dark” spells (like poison, stone, etc). They were perfect for dealing with demons.

My only problem with them is they didn’t match my Quicksilver Armor, which bothered me esthetically. I wish I could have used the matching Armor, but the thing was so freakin’ bulky just walking around in it would have been a pain. Don’t even get me started on trying to swing a sword! I bitterly resented the artist who design such an impractical armor.

“You look amazing!” Dignity complimented my change, a wide-eyed look of admiration on his face.

I gave him a thumbs up. “Thanks!”

Moving around in a plate of armor was still a little awkward, so I walked around, swinging my sword and doing different poses to get use to it.

Dignity clapped and cheered me as I did this, apparently misunderstanding my motions to be a show of strength. After I’d finished, he confidently proclaimed: “I’m sorry I doubted you!”

“Er, right. Well, let’s get those demons and show them who’s the boss!” I turned around, took two steps, and was startled when they appeared.

They clawed their way out of various shadows cast by the city buildings. I blanched under my helmet, startled by their sudden appearance. I’d expected to meet them farther down the road, not suddenly pop out the shadows.

Hm. Shadow demons? I didn’t know exactly what they were, but I guessed they moved through the shadows, so I named them based off that. While that meant my light magic should be particularly affective against them, it worried me. What happened to us at night, when the world was covered in darkness?

Pushing that aside, I focused on the battle in front of me. Three shadow demons moved towards me and I decided to cast the strongest light spell I knew. I had no idea how strong they were, and I wasn’t risking a weaker spell that may do nothing to them.

I raised my sword, pointing it at them, and spoke the incantation that came to mind: “O, Light of the World, pierce the darkness, rend the night, wrap the world in your light!”

It was an “area of effect” spell, which I used against boss level demons who had a lot of annoying swarming demons. You cast it on a target and everything near it would be affected too. The cool down time was something like 30 seconds, which meant I’d have to use another spell while I—

I blinked. The demons had evaporated the instantly.

“Eh? What? They’re gone already?” I walked over to where they had been standing, looking around. There was nothing to show for their existence. Well, I guess that made a kind of sense if they were demons of the shadows. Shadows didn’t leave behind anything when they disappeared.

Had I over estimated their strength then? Perhaps I should have—

“Wow! WOOOOOOOOW!” I jumped at Dignity’s sudden shouting. He’d been hiding a ways off but had come running after I’d, uh, “killed” the Shadow Demons. “You’re so strong! You’re just like your name: a Messenger of God!”

Oh no! Just looking into his face I could tell: he was looking at me like I was some kind of rock star. The phrase “starry eyed” came to mind.

I wanted to curl up and hide from embarrassment. Look, kid, I thought at him, I’m not powerful. All I did was sit in front of keyboard, wasting my life away on a game that just got canceled. At best I could be called lucky, and that wasn’t worth praising.

But how do you explain that to someone who just learned to read and do math? Did they even have anything like computers in this world?

“Er, I wouldn’t go that far.” I said awkwardly, trying to calm him down. “Let’s keep going, shall we?”

I took a few more steps, and another set of Shadow Demons appeared. This time there were 4 instead of 3. Uh oh. Were they going to multiply when they re-spawned after being defeated? That would prove highly annoying later if that was the case.

This time I used a weaker spell called Shining Light. It was an area of effect spell too, but was centered on me so it required the enemy be near by. As with the Rending Light spell I’d cast before, the Shadow Demons were snuffed out of existence the moment the spell hit them.

I went to scratch my head in confusion, when I realized I had a helmet on. I sheepishly lowered my arm.

So apparently these Shadow Demons were much weaker than I’d anticipated. Spells in the game had their own levels, ranging from 1-10. Light Orb was a level 1, Rending Light was a 10, and Shining Light was an 8. If these Shadows were being insta-killed by a level 8 spell than they must be pretty weak.

I took a few more steps forwards, and was unsurprised to see 5 Shadow Demons appear before me. Yep, they were multiplying.

This time I went with the lowest level Light Spell I had: Light Shield Bash. It created a floating shield of light for 60 seconds, with unlimited use in that time, and all you had to do was run into an enemy to activate it. The only requirement you needed to get the spell in-game was have a shield and have an “extreme good” alignment.

With my speed augmented armor, I could “bash” into enemies multiple times before they had a chance to attack me back, which is what I did. It took only 3 attacks per Shadow Demon to “kill” them. And they were so slow in their counter attacks that I felt like I was doing some kind of weird dance with them. They didn’t even have a chance to scream at me, which was the original attack that’d given me such a fright.

