A long time passed before silence finally settled over the forest.
Jun quietly opened his eyes and looked around. Just as he had expected, there was not a single goblin in sight.
“Phew.”
He brushed off the moss, leaves, and other debris covering his body, then headed toward the spot where he had buried Aiden.
“Aiden. Wake up.”
“……!”
The moment Jun dispelled the magic he had cast, Aiden, who had been sleeping like the dead, jolted upright.
“Se-Senior?”
“You awake?”
“What happened to the battle? The battle?”
“Look around.”
At Jun’s words, Aiden turned his head from side to side.
“Ah.”
Corpses lay scattered everywhere.
What was unusual was that, for most of them, only their heads remained.
“We lost. The goblins took everything except the heads of the dead. They probably became provisions.”
“Senior Popkin…… is dead too.”
“……We don’t have time to get sentimental. There’s something we need to do first.”
“……Senior?”
“Do you remember where the captain died?”
“What? Ah. It was somewhere over there.”
“Just follow me for now.”
Aiden still looked bewildered, but he soon followed behind Jun.
“But Senior. The reason I fell asleep…….”
Perhaps recalling the magic Jun had cast on him before he lost consciousness, Aiden asked the question, and Jun nodded.
“Sorry for using magic on you without permission. I needed to erase every trace of our presence.”
“That’s…… fine. Given the situation, I understand. But next time, please tell me beforehand.”
‘Next time?’
Jun found the wording slightly odd, but there were more urgent matters at hand.
“You said it was around here? Ah, there it is.”
“Hmm…….”
Before long, Jun arrived in front of a tree where the mercenary captain’s head had been hung.
“The heads of the corpses…….”
“It’s a goblin custom. They hang up the heads of enemies who were somewhat strong to announce their victory. It also serves as a territorial marker.”
“…….”
“I’ll explain the rest later…… Found it!”
“……?”
Jun hurriedly picked up something lying near the mercenary captain’s corpse and spoke to Aiden.
“Aiden. Do you know how to use a shield?”
“Yes. I’ve trained in shield techniques as well.”
“Good. Then can you use that thing over there?”
“This is…….”
“That’s about the only thing the goblins left behind.”
It was a tower shield large enough to cover the wielder’s entire body.
The goblins had taken most of the other equipment, but apparently, that shield had been too large and heavy for them to bother carrying away.
Aiden nodded.
“I can.”
“Good! Then let’s head straight back to the fortress. It’s going to be a little dangerous, though.”
AWOOOOOO—!!
“Because now it’s the beasts’ turn to come running after smelling all this blood.”
Jun recalled the days when he had still been ‘Lee Jeong-jun.’
The Black Forest was essentially the introductory area of Blackout.
But did that mean it was friendly to new players?
‘It was friendly, all right. It very kindly taught you that this game had no intention of being kind to new players.’
After the early battles against goblins, the new players who barely managed to defeat them were greeted by beast-type monsters.
‘These things weren’t designed to be beaten.’
Of course, if players developed both their characters and the NPCs in their party, the monsters were entirely huntable.
But someone who had only just started the game naturally had no such foundation.
Most new players who grew confident after defeating the goblins found themselves assaulted by beasts drawn in by the smell of blood, only to see the words [Game Over] appear on their screens.
They possessed overwhelming agility, Vitality incomparable to that of goblins, and even inflicted a Morale Reduction debuff through their howls.
For new players, it was exactly the sort of mechanic that made them want to give the developers a very personal piece of their minds.
So how were players supposed to clear it?
“Shh. They’re coming.”
“…….”
Aiden raised the massive shield, hiding both himself and Jun behind it.
A beast-type monster approaching from nearby—an ‘Outer Wolf’—sniffed the air as it drew closer.
Each one was twice the size of an ordinary wolf.
And there were five of them.
Their passage left paw prints nearly a handspan wide in the earth.
Even the shield Aiden was carrying would not last long beneath paws that enormous.
Despite that, Aiden kept the shield firmly raised without relaxing his grip.
SNIFF.
GRRRRRRR……
BARK!
The beasts came close enough to nearly brush past them.
SWISH—
And then they simply continued on.
The two held their breaths until the beasts had completely vanished from sight, only then letting out sighs of relief.
“Phew. We got through that one too.”
“Yes…… I truly survived thanks to you, Senior.”
They still had more than a full day’s journey left before reaching the fortress.
And this was already the fourth time they had encountered creatures like those.
What would have happened if they had run into them without any preparations?
Aiden’s face paled merely imagining it, and he looked down at the shield in his hands.
