The Gamer army moved deeper into the forest as fast as possible, following the orders of their brave general Johan IloveFurries007.

  The guy who had shouted “Fuck yeah! Let’s go back and kill them all!” after the heroic arrival of Arthur and the others was named Eric. And he walked with a small group of like-minded zealots, all of them young men, shouting about their future exploits, adrenaline pumping in their veins.

  That didn’t stop them from walking as fast as everybody else, not looking back toward the battlefield once, while still talking about their future glory and how much they would “fuck those dudes up.”

  Arthur had taken one of the prettier women and helped her over his horse, sitting her in front of him. She smiled happily, a little blushed with the attention. Her name was Emily, and she was very chatty and excited by everything she had seen since being resurrected.

  As planned, Tobias also got some of the fame. For a moment, he tried to deflect the merit, but the bloody saber spoke for him. And he again surprised Mark because he seemed to be enjoying the attention. He flirted poorly with a couple of girls, and was now surrounded by the group of zealots, who were trying to get him to tell all the details of his exploits.

  True to his word, Tobias didn’t provide any real details about what had happened. But he did brag. A lot. Mark stopped listening when he heard Tobias, still riding the horse, proclaiming:

  “You know how it is… We came. We saw. We mother-fucking conquered!”

  Mark walked a few yards away from the now cheering zealots, discouraging everybody’s approach with an angry scowl. He didn’t want to talk with anybody. Not now. He wanted time. To think, to plan his next move. Now that everybody had seen his bloody dagger, he cleaned it with the help of a young man’s canteen and sheathed it. At some point, they stopped near a river, and he managed to clean up most of the blood covering his face.

  He tried to remember as much as possible of the premonitions he had seen on the battlefield: the dragon, the army of undead, the laughing king witnessing his kingdom being burned to ashes, and the god destroying a city with its own hands.

  Hours passed. Everybody seemed to be slowly forgetting about the battle they had just witnessed, and the feel of the “Gamer Battalion,” as they were calling themselves, was more of a group of friends walking through a peaceful forest than people running for their lives. People laughed and greeted each other as they put a face to the usernames they had been playing with, in many cases, for years. Even Mark eventually started mingling with people.

  Eventually, Arthur’s horse seemed to tire. It refused to keep moving, stomping a hoof firmly on the ground, whinnying softly. And a bitter-looking guy with a bruised eye commented that two people on the horse were too much and could injure it—he was one of the guys who had gotten into a fistfight when they had arrived into this new world.

  Arthur decided both of them would walk, so the horse could take a rest. After a few minutes walking and flirting with the girl, he left her the reins of the horse, and he made a gesture to Mark. They both approached Johan, who led the crowd while answering questions and getting to know people. Tobias followed them, and Arthur seemed okay with it, so Mark didn’t say anything.

  They had spent the last eight hours walking away from the battlefield, always moving deeper into the forest. They had taken time to rest a few times. Tobias had lent his horse to a guy who had sprained his ankle. Mark could feel his Skills slowly replenishing within him. If he tried, he probably could use his [Phantom Presence] for an instant.

  “So nobody has a book in their bag?” they heard Johan asking a man who shook his head negatively. “Keep asking, keep asking, it’s very important.”

  Then Johan realized Arthur and the others were approaching him, and he smiled widely, extending his arms:

  “My champions! My glorious soldiers! My beautiful warriors! How are you doing? I wanted to speak with you! But first, let’s stop in this place, it’s as good as any to camp for the night. Then we’ll confer.”

  It had been getting dark for the past few hours, and soon the darkness would be absolute. They thought they were stopping near a ridge of tall rocks, but as they got closer to it, they realized it was a massive fallen statue made of rock. It was so tall that when it was still standing, it must have towered over the forest. It took them almost ten minutes to go around it and make camp on the other side, protected from the wind and also from being seen by anybody coming from the battlefield.

  A few people had holding bags that held some camping equipment. It took effort, but they managed to organize a camp with different streets, latrines, and a night watch schedule. One of Eric’s zealots even managed to climb the fallen statue to keep watch from above and be sure nobody came from the direction of the battlefield.

  “Somebody carved something into the stone!” the self-appointed lookout shouted. “It looks super old—like hundreds of years old! It says: ALL HOPE IS LOST!”

  A little unnerved by that optimistic message, the Gamers started setting up the camp.

  And for the first time, Johan showed some actual leadership skills. He seemed to be everywhere. Organizing things. Trying to cheer people up. Cajoling them into their newly given duties.

  And all the while, he kept insisting and asking everybody if they had a book among their equipment. He hadn’t had any luck yet.

  Mark was sitting near one of the cooking pits, where he and a few others had been trying to start a fire so they could prepare dinner. Their attempts had been very unsuccessful, but pretty fun. For some reason, people enjoyed telling Mark about the supervolcano and how they had died, and he listened to their stories. Many had taken the euthanasia pills provided by the government. Others had died in more dramatic ways.

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  "So I told the guy he didn't have the balls to shoot me..." one of the guys was saying. "But I guess he did, because the next thing I know, I was here. Who would have thought that shitty old gun would still work?"

  Tobias was nearby, arguing with a few others about the best dish to prepare with the very few ingredients they had. He defended making a good, healthy soup. He had almost drawn his saber when some guy argued for slaughtering one of the horses and eating the meat. But the horses already had names, and were beloved members of the Gamer Battalion; so a consensus was quickly reached that they preferred to roast and eat the dude with the horrible idea than even imagine eating the peaceful Destiny, or the affectionate Serenity.

  So they were having fun. They were not at all closer to actually having something to eat. But they were having fun.

