I don't know what to make of this situation. It was New Year when it all happened, so maybe not as many players logged in as they had other appointments, but at same time it was the last event of Obsidian so it may have lured them in. Furthermore, it looks like it dragged not only players but also NPCs and they appear to be sentient 'at least Trevor does'.

Currently we are walking in the direction of possibly 'after all, we haven't confirmed it yet' the nearest person. For now, we haven't encountered any danger, which is good, but also leaves me scared if I have the wrong impression and I haven't met the danger yet. The wildlife does not appear to approach us, rather they are either ignoring us or keeping their distance. 'Trevor seems to be a little distracted.'

"Trevor, you ok?"

"Yeah, I'm fine 'that seemed to have wake him from his stupor'. It's just… I haven't seen any of this type of trees before AND I have seen a lot due to my work."

"I see, but keep your curiosity in check. You'll have more time later. I need you to focus right now since we are not used to walk around in an unknown forest."

"Yes ma'am… Wait, you said we? Me, I can understand since I am basically a Crafter. But you move around all time, no?"

"Yes and no. You do remember I could teleport?"

"Oh, I see. Because you just teleported, you had no need to walk around."

"That's correct."

Frowning he stated "And now you cannot, because you no longer have a connection to the world… How can you lose contact with the world?"

"Do you want to hear my theory? It won't be pleasing."

He went silent, thinking the pros and cons of the answer, but in the end, he firmly declared "Yes. The more I know about what happened, the more options we have for the future."

I stopped on spot and turned to look at him the eyes, displaying the seriousness of the situation "To answer your question, I need to start from the beginning." I took a deep breath and started " During the festival celebrating the end of conflicts and the beginning of the peace era-"

"Wait a second." Interrupted Trevor

"What is it?" I asked with a somewhat sour mood for being interrupted in the middle of a sentence.

"The festival was celebrating a new era?"

My eyes went wide open at his question "Wait a minute. Are you saying that you participated in a worldwide festival, that took over a month of preparation, WITHOUT KNOWING THE REASON FOR IT?"

Trevor averted his eyes as mine narrowed. I sighed 'must have the longest today' and felt a wave of fatigue hitting me for a second. I looked at the sky and wondered how much time passed since I woke up '2 hours, 3, feels more than that', hard to tell without a watch.

I cleared my throat and tried to forget the last minute "Either way, that's not important for now. This time please do not interrupt me" He nodded "As I was saying, during the festival I started to lose connection with the east part of the world and whatever was happening, it was coming in our direction. Are you with me so far" He nodded "It's not like nothing was done to stop it… we tried, but nothing worked. So, we despaired or at least I did, I did not have the mind to notice others feelings. And then, a few moments before midnight, I witnessed the sky and the ground breaking apart. After that, I found myself here, then I used the soul pulse to find the nearest person which was you and that's it."

"… You still haven't answered my question?" Said Trevor after a moment of contemplation.

"If I have no connection with the world and the environment here is something I have never witnessed, then I can safely say that this is not our world."

"…That seems quite farfetched of an explication."

I shrugged "If you have anything better, I am all ears." Then I turned around and kept walking. Trevor following me.

He was about to open his mouth when I felt a soul signature approaching our position and it didn't appear to be hominum. I motioned at Trevor 'he noticed it too' to be behind me as I face the signature.

Rules of combat: Number 1, if you are in a party, be in formation; Number 2, buff yourself before making contact; Number 3, prepare your attacks so they can be released at a moment's notice; Number 4, analyze your opponent and act accordingly.

Following the combat rules, I buff my muscles with [Body enhancement] which increases my physical strength and speed, my brain with [Mind sharpening] for processing speed 'it also has other effects'. I charge my sword with soul energy along the edge while it is in the scabbard while putting my hand on the grip ready to pull it out. I feel both my life energy and soul energy decreasing for a moment before the regeneration kicked in. Finally, I await my opponent. Trevor as taken a seed out of one of his bags 'a plant user?' and put it on the slingshot, ready to fire.

The opponent was a deer like creature, like being the keyword since it more than twice as big with grey-red fur and appeared to be quite pissed at us for an unknown reason 'is it territorial?'.

"I do not know if you understand us, but we are only here to retrieve our companions and we will leave right after."

"I don't think that beast will change its mind though" The deer(?) started scraping the ground with its hoof and got ready to charge 'at least I tried'

"Ready?" I asked while enveloping my body in soul energy.

"Whenever."

