NPC Code: Red Riding Hood

  Red's Perspective

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"Whatever you do, Match, don't look behind," I instructed, as I grabbed the little girl's hand and zoomed through the sea of forest.

The two of us left behind the village, hoping that the townspeople could defend themselves from the players.

With the cloaked merchant's advice, Match and I went to the forest. Although the two of us wanted to stay any longer, that tradesperson persuaded us to go to the dwarven village. He told me he and Olivia could defend the townlet. And there was some force approaching in the village, which that merchant discreetly explained.

I could still remember the merchant's words. He told me he could fight them, especially when Olivia was around. I had not seen that lizard fight, and I could only hope that the merchant was speaking the truth.

After buying the dragonewt's explanation, we trusted the two and carried on with our quest. It was the journey of collecting the three remaining obelisks, starting with Wonderland.

It had been six hours since we escaped the village's borders, and a few climbed the mountain top.

The breeze coming from the summit had a different gust of wind. It had a somewhat chilling touch like winter. As we reached the apex, I told Match to stay close to me. We stood around hundreds of feet away from below ground. There were no rails of some sort that would act as a safety precaution for the two of us, making it even worse than climbing a tree.

"Can you see anything, Red?" Match asked

I shook my head in response. "Nothing yet… Well, I do some caves, but not with dwarves or anything in particular. Only… empty caverns."

Although the map told us otherwise, there was no clear sign of the dwarven land. All we could see, even at this height, was the forest. Nothing special appeared before us during our observation.

"Well, I guess we could visit every cave we saw right now," I said, while heaving out a tired sigh.

"Ehh, but that's too tiring and time-consuming. Can't we ask the system about it? The map shows we are in the right spot, right?" Match retorted.

"Yes, that's true. But… Like I've said before, the system doesn't give us any landmarks at all. It just says here that we're already dwarven. And probably one of those caves is the entrance to that kingdom. We just need to find the right one," I explained, and prepared a route back to the bottom. "Come on, Match. How bad would it be?"

There are twenty-four caves in our vicinity, and we discovered one of them by the time we landed on the soil. All those twenty caves were all placed on my map and saved in my storage. The two of us just needed to follow the navigation road prepared by the system.

"No luck."

Upon stepping foot into the cavern, a wall welcomed my eyes. There was nobody there inside to greet me. I also did not notice any signs of life inside and outside of the cave.

"It's okay. We just have twenty-three caves left to explore, right, Match?" I enthusiastically asked, with my hands soaring in the air.

But I was the only one with that overwhelming energy. Match was like an old woman who was near in her sixties. She did not want to visit places, especially caves. Although I tried to make our journey entertaining, Match had lost all motivation from checking each of these caverns.

It was a matter of time before I lost mine…

........

I had never thought about jinxing myself from what I said before. I told Match that we would have a fun time exploring the uncharted realms. However…

"Ten more to go… It has been ten days since our first… cave expedition, and yet we haven't found at least one lead! We can't even see any dwarves! What's wrong with this place?" I lashed out while slashing the obstructing vines all over the place.

Match, who had been munching berries throughout the trip, became silent all over those days. I didn't know that a few berries would make her emotions stable.

However, it was not just her who was feeling restless throughout this cruise. I was already passing my limit, and the only thing that kept me going was the berries we had been picking on the road.

It had a sweet blend of mangoes and the sourness of lemon, mixed with the surface colour of strawberries in the shape of dragon fruit. I could not ask for more, since we found fewer animals roaming around the vicinity. I also noticed that somebody engineered the trees growing in this forest.

It only meant that the trees and berries were all carefully placed in their right order. That pattern became visible in my eyes, which Match also noticed.

As we headed deeper into the woods, we found the ninth cave near the ruins. The cavern differed from those terrains we visited before…

"Bullets… and rifles? But there are no bodies… Something must have happened around this place. Did the soldiers reach this place?" I whispered, while leaning closer to the ground.

Despite the bullets and rifles seen lying on the floor, none of them worked as I saw from the soldiers. Regardless of their worth, I placed them inside my bag for keepsake, hoping to find their use in the proper hands.

While dilly dallying around, my eyes caught sight of the footprints going inside the cave. It had a smaller shape than the ones humans have, telling me we were not alone in this place. I used my detection skills on my map and tried finding the anomaly lurking around the shadows.

However, my map refused to cooperate with me, telling me it saw nothing absurd to call it a threat. My system also couldn't identify the markings on the ground, making it difficult for us to perceive the way.

But I knew that we were close to our objective, since we only had nine caves to explore, including this one with the phantom arsenals.

"Finally, there's something exciting! But I hope we don't meet any soldiers along the way…"

Match's jolly expression immediately shifted to an anxious one at the end of her sentence. She knew that fighting against those players would prove difficult for us to proceed to our goal. And if we ever saw one around the cave, a campsite filled with adventurers and soldiers would be waiting for our arrival.

"Yeah. We sure hope so, Match. Come on, follow me inside. Whatever you do, don't walk away from me."

Match gave me a nod after hearing my instructions as the two of us entered the cavern. As we stepped foot inside, the ground quivered, disrupting our balance. I snatched Match away and went backwards, only to witness four burrows shattering the floor. 

"What is that?" Match asked, but I could not give my answer.

After waiting for a few seconds, four altars emerged before us, with a passageway at the farthest wall. 

Each of the altar had a rectangular size that could fit something. At the centre of the four was a caged door.

"Should we try and open that?" Match asked once again, and now I gave her a nod. Although the situation that we were in sounded dangerous and eerie, we had no other way but to proceed in this place.

I touched the ground and prayed that it would never quake again. After waiting for some time, the floor did not move a stone. Upon advancing, I went to the centre and tried pulling the door. But the ground never budged a centimetre despite my exerting enough force to move the mountains. 

I even had my right eye glowing like crazy. 

"Nothing."

I gave up trying to move the stone and tried looking around. My eyes finally wandered in front of the gate at the farthest part of the cave. The door looked more like a dungeon for prisoners and rebels now that I moved in front of it. Match stayed closed beside me while tugging the ends of my clothes with her fingertips.

"Are we going inside?" Match asked.

"Yes."

After our exchange, I nudged the doorknob and pushed the door open, only to see a circular shelf of books surrounding our vicinity. Those racks connected each other, forming one ring, with the entrance as its hole. 

In front of us was a table with a crystal and a window floating in mid-air. Match and I had experienced a lot of mysterious things besides this, so the screen was nothing new to us.

I gulped the remaining salvia inside of me and approached the glimmering light. Upon reaching out for the crystal, a notification appeared inside my system.

[Congratulations! You've found the lair of the dwarven kingdom! All you gotta do is to solve the puzzle!]

Dozens of files appeared before us as the automated voice inside my head read the texts.