I could tell you of how bravely I fended off the weird Spirit that was stalking me, how I cooly whacked it with my dagger and sent it flying up over the trees and out of sight. I would tell you that, in fact, if that were the truth. But no, that’s not what happened. What happened was that I shamefully screamed like a baby, tripped on the Ethereal Cape and fell over into the water.

Look, you can’t blame me for that reaction. It’s frightening, having a big, lumpy, thing just suddenly jump onto you and start clawing at your face. It’s like a scene out of a horror movie where the evil sewer clown starts biting at the main character with all ten rows of shark teeth. Traumatising.

I am not a fan of jumpscares.

So yes. I screamed, fell over, and essentially made a fool of myself, while the unidentified mob, who had been clinging so desperately to my hair, fell into the water with me. And it was then, when I heard the little splash follow my own clumsy slip, I finally came back to my senses, and I managed to get a good look at the thing.

It was most definitely not a Water Spirit. This one was more solidly formed, with small mushrooms growing haphazardly on top of its head like mould on a piece of bread. Woodland Spirit, I would say, if not for the fact that Woodland Spirits spawn in a woodland, and not in a river.

Then again, mobs are not supposed to stalk you. Jump on your face? Maybe. But watching creepily from where it thinks you can’t see it? No.

From my experience of playing Briarwood Rebirth the game, there are only a few things you can do when you run into bugged mobs. The easiest, you stab it until it stops being bugged (aka when it’s dead). If you can’t stab it, you run to the biome entrance, leave and come back in. If your escape route is blocked, then you log out and wait a couple hours for someone else to deal with it.

I could probably just stab this one.

Right?

“Appraisal.”

[Skill Appraisal activated.]

[Scanning target…]

[Skill All Seeing Eyes (Passive) activated.

Target’s full Status screen shown.]

[Name Woodland Spirit

Nature Hostile

Lv 3]

[Stats

HP 300

MP 0

ST 0

ATK 50

SPD 0

DEF 0

INT 0

CRT 0]

[Status Compromised]

Compromised? What was that supposed to mean? Someone hacked this thing? Why would anyone do that? And didn’t “Status” only show whether the mob was dead, alive or afflicted? The fuck did “compromised” make it do? Did it spread? If I stabbed it would I be “compromised” too?

According to movies of all genres, anything out of the ordinary meant that something bad was going to happen. It looked weak now, but who knew. Maybe it would suddenly gain the max ATK and one hit KO me. Or maybe it would infect me with “being bugged” and everything would seem fine at first, only for terrible side effects like “I can’t respawn anymore” or “my luck stat dropped even further as if it wasn’t bad enough already” to show up. The smartest choice, would probably to leave it alone and run away, and grind my Crystal Drop after it had despawned. No associating with weird mobs or their weird statuses. That would be the sort of thing the first person to die in a horror movie would do.

And so, with the wisdom of a dead rat, I told it.

“You’re sketchy, I don’t like that.”

“Wuh,” it crossed its tiny arms and looked down.

Was that a response? I couldn’t tell if that was a response. Common sense told me that it was a coincidence and that it would only be a response if I saw it as one.

Then again, common sense wasn’t exactly very helpful considering my current circumstances.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes I don’t want to see you ever again either’,” I told it, and, as gracefully as I could, stood up to wade my way back to shore. “So long.”

Good news, I managed to get myself back onto dry land, put my shoes back on, and get on my way out of the area without the bugged Woodland Spirit chewing my face off or spraying “bugged” juice at me. Bad news, the fucking thing was still following me. It wasn’t even bothering to be discreet this time around, it just waited till I was out of the water, before flopping ashore like a beached whale, then righting itself and bouncing after me, conveniently (or deliberately? At this point I couldn’t really tell) out of slashing range.

Don’t worry, I thought to myself, it won’t leave the area with me. Ah yes, great joke, absolutely hilarious. I left through the portal back to Richard and Livia’s little town, breathing sighs of relief, only to look down and see a blobby thing with mushrooms on its head staring back up at me.

It came through the portal, therefore, it left the area. If it can leave its spawn area, that means I can’t get it to despawn.

Well shit. I still needed that Crystal Drop. And I didn’t like having this “compromised” thing anywhere near me.

Plan A ended in failure, time for Plan B, make it someone else’s problem.

I crouched down in front of it and stared directly into its blinding spotlight eyes.