The deer(?) charged with its antlers pointed at us. The moment it did, I threw a soul energy string at its left side and using the energy enveloping my body, I used [Blink] to teleport me right in the place where an energy body double was, which was right at side of its neck. Before my brain was able to understand that I changed my location, I had drawn my sword right into its neck and halfway through I unleashed the energy to separate its head from the body and the beast was dead.

I quickly put the deer(?) in my inventory, which is infinite thanks to my regeneration, in an effort to hide the scent of its blood before attracting something else. I used my soul energy to expel any drops of blood from my sword into a hole I made with earth energy before putting back in the scabbard and covering the it. I turn to Trevor and declared "It is done. Let's get a move on."

I decided to keep the buffs on, but I toned them down to the minimum so I can increase them when needed and so that they do not bring too much stress to my body. Honestly, I can heal the damage by using Life energy, but it's better to not go overboard with it.

"Ok." He started following me while saying something in a barely audible voice.

"What's that?"

"Oh, did I say that out loud? I was just thinking "As expected from Lady Craven, the one hailed as an unstoppable killing force.", you swiftly killed without getting a chance for counterattacking." 'oh no, is this the so-called embarrassing praise. Please spare me from that! Or did he just said that to escape interrogation?'

"First, stop calling me Lady. Second, we are almost there."

"Yes, ma'am!" 'how can he say that so seriously and sound stupid at the time'

"Also, by encountering the animal earlier, I believe this forest is not that dangerous. Since it was prideful enough to attack us without knowing its opponents might, we can safely say that there are few to none beasts stronger than the one we just fought. That is, if that thing does not attack any living being on sight."

"So, you're saying that we'll be able to split."

"Possibly, but let's do that after reaching this one first."

"Ok."

As we were approaching our destination, I saw a shadow pass in front of us, but since there was no being that could produce that type of shadow nearby, I looked at the sky. There, circling in the air what would be the location of our target, were a group of birds 'well, somebody will have a rough wakeup call today'. We could not see them before because of the tree tops. Furthermore, both [Soul pulse] and [Life pulse] are not that reliable because they are too good, they give too much information and if we don't want to be overwhelmed by it, we have to tone them down.

At this point we did not bother with stealth, rather we made our presence known to keep the wildlife far from us since now we had an idea of the level of danger of the forest. We finally saw our destination, there was an unconscious wolf-eared woman surrounded by four birds, like those we saw in the air still circling us, hesitating, wondering whether or not it was a trap 'I think'.

While I was contemplating, Trevor stepped forward and yelled at the birds "Shoo, go peck something else you lousy birdbrains!!" The birds spooked from the angry voice, flew to their companions in the sky.

Just as he was about to turn around one of the birds swopped down at him. I was surprised by it, so I was not prepared, I swiftly increased the strength of my buffs, stepped forward and positioned myself in a running form then exploded my energy out of my feet to propel me forward to the trajectory of the bird 'that was a sloppy use of [Flash Movement]'. As I was not prepared for it, I could not reliably take my sword so, I used my [Soul shield] covered fist to hit it. The bird did a sickening sound of bones cracking before going flying against a tree.

I exhaled the breath I was holding and I looked up at the birds, it seemed they cautious of us but at the same time they were not fleeing "I thought they were the type that eats corpses but now I am not sure… They'll probably follow us and harass us whenever we don't pay attention even after knowing they could perish. You ok?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. The [Soul shield] should have defended me from it, but thank you none the less. As for those bastards." He answered while looking at the birds "Perhaps they're the type that harass their prey until it is tired before swooping down as a flock and eat it, they won't care if one or two of them dies"

"Great" I said exasperated "So we'll have to deal with them AND we have to do it while waking up the others."

"I did not say that." I looked at him and waited for him to continue "They might not care if one or two die but kill enough of the flock and the rest should flee."

I frowned "I do have a bow and arrows, but they seem smart enough that even if I kill a few, the rest would start dodging the arrows. Furthermore, I am only an adept with the bow."

Weapons in Obsidian have proficiency levels: none; basic; adept; expert; master. You can have proficiency on all weapons until basic level, then ten weapons in adept level, three in expert and one in master. Proficiency only increases the damage of the type weapon but it also tells us how much time and effort we invested with a type of weapon. We may be able to increase our strength, speed, soul energy and life energy using in game mechanics, but spells 'apart from the original ones', skill and tactics came from experience and the time invested in the game. If you say you are an expert with a weapon, it means you have invested hundreds and hundreds of hours with it.

But, as all the other categories of the game, it is quite vague since all that Creo gave to the players were building blocks to play with and with those came complexity and diversity through lots and lots of trial and error from the players.

