Ryan POV
The parchment feels heavier than it should for a piece of paper.
I read it again, slower this time. *Clear the disturbance near the eastern tree line. Local wildlife reported behaving unnaturally. Guards have declined to investigate further.* Reward: gold, minor experience, standard green-tier classification.
"Ryan?" Emily’s beside me now, reading over my shoulder. "What’s got your attention?"
"The wording." I handed it to her. "Doesn’t match the others."
She scans it, and I watch her expression do the same thing mine probably did—pause, then narrow.
"Guards have declined to investigate further.’ That’s not standard quest language. Someone wrote that specifically."
"Could just be flavor text," Daniel offers, leaning in. "Guild writes these things to sound dramatic. Makes killing six rabbits feel like an epic."
"Maybe," Emily says, but she doesn’t sound like she believes it either. She hands it back to me. "You want this one?"
I think about the shopkeeper’s warning. *Pay attention to anything that happens to you that doesn’t happen to anyone else.* This quest isn’t about me specifically—I found it on a board full of dozens of others—but something about it pulls at the same instinct that made me reach for it in the first place.
"Yeah," I say. "I want this one."
"Then let’s make it official."
We bring it to the receptionist, who scans it with practiced efficiency and stamps it without so much as glancing at the description. To her, it’s just another green-tier posting. Routine. Forgettable.
"Accepted," she says. "Objective: clear the disturbance at the eastern tree line. Reward will be issued on confirmed completion. Good luck."
Daniel’s already bouncing on his heels by the time we step back outside.
"Okay, first official quest. This feels different than just wandering into a clearing and murdering pigs."
"It’s not that different," Emily says. "Same basic structure. Accept, complete, return, collect. The system just likes giving it a bow."
"What’s actually different," I say, "is that now the system’s tracking it. Progress, completion, probably time elapsed. It’s not just us deciding to kill something anymore."
Emily glances at me, something unreadable in her expression.
"You’ve been paying attention."
"I pay attention to everything lately."
She doesn’t push on that, though I catch her filing it away the same way she files everything—quietly, for later. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The walk to the eastern gate takes us past the training grounds, where a handful of players are still grinding dummies despite the late hour.
Daniel waves at a guy he apparently met during the tutorial phase, gets an enthusiastic wave back, and spends the next thirty seconds trying to explain who the guy is before giving up when neither Emily nor I show any interest.
"You two are impossible to talk to sometimes," he mutters.
"We’re focused," Emily says. "There’s a difference."
"Is there?"
"Ask me again after the quest."
The eastern gate is quieter than the main plaza—fewer players, fewer vendors, just a pair of guards stationed on either side of the archway, armor catching torchlight as we approach.
"Heading out?" one of them asks, more out of habit than curiosity.
"Quest," Emily says, showing the stamped parchment. "Eastern tree line."
Something flickers across the guard’s face. Barely noticeable, gone almost as fast as it appears, but I catch it because I’ve started cataloguing exactly these kinds of reactions since the appraisal shop.
"That one’s been sitting on the board a while," he says carefully. "Nobody’s taken it in days."
"Why not?" I ask.
He shrugs, a little too deliberately casual.
"Not much reward for the risk, I guess. People prefer the clearer postings." He steps aside anyway, gesturing us through. "Stay close to the marked trail. Don’t go past the old watchpost."
"Noted," Emily says, already walking.
Daniel glances back at the guard as we pass under the archway.
"That was weird, right? Or am I imagining things now because of everything else?"
"You’re not imagining it," I say.
The forest past the eastern gate feels different from the clearing where we fought the boars days ago. Older trees. Thicker canopy.
The trail beneath our feet is narrow, worn down by years of foot traffic that’s clearly thinned out recently, grass creeping back in at the edges like it hasn’t been walked in a while. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
"Quest objective should update once we’re close enough," Emily says, eyes scanning the treeline as we walk. "Keep your guard up. Green-tier doesn’t always mean harmless, especially with wording like that."
"You really think it’s dangerous?" Daniel asks, though his tone’s shifted—less excitement now, more genuine caution creeping in.
"I think something made guards stop patrolling this trail," Emily says. "And I think that’s worth taking seriously, regardless of what color stamp is on the parchment."
I walk a half-step behind them, eyes moving across the undergrowth the way I’ve started doing without fully deciding to.
It’s not conscious anymore, not exactly—more like my attention’s been recalibrated since the appraisal shop, tuned toward anything that doesn’t quite fit.
Which is maybe why I notice it before either of them does.
A patch of undergrowth, maybe thirty feet ahead, shifts wrong. Not wind-wrong—there’s no breeze moving through the canopy right now, the air hanging still and heavy around us.
This is different. Deliberate. Like something settling into a better position rather than being pushed by anything natural.
"Stop," I say quietly.
Both of them freeze instantly, trained enough by now to not question the instruction first and ask questions after.
"What is it?" Emily whispers.
"Movement. Ahead, left side. Something’s watching the trail."
Emily’s hand drifts to her sword hilt, eyes narrowing on the same patch of undergrowth I’m watching.
For a long moment, nothing happens. The forest stays still, quiet in that same holding-breath way I’d notice again later, outside Silverwood, before the ridgebacks.
Then the leaves shift again; this time all three of us catch it.
"There," Daniel breathes, already drawing his sword. "Something’s definitely there."
The quest objective flickers open in the corner of my vision, updating on its own the way Emily said it would.
[QUEST UPDATED: Disturbance detected. Proceed with caution.]
Short. Vague. Unhelpful in every way that matters.
"Whatever’s out there," Emily says, voice low and even, "it already knows we’re here."
The undergrowth goes still again, and for a moment I let myself hope it was nothing—an animal, a trick of shifting shadow, anything explainable.
Then something moves at the very edge of the trail behind us, cutting off the path back toward the gate, and I realize, with a cold drop in my stomach, that whatever we walked out here to find has already decided this isn’t going to be a simple hunt.