The steady squelch of hooves in deep mud echoed as two armed riders traversed a narrow forest path. One chewed contentedly on a crisp, juicy apple. The other sat rigid in the saddle, eyes narrowed at a crinkled sheet of paper.
"Find anything useful, Adrien?" Vera asked, tossing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.
Adrien sighed and shook the reins. "It's a guess, Vera; landmarks are off, distances? Not reliable. If we'd trusted this to find our way to Ebonysworth, we'd be lost."
Vera grinned. "No satellite imaging in this game, Adrien."
"I know, I know," Adrien muttered, rubbing his temples. "But it doesn't make it any less infuriating."
Vera chuckled, reaching into her satchel and pulling out a final piece of fruit. "Well, here is the last apple. Do you want it, or should I just feed it to the horses?"
Adrien immediately folded the map, tucked it safely between the pages of his journal, and shoved the book into his leather chest pouch. He snatched the apple from her hand with a grateful grin and took a massive bite.
Sweet, vibrant juice burst across his tongue and trickled down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his gauntlet, letting out a satisfied hum. "Unbelievable. This is genuinely better than any apple I've ever eaten in the real world. I wish we could log out with a basket of these."
Vera smiled, watching her horse prick its ears forward as they rode on. "Right? The flavour code is a masterpiece."
"Hey, Adrien," Vera said, her voice dropping as she leaned slightly across her saddle. "Are you sure it was smart to leave half our ammo back at the inn?"
Adrien didn't look up from the road ahead. "Trust me, I'd love the extra firepower, but you remember how much all of that was weighed, and carrying that much lead would slow us down to a crawl, and we need to stay mobile, especially during a fight."
"Fair point," Vera conceded, shielding her eyes as the tree line finally broke. "Look ahead. Looks like we're coming up on Ironsworth. And we aren't the only ones here."
A cluster of players in mismatched armour sets hummed with activity near the perimeter. Vera frowned, her grip tightening on her reins. "I just hope that someone is not going to poach the Mercenary Guild's quest right out from under us."
Adrien shrugged carelessly, adjusting his weapon sling. "Let them try; it won't affect us, and we'll find another task."But as they drew closer to the heavy timber gates of Ironsworth, the casual banter died away, as something felt deeply wrong.
The local NPC militia wasn't standing at their usual passive attention. They paced restlessly, hands white-knuckling the shafts of their pikes, snapping aggressively at any players who stepped out of line. The air felt thick, charged with an unnatural, systemic tension that wasn't there during normal gameplay loops.
Sensing the shift, Adrien threw a cautious glance at Vera. They smoothly dismounted in unison, catching their horses by the bridal straps, and began leading the animals forward on foot toward the hostile-looking guards.
"Greetings, my—"
"Go die," the guard snapped, cutting Adrien off with venomous enthusiasm.
"We're with the Mercenary Guild," Adrien pressed on, keeping his voice level.
"We—"
"Oh, brilliant! So after days of sitting on your asses, you lot finally decide to grace us with your presence?" The guard roared, stepping directly into Adrien's space, and flecks of spittle flew from his lips.
"What, did you come to enjoy watching us suffer?!"
Adrien immediately raised his palms in a placating gesture. "Hey, relax. We came out here the exact moment the notification popped for this contract."
"Yeah, right. And what do you want from us, a royal welcome? A red carpet?"
"No," Adrien replied, his tone hardening. "I just want to know what the hell is happening, finish the target objective. We're busy."
The guard's face turned purple, his chest heaving with rage. Before he could draw his weapon, a fellow militia member grabbed his shoulder, whispering hushed words to coax him away from the gates. A third guard, looking completely exhausted, stepped up to take their place.
"You'll have to forgive him," the new guard sighed, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. "Things have been… chaotic lately. Did you say you're here on behalf of the Mercenary Guild?"
Vera stepped forward, nodding firmly. "We are. As my partner said, we headed out as soon as we accepted the posting. What's the actual situation? The quest log just said a wild beast was thinning out your livestock."
The guard beckoned them forward with a jerk of his chin. The moment their boots crossed the threshold into the village proper, a familiar window materialised in the centre of their vision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━[ System Notice ]━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Welcome toIronsworth Village
Safe Zone:InactivePvP:Unrestricted
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
'It is going to get interesting,' the thought flashed through Adrien's head.
