Ona, did the curse break?

How are you feeling? Did we succeed?

Ona did not answer. She approached the site of the explosion. The sign pulsed, just as it had before.

Say something already.

Maybe the explosion hit her?

I don't know. Let’s wait for the report.

Ona saw that her arm had already turned black. The veins were swollen, shining with a purple fluorescent glow. She trembled. Nothing had changed. She dropped to her knees and grabbed her head and began to cry. After a couple of minutes, she pulled herself together and texted in the group chat:

The curse did not break.

Shit. Faolandan, go to the totem where Sitting Bull was ASAP, make sure there are only ruins there.

I can't believe it didn't work. Latludious, my organs are shutting down, I'm dying.

Hold on! We’ll save you.

There is no salvation from this...

Don’t lose hope, I'm on my way.

As Faolandan and Barahu approached the southern totem, Ona continued to write.

Help me, help me...

What's the big deal? Ronnie wrote. You're dying in the game, not in the real world.

You bastard! It's all because of you. Because of your thirst for profit. Shit. I’m just dying in the game? That’s what you think? You jump to conclusions without knowing a fucking thing about the person! You don't care about anybody but yourself. To me, the game is life. Right now, my real body is in an artificial life support capsule. I don't move, I don't eat, I don’t even breathe like a human being.

Latludious stood, surrounded by the broken orcs’ bodies. He watched the last branch on the dead ground burn. He cursed and spat.

What are you talking about? Faolandan wrote.

Guys. You wanted to know what I did for a living and how I got the scars on my face? It's about time I told you... I used to be a firefighter. Pulling animals and people out of flames. Once, when I was pulling a girl out of a house on fire, I was trapped by a beam. The girl survived, but I, with a broken spine, was burning alive. My team, my comrades, and friends got me out of there, but too late. Now the world of Guns and Magic is everything to me. A new world. I can't, like you, go offline and go for a walk in the park, watch TV. I can't even communicate with people who come to visit me. I sink into a dark world of dreams. Here's my story. So, who won?

Sitting Bull. Latludious wrote a moment later.

Ronnie stood, reading, unmoving. He turned his head away, as if he did not want to meet Ona's gaze, sighed and rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb and said:

“Fuck.”

Faolandan ran to the destination, stamina dropped to one.

The totem is destroyed, our tracker has made it. We should never have doubted him.

Latludious sat down on the corpses of his enemies in a lotus pose and began to think, his hands shaking, his emotions running high. Was the game really that cruel? Hadn't the developers thought of a way out? It cannot be. Where was the slip, where was the mistake? Suddenly the mage's face stopped showing any emotion. A side quest, "Saving the Forest from Infestation," appeared in the HUD. He got to his feet and wrote in the group chat.

We may not be able to save Ona, but we have a chance to earn some points for the guild and save the forest from further decay. You won't like this plan, but we have no choice. I'll use my last reserves of mana and dig three firebreaks around the infested part of the forest. This will stop the fire from spreading.

Ona's eyes widened and she stopped breathing.

Are you mad? Faolandan wrote. I won't let her sacrifice herself.

Then she would just die for nothing, Ronnie wrote.

He's right, Latludious wrote. Ona, it's hard for me to ask you to do this, but...

I'll do it, she wrote. On one condition. Faolandan, by all means rush to me and take the cubs of Alrawn. They were also struck by a curse, but maybe in calm conditions in the laboratory in Varnasosto you will find a way out and save them. And also take all my things. Then you will return it.

Ronnie, Latludius texted him in a PM. After I use such a powerful spell, I’ll be out of strength. Run to me with all the elixirs and syringes you have.

Roger.

Faolandan was at Ona's side in twenty minutes, her legs failing, her breathing accompanied by wheezing, squeaking, and moaning. He took her belongings and the chicks and gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek and walked away. Ona showed no reciprocal sympathy. Her face, white, eyes dry. Did not say anything, did not even look back.

Latludious rolled up his sleeves, touched the ground with two palms and drew a circle on the map and put all his will in it. The first ditch appeared. A little more and he would have vomited out his insides or at least the feeling was similar. He stepped back a few meters and created a second moat. His head felt dizzy and his vision went black. I'll feel better soon, he told himself and went on, but it didn't get better. He fell down and could not move for about five minutes. When he recovered, he stood in front of the place where he planned to make the third ditch and looked at his stamina in the HUD - 1.5 out of 10.

“I hope I won’t fucking die,” he said with a crazed face.

Ronnie ran to Latludious when he was one step away from death. The AI had already begun its countdown. About ten minutes later, Faolandan and Barahu arrived. The mage asked for a few minutes to "recover," and as the trio headed for the forest's exit, a cloud of black smoke billowed into the sky behind them. The flames were spreading, burning everything in their path.

“No lumberjack has ever conquered this forest...,” said Faolandan, “and Ona did it, even at death’s door.”

Ona has gone offline.

“We'll meet her in three days, on the other side of the mountains,” Latludious said with a stony expression.

In the evening twilight, they emerged from the forest with the look of the righteous men who had lost their faith overnight. The last rays of the receding sun were hiding behind the endless mountain range of Orodrim Eowl in the west. Players in soldiers’ uniforms greeted them. They did not see the joy on the faces of their comrades.

Faolandan walked with his head down, breathing heavily. He tried to control his emotions, not to show his weakness and affection to anyone, but his worries were still breaking through. For the first time he understood: feelings, especially those that excite a person, cannot be hidden in a far corner of the mind. They would come to you, arise, thundering in your head and not subside even in your sleep, until everything was as it had been before, back to normal. He was the only one who knew it was not to be. There was fear in his eyes and a mute question: what now? Thoughts were lost now and then in the innermost recesses of his soul, sitting there with his legs wrapped around his knees, like frightened and misunderstood child. The events of the day were turning over in his head: words that had been left unsaid, decisions that could have been changed. It was true what they say, that what had happened cannot be undone, but feelings always prevailed over reason.

The wrinkles on their foreheads, the slow and quiet speech, the hands at their seams, all showed before the audience a secret that everyone understood without words but dared not speak out loud. Ronnie felt regret expressed in anger in his eyes. He looked at everyone sideways, answered with short and curt phrases, and often looked back at the forest. The words of the men around him mingled into one incomprehensible hum and hubbub.

Latludious replied to anyone and everyone, as much as possible, that everything was fine, when the time came everyone would know everything. His eyelids were drooping, his voice smooth and steady. When the mage began to tire, the head of the local unit, an officer of the Support Battalion – Illyseh came up, just in time. He dispersed the crowd of players and gave all three the best rooms and did not bother asking questions. The morning wore on. Their journey was not yet over. There was a long road ahead...