Trevor smirked "Then allow me." He took a rough wooden ball 'ah, I see' and ready it in his slingshot glove, pointed at the flock and then he let go of the elastic. The ball was shot in the direction of the flock, the bird in the trajectory was making moves to dodge it, a meter before reaching a loud noise was heard and a moment later birds fell down to the earth with a spike of wood piercing it. The flock fled after taking a large it to its population 'That's that'.

That was the spike variation of the [Wood scattershot] spell. Strong against a group of weak foes and reliable against strong foes 'basically a wood shotgun'. You only need a piece of wood, delimitate the shapes for splitting with a form of volatile energy and fill the rest with life energy so that the pieces grow in size. Wood is simple and strong in the right conditions, although, it is weak against fire and corruption.

Trevor put his arm down and looked at me expectantly. I tilted my head, not sure what to do. He kept looking at me. I was getting really confused now.

He sighed "Can you like, say something?"

"Like what?" I asked confused.

"I don't know like "Nice shot!!" or "Cool!!" you know something like that." 'I see, he wants me to stroke his ego'

"You do know it's not the time for that, don't you?"

"Come on!"

"Fine… That was a good shot!! I was worried for a moment there, but I am so glad to have you here, you know!" I said with a smile radiating positivity.

"… That was really embarrassing..." 'If it was embarrassing to you, how do you think it felt to me!'

"This never happened."

"What happened?" He asked sincerely

"Good. I need to ask, why the praise?"

"Gerard told me once that a good Vanguard party should praise each other when they do stuff." 'Is that the reason why he praised me earlier?'

"I do not think I know Gerard?"

"Oh, he's the guy who takes care of the training grounds."

"You mean the hotblooded guy, the one with shaved head, brown beard and has too much energy for his own good?"

"Yep, that's him…" He sighed

Every player that went to Green Wood town should know him because the training grounds are always frequented by players. Since there is almost no User Interface, the only way to know how much damage you deal is by using the training grounds as it has training puppets that records not only physical damage but also bad status effects damage. It is a place where you can reliably increase your weapon proficiency up to basic level and because there are private facilities players go there to create their new secret technique.

I shake my head and turned to the woman and wondered out loud "How is she still sleeping? I believe we did some noise, didn't we?"

"Maybe she drunk too much?"

"Oh well, that doesn’t change our objective." I started gathering and twisting my soul energy to change its nature from pure to water energy, when it comes out of my hand it becomes water and I manipulate it with my energy so that it floats as ball on top of my hand. When one transforms energy into one of the elements it still needs soul energy mixed into it so that it can be manipulated or else it becomes elemental discharge. Good in some situations but by manipulating it with energy more options will be born. What I created is a simple [Water ball], one of the first elemental spells that has been created.

"Wait, wait, wait. You're just going to wake her like that, are you?"

"What's the problem?"

"Can't you just wake her up normally?"

"She didn't with all that noise. Do you believe she will wake up if we did it normally?"

"Perhaps not… But it is too cruel to wake her up like that."

"Too much work." As I finished talking, I lightly threw the [Water ball] to her face. 'rise and shine'

With a splash the water fell on her face and then she got up so quickly that one would doubt she was sleeping a moment ago "…Wha, what…"

"She looks confused."

"Well, no shit. You just wake her up in the worst way possible." Trevor criticized.

"I can think of worse ways."

"That's not the point!"

She seems to have woken up from her stupor thanks to our conversation as she focused her eyes on us.

"…Trevor and… Lady Craven?" 'Lady again, oh whatever'

Trevor cleared his throat and put an approachable smile "How have you been Garamis?"

"Terrible." She croaked "My head hurts and I was woken up by being splashed with water. Tell me Trevor, did you to wake the same way as me?"

Trevor slightly averts his eyes from her scrutinizing gaze. 'If I don't do anything, we'll be here all day'

"I would like to get on with the real problem if you don't mind." That brought their attention to me. 'Let's just ignore Trevor's gaze filled with indignation'

Garamis used a weak fire discharge to evaporate the water and payed heed to me. Not that will matter as all spells lose their energy and their constructs will disappear unless maintained. I can see the wood spikes sticking out of the bird corpses 'I need to collect them' from Trevor's spell crumbling away little by little. In the lore it is said: Soul energy and life energy pools are filled by absorbing it from the environment and when we use them, they will go back to the world. 'Focus, focus'

"Garamis, do you know where we are?"

She was confused for a moment, but as she started scanning the surroundings, pausing for a second on the corpses, realization appeared on her face "Did I drink too much and got lost in a random forest?"

