The Golden Woods were a bit of an oddity in the game. Unlike pretty much every other non-town area, the Golden Woods had no aggressive creatures for you to fight. Instead, they featured several secrets, puzzles, and collection spots. It wasn’t a very popular place, since most people played this game to kill monsters and level up. In here, the monsters were missing, and you couldn’t even fully enjoy the feel of nature like in a real life forest. 

But still, that didn’t mean there were no people.

I pulled my hood down to further cover my face and continued walking, hoping the players going in the opposite direction would ignore me.

“Hey there, cutie, whatcha doing here alone?”

Aaand my hopes were already dashed. Also, why cutie again?!

“Uh…”

“Dude, stop hitting on every girl you see in the game,” another person said.

Honestly, why were they assuming I was a girl? Was it because of the robe? It had fox ears and the size was adjusted to my avatar. Was that it?

I peeked up from my hood and momentarily froze. They were the same people who’d seen me in the portal. What if they recognized me? No, wait, they’d called me a dude back then and now they thought I was a girl. Right, I just had to go with it. Pretend to be a girl. No big deal.

“Sorry for that, miss… Wait, what the hell?” the man with deer antlers exclaimed.

“What?” his scar-faced companion asked.

“Uh, sorry. There must be some kind of bug. Are you a player, miss…?”

“Um…” I had no idea what to say.

“A bug? What are you… Holy shit, what?!” the scarred knight jumped in surprise.

What was going on? Why were they freaking out? It made me wanna freak out too!

The grip on my staff tightened but I did my best to remain calm.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that when I try to examine you, your name and class and everything comes as just some garbled moving symbols. Weird,” the deerman explained.

Oh… So I was classified as neither a player nor an NPC. The game didn’t know how to classify me? That made sense in a way…

“Hmm… This isn’t the kind of thing that would be a bug, you know?” their third member, the man in orange robes, spoke up. “It’s more like this was put into the game intentionally.” He took a step closer to me. “So, are you a player? Or are you some new mysterious NPC?”

Shit, shit, shit! Ahh, why did Mr. Smartyrobes have to say that! All three of them were staring at me now! What should I tell them? Tell the truth? No way. Pretend to be a broken NPC? How? Play it off as a weird glitch?

I was beginning to panic inside. And as a result of my mind going into overdrive, my response was raising my head ever so slightly to make eye contact with them, putting a finger on my mouth in a shushing motion, and then turning on my heels and rushing off into the untraversable forest.

“Wait, hey!”

They couldn’t follow me there. An invisible wall barred player avatars from going through.

I ran for a moment, before remembering my stamina was awful and decided to hide behind a tree. Even from where I was, I could still hear voices in the distance.

“Duuuude! I’m telling you! It’s another teaser for something big! Like the portal dude! You don’t just put an NPC with a garbled name text who suddenly runs out of bounds like that for no reason!”

I had a reason!

“And did you see how she shushed us? It’s like she was telling us there was some secret or mystery going on here!”

Ugh, why had I done that again?

“Aww, man, I can’t wait to post this on the forums! I bet –” The excited voice got further and further until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

I sighed to myself.

Had I just created a false mystery? With how many this forest had… one more wouldn’t hurt, right?

Right?

…

I decided to travel through the untraversable woods for the time being. A bit rougher terrain, but at least I wouldn’t run into any more players.

Jeez, what an adventure this was already. Would that happen every time I ran into players? Did I have to hide from them? Or maybe I could still pass it off as a glitch?

Wait, if a lot of people reported the glitch to the developers… What would happen then? Would they… fix the glitch? Somehow? Would I get deleted from existence?

This train of thought was going to dangerous places. I needed to make sure to actually research the developers as I’d promised myself. They had to know something. Maybe this was all some kind of experiment and not really a game?

…

That was for later. I shelved that thought process into my to-do list and continued on my journey.

It was a bit weird to keep walking in what was supposed to be untraversable terrain, but unlike what I would have expected, there was no cut-off point in the distance, where the land suddenly stopped existing. The forest just kept going even though the render distance of players would never see that far.

It really cemented the idea that this was real and not just a game.

Nevertheless, I ran into one more group of players, but this time made sure to hide behind a tree and wait for them to pass before continuing. I felt like I was doing something bad, sneaking around like this, but I didn’t want to risk more people looking at my weird status.

Still, thanks to the movement-speed-increasing boots, the trip wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In no time at all, I finally arrived at the secret bush entrance… Except I was already inside the secret path since I was walking in the forest where you were supposed to enter via that bush path. Weird how that worked.

Not thinking too hard about it, I turned to the other landmark bush and kept following the directions. I still remembered getting stuck on this puzzle the first time around before finally realizing the leafless branch on each bush indicated which way to continue going.

Either way, a few minutes later I was past the bush puzzle, and in front of me stood an old hut. The home of the NPC who could teach a skill called true form.

Would I be able to learn it? It made me kind of excited.