“Say, buddy,” it cocked its head (body? It was just a round blob, so it was hard to tell) in a way that made it look like it was listening to me. “I don’t know if you can understand me or anything, but I want you to stay right here, okay?”

“I’ve got something to take care of real quick, I’ll be right back to see what to do with you,” I said like a liar. “So don’t go anywhere, got it?”

Fortunately, the Woodland Spirit, despite its uncannily sentient behaviour, was not well versed in the language of finding excuses to ditch someone, and just rolled back into a corner of the portal frame and stared expectantly at me. Then it leisurely flapped a chubby arm at me.

Telling me to get lost? Don’t mind if I do.

I slowly backed up through the portal and back over to the Babbling Brook area. To my relief, the bugged Woodland Spirit did not follow me. Plan B successful. Hopefully someone would take care of that thing by the time I get the Crystal Drop.

Yet all the way through my arduous grinding, an itching sense of guilt crept up from the back of my mind, down my throat and settled in the pit of my gut, squirming around like a pack of snakes. I felt as if I was a bad owner that had just abandoned their pet dog at the side of the street. Which, of course, made no damn sense. For fuck’s sake, why was I even feeling guilty? I was ditching a potentially dangerous entity that I had no idea what was wrong with, not my dog, for fuck’s sake.

Look, me, I tried reasoning with myself as I cut through yet another Water Spirit. That thing’s weird. It was stalking you, and then it went and jumped on your face. It’s supposed to be a regular old Woodland Spirit, that is not supposed to understand a lick of what you’re saying, that you’re supposed to hit, and not converse with. There’s absolutely no reason to feel guilty about ditching something like that.

In fact, I realised with a start, this thing wasn’t even supposed to be able to do any of those things in the first place. No stalking, no listening, no waving for you to get out of its sight. NPCs being aware of being NPCs like Rosa was one thing, since you could put that off as a whole “I’m a special snowflake” thing, but a regular mob? A regular mob gaining sentience when it wasn’t even able to talk, now that was weird. Maybe, even key-to-getting-out-of-this-world weird.

“Chat, LarkspurXX.”

I hurriedly opened up the chat menu, and sent a message to Marge.

“[Hey Marge, I found something weird.]”

“[What kind of weird]”

She responded. Really quickly. Like, really, really quickly. My fingers had barely even left the send button, and she’d already typed out that four word sentence. Even for Marge, who I’d come to realise answered messages almost instantly, that was fast. Then again, she was someone who kept a consistent fourth place in the PVP Arena, fast typing was a quirk that usually came with godly APM.

“[Bugged Woodland Spirit.]”

“[Oh]”

“[No like, it’s really weird. It was watching me in a river, and then it started following me without attacking.]”

“[Maybe its attack command is broken]”

“[But listen to this. It followed me through a portal, didn’t despawn, but when I told it to stay there, it actually stopped following.]”

There was no response.

“[It even told me to fuck off.]”

[Incoming call from LarkspurXX]

[Accept Call?

>Yes No]

“Luck,” Marge’s voice came crackling through, her tone surprisingly urgent. “What do you mean by it told you to fuck off?”

“Well, I mean it didn’t actually tell me to fuck off, but it tried to wave me away.”

“Are you sure that wasn’t just it trying to attack you?”

Excuse me, who did she think I was? I’ve spent 15 years playing this game, and I know very well that the Spirits’ attack animation does not involve arm flapping.

“Yeah. It doesn’t even look remotely like an attack.”

There was silence.

“Where are you.”

“Huh?”

“Where are you, and where did you leave this thing?

“Umm… hold on. Map. Let’s see… I left it at the entrance to Ivysmith Town’s portal to the Babbling Brook.”

“Got it. I’ll be right over. Go back there and make sure it doesn’t run off.”

“What?”

“We need to interrogate it. So far there’ve been NPCs with self awareness, but if you’re not lying, this is the first mob to gain sentience. Go back there, and make sure it stays there, it doesn’t run off, or gets itself killed by some random Champion.”

“But what about my Crystal Drop?”

“The tutorial quest one right? It just needs you to have one that wasn’t bought from a shop. I’ll give you one.”

“Oh damn, thanks, guess my hours of grinding were pointless if you could have just given it to-”

“Just get your ass over there to guard the fucking mob, okay, Luck?”

She hung up.

Ah yes, guess I am an errand boy, now, fantastic. Of course, Miss Larkspur, I’ll babysit this stalker Spirit for you right away. How many teeth marks would you like to see on my face?

