Ona stood before the vile, disgusting totem. Its eye fixated on her, watching, spying. Its eyelids flapped every five seconds and did not fully open. In its gaze, there was a sense of mockery, of derision. She the middle finger to the totem and spat right into its pupil.

Small forest creatures jumped from branch to branch. A gnat flew into the only clearance in the tree crowns. Orcs were nowhere to be found. The rotting body of the Alrawn (the name the AI gave to the creature Ronnie had killed) made her nauseous. Ona covered her mouth with a scarf and sat down by the nest. There the chicks chirped, huddled by their mother's corpse. They did not understand why she was not moving anymore. They wanted to eat. Ona, with tears in her eyes, fed them with the first thing she could get her hands on. When the cubs were finished eating, she took one of them in her arms and stroked it. It turned its face towards her.

“No, no, no,” she cried out, her arms weak. A little more and the chick would have fallen to the ground.

Ona put it down and examined the others. A lump formed in her throat, her breathing quickened.

“They're all cursed...,” she said and pulled back and covered her mouth with her palm.

Ona moved them to a safe distance and pulled out her weapon, adjusted the thickness of the fiery jet, and with an angry shriek tried to turn the totem to ash. The eye twitched, the fire engulfed it, there was a piercing screech in the clearing, it melted, spreading like wax. The flames, strong and bright, danced, rushed to the heavens. Sparks swirled. More flashes appeared. The flames flickered and quivered. In ten minutes, there was nothing left at the site of the totem except a huge mark on the ground. It was the same one as on the trees.

The symbol lit up with a red glow. The wind lifted. The cursed earth was sticking to each other in wet clumps. The totem began to regenerate. Ona pulled the trigger of the flamethrower again and the blessed fire shone and reached for the heavens and danced and swirled, but when the fire show ended five minutes later, the scene repeated itself again.

***

Ronnie moved at an increased pace under the cover of the tree crowns, through which light had no chance of penetrating. His path went through a windfall, a real forest cemetery - an old coarse woody habitat overgrown with moss. The trees that were lucky enough not to decompose, they were all dry and cracked with stripped bark, leaning from side to side. Weather anomaly... happened a long time ago… After passing through the undergrowth of brush and vegetation, he came to the edge of the forest and crossed a small river and found himself in the eastern part of the forest in the valley of the Gorthad forest tumuli.

There were spirits flying behind the trees, wolves climbing the hills and howling. Most of the burial mounds were no different from the forest hillocks, but some clearly showed signs of an entrance, a stone slab with a sign and an inscription. Ronnie thought that perhaps there had once been a civilization here and wondered what had become of it. He walked over the bumpy ground, skirting ravines, pits, and black, bottomless chasms. The monsters in the area did not attack him. After half a mile, when the tumuli were left behind, a plain stretched ahead, empty and lifeless, with burnt trees of gigantic proportions, he saw several ruined stone gates leading to nowhere, a little further on he met monuments dedicated to either great warriors or kings of a long-forgotten era. They stood with a formidable and majestic appearance, touched only by mother nature. The air was getting eerily cold. Every exhale let off steam from mouth. On a rocky hill west of the road, he saw a sword the size of an enormous tower.

The cursed totem was nestled among huge as the tower of Babel and as beautiful as the serene twilight black-purple trees. Their leaves seemed to soak up the daylight and glimmer with white fire. The space between the trees was truly vast. Every nook and cranny were visible. The road was wide and flat. Except that Ronnie had never encountered this type of soil before. The ground beneath his feet looked like some kind of volcanic rock, dried out hundreds of years ago. Just that it was soft, and the cracks were more like semi-circular patterns.

There were three dozen orcs ahead, about two hundred yards away. It would take two magazines to deal with such a horde, which meant that there would be very little ammunition left for the dungeon. The enemies were patrolling around the totem with its throbbing heart. Latludious was right. The orcs were awake, vigilant, perhaps somehow alerted to the danger. There at two o’clock, black bones of a ribcage of something very large picked out from behind of a small hill. Ronnie inadvertently wondered if it was all worth it. Sitting Bull, the only one I respected, is dead. Doing it for Ona? Not likely. Doing it for experience, probably. There's a lot of experience. Mana oozes from everywhere. If I kill them all, I'll get up to the twenty-second level.

“I’ll take my chances,” he said and spat.

Ronnie retrieved a remote-controlled C4 explosive from a World War II backpack purchased at the Vanguard store. Hid it in the cracks, took cover about 60 yards from that spot behind a tree with a flat ground surface, took the Barrett off his shoulders, and took aim. It wasn't hard to hit orcs at short range, but the silencer wouldn't let them know where he was shooting from, so... Ronnie took the silencer off, put it back in his backpack, smiled, and fired the first shot. He took three lives at once. The second shot did not take long. The orcs twitched, began to turn around.

Meanwhile, Latludious was accumulating mana seven miles away from Ronnie and heard the heavy echo of shots from the Barrett.

What the hell are you doing? he asked in group chat, but there was no response.

Ona also picked up a sound that sounded like thunder. She looked up through a gap in the tree crowns. There, in the sky, thunderclouds were floating south. Her restless soul trembled. The rain still would not come down.

Meanwhile, Ronnie killed three more orcs, giving priority to mages. Restrained and deadly, he watched every movement, picking up every rustle and shout. Despite the deafening sound of gunfire, the enemy was in disarray. The rearguard warriors fired fireballs and water beams in all directions but in vain. One orc created some mist. Nevertheless, Ronnie's memory never failed him. He knew who stood where and fired one bullet after another and saw the experience increase. The monsters bellowed and hooted and scattered to the sides.

“Fuck, they've never fought against firearms,” Ronnie said to himself and used “Furious Rhythm” and changed position at high speed, running across the road to the left closer to the enemy and putting the silencer back on the rifle.

When the fog cleared, the orcs, frightened and stupid, were already hiding behind covers. They shouted something to each other, but Ronnie could not understand their language. He placed his rifle on a tree root and sat down in a small hole nearby. If anyone attacked him, it would only be from the back where the explosives were set, he put the remote next to him. The last orc-mage fell within the next five seconds. The remaining dozen blockheads spotted where the shots were coming from and ran at breakneck speed, some of them decided to flank him.

The first three were easy to kill. The rest were out of sight. Ronnie used “Detection” to find each and every one of them. Five orcs with clubs and swords lit up behind him, he pressed a button on the remote and blew them up. Another orc, with two throwing axes in his hands, jumped at Ronnie's head, but an oncoming bullet pierced his armor and tore through his heart. The enemy's dead carcass fell on him at just the right moment as a barrage of arrows flew into the trench.

Backup?

The sniper cursed and tossed the corpse aside and pulled out his Stechkin pistol and laid one archer after another on the ground in two or three bullets. When it was over, he got out from behind the cover, rifle behind his back. All around there was the creak of trees and silence. He walked over and examined a pair of orcish bodies. They died without fear in their hearts. The soil was soaked with blood. As for the loot, nothing of value.

As Ronnie got ready to destroy the totem, he saw the last enemy beside it. He looked taller than the others, about nine feet tall. A red tattoo covered his entire bald skull. Every muscle of inhuman proportions was visible on his naked torso. Chains were hanging around his legs and arms. His death would just be enough to raise the level from twenty-one to twenty-two. The right corner of Ronnie's mouth lifted in a sinister grin. Droplets of sweat appeared on his forehead. A warning popped up in the HUD: Elevated heart rate.

“Huh, where did this guy come from?” Ronnie wondered.