Fate Online: Shadow Chapter 77 - Wasted

Michael is currently in a place called Forest of Despair, a huge land made up of all kinds of trees, vegetation and mountainous regions, with a landmass as huge as or more than ten states of USA combined together.
It is a massive forest that divides the continent of nevareth into two sections, where native residents would refer the lands as the eastern or western continents.
In this forest, resides many dangerous monsters, and that even the natives are afraid to venture forth inside unless they have an army, and only crazy people would venture inside this place.
And Michael, is one of those crazy people to date!
After all, this place is teeming with monsters of different levels, with Level 18 being the weakest monster, and some monsters even have unknown information where Michael could only see question marks floating above their heads.
Michael closed the Leaderboards and looked around him.
"I didn't know that there's actually a huge forest that divides the continent in two" Michael mumbled to himself, while picking up an herb called Redthistle.
It's an herbal ingredient for concocting a Greater Healing Potion, and he's collecting them from a quest given to him by an NPC called Alchemist Balder.
Its an NPC residing in a place called Elwynn Fortress, a fortified town with a towering twenty meter high walls that enclosed the town in circle.
Michael managed to reached this place by hitchhiking a ride with an NPC army who was just stopping by in Durinberg Town.
A lot of players, including Michael took this chance to converse in talks with these group of mounted hors.e.m.e.n, but only a few players were lucky enough to actually be able to talk to them, mostly thanks to their reputation, especially Michael who really has high reputation and small bit of fame, thanks to the quests he had gottend and completed so far.
Because of this, Michael managed to make friendly relations towards the soldiers, and he even got the chance to meet their commanding officer called Erling, who is the current regiment commander of the 7th Cavalry.
With this, Michael managed to hitch a ride with a returning