“So what kind of monsters are in this area?”

I looked around wary-eyed, gaze darting between the trees  and my experience with the slimes at the front of my mind. I was pretty sick of monsters sneaking up on me at this point and I wasn’t about to let them do it a third time.

We were walking down a loose path through the forest. The path itself was a dirt hunting trail at best, and completely disappeared in places before we found it again, 5 or 10 minutes later. The trees were tall and needled, though I didn’t recognize the exact type. They did a pretty good job of blocking out the morning sun and cast the underbrush into a green twilight. The underbrush itself was more varied, with huge ferns and many other plants that I didn’t really recognize.

Dimm just smiled at my question. That earned a pout in response.

“Don’t worry about it. My racial passive puts monsters to sleep. We won’t be attacked unless we pick a fight first.” She paused. “Although it doesn’t work in dungeons.”

“What kind of legacy is that?”

“The sort that a sheep girl gets, I guess. The Legacy is called. ‘Dream Faun’.”

I nodded, then after a few moments went back to looking around. I didn’t totally trust an ability like that to protect from bigger monsters.

I decided to do something about it. I reached around my lower back to grab the disk that was hanging there, disengaged it from its harness with a tug and threw it gently out in front of me. It hit the ground with a little bounce, then started to unfold, the outermost radius becoming legs and sensors coming up out of the middle. Nikola was walking around after a moment, following me. I opened my wrist-mounted control console and set him to scout mode. He stood still while I gained a couple steps on him, before the drone wandered off into the bush.

I was pretty sure that he would circle around us and report back if he found anything.

I closed my wrist controller and looked back at Dimm. She was glancing back at me with an eyebrow raised.

“I call him Nikola.” I said sheepishly to the sheep. “I guess you could say he’s part of my passive.”

“Kind of a weird passive for a Raccoon, but it suits you,” she said quietly.

I grinned at that, a warm feeling in my chest.

“That’s because you don’t know the full name.” My grin turned into a face-splitting smile. “I’m a Trash Goblin!”

We both broke into laughter which ended all too soon, the both of us preoccupied with thoughts of different things.

“So…” I broke the silence. “Where are we going anyway?”

“I wonder.” Dimm grasped her chin between her fingers as if deep in thought.

“Hey, cut that out! I’m the one who’s supposed to be the troublemaker!”

“I suppose it suits your character better than mine.” She grinned wistfully. “It’s called the Abandoned Forest Factory.”

“Because there’s abandoned factors just lying around everywhere.”

“Pretty much.”

I sighed.

“The player nickname gives them all colour codes. This one’s green.”

“Because it’s in the forest?”

“That, and also because it’s the one that’s easiest to reach from newb town.”

“I’m starting to realize how much the playerbase likes hammering that in.”

“Eh.” Dimm shook her hand in partial disagreement. “None of the player names are very good. At least Newb town has a theme that makes sense. There was this big ring city that I saw in the beta, right? Players called it the Onion Ring!”

I shuttered. “You’re right. Newb Town is better.” 

Wait a second.

“You were in the beta?”

“Only for the last week or so,” she nodded. “Laura was actually in the closed beta. I was just in the open stress test at the end.” Her cheeks reddened a little. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Laura could be scary like that. She was normally pretty dispassionate about her life, but she went in hard on her hobbies. I guess that was sort of how she coped with her family? She had little enough free time that I could see the particular appeal for a game like this. Doubly so when she needed a place to vent her energy.

I was giving that thought a good tumble in my head when I managed to trip myself into a blackberry bush.

For those who’ve never experienced the plant before, blackberries are a dense, sprawling plant that’s covered in thorns. This particular bush was small in that it only came up to my hips. 

I swore loudly. The sort of language that was best to not repeat, and only swore more as my instincts were to thrash around in an attempt to dislodge myself, leading not to my freedom but to being stabbed by more thorns.

“FUUUUUUUUUUCK! Okay,” I groaned. “Just SLOWLY move myself and…”

I carefully moved around, lightly poking yet more thorns as I carefully extracted myself from the bramble. Dimm of course wasn’t silent while this all was happening. No; I got myself out to a soundtrack of hysterical laughter.

“Oh, I-I’m,” more barely suppressed giggles. “I’m so s-s-sorry!” 

I might have believed you if you’d said it with a straight face!

I finished climbing my way out of the bush while Dimm took several moments longer to get her laughing under control, if not the grin off her face. I just gave her the evil eye. At least she had the decency to look sorry.

“Anyway, this was actually a good place for a-” A deep breath to suppress another fit of laughter. “A break.”

She whispered something under her breath that I couldn’t understand, then pointed to the brambled I’d been entangled in.

“Fire Beam”

Orange and Red sparks condensed on her fingertip until they started to shift white, then all at once a burning laser shot out from her fingertip, cutting into the bramble in front of us and lighting it aflame.

Okay. As much as I want to complain she hadn’t helped me out, at least she didn’t set me on fire, either.

Danny made a sweeping gesture, her finger still pointed outward, and the beam followed it. Soon the whole patch of brambles were ablaze. Ablaze and, before long, were reduced to little more than sweet smelling ash.

Across the new clearing, still filled with little embers, was another path. Only this one was different than the trails we’d been following. It was paved, albeit cracked and overgrown, and it took only minutes for it to take us to our destination.

The Abandoned Forest Factory looked like a cross between a warehouse, a power plant and some kind of burtonesque contraption. It was made from large brick and concrete walls, in places collapsed, with strange metallic arms and pieces of machinery sticking through holes and lying haphazardly around the ground. There were huge chimneys just visible from the entrance, which was surrounded by the remains of a wrought-iron fence, and a set of huge metal doors stood open. One half pushed to the side and the other fallen outward.

I pulled out my pistol to make sure it was charged and smiled.