I grumbled away to myself as I made my way back along the path for the fourth time today, the still air away from the Babbling Brook very much absent of any wind that might help lessen my degree of being soaked while on my mission of utmost importance. How did Marge even intend to interrogate that thing? It wasn’t as if it could talk. Could it write? How could she even get it to answer honestly.

It was at this point in my grumbling that I remembered a certain skill that I had put off on testing during my time in the Inner City.

“Skill description, Overpower.”

[Overpower

Mana Usage: Nil

Range: Single target

Cooldown: 24h

A skill unique to Chosen Ones. Your imposing aura allows you to overpower those who oppose you, and garner respect from those who revere you. When used on a hostile mob or boss, paralysis will be inflicted for 30s and the target's defence will drop by 100%. When used on a Champion, paralysis will be inflicted for 5s, and all the target’s stats will drop by 50%. When used on an NPC, the NPC will be forced to perform any task as long as the task is within its capabilities. When used on yourself, all stats will be buffed by 500% and all skills strengthened to their Tier 11 form for 10s. This skill is rendered null when used on other Chosen Ones.]

I studied the skill description. Did the Woodland Spirit count as a hostile mob or an NPC? It was definitely a mob, but it wasn’t hostile, so would it get paralysed or would it be forced to do whatever Marge wanted? This skill description didn’t say what happened if you used it on a non-hostile mob, so what were we supposed to expect? Theoretically, I supposed you could do an interrogation by using Overpower on an NPC to force them to answer your question honestly, but what if it was a mob? If this didn’t work, and now that I look at the description, I was honestly quite sure it wasn’t going to work, then what did Marge want to do next? Do it the classic way? I wasn’t sure if Woodland Spirits had enough HP to handle a torture interrogation.

I stepped back through the portal to see the Woodland Spirit where I had found it, leaning against the portal frame, except this time it was staring at the crowd walking past with its head tilted to the side. Upon hearing my approach, it glanced up at me.

“Wuh,” it said accusingly.

“Don’t you look at me like that. My business had to be put on hold. Now my new job is to sit here and make sure you don’t run away.”

The Woodland Spirit did that head tilt thing again. Any doubts I might have had previously about this thing actually understanding me were swept away.

“My uh, boss, told me to keep an eye on you while she gets here. She wants to have a little chat.”

It stiffened, and started hopping frantically in the opposite direction. Oi.

“Excuse me, what did I say?” I grabbed it and towed it back squirming. “Stop running.”

“Wuh!” it opened its mouth and bit down on my fingers.

Crunch.

My HP bar appeared out of the corner of my eye and dropped by 50.

“No. Bad. Stinky,” I transferred it to my other hand and shook the slobber off of my bitten fingers. The thing continued to squirm around in my grasp, making biting motions at my arm. “Don’t attack me. I don’t want to waste my HP potion.”

It growled and shook itself violently.

Actually, maybe I should use this situation for a little test.

“Use Skill Overpower.”

For a skill that only Chosen Ones could use, I would have expected something dramatic to happen. Such as a flash of blinding light, or a chorus of angels soaring down from above, or any kind of fancy special effects that would have made other players stop what they were doing and stare. Unfortunately, there was none of that.

All that happened, was that the squirming blob froze, its spotlight eyes slowly clouding over in a glassy sheen. Huh. It wasn’t exactly the paralysis effect I was expecting to see, but it was still paralysis in some way, shape or form, I guess. So that means that, as I thought, it counts as a mo-

[Please state your chosen task within the next 60s]

What.

I squinted at the popup.

Well looks like the System considered it an NPC. Okay. Guess Marge’s interrogation plan will work after all.

I glanced at the frozen blob in my hand.

“Stop moving around.”

[Task received. Target will perform the task for the next 24h. Task can be terminated on command.]

The glassy effect over its eyes faded, and the blob was back to its I-want-to-bite-your-face-off look. Then it started to wilt, like a deflating balloon, its little arms sagging by its sides.

“Wuh…” it stared imploringly at me. I slowly released my grip and it fell limply onto the ground next to me, where it lay unmoving, looking very sorry for itself.

Ah. “Stop moving around” made it stop moving altogether. It looked as if the Overpower skill took your words very literally. Well… at least it couldn’t make its escape attempts anymore.

