Chapter 8: The Endless Forest (1)

"I dunno. You are born with your talent, you cannot choose it.", she said. "Oh hey, we arrived."

"This is the teleportation room?", I said looking at it.

This place was extremely large, evident from our taking 5 minutes just to get here. That aside, this place had no door, just a person inside, with a computer, and a very very large campfire area. The flames were green for whatever reason.

"Hey, Maria. Did the director send you?", the dude in the chair asked.

"Yup. Let us pick our weapons and we'll be on our way.", she replied.

"Alright then. You are going with David right?", he said, typing something on that computer of his.

"Yup. There should be extra weapons in the room right?"

"For the girl next to you? Who is she anyway?"

"My new roommate."

"Ah, I see- wait what?", he said, sounding extremely surprised.

"Alright shut up.", she said, heading into a room connected to this one. I just followed her.

In the room was a bunch of weapons. There were many weapons, from swords to spears, to bows and even guns. What I felt was weird was the severe lack of modern weaponry.

The moment I saw the weaponry, I realized this was a lot more dangerous than I thought. It felt more real all of a sudden.

"Hey… uh Maria?"

"Yeah?", she replied, while taking a spear.

"Why is there a lack of modern weaponry?", trying to take my mind off the sheer amount of medieval weaponry present. I mean seriously, it seemed like enough weapons to wage a war back in the Middle Ages.

"Oh right, you don't know. Stuff like bullets are really small, and trying to use nihilism on them requires immense effort. To add to that, nihilism dissipates quite easily. That makes stuff like guns hard to use against remnants, but if used correctly, it can still be extremely useful."

"I see.", I said, understanding nothing, but trying to seem polite. In my defense, I didn't even know what nihilism was, as far as I knew, it was just the surge of power I felt against that statue thing.

"Why are you just standing there? Choose a weapon. Unless you haven't used any of these before.", she said, in a bit of a mocking manner.

To be honest, I had never touched any of these weapons prior to coming here. I did go to kendo classes back home, but that was about it.

The katana looked cool, and I had practiced a decent amount of kendo, so I decided to choose that.

As I would later find out, there is a massive difference between wielding an actual katana and a straw or wooden stick with a handle.

"You sure?", she said, heading out.

"I think so.", I said. I mean, realistically, I didn't know how to wield any other weapons, so the katana was my best bet. Judging by how we had a weapons room, I definitely couldn't do this barehanded.

Maria chose a large sword, that looked like it was straight out of a Japanese samurai movie.

He went back to the room with the green fire in it.

"We are ready.", Maria said.

"Alright then, step in.", the guy said.

"Step in where?", I asked, looking around.

Maria pushed me into the flames.

"What the-"

"See you on the other side.", she said, like a classic villain would right after murdering someone.

But for now, I had bigger things to worry about. Like the flames I was standing in. It felt like cold flames were burning me alive. Worse still, I felt nauseous as hell.

I could feel every part of me burning. Then it just stopped. I found myself in a different place.

I immediately found a tree nearby and puked my guts out. Maria could have at least given me a warning. The nausea was one thing, but holy shit was it painful.

I turned around and saw Maria.

"You b-", I said, about to throw a punch at her.

"Shut… up…", she said, looking like as if she was about to collapse.

"You alright?", I asked, my fist awkwardly hanging in the middle of the air.

"God I hate that teleporter every time.", she said, moving around like as if she felt dizzy.

"That was a fucking teleporter??", I asked, almost puking again.

"Let's just get a move on", she said, grabbing my hand and leading me deeper into the trees.

As we went deeper into the forest, we found an empty patch of grass, a clearing in the forest, devoid of many trees.

"Where are we going anyway?", I asked.

"To David."

"How do you know he is here?"

"I can sense him. You will be able to soon too.", she said, then looked up at a tree and said, "Get down, we are here."

Up in the trees was a boy. Was it even right to call him a boy? He looked to be about my age, but his hair was grey, like as if he was 80 years old. His face was covered in a white mask, that made him look like he was part of a masquerade. He wore a white robe with gold outline, and a cross embroider on his back. He dropped down from the tree.

I noticed he had a sword in the shape of a cross and a cross necklace around his neck. Either he was very pious, or he had an unusual obsession with crosses. Either way, he looked like a teen going through his edgy phase.

"Hello there.", he said, sounding about as monotone as a person could.

"Hi there", Maria replied. "Where are we supposed to go?"

"We are supposed to investigate this area.", he said.

"At least give us a debriefing."

"About two days ago, this place was a village that was mainly into agriculture. Now it had turned into a forest, as you can see here, with the houses disappearing and the people going missing."

"I see… what exactly are we supposed to do here?"

"Find out the type of remnant that did this, and which god it belongs to. If you encounter a remnant, retreat. That's all.", he said. His voice screamed out 'I want to go home'.

"Alright then.", Maria said, walking into the forest.

I followed her. "What are we going to do now?", I asked.

"Just roam around until we find a lead. Or the remnant if we are unlucky.", she replied, walking deeper and deeper into the forest.

"You know the way back right?", I asked, seeing how she was just walking further and further into the forest.

"Yup. I think so.", she replied, with no hint of fear in her voice.

"Is this your first investigation?", I asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

"I guess this is my 4th one now. This is my first one where I am unsupervised though."

"So basically you aren't experienced?"

"Come one give me some credit-", she stopped.

"Oh yeah, what's up with the David dude?", I asked, before bumping into her. "The hell…? Why did you just stop?"

"Where the fuck are we…", she said looking forward.

I looked in front and immediately understood what she meant.

We were at the same clearing we started from.