Afterlife Dream

We all watched in awe as the arrow left Cecilia's bow and split the air with an ear-piercing sound. It did not take long before it completely disappeared into the distance.

"What is that about?" I asked Cecilia in confusion.

She merely held a hand up. "Wait," she said.

"Wait."

We all rose to our feet and waited in silence.

Sure enough, it did not take long before a buzzing sound was heard. The same arrow that Cecilia shot flew above our heads in the same direction where she originally shot it.

"Let's go!"

We marched toward the direction where the arrow was headed. It passed us every minute, again and again. After walking for around fifteen minutes, HellWitch shouted and pointed at the sky.

"Look!"

The end of the loop was invisible. The arrow practically disappeared when it reached a certain point in the sky.

SakuraChan put her hands against an imaginary border in the air.

I did the same. I was hoping to see something in the air. A ripple of an invisible screen, akin to water ripples, or maybe the waves of a curtain. Unfortunately, there was nothing.

Next to me, SakuraChan was also unable to perceive the loop border.

"I can feel nothing."

The beginning and the end of the loop connected seamlessly. It was a perfect loop.

"How does one break out of a loop like this one?" I frowned. "Also, what happened to the three players who went missing here?"

"Speaking about that... we had a discussion in Dominion regarding the matter once," SakuraChan mused. She pinned me with a quizzical look.

"When you people were exploring the Lava County, you were all quite chatty. As in, you had time to report the situation of Lava County and even requested people to go and check the Summer RainForest.

On the other side, those three people who ultimately went missing were very quiet. They did not say even a word or report anything after they volunteered to go together. Isn't that strange?"

It was indeed strange. This was why we knew nothing about the Summer Rainforest as opposed to the Lava County.

"Logically speaking, being close to a lake of lava is more distressing than being in a jungle like this."

"Yeah, so they should have had time or chance to say something."

"Or," I interceded. "Or maybe they are unable to send any message once they are here. Shall we try?" I pointed at my user interface screen.

"Sure," the girls said in unison. "There was no harm in trying. I will try too."

"Yeah me too."

I proceeded to send a message to world chat. Just a simple one.

"Hello."

It went through smoothly.

The others also managed to send messages to the world chat and guild chat.

"So they were able to communicate but they chose not to," I decided.

"Or, they were unable to type it down for some reason," HellWitch corrected me.

"It doesn't make sense. They could have said something during the trip with the Giant Macaw. Or immediately after they landed."

"Did something happen to them right after they landed? Or during the trip?"

Cecilia wrinkled her nose. "These three players did not have Angel Wings. They might be dropped by the Giant Macaw just like we were."

Alone the thought of those three players screaming in panic and hitting the ground was enough to evoke nausea.

I stared at my user interface screen. Something was inherently amiss, but I could not put my fingers on it.

"Antares, what's wrong?"

I did not answer.

I walked in circles while gazing at my user interface screen. And then I realized what it was.

"The chat," I said.

"What chat?"

"What are you talking about, Antares?"

I looked at the three girls and replied, "Why is no one writing anything in the chats?"

All three girls immediately switched on their user interface screens to take a look.

No chats were active.

World chat, guild chat... all of them were inactive. It was as if everyone was doing something else at the same time, but how likely was that?

The more likely theory was that they never read our messages.

We could type whatever we wanted into the chat, but the messages were never transmitted to the rest of the realm.

"The same thing happens when we try to send a message outside," Cecilia reported.

She showed us the private messages that she sent to a friend.

All the messages were written in the chat box neatly. There was no error message, but also no answer.

"I think..."

There was a mix of manic glee and fear in SakuraChan's eyes when she spoke. "I think we are there. Where the others are."

Her words gave me goosebumps. By the looks of it, I was not the only one who felt rather uncomfortable. We wanted to find the missing players, but we did not want to go missing as well!

SakuraChan frantically typed into her user interface screen. After she hit enter, she almost jumped from joy.

"LOOK!" She happily showed us her user interface screen.

She sent a message to HinoKun and for once the error message didn't show.

"It says nothing," HellWitch commented. "The chat doesn't work here regardless of the recipients."

HellWitch's words were sharp and concise. What she said was the truth and it was clear to all of us, but SakuraChan refused to accept it.

The girl cupped her hands in front of her mouth and shouted, "HINOKUN! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! COME OUT!"

We were horrified.

HellWitch and Cecilia tackled SakuraChan to the ground.

"SSSHHH!!!" Cecilia hissed. "Sakura, are you insane??? What if you alerted the enemies???"

SakuraChan trembled slightly. She clamped up immediately as her eyes widened in fear.

It was too late for that. We listened with trepidation to a gradually louder humming sound that came from all directions.

"What's that?" Cecilia whispered, looking frantically left and right.

"It is a..."

It was a song. Or some kind of tribal music.

I wanted to run, but I did not know where to run to. We were trapped in a loop after all. We had no other choice but to stay put while the sound of footsteps soon was heard. The enemies were surrounding us. We had no way to escape.

A bunch of buzz-cut heads appeared from behind the trees. Their faces were painted with red, black, and white color. They wore nothing but red-brown waist clothes and various accessories around their necks, legs, and arms.

Each of them had a long, pointy spear in one hand and a metal shield in another.

They looked like the Waikiki tribespeople from the Third Job Advancement Test, but a little more advanced. And a little more intimidating.

There were a hundred, no, hundreds of them. They surrounded us and gaped at us. Not more than us gaping at them, I am sure.

The crowd parted to let an important-looking person through. He sported some slivers of silver hair on top of his head. He too had paintings all over his face but also some on his torso. Instead of a spear, there was a cane in his hand. This was the leader of the group.

He slammed the end of his cane to the ground and shouted something unintelligible at us with a stern face.

"Dan neah inni faz hou cenim?"

We all just stared at the leader until Cecilia bravely stepped forward.

"Excuse me," she said after clearing her throat. "We are uh, lost. We want to go back home."

The men stared at us in silence. The leader too cleared his throat and then slowly said, "Go back home? I don't think so."

He could speak English!

We were so excited that we started talking at the same time in an attempt to persuade this elderly man.

"But we really don't want to be here!"

"Please help us, we just want to go home!"

"Can you tell us where the others are???"

Cecilia, HellWitch, and I pursed our lips at SakuraChan who popped the question. She stared at us in bewilderment. "What??? Are we not here to save the others?"

"Technically speaking, we are here to investigate," Cecilia said.

"I am here to save those who are missing," SakuraChan pointed out. "If you don't want to help, you can escape by yourself."

SakuraChan did not quite understand the situation.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side.

"SakuraChan, think about it. The three players were also trapped here in the loop. It has been a while since they went missing. If they were still alive, don't you think that we would have found them by now???"

The elderly man suddenly tossed out dry laughter. "This young man is not wrong. You will all soon find out what happened to them."

His gaze swept over the other men. "Inni koluka pa," he said while pointing at the four of us.

When the men approached us and seized us by our arms, I knew even without translation that they were going to take us away.

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