Me and Trevor sighed at the same. 'This is going to be a long day…'

I turned to Trevor and asked "How long has it been since you've woken up?"

He seemed confused at the change of the topic, but answered truthfully "Hard to tell without a way to tell time. If I had to guess, it has… less than an hour 'feels longer than that'. Why ask?"

"This is the first person after you and we a whole lot more to go through… And I still don’t' feel anyone moving from the [Soul Pulse] readings."

"Oh… Why don't we just wake them up and explain the situation later."

"Trevor… Did I ever tell you that you are a genius? How did I not think such a simple solution?"

"Hello, did you forget about me?" Garamis asked sullenly.

I cleared my throat "No, we did not 'maybe'. We were just planning what to do next, which brings the question: Garamis, can you protect yourself?"

"I may be a librarian, but I know a thing or two about magic. Not as much as a Vanguard though…"

"You are a librarian? There's a library in Green Wood?"

"Oh, yes. It is a public library so anyone can enter by paying a fee. It's the building behind the Town Hall and it is always open" 'She seems really happy talking about her library…'

"Trevor what do you think? About her fighting prowess?"

"About that, can we have a demonstration? Nothing too big."

"You still haven't told what's happening." She grumbled while taking a staff from her inventory. A person cannot expel large quantities from the body, either Soul Energy or Life energy, at a time and that's where weapons like staffs and wands come in. The user will charge the weapon with the necessary energy and when it is charged, the energy can be unleashed at will and that's how large-scale spells came to be.

"Wait." Garamis glanced at Trevor "You're not going to unleash a spell from your staff, are you?"

"Yes. Why?"

I answered "We only need to see if you are capable to defend yourself. Looking at the color of the gem on your staff, you use water spells, right?" She nodded "Then a [Water ball] is enough and aim at the tree in front of you."

"I see. Gerard 'Gerard again?' told me once that we have to show our might to teammates or something along those lines. So, I just need to use a [Water ball], right?"

""Yes."" Both me and Trevor nodded 'No need for needless destruction'

"Ok." She gathered water faster than me on her hand 'is she water-infused?', the water was spinning at a great velocity and then she launched the [Water ball] at the tree, the strength of the impact shook the tree and left a gash on its trunk.

"Was that alright?" she asked us.

Another difference Obsidian has with the more classic games: there is no tier for spells. Spells are only categorized into elements, from the least pool requirement to the biggest, and the purpose of the spell. The reason why there are no tiers is because all spells are useful to players, from the beginning to late game, like Body strengthening. More importantly, spells are not fixed, they can be modified. For example, if you add more pressure and rotation speed to the [Water ball], it can pierce metal in its more powerful state, if you can use the spell in quick succession then you have something comparable to a close to medium range anti-material rifle.

And how do NPCs have player made spells? Through constant updated and patches for the sake of immersion, really. Anything new that players come up with, anything that is too different from the already existing stuff, from spells to armors, will be alerted to Creo developers for the sake of balancing, until then it will have provisional numbers that the AI calculated. Game Masters are not exempted from this rule, I too had my one original spell [Nodes] heavily balanced 'even though it was so good'.

"It should be enough." I answered her.

"Now can you tell me what's going on?"

"I'll leave that to Trevor. You'll be forming a temporary team, if that's fine with you Trevor?"

"No problem. We'll be able to cover more ground by splitting."

"I understand. Then we should share our fighting styles then, Trevor?"

I quickly interrupt them "Wait, wait, wait. You do not give information of your combat style unless you thrust the person with your life or when you have no other choice."

"… Is that a rule amongst Vanguards?" asked Trevor after a moment of silence

"No, it is an unspoken rule from Obsidian, it applies to all. After all, we never know when friends turn into enemies."

"Obsidian?" 'Crap'

"The name of our world that me and my friends came up with instead of always calling it "our world", you see." 'Speech 100, I hope'

"Oh, I see. But why Obsidian, though? Is it not the name of a rock? Should you have not chosen a cooler name for it?"

"Oh, that. You see, we agonized for some time with the name, too much time. So, we ended up trying to settle it with a simpler name, one related to the earth we walk. Only Earth seemed too simple 'I'm sorry home', then one of us found what looked like an old dagger made of black stone, older than a century. We thought it was a tool our ancestors used long ago before moving on with better tools, you see."

Garamis seemed to be completely absorbed by the story. 'A bookworm perhaps? Since she is a librarian'

I continued "We found out later that the dagger was made from obsidian. So, we settled with "Obsidian". As a memory to our ancestors and as hope that we craft a better future." They were impressed with the story 'it's not all lies, though'

"Where's the dagger now?" Garamis suddenly asked

"What?"

