Echoes of my mission

While passed out for the second time, I experienced another memory in the form of a dream. I was 14, back on Earth, standing in the simulation room with a few other kids.

"Alright, now."

At the sound of our drill sergeant's command, we promptly fixed the VR headsets we had been holding onto our faces.

"Activate."

At the sound of his second command, we pushed the buttons on the sides of our headsets.

"What you see before you now is a virtual representation of the world each and every one of you will eventually be transported to, just as soon as your training is completed."

The voice we were hearing was coming from the headset's speakers. It was the woman talking to us—the mysterious woman I had seen so many times from my other memories.

"None of you are seeing the same thing," she said. "Some of you might be watching a dark forest. Others might find yourselves standing in the middle of a stormy desert, and a few of you might see yourselves at the bottom of hell."

I had a view of a dark forest, with monsters hiding and lurking in the shadows. The Slayers’ Forest. That’s what I was seeing.

The woman continued talking.

"Regardless, your missions are all the same. These are all fragmented locations from a world that is undergoing various stages of decay, and desperately needs a savior to protect it. You all are my chosen saviors. And when the time comes, you cannot fail me."

***

The following morning, I was out of the temple and on my way to nowhere in particular. I was just walking. The little girl was padding along beside me, wearing her simple long white dress and a pair of small black boots. Slick, the water lizard, was resting on top of her head as usual.

After I had woken up and gotten dressed, I headed downstairs with the intention of skipping breakfast and going for a little stroll. I wasn’t planning on bringing anyone with me. I just wanted to clear my head.

The events of the previous morning with the Widow Makers were still fresh in my mind. So many people had died trying to rescue the farmers from the six-legged monsters. I almost died. Again.

I was just planning on taking a walk around the quiet parts of town. But then I locked eyes with the little girl, who had just finished eating her breakfast. After rushing up to me and wrapping me in a small hug, she demanded to come along.

Unlike the last time I went on a stroll through town with Lumia, we weren’t going sightseeing this time. We were trecking in the opposite direction, away from most of the houses and establishments. We were heading into a small patch of forest, a place I was told only contained the occasional birds, rodents, and other small animals. As long as we avoided moving deeper into the woods, we were going to be safe.

We finally reached a small clearing with a few trees surrounding the area. “E! E! E!” the little girl suddenly said in excitement, pointing at something in front of us. I followed her gaze and discovered she was pointing at a nearby sun fruit tree. Although this one wasn’t as big as the one back at the cabin, it still had plenty of ripe sun fruits hanging from the branches.

The girl then looked up at me expectantly, as if waiting for my permission. “Be careful,” I said, and she did not spare another second.

She immediately took off running toward the tree, with Slick still resting atop her head. And just like at the cabin, she leapt into the air an instant later, gracefully moving upward until she got to the topmost part of the tree, where she proceeded to pluck a few of the fruits and clutched them tightly to her chest.

However, unlike the last time at the cabin where she had a nearby body of water to break her fall, there was no lake here. So the second gravity took over and her momentum began pulling her back down toward the ground, I instantly sprang into action.

I rushed forward with the intention of catching her before she hit the ground. But there was no need. As she fell, she was somehow able to slow her descent and cushion her fall by, well, slowing herself down and cushioning her fall. I had no idea how, or what she might have done. Then, as gracefully as she had leapt into the air, she came back down.

“E!” She was now standing in front of me and holding up a sun fruit for me to take.

“Alright,” I said, accepting the sun fruit from her. “You, young lady, will have to show me how you do that sometime.”

The little girl smiled at my remark, then gestured to a spot under the tree where we could sit. And after situating ourselves beneath the sun tree and finishing our fruits, the girl got up to chase after a butterfly she had been staring at the entire time she was eating, while I remained seated with my back resting on the tree.

“You know, you will eventually have to give her a name,” my AI companion said from within my head, while I watched the little girl trying to catch the butterfly. She would go in for a closer look, only for it to fly off at the last minute before she could reach out her hand to hold its wings.

“I’m sure she’s tired of people referring to her as ‘Hey!’ and ‘Little girl!’ all the time,” Rachel added, but I wasn’t really listening. My mind was somewhere else.

"It's not your fault," Rachel suddenly said, reading what was truly going through my mind at that moment. "You did all you could to help those farmers."

"A lot of people still died, Rachel," I said.