It was so thoroughly covered in mushrooms, grass, rotten wood, and other debris that it was impossible to tell what it had originally looked like.
“I never imagined camouflage like this would work so well, Senior.”
“Most monsters in the Black Forest have a much weaker sense of smell than their other senses. Unless it’s blood, they have trouble distinguishing scents.”
There was a reason for that.
“I suppose living in a place like this would ruin anyone’s sense of smell.”
The pungent scents of dead trees, mushrooms growing within them, and countless herbs assaulted the nose from every direction.
Even humans found the odors overpowering, so how miserable would they be for beasts with sensitive noses?
Naturally, they had evolved in a way that left their sense of smell less developed.
‘Even in the game, there was no way to get back alive unless you concealed yourself like this.’
But this method did not work every time.
As Jun had said, ‘most’ monsters had a poor sense of smell.
Which meant there were also monsters with keen noses.
“……Damn it.”
“What is it?”
“Undead.”
“……!”
Aiden narrowed his eyes and looked in the direction Jun was pointing.
Yet no matter where he looked, he could not see any undead.
“It’s hiding just like we are. Look carefully around the base of the tree.”
“……Ah. Is that it?”
Something bulged beneath a layer of moss and mushrooms.
Judging from its size, it was probably a goblin corpse.
Its camouflage was so natural that, at first glance, it looked like nothing more than part of the scenery.
“Amazing, Senior. I didn’t notice it at all.”
“You’ll learn to spot them quickly once you get used to it.”
In Jun’s case, [Keen Eyes], one of the skills he had selected during character creation, made them much easier to detect.
It was originally a skill commonly taken when building a Hunter, but it had so many applications that players often used it while developing other classes as well.
“It already knows we’re here.”
“……Then why isn’t it moving?”
“It’s undead, but it isn’t an ordinary undead.”
It was commonly called a Plant Undead.
As the name suggested, it was an undead creature that lived covered in plants. The relationship could be considered a kind of symbiosis.
The undead followed its instinct to hunt the living, while the plants planted their seeds in the undead’s prey and spread their species.
Its own combat ability, however, was utterly pathetic.
It moved slowly, and its only attacks amounted to sluggish swings of its arms and bites from its teeth.
“That’s why it almost never moves on its own. It likes getting others to do its dirty work. If we get too close, or if it thinks its life is in danger, it’ll scream.”
That was how it summoned other monsters in the surrounding area.
The problem was that its scream was no ordinary scream.
“Their screams send certain monsters into a frenzy.”
One representative example was the Outer Wolves that had passed them earlier.
The already powerful beast-type monsters became even stronger.
Granted, the frenzy also lowered their intelligence and made their movements more predictable, but—
They were still far too much for new players to handle.
“Ah…… So those strange noises people sometimes hear in the Black Forest come from those things?”
“Right. Honestly, if you’re moving with an entire subjugation force, you’ll almost never have to deal with them. Unlike ordinary undead, they have a certain degree of intelligence. They understand that provoking enemies they can’t handle would only get them killed for nothing. But when you’re traveling in a small group like we are…….”
They became easy targets.
That was one of the reasons solo play was so difficult in Blackout.
Every region in the game concealed mechanics like these, and if players wandered through without understanding them, all that awaited them was death.
‘The game was popular because its quality matched its difficulty, but…….’
Experiencing that difficulty firsthand was another matter entirely.
“What should we do? If we kill it from a distance…….”
“That won’t work either. Those things are like cockroaches.”
If they found one, they had to assume there were others hiding nearby.
“There, there, and over there. See them?”
Aiden’s expression darkened as he spotted the concealed undead in the directions Jun indicated.
“……Yes. But are those corpses goblins?”
“Right. They’re among the few natural enemies goblins have in the Black Forest.”
Ordinarily, the beasts did not threaten goblins.
Just like the relationship involving Plant Undead, a form of symbiosis existed between them.
The remains of whatever the goblins hunted were left behind without the beasts needing to do anything, so there was no reason for them to struggle against the goblins themselves.
‘But frenzied beasts are different. They literally stop caring about what’s in front of them.’
In any case, there was no reason to fight those monsters unnecessarily.
Jun and Aiden slowly backed away.
‘If we can just turn around and go the other way…….’
They should have been fine.
“BARK!”
At the sound of an Outer Wolf directly behind him, Jun’s face twisted horribly.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me. A random encounter now?’
Random encounters occasionally occurred even in the game.
They happened when players failed to properly manage their Scent stacks.
‘Damn it. Did they follow the smell of our sweat? We’ve been moving around so much that I forgot about it.’