"I mean, if that dagger has such a significant role to you, you should have saved it somewhere, right? I would love to have a look at it."

"Right, right, we did, but…" 'I need to say something, anything!'

"But?"

I cleared my throat "Like you said. We saved it in a place where it would not be destroyed or lost, you see?"

"Yes." She was really exited now; I could bear to look at her eyes so I averted them

"But…"

"But?"

"But a couple years passed and we completely forgot about it. If Trevor didn't ask where the name "Obsidian" came from I would still have not remembered it."

Garamis asked, hopefully "But now you remember the location where you saved it, right?"

"… No. Sorry."

"… And, the others?"

"… I believe they are the same."

An awkward silence fell.

.

.

Trevor cleared his throat "Anyway, I did not know that people lived like that. Never trusting. I cannot imagine such life..." 'Thank you Trevor, you're a lifesaver!'

I regained my composure "No. It is the complete opposite." They looked confused, it seems I have to explain it better "Disclosing our combat styles to others is similar to giving our lives to others, since that information basically contains our strength and weakness. That is why this information is best kept secret among those you trust the best or else it might will go to the wrong hands 'especially because of the internet, information spreads fast thanks to it'"

"I still don't get it."

"It means the one telling should make sure the other will not spread it, the one receiving it should never spread it and both of them should make sure they are the only ones hearing it. So, even though you trust each other, you should at least do it after I leave. Also do not go into the details, ok?"

""Oh."" they seemed to have understood it.

Garamis raised her hand "Yes?"

"I heard a lot of rumors about some people fighting styles, yours included, for example I heard that you use multiple swords and that each one had a different element. Is that because someone you told the information spread it?"

"It's because some fighting styles make people famous or some famous people make their fighting styles more known. Basically, people will talk after seeing you fight and if the impact is sufficient enough more people will join."

"I see. So, there is no way to stop information spreading even with that rule, huh. Then, that means your fighting style has been disclosed, is that not dangerous?"

I shrugged "I doesn't matter really; they are only speculating. They may know the bigger picture but not the details and not knowing the details changes things a lot. Also, that information is not true."

"So, it is a lie."

"No, it's not. That brings another rule: Never lie, on purpose, about yours or others fighting styles. That will bring many problems, I believe I do need to explain them. Now let me reformulate my previous answer: That information is no longer valid. It was true at one point but not anymore."

My previous fighting style focused on using multiple swords, two in my hands, five in the air using [Puppetry]. Like all Game Masters, it was a style centered around my only cheat, regeneration, to fight against the onslaught of players looking for unique gear. The style was basically me wielding two swords, one on each hand and a third in the air using a flexible and strong tendril of soul energy at the start of the fight. After the enormous initial cost for the creation of the spell, it would be considered a continuous type of spell, so I could maintain it for as long as I like and add more swords each time my energy pool was filled. Cool idea, but there was a problem with that style: me. Basically, each sword required a level of concentration to be useful, so the more swords you add, the sloppier I would become. I had to limit my swords up to seven, but even then, I would be mentally tired after 10 minutes thus the fighting style was not viable for long fights which were the norm since most of the time it was me against a well-organized party 'the sorrows of being a boss'.

"Now you know the rules." 'Perhaps they may no longer be necessary but I will not let my guard down'

I clapped my hands once to bring closure to the subject "Anyway, we've lost a lot time with this conversation so, let's get started. Trevor, can I count on you and Garamis with the others in that direction?" I said while pointing in front of me

"Leave it to us."

"I still don't know what's going on, you know?" said Garamis with a bitter smile 'I think that smile is twitching a little'

"Trevor will talk to you on the way. I will take care of the others on the other way. Keep your pulses on, if one of us stop using the pulses then something bad may have happened. Remember, just wake them up and take them with you to the next one." Done with delivering the tasks, I turn around and started concentrating on my soul energy.

I twisted my soul energy and transformed it into air energy and filled around 80% of my body with it. This action made me feel light on my feet. I increased the life energy on my buffs and jumped. Ignoring the gasp of surprise from behind, my body went high, higher than the tree tops, but no man can fly with only his body even with the help of magical energies so my body, attracted by gravity, started falling to the earth. Before touching the earth, I touched a fragile branch, used my soul energy to hold myself to its soul and jumped again, this time more parallel to the earth, the branch didn't even tremble as I continued jumping from tree top to tree top faster than before. 'Crap, I forgot to pick up the bird corpses'