The guard's expression completely shattered, collapsing into profound, hollow distress. "If only it were just livestock," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Last night, the thing took Misa. She was only two years old. Just a baby. We tracked it into the woods until daybreak, but there wasn't a single drop of blood. Not a single footprint. Poor, sweet girl…"
Adrien and Vera traded a sharp, heavy look, as silence settled between them. When they had first accepted the quest nearly two in-game days ago, they hadn't rushed. Instead, they had deliberately delayed their departure to study in the city library, drawing maps and studying regional history to maximise their game knowledge, as they had assumed it was just a low-tier hunting quest.
"Wait, when exactly did this shift from livestock to people?" Adrien asked, a cold knot forming in his stomach.
"How did it get inside? Where are the parents?"
The guard froze in his tracks. He turned around slowly, his eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion. "What exactly did your guild text tell you?"
"Just that an unknown predator was stealing and killing your domesticated animals," Vera admitted.
"Typical, f*c*ing bloodsuckers," the guard spat bitterly, turning back to escort them down the main thoroughfare toward the Village Head's longhouse.
"Withholding information so that their members can get injured and then find an excuse to squeeze out more money."
He looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide. "Look, we might just be backwater militia, but we aren't weak. We know how to handle wolves and bears, but this creature… It's something else entirely. It comes almost every night now, rolling in right alongside the mist."
"The mist?" Vera repeated, her gaming instincts immediately screaming environmental event.
"Yes, the mist," the guard whispered, a genuinely haunted look washing over his features. "It isn't normal weather. It's magical. It makes you see things. Horrible things, dangerous things, and unless you look at it yourself, you will never truly understand."
"I see," Adrien said, turning his head toward a group of players loitering in the village. "And those people over there? They don't exactly look like locals."
Outwardly, his tone was casual, but inwardly, his gamer instincts were firing rapidly. It made no sense; a village with active player worth their salt would jump at the chance to crack an undocumented, high-reward event like this. Yet, why is the situation escalating?
The guard sighed heavily, "A couple of days ago, a person arrived to deliver some ironwork. When he heard about the disappearances, he offered to help, but unfortunately, failed, and since then, more and more of these outlanders have been trickling in, trying to figure out what's hunting us, but none of them has succeeded."
"I see," Adrien murmured. "Let's hope one of us manages to put this beast down."
As they finally halted outside the iron-banded doors of the Village Leader's longhouse, Vera leaned in close, her voice barely a breath against the wind. "I counted at least fifteen players on the way in. They aren't a unified guild. They're split into small, competitive factions."
"I noticed," Adrien whispered back, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead. "Keep your guard up. I caught at least three different scouts tracking our movement since we crossed the threshold."
"We need to be incredibly careful," Vera muttered, her hand drifting toward her holster. "This place isn't like Ashfall Town or the lower-tier settlements. There is no system-enforced peace here. PvP is completely unrestricted."
She paused, a thought striking her. "Adrien, what are the actual penalties for player-killing in this zone?"
"There aren't any," Adrien said flatly. "The forums were very clear about that. No red-name status, no bounty multipliers, and even in restricted zones, the system doesn't physically stop you from drawing a blade on someone; the only difference there is that elite high-level NPC guards will immediately curb-stomp you into a jail cell."
"Brutal."
"Exactly, and so, whatever you do, don't die."
Vera glanced at him, "What's the exact death penalty here?"
Adrien stopped and looked her dead in the eye, his expression grim. "You lose a massive chunk of your level XP. You randomly drop equipped gear upon death, meaning you have to run back to your corpse to retrieve it before other players loot you. On top of that, you get hit with a temporary random resurrection debuff, and your remaining gear takes a massive durability hit. If you don't reach your corpse within a strict timer, your dropped items disappear forever."
Vera let out a low whistle, rubbing the back of her neck. "Ouch, well, I suppose that's pretty standard for a hardcore RPG."
The guard stepped forward and pounded his fist heavily against the thick timber door. The iron studs rattled in their frames as he called out, "Elder! The Mercenary Guild finally sent some people!"