This was one of the differences between a game and reality.
In the game, even the scent emitted by the player character was displayed through the interface, so there was always some way to address it.
In reality, however, it was difficult to accurately judge one’s own body odor.
‘Undead ahead and Outer Wolves behind us…… Looks like getting out without a fight is impossible after all.’
Having made up his mind, Jun looked at Aiden.
Aiden seemed to understand the situation as well. He tightened his grip around the shield’s handle and took up his stance.
“Good. If it’s come to this, let’s fight.”
Jun also touched the choker around his neck and began drawing up his Mana.
‘I can’t let them turn their attention toward Senior.’
Aiden watched the movements of the growling Outer Wolves as they measured the distance between them.
He had to buy enough time for Jun to prepare a spell powerful enough to reduce their numbers in a single strike.
‘I’ll hold out as long as possible, then attack together with Senior’s spell.’
Fortunately, there were not many Outer Wolves that had come this way.
Three in total.
They could manage that.
The moment Aiden reached that conclusion and sprang forward, he sensed Mana moving behind him.
‘Already?’
Back when Aiden had still been a porter, he had gone on missions with Jun before.
Even then, he had never seen Jun manifest magic this quickly.
‘Will it be all right?’
For a moment, Aiden wondered whether Jun had panicked and was about to use some low-level spell.
If so, that would be a serious mistake.
Unless he killed one outright with overwhelming firepower, he would only draw their attention toward himself.
‘He’s a clever man. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that.’
Aiden pushed aside his unease and sensed the direction in which Jun’s Mana was moving.
‘Now.’
At Jun’s current level, it would be difficult for him to pierce an Outer Wolf’s hide and bones in a single attack.
Aiden was just about to move in close when—
“Go for the one beside it first!”
Jun’s command struck like an arrow, and Aiden reflexively changed course toward the Outer Wolf beside him.
At the same moment, a violent gale tore past his head.
The wind shot forward like a blade and sliced straight through the Outer Wolf’s neck.
No.
Could that even be called slicing?
It looked as though the beast had been struck by a cannon.
There was simply nothing left where its head had been.
‘What the hell……!!’
That was not power a Low-Rank Mage should ever have been capable of producing.
Wind Cutter was a 2nd-Circle spell favored by Low-Rank Mages for its exceptional cutting power.
Its Mana efficiency was also excellent for the damage it produced, making it a simple spell that virtually anyone aspiring to become a combat mage learned.
However, as a mere 2nd-Circle spell, it possessed several inherent weaknesses.
One of them was range.
Once the target was even moderately far away, its cutting power fell off dramatically.
Jun knew that perfectly well, but since he would have to rely on the spell as his mainstay for the foreseeable future, he had modified it himself.
Though his idea of modification amounted to brute-forcing an absurd amount of Mana into it with [Mana Incarnate].
‘Tsk. Did I put too much into that?’
It had been a long time since Jun had used this much Mana, and he clicked his tongue after failing to properly control the output.
‘Well, even that should still be within what a 3rd-Circle Mage could pull off if they pushed themselves.’
Granted, it would have to be a 3rd-Circle Mage standing on the verge of reaching the next Circle, but Jun could make up an excuse for that much.
Out of habit, he raised his fingers to the choker around his neck and felt its familiar texture.
A voice seemed to echo beside his ear.
-This necklace will save your life. For a while, at least.
‘That damned bastard of a master.’
Jun thought of the person who had fastened the choker around his neck.
Fueled by his anger, his Mana once again manifested a violent gale in reality.
The wind churned like water being violently stirred inside a fish tank, then launched itself toward the enemy with a deafening roar.
BOOM—!
Another beast fell, spraying blood and entrails through the air.
When Jun turned his gaze toward the last remaining Outer Wolf, Aiden’s sword happened to pierce straight through its throat.
‘That guy isn’t ordinary either.’
Jun had killed two of them, yes, but a Low-Rank Mercenary killing an Outer Wolf alone?
If that were supposed to be possible, Blackout would have been a much kinder game to new players.
“Senior, what was that just now……?”
“No time to explain. We need to run.”
“Ah.”
They both had plenty of questions, but they had no time to ask them.
The metallic stench of blood brushed past Jun’s nose.
More monsters would appear soon.
Aiden was just about to pick up the shield he had briefly set down when—
“……Senior! Behind you!”
“What?”
SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH——!!
The shriek of a Plant Undead that should have remained silent rang throughout the forest.
“Damn it.”
Only then did Jun see them.
Another pack of Outer Wolves was approaching from the opposite direction.