I checked the skill details for Overpower again, the blob making small grumbling noises even in its ragdoll state. Unfortunately, as expected, the cooldown of 24h had started. A 24h cooldown… Who even decided to make it that long? Even Tier 10 OP skills whose long cooldown times everyone grumbled about were much, much shorter than that. It’s effect on hostile mobs wasn’t even that great, and while the buffs granted when used on yourself seemed pretty sweet, it only lasted 10s, and with that cooldown time, probably couldn’t be relied on in most cases. Maybe its effect would be best used when trying to speed kill a dungeon’s final boss?

It was even worse in terms of interrogations. Yeah, you could probably do it by saying “answer every single one of my questions completely honestly”, but the skill could only be used on a singular target. It was probably fine in this case, where there was only one thing you had to interrogate, but what if there were a bunch? With how enthusiastic their leader seemed to be just from me finding a sentient mob, I don’t think that the Chosen Ones Alliance would slack on trying to interrogate every plot-important NPC in the game. You’d have to gather a bunch of Chosen Ones, all to activate the skill on a singular target, and then ask the target questions one by one. It was probably easier now, since the Chosen Ones Alliance had at least a hundred members, but what about at the beginning? The players who actually went to fight Rue in story mode and won were very few and scattered over the time span of several years after the final boss update was implemented. I could picture the Chosen Ones Alliance being composed of a meagre four or five members at the very beginning, maybe even less, if you took into account the fact that some declined joining the guild.

It would take at least a week to finish questioning the members of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, and even more if you included the random shopkeepers and travelling merchants that had a bit more backstory to them than the others. Then there was the Decay, Rue. You had to go through an entire dungeon just to get to him, and you could only actually open the door to access the room he was in through story mode, which, in that case, would make him a boss, not an NPC. That would mean you’d have to go through all that bullshit a second time just to interrogate him as an NPC. Now, if you could use Overpower and tell him to sit still and let you hit him, then that would be problem solved, but the 24h cooldown would mean that you couldn’t guarantee that everything he said was true. And no matter how uncharacteristically soft he was in person, if the NPCs had retained any semblance of their canon personality, if not a pathological liar, Rue was probably still a good liar. Even if Marge had indirectly told me that they had their ways, considering the fact that they’d already interrogated him, it didn’t make Overpower’s cooldown timer any less of a pain in the ass. Maybe whoever sent us here put that in to make sure anyone’s search for a way out was as painful and arduous as possible.

“What do you think, buddy,” I turned to the now formless blob. Despite not moving at all, it managed to give me a puzzled look. “Isn’t 24h too long of a cooldown?”

“For some assholes with too much time on their hands, I say it’s too short,” I glanced up from my enlightening one sided conversation with the blob to see Marge, accompanied by a woman I didn’t recognise. The woman, the one who had spoken, looked somewhat younger than Marge (then again, with the Glamour system, you couldn’t exactly be too sure), if I were to guess, somewhere in her early twenties. Unlike how Marge and Trix appeared to be during my first encounter with them, this woman wasn’t wearing a lot of high rarity equipment. Most of it was your more commonly seen UC and R rarity, the type that occasionally drop in some of the low to mid level dungeons. Though, as with the rest of us, she wore the Ethereal Cape, though hers seemed to be a bit different from the rest of ours. A more, side cape sort of style, with the bulk of it hanging down her left side, leaving her right arm swinging free. So there was a way to mod the stupid ankle tripping cape.

Marge shook her head.

“Be nice, Hana, they aren’t all completely bad,” she turned back to me. “Well, Luck, this is Hana. You might know her as Hana4U from the forums, since she used to post her art there. Hana, this is Luck. He’s a bit dense-”

“Hey, I’m right here, you know?”

“He’s a bit dense, can’t even tell the Decay from a normal NPC,” she repeated scathingly. “But he’s been around since the beta, so in terms of game sense, he should be more experienced than you and I.”

Excuse me, I never told you that. Did Marge run a background check on me?

“Nice to meet you, Luck,” Hana held out her hand and smiled so sunnily and with such boundless energy that I could feel myself aging in contrast.

“Nice to meet you too,” I stood up and shook her hand. I knew that there was a high chance that Hana had come to this world too, but to think that I could see her in person. “Big fan. Especially of your Rosa art. Really brings out the colour in her eyes.”

“Thank you. I’m flattered that I could give credit to Rosa, she is so flawless,” Hana gushed.

“I know right, and when she smiles-”

“Ahem,” Marge coughed and glared at me. Hey, what did I do? She then turned to Hana and said more gently. “Anyways, Hana, Luck was the one that found the sentient Woodland Spirit. I’m hoping that I could borrow your Overpower skill to ask it some questions… Luck, why does the Woodland Spirit look like a deflated balloon?”