"Yes, but a lot of people also survived," she replied. "If you hadn't chosen to act when you did, everybody in the fields would have died, Hunter. Do you understand? Everybody would have died, including Lumia and both companies of the town's volunteers and knights."

"I just wish I could have done more," I said, trailing off as I watched the little girl continue to chase the butterfly around.

"I know," Rachel replied. "I'm in your head, remember? So more often than not, I know what you're thinking," she added. "And whenever you feel down in the dumps like right now, I also feel it. So cheer up, partner. We'll get 'em next time."

I smiled at her last statement. "Thanks, I needed to hear that."

"You're welcome, partner," she replied in her cheerful demeanor. "Now back to the other stuff. Like I was saying, you’ve got to give the kid a name."

I agreed with what Rachel was suggesting, but it felt like it wasn’t my place.

We didn’t know if the little girl already had a name given to her by her biological parents. We didn’t know where she was from, or what she had been doing all alone outside the cabin in the forest where I found her.

We had assumed she was from town since it was the closest place to the cabin at the time. But according to Lumia, nobody here knew who she was.

Rachel then suggested that maybe the wrecked horse carriage we saw on the main road leading to town had something to do with where the little girl might have come from, and I also agreed with that. But as it was, I wasn’t in the condition to go back out there. At least not yet.

I was fairly certain the wreckage was caused by a Widow Maker or some other monster in the surrounding area. Going out there to investigate meant I was most likely going to end up running into something I would have to fight.

With my health only at 68% and my body still very much healing, there was no way I was going to last long in a fight with a monster stronger than me. I would eventually have to go back out there to find answers in order to help the little girl, but for the time being, I couldn't do that just yet.

“Rachel,” I said to my AI companion as I sat up straight. “Where in town can I go to level up and get stronger?”

“Processing…”

As I waited for a reply, I looked around a bit and found Slick being chased down a tree by two other regular lizards. I hadn’t even realized he had left his usual spot sitting on top of the little girl’s head. He must have pissed them off or something.

He jumped down the rest of the way and continued to run at full speed as he made his way to where the little girl was on her knees, still focused on catching her butterfly. He startled her as he rushed onto her back and up her neck to sit on her head. The commotion caused the butterfly to fly off and the two lizards chasing Slick to turn back.

“Eee!” the girl said as she looked up and complained at the water lizard on her head for causing her butterfly to get away. But Slick’s plan had worked. The two other lizards had stopped their pursuit the moment they saw he was with the girl and returned to the trees. And for the rest of the morning, Slick did not climb off the little girl’s head.

***

By the time we left the small patch of forest and were making our way back to the temple, the time was quickly approaching midafternoon. The little girl had tired herself out from running around all morning, so I was now giving her a piggyback ride. Slick was perched on the right side of my shoulder, basking in the afternoon sun despite the fact it was causing his silver, smooth skin to crack in certain parts. I made a mental note to drop him in his bowl of water as soon as we got back so he could rehydrate.

I was utilizing the quiet moment to go over the list of locations Rachel had provided when I asked for a place I could go to level up and get stronger. They had appeared as an unordered list of names in the corner of my vision.

__________

Slayers’ Forest

Slayers’ Dungeon

Goblin Fortress

Goblin Dungeon

Widow Makers’ Nest

Cursed Castle

Hell’s Portal 1

Hell’s Portal 2

__________

There were other info provided for each of the places, but I also noticed that some of the locations, like the Cursed Castle and the Goblin Fortress, had quests attached to them as well.

When we finally got back to the temple, I passed the still-sleepy little girl over to one of the junior healer girls, who promptly took her upstairs for an afternoon nap. Slick had also followed along on the girl’s shoulder, and I kindly asked her to put him in his bowl of water when she got to the room.

I looked around a bit as I made my way back out of the temple, hoping to see a certain someone with wavy red hair and snowy white skin. But according to the junior healer girl, Lumia was at a meeting. I guess she hadn’t come out yet.

I summoned some of the money out of my inventory and used it to buy a whole bunch of temporary healing potions from one of the shops just outside the temple gates. After purchasing, I absorbed all of the potion bottles back into my inventory and began making my way farther away from the town.

“Rachel, among the list of places you provided for me to level up, which of them is closest to my current location?”

“The Cursed Castle,” Rachel replied almost instantaneously, pulling up a transparent blue map in the corner of my vision. “This is the place,” she said, marking the spot with a purple dot.

“Alright,” I said, mentally preparing myself to go on my first quest. “Let’s go find ourselves a horse then.”