  And then nearby, some guy told Johan that he didn’t have the book. And Johan snapped and shouted with his heavy Swedish accent:

  “You’re lying! Let me see that bag!”

  And tried to take the bag of holding from the man, who resisted, trying to keep the bag away. Johan had managed to get the loyalty of Eric and his small group of zealots, and they ran to his help, taking the bag from the man and emptying it on the ground. There was food, clothes, and an alchemist kit with some ingredients.

  But no book.

  “Nothing here, boss!” Eric exclaimed, his eyes shining a little with the excitement. He pushed with his feet some of the clothes, as if making sure that the book wasn’t hidden within them.

  Johan, pale and staring at the things lying at his feet, raised his eyes and realized a small crowd of curious people had formed around him. He shouted:

  “Where’s the book? Who has it? Without that book we’re all dead! We’ll die gruesome deaths! Tortured and maimed! We’ll be tortured and maimed!”

  That got people’s attention. And a new improvised meeting started soon, with everybody approaching Johan.

  Mark saw Arthur getting out of one of the tents, a very flushed and smiling woman behind him, retouching her clothes. It was a different woman than the one he had been riding with. Arthur ran his fingers through his hair, fixing it a little, and meanwhile, he pushed through the crowd to stand next to Johan, who looked at him, but said nothing.

  “We need to find that fucking book!” Johan shouted. “If nobody gives it to me, we’ll have to search every single person until we find it! It’s thatimportant!”

  “Why is it so important?” Mark asked.

  “It’s…” started Johan, and then looked around a little uncomfortably. “It’s… well, it’s a magic book.”

  Somebody snorted in disbelief.

  “It’s true!” Johan insisted. “Before you arrived, all the generals were offered different options to equip their armies. And one of the options was a book with magic spells. Very basic ones. Why do you think we barely have any weapons? Just that single book was worth enough to get more than a thousand swords and shields!”

  The same guy with the bruised eye who had told Arthur to get off the horse intervened now:

  “You seriously made us appear unarmed in the middle of a battle just to get a magic book?”

  Johan looked around, seemingly afraid people might start to turn against him.

  “Of course I did! Wake up, people! Those guys back there,” he pointed in the direction they had come from, towards the battlefield, “they were chosen by the greatest generals in history. Chosen among the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of soldiers those generals ever had. We are talking about the elite of the elite! We cannot fight them in normal combat!”

  Johan looked at Arthur, still standing next to him, now with a satisfied half-smile on his face. And then continued talking:

  “Well, we can; somehow we managed to take down a couple of them. But that will not be the norm. How many of you ever held a sword in your entire lives? See? We cannot compete with them, not with normal means! But I guarantee you one thing: of all those millions of men, none of them know how to throw a fireball, or cure an injury with magic, or do any magic stuff. That will be our edge! As long as we find the goddamn book!”

  A woman in the crowd gasped.

  “I think I know where the book is!” she said. “I remember now! When we first appeared, a guy looked into his bag and took out a weird-looking book. You remember, Emily? He was the tall, red-headed one…” she added, looking at a woman next to her, who seemed scared of speaking in front of so many people.

  Johan ran to the first woman and took her by the shoulders, looking into her eyes.

  “Who? Who has it?”

  Eric and the zealots started staring at the crowd and taking positions, maybe expecting the culprit to start running away.

  The woman stayed silent. She seemed afraid. Afraid of what she was going to say.

  “Who has it?” Johan insisted. His eyes had a touch of madness.

  After a couple seconds of silence, she whispered:

  “He stayed watching the battle…”

  Johan understood immediately.

  “No…”

  “He… he was killed by the Mongol arrows. We all saw him die.”

  “No!” shouted Johan, letting the woman go and walking away. “Fuck! Fuck!”

  He kicked one of the empty pots where Mark and the others had planned to make the soup. And hurt himself, the dull metallic thud getting more than one hiss of sympathy from the crowd.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” Johan shouted again, now for a very different reason, while hopping on one leg.

  That uplifting display by their brave and courageous leader lasted for a couple of minutes.

  A very long couple of minutes.

  Until the pain eased, and he relaxed a little and said:

  “Okay… This is still salvageable… My god…! I hope the blood of that idiot didn’t spoil the book!”

  Johan realized some people were giving him bad looks.

  “What? Don’t act as if you give a fuck! We barely knew him!” He looked around and shouted, “Mark! Mark! Where is Mark?” And when he found Mark in the crowd, he added, “Great! You, Arthur, and Tobias come with me! I’ll need my champions for this mission!”

  Mark looked at Arthur, who shrugged, and they walked towards the command tent. Before entering, Arthur made Eric the Zealot approach and told him to get everybody back to their duties. Then he disappeared into the tent, followed by Tobias and Mark. From the outside, the command tent was a little bigger than the others, a little higher than the others. Just before closing the flaps of the tent, Mark looked back towards the pots they had readied to make dinner.

  No soup for me… he thought sadly.

  Then he turned around and realized he was in a space way bigger than it should have been. From the outside, the tent looked like it could fit about four people, a little cramped. But once inside, the tent was spacious, enough for about ten people to relax without worries. There were couches, a few small beds. And in the middle of the space, there was a small pit that you had to walk down two steps to reach. There, behind a big, rectangular wooden table, Johan waited for them, standing with his hands resting on the table, looking at them solemnly.

  “My soldiers… My warriors… My glorious champions… I hate to say this, but I need you to go back to the battlefield, avoiding all the armies of the forest, and get my magic book back.”

  Mark stared at Johan, a little perplexed.

  Is he serious? He looks serious…

  Johan seemed to be seriously asking them to walk back to the battlefield they had just escaped from.

  He seemed to be waiting for their answer.

  “Fuck you,” Mark answered.