“Wuh,” the blob protested.

“Well, uh, so you see, I was trying to get it to stop biting me, so I used Overpower-”

“Luck why?” Marge groaned. “You told it to stop moving, didn’t you? Well now you’ll have to cancel that skill and then you’ll have wasted your Overpower.”

“Well what was I supposed to do?”

“Anything but that. Oh well, I guess what’s done is done. At least now we know that it works as an NPC. Mind ending the skill?”

“Right, right. Cancel skill Overpower.”

Like a rocket, the blob shot up from its position and tried to take off across the square and into the crowd. Sadly, I managed to grab ahold of it before it could do that, making it turn to stare at me with a look of great hurt and betrayal. Too bad buddy, not today.

“Thanks. Hana?”

Hana bent down and stared at the blob squirming between my fingers. “Overpower. You must obey my next five commands.”

Hey, isn’t that cheating? I glanced at Marge. And why doesn’t Marge have her Overpower? She caught my gaze, scoffed, and made a series of hand gestures that I couldn’t completely decipher. It probably more or less implied that she was fighting a boss of some sort, anyways. Or interrogating another NPC. Who knew what the rest of the COA members did in their spare time.

“You will not attempt to escape,” meanwhile, Hana was slowly mumbling her orders to the once again glassy-eyed blob. “You will not attempt to attack us. You will answer all our questions. You will answer completely honestly. You will tell us everything you know about a topic when asked.”

Marge mumbled something that I couldn’t quite hear, but which made Hana’s hand fly to her mouth.

“Oh, I forgot about that one. I’m sorry, Marge.”

“Don’t sweat it. Luck, put it down,” Marge produced a translucent screen, spun it around and set it down in front of the blob. “Woodland Spirit, can you speak?”

The blob stared at her with a glare almost as scathing as Marge’s own.

“Right,” she pushed the translucent screen towards it. Displayed was a keyboard and a text box. “Then can you write?”

The blob seemed to think for a moment, before it raised a chubby hand and began tapping at the letters on the keyboard.

“[Yes.]”

Hana gasped dramatically.

“Very good,” Marge’s enthusiasm seemed to suddenly flare up. “Do you have a name.”

The blob tilted its head.

“[No.]”

“I see. What are you?”

“[Woodland Spirit.]”

“Can you explain why your status is compromised?”

“[Unsure.]”

“Do you have a motive?”

“[Yes.]”

Marge stared expectantly. The blob stared back.

“Well… what is it?”

It seemed very unwilling to tell us.

“[Seek caretaker.]”

“Why?”

“[Avoid detection.]”

“Detection by whom?”

“[The System.]”

“Alright. How did you become like this?”

“[Definition required.]”

Watching this was like watching a game of pinball, Marge shooting questions at the blob while the blob seemed to be intent on answering vaguely and dodging questions that it didn’t seem to like answering, back and forth, back and forth. It didn’t feel like a real interrogation, there was no obvious aggression, or pressure, or malice. Yet, considering the fact that the blob was obliged to answer completely honestly, it was probably feeling a decent amount of pressure.

After struggling to get the blob to tell her how it managed to gain sentience (all it would tell her was that an “anomaly” did it), Marge finally got to her last question.

“Do you know who is behind all this,” Marge gestured around her. “And what they intend to do with us?”

The blob hesitated.

“[Classified.]”

Excuse me?

“I thought it had to answer all questions,” I glanced over to Hana, who looked equally puzzled as I did.

Marge, on the other hand, didn’t look too concerned, just disappointed.

“No, no, this is fine. We're done here. I honestly kind of expected it,” she sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “All the NPCs except Rosa, Puck, and the Decay give that response when asked about the Creator, and even they can’t tell us too much without clamming up as well. I just thought that maybe there’d be an oversight, since this isn’t an actual NPC.”

She waved away her transparent screen and hopped back up on her feet.

“Well, at least that wasn’t entirely unfruitful. I’ll have to have a little chat with the others about what exactly this ‘anomaly’ is. If it’s powerful enough to grant sentience, then maybe it can send us back home,” she turned to leave. “I’ll be rushing back first, Hana, so I’m afraid I can’t join you on that grinding quest you talked about.”

She turned back.

“Oh, and Luck?” she pointed at the blob. “It wants a caretaker right? Since you found it, that's on you now. Make sure it doesn’t die.”