After they were gone I reached a conclusion: While they were weak, if they kept multiplying like this it would be a real problem. No amount of strength would help against raw numbers. The way things were going, I’d end up fighting an army of these things. That wouldn’t work.

A better course of action would be stealth. Simply get around them and make a run for the exit. I should be able to do it with my racial and armor attributes. Determined, I explained my plan to Dignity.

After some planning, he decided to cling to my back to keep my arms free. Apparently he was strong enough he didn’t need me hoisting him up, he could just hold on to the back of my armor.

With that, I sprinted off. Immediately Shadow Demons started crawling out of the shadows, but I ran past them easily. I was feeling really satisfied with myself until I’d gotten about half way down the road.

Clustered together right where I was trying to run was a crowd of Shadow Demons. Had they figured out what I was planning?

Whatever. I turned to my right, turning so sharply Dignity gave a grunt and almost lost his grip. “Sorry!” I apologized and grabbed his hands to pull him back. I’d be more careful next time.

With the armor helping me, I could run twice as fast for twice as long without getting tired. Every now and then I’d meet a small army of Shadow Demons, which I avoided easily.

However, after some time, I stopped.

“What are you stopping for?” Dignity asked me in surprise. He’d started enjoying the ride after I’d adapted my sharp turning to prevent him from flying off.

I grimaced. “We’ve got a problem. We’re going in circles.”

“What?!” He looked around, checking for familiar scenery. He didn’t have as good a view as me, so had a harder time telling if we’d passed spots before.

“I think those Shadow Demons are blocking the exit at strategic points. I’ve passed by this fake shop twice already.”

“Oh.” I could almost feel him deflate. There weren’t many unique buildings in this place, but every now and then you came across one: in this case it was a bakery with an artistic sign that had a steaming loaf of bread on it surrounding by fake carved flowers. In front there were some neatly arranged chairs and round tables. I’d noted how quaint it looked the first time I’d passed by it.

I sighed. “Let’s take a break and think it over.” I was getting thirsty and tired anyway.

We went over to the tables and sat down. I pulled out various items from my inventory, took off my helmet, and we had dinner.

That was the other thing nagging me: what if I didn’t get out of here before nightfall? Was I going to have to attack Shadow Demons all night? The sun was already setting and the shadows were growing longer.

I wish I had a map. It was hard to know how lost you were without a frame of reference.

Wouldn’t it be nice to fly too? In the game you could only do that with a mount. And, as you might have guessed, I had no access to them here. I’d actually tried when I was in the forest. Any pets I’d had in the game hadn’t transfered over, and the whistles that you used to call a mount to you didn’t work either.

All I could do was jump.

Oh.

Maybe I could just jump over the Shadow Demons? They were tall, but not so tall I couldn’t jump over them. Even if they put their arms up, I should be safe.

But that was risky. Jumping left me vulnerable from every angle. As I chewed my food, I chewed over it.

After we were done, I decided it was worth the risk. I absolutely did not want to be stuck in this city when night hit.

Warning Dignity of my plan, we set off again. It amused and worried me that he no longer objected to my ideas after witnessing my Level 10 spell earlier. I hope that over-the-top admiration wore off eventually. His sassy attitude had been annoying at times, but it proved he was thinking for himself. And since he was from this world, he knew more about it than me in the end, which made that critical thinking important to my survival (and his too).

In no time at all, we ran into the Shadow Demons again. I ran straight for them this time and jumped as high as I could.

It seemed to be working until I’d gotten about half way up.

I jumped into an invisible wall.

I let our a strangled grunt of pain as I hit it, falling like a rock. My Mewnin racial ability saved Dignity from being squished: I instinctively righted myself as I fell so that I landed on my feet, just like a cat. I left two “feet craters” from the impact.

Putting my hands on my knees, I wheezed in pain. If there was such a thing as HP (health points) in this world, I’d lost quite a few in that mid-air debacle.

“Angela, the Demons!” Came a scared yell behind me.

Cursing, I raised my shield, managing to protect myself before the first blow hit. Because they were weak, I barely felt the impact, but I was still in trouble. I was surrounded by them, and I couldn’t count how many there were now. If they hit me in the back, I was pretty sure Dignity would die.

Apparently you didn’t need to kill them to cause them to multiply. Anything that counted as “defeat” was enough. And running past them was a defeat, I guessed.

My legs ached from heavy impact and I still felt disoriented from the mid-air collision. Even a weak monster could kill a player if their HP was low.

I cast Greater Rending Light and made a wobbly escape. Even with it, I’d only halfed the amount of Shadow Demons. I wanted to scream out in frustration.

I was trapped. Throughly, completely, trapped. And night was coming fast.