Chapter 14: Chapter 14: The bloody forest
Once out of the head keeper's room, I went out to get nature's blessing from the prayer room, every faith system got this kind of blessing where depending on the type of religion you are in, the blessings given adds a boost. Nature's blessing grants an additional 5% of EXP increase on all activities and 10% defense increase. This kind of blessings are expirable after an hour but can always be rebuffed by going to the prayer room and praying. Although the main difference in the grove is that nature itself blesses the players as well as the natives and aids them to infuse more essence within them.
After that I returned to the estate. One thing I learnt about this family is that no member goes to any dangerous mission alone, and for a player, any scenario quest is a dangerous mission. Although the adults will not help in this endeavor, due to the head keeper asking me, one from the younger generation, I can get some supplies and take two people from the young generation with me in the mission.
The thing is that due to the nature of the mission, I won't like to take any natives with me. Although my family members won't cause any problems in the mission, they will always be inquisitive about the details that I will get; because no matter what, players always gets more information through the system than natives. Luckily, I found two more players in the family. I won't have to be worried about being with them is due to how the selection of the reincarnators family goes on. Order is connected to the main server of EHF, she gets all the data about all the people of earth, something even we can not ask her to show, due to the confidentiality. She sorts the family chart in such a way that like minded players go in similar families. Someone sorted to house Shire won't harm another player of the same house at all, because even in reality they receive similar education and upbringing.
I went to find those two, they became my uncle's son and daughter. Here they are twins, and they should be as such in reality as well; only then such a reincarnation is possible. Finding them was not hard, we can call the family members with the help of the AI in the family; so I asked them to meet at my room, since they were in the library and my place is closer to it than theirs.
They had black hair and pupil and were from japan; Natsuko being the girl and Yasuo being the boy. I spent some time talking about the issue with them, once we verified all the issues, we went to get some supplies like small potions for health, mana; some foods that will increase our attack and defense. I also checked my herb reserves that I found to be useful for my first-aid, despite not being able to use the skill yet. I also checked with the twins about the party formation; Natsuko chose code of life and she uses a scepter and shield. Although code of life mainly focus on the healing part, as a pure life attribute, she can also become an off-tank. Yasuo went with code of light and is using a nodachi, he can deal extreme amount of damage to any creature who is not yang attributed. Being in the same family they also have similar kind of gear, so our strength are not too far apart.
Now, it may sound confusing to find only two people in a big family, but the issue is that this family is separated into countless branches. Seventeen families of the four galaxies opened during the launch of Chaos are considered big families due to how great their influence is and how vast they are in terms of family tree, therefore, the players who fit the criteria to join into them are spread throughout the seven main planets that are designated as the beginner planets to house the entire population of earth; not to mention the death realm is counted as a separate planet itself, although it is much more than that.
Now coming back to my gains during my stay in the grove; I gained 22 points of natural energy and 26 points of life energy, resulting me to gain three more life related words; Vivifica which is the revive word, it costs one fourth of my essence pool. The other being Munda; this word meaning cleanse purges any harmful substance and neutralize contamination. The last is Sanctus; this word creates a zone in a designated area where players can gain invulnerability, the zone costs 20 essence points per second to sustain in a circle of 5 meter radius, an absolute life saving skill. The effect of these words also get stronger as I gain more related attribute energy.
Last thing I did before leaving with the twins is informing our parents, in case any problem arises. We created the party and used the guild vehicle to head towards the forest of Rakh'bal.
"Say Akrosh, how tough do u think the enemies we will encounter will be?"
"Probably not too way over our level Yasuo; after all, this is just a recon mission, we are not going to attract all the heat in there. In fact, we'll avoid most of the natural creatures."
I showed them the quest item to reassure them.
[Staff of Narmina
Quest item
The staff used by grove keeper Narmina to protect nature, containing it's blessing.
Blessing of recognition: Being near the staff allows all natural beings to acknowledge you as a part of nature. Generate zero threat from natural beings unless provoked.]
After the staff was identified, it now gives us perfect condition to roam in a forest without being attacked by any predator. Many scenario quest items have this kind of feature, otherwise, it would have been very hard for players to survive in a hostile zone.
"Then what kind of clues are we searching for? Will they highlight in our HUD or something?"
"Probably not, the clues might not even be like how we are used to, you guys have any skill to search or identify?"
"Nee got one."
"Let me share it to you."
[Skill: Analogy
Level: 3
Analyse substances and learn about them. Can you remember everything?
Hard grade items can now be identified.]
"This will come in handy; look, we're here."
I also wanted to learn that skill but forgot due to the haste of this quest. Anyway, we got to the forest entrance and disembark from the vehicle, there was a side route through which guild vehicles can enter the forest entrance, although I don't see too many people here. That may or may not be due to this place now being under the scenario, so something might have caused which made people leave this place.
I took the staff on my left hand while my spear stayed on my right; quest items, regardless of its type, do not consume any equipment slot unless they are graded. The graded items give stat bonus and additional skills. We took a triangle formation with Natsuko being in my front and Yasuo at my left side. Once we went inside the forest, a very light green light covered us there, with our status showing the buff from the staff. As we went deeper inside the forest, the animals continued to ignore us, while Natsuko used her analogy skill to identify different creatures and plants.
We found something weird about this forest; generally in a forest, the outskirts have less creatures and the number increases when you head in deeper. Here we saw creatures trying to avoid going deeper inside the forest. We even saw lv5 creatures avoiding that area.
"If there's something even higher than lv5 deep inside there, you think we will be able to kill them?"
A valid question, because all of us are at lv3, anything higher than lv5 will be very hard for us to kill; not to mention that any being above lv5 actually has it's class, as classes are not unique for players only.
"We might not have to kill it by ourselves, if that being is the reason for the keepers disappearance then we will only have to report what it is to the grove."
As we ventured further inside, we saw the plants no longer looked green. All plant life from here on have this weird red color; it's faint but it's still there.
"Natsuko, what are these?"
[Identified: Blood infused plants
These used to be normal plants but now they are infused with animal blood through unknown means.]
"Animal blood?"
"So this is our clue?"
"No, the quest didn't said anything yet, just this alone might not be enough. Let's move on; also just to be sure, don't come in contact with these with your bare skin."
Little by little, the entire forest was dyed with blood red color. Suddenly, we found a new prompt from identification.
[Identified: Mutated blood tree
lv5
A normal tree, infused with blood and experimented to carry out tasks; tasked with guarding the area.
HP: 5660
Nature: Aggressive]
We found these beings standing a few meters apart; there were 6 of them and due to their position, we would have to lure two of them at once. These trees also just look like normal trees, with no way to tell them apart from the rest. We spent some more time to check if there were anymore of these things around.
We didn't know how strong these trees were, so I asked Natsuko to attack one of them and taste the water. She used her scepter to hit one.
[-26.5]
"It almost decreased my damage by 20%."
In response to her attack, tree roots started attacking her. But the attack was predictable due to the movement from the ground.
[-16]
[-16]
Each root attack dealt 16 damage to her, I won't have to focus on healing her since her inner skill is the best for that; she can take care of tanking them and healing herself. Meanwhile, I and Yasuko attacked one of the trees. Each of my spear attacks dealt 28.33 damage while Yasuko did 30.12 damage. I also had to use my heal to mitigate the 10 damage the tree leaves caused. We spent some time to kill these two trees, apparently they didn't had any other attacks. One thing I also found from this encounter is that the defense stat is working differently for these trees; they were negating % damage from us, whereas our defense subtract the defense value we have from the attack we receive, I'll have to ask about this later when I get time. Once killed, these trees burned down by themselves and didn't leave anything for us to loot. We only got 80 EXP each for one of the trees; while I also got 0.4 blood energy points. It didn't take us too long to clear the six trees, since we got accustomed to their attack pattern, not to mention that they can not leave their spot.
Clearing those trees, we went deeper towards the center of the forest; on the road, we found a total of 10 trees before we arrived at a place that looked like a small cottage. It looked abandoned and seemed like whoever lived inside left sometime ago.
"Guys, let's search this place. Maybe we will find some clues from here."
Inside the cottage, we found some makeshift beds and weird looking altar. The altar was more of a bowl inside of which we found dried blood.
[Clue: Blood offering altar
Inside the bloody forest you have found an altar used to offer blood of living beings to an unknown entity. The blood belongs to beings very close to nature.]
We also found some books written in an unknown language and come torn apart cloths.
[Clue: Unknown ritual book
You do not know what this book is for, maybe someone else does]
[Clue: Torn cloth
Who knows what the owner might be trying to do?]
[Scenario quest update: Narmina's distress
You have found clues about whatever happened inside the Rakh'bal forest; however, you can not decipher any useful details from them. Bring the clues to head keeper Barkhan and see if he can shed some light.]
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
OrrinShire
OrrinShire Now since my collage will start, the pace of the updates will decrease a little; however I will try to keep up as much as possible. Do expect certain days when I won't be able to update since if I don't like the content myself, I will redo the chapters before delivering them.
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