Afterlife Dream

And it was when wings came in handy.

I did not need to remind Cecilia and SakuraChan to use their wings. Three pairs of wings quickly unfurled to prevent three of us from falling to our deaths.

HellWitch who had no Angel Wings, on the other side, was completely helpless. She was heading to her doom with increasing speed. I reckoned that she never once dreamed about needing wings before she even landed on Summer Rainforest. Neither of us did.

I took a dip toward the ground at full speed.

My heart was racing as fast as the wind that blew past my ears. Was I going to make it?

HellWitch was so close. But so were the trees!

HellWitch was only one meter apart from the dark green carpet of trees beneath her body when I finally caught her. She let out a shriek when she felt my arms around her waist.

I shot back into the air, and it was challenging because HellWitch kept thrashing and kicking in a desperate attempt to break free.

"Don't panic!" I whispered into her ear urgently. "It's me!"

HellWitch stopped struggling but she tensed up abruptly. I felt like carrying a wooden log and not a human being. I comforted myself with the thought that at least this wooden log was not trying to kick my ass.

"Antares! HellWitch! Everything alright???" Cecilia shouted from a distance. She and SakuraChan had landed fairly far from HellWitch, so they were unable to help.

"We are good!" I shouted back.

Cecilia approached us and took HellWitch's hand in hers. "Are you okay, HellWitch?"

HellWitch nodded, but she was pale and sweating profusely.

"You look sick," Cecilia said full of concern.

"I feel sick," HellWitch admitted. "Just some air sickness. I will be better as soon as I get down on solid ground."

"Can you two find a good place to land?" I asked Cecilia.

I did not think that I had enough power to carry HellWitch around to search for a good spot.

"Okay!" Cecilia shouted.

She went flying toward SakuraChan and the two of them started to go around in search of a safe spot.

The Giant Macaw threw us off its basket because it could not find a spot to land on. Its usual landing spot was obscured by the wildly growing vegetation. It was not even possible to see the ground from our position in the sky. Everything was covered up perfectly.

The Summer Rainforest showed only an expanse of dark green color to any visitors while keeping its secrets hidden at its core.

"I think we have to pick a tree to land on," SakuraChan mused. "We have been flying around to search for a good place but I don't see any clue that pointed toward it. Antares must be tired too."

I did not want to say that, afraid of earning a glare from HellWitch, but how could I not be tired? I was holding up another body here. She was a warrior and thus covered in heavy armor. That did not help her case at all.

"Okay then let me pick for us," Cecilia decided.

She took a dip toward the trees and disappeared into the thick leaves. A moment later, she burst through the leaves and waved at us.

"I think this one is good. I didn't see anything strange."

SakuraChan and I went to follow Cecilia's lead.

It was a huge but fairly ordinary tree. We took a rest at the highest spot, sitting on various branches. The ground was around twenty meters beneath us.

After we rested for a while, we decided to go down and explore the map. I pressed a finger against my lips to signal to the others to not make a sound.

Our surroundings were quiet enough. We did not want to attract the enemies, whatever they were.

I recalled the mysterious lanky and fiery monster that emerged from the sea of lava. I had never seen the monster before in my life. It almost seemed as if the game created the monster just to kidnap the players. I would thus not be surprised if another unique monster shows up at the Summer Rainforest with the same goal.

When that happened, we had to stick together no matter what. Going solo was not an option here.

"Antares, where do we go?" Cecilia nudged me. I snapped from my daydreams in bewilderment.

Good question.

I had only gone through this map on my way to the raid dungeon. There was a cave at the end of the map that served as the entry point for the level 60 pre-cursor raid.

There were supposed to be random monsters all around the map, but no players ever bothered to grind in here. Why? Because there were so many better grinding spots with platforms and abundant monsters that were piled up together for easy killing.

"Everyone, look at this."

SakuraChan tugged at our sleeves and pointed at her user interface screen. She had the area map open. On top of the map were four little green dots that represented the four of us. We were standing on the south part of the map, and the cave was in the north.

"This way if we are heading to the cave," SakuraChan whispered. "Are we heading toward the cave?"

The three girls stared at me again.

"Why are you looking at me?" I asked. "I also don't know where to go!"

HellWitch pursed her lips. Cecilia sighed. SakuraChan couldn't help but smile.

"Why don't we just go there for now, because it seems that any abnormality would be related to the raid area?"

"Sure," I shrugged.

Our little group made our way toward the cave by relying on the map. SakuraChan was in charge of direction. Cecilia and HellWitch were in charge of offense while I built the defense. That being said, SakuraChan and I walked in the middle while HellWitch led at the front and Cecilia followed at the back.

It might sound like we were marching smoothly through the jungle, but the truth was far from that. We had a lot of trouble going past the thick jungle. Trees had grown on previously existing paths, causing us to climb over giant roots at times just to maintain the direction.

Our patience wore out the more we had to struggle to go through.

"Damn it," Cecilia cursed in a low voice.

She broke a branch that almost stabbed into her eye.

"Pay attention to where you go. Nothing is more dangerous than an unexplored jungle."

We walked and walked, but for some reason, we were barely moving on the map.

"Is it because the map is huge?" I speculated.

SakuraChan shook her head. "It is huge, but we have walked for almost an hour now. We should be moving on the map."

"Let's walk one more hour and see where we are."

"Mm okay," SakuraChan agreed with reluctance.

We went another hour, but our locations on the map were still more or less the same.

"This can't be," Cecilia said grumpily. "Two hours and nothing?"

"This map is impossible to explore," HellWitch groaned. "Since we haven't discovered anything, should we go back?"

"Um... how?" I asked dumbly.

A deafening silence settled upon us when we realized what was happening. We were stuck in a forest with no way out. And we did not know how to go back to Paradise Island. The Giant Macaw had dropped us ruthlessly from its basket! Fat chance that it would find us and take us back home!

"Oh. My. God."

Cecilia smacked her forehead. "I can't believe this. We are stuck."

"Um, guys..."

HellWitch bent over and picked a broken branch from the ground. "Cecil, was this not the branch that you broke previously?"

Cecilia stepped closer to HellWitch. She eyed the branch incredulously. "I... It does seem like it."

The bad news seemed to be piling up graciously. We were not only stuck with no way out, but we also happened to be walking in circles for hours. We were inside a loop.

The discovery wore us out faster than the two-hour walk through the jungle. We ended up leaning against a giant tree while pondering about a way out.

"Why don't we try flying?" SakuraChan suggested.

Angel Wings seemed to be the generic solution to any problem these days.

"Maybe, but it was impossible to look at the ground once you are up there. You will not know where you are going or whether you are going in circles," I pointed out.

"Oh!"

Cecilia suddenly rose to her feet, surprising all of us.

"W-what is it, Cecil?"

"What if we just locate the loop boundaries?"

Cecilia looked at us one after another with bright eyes.

"Um. Sure, but how?" I asked, puzzled.

It was not like there was any signboard that told us where the loop started.

"With this," Cecilia said while pulling an arrow out of her arrow quiver.

Confidently, she drew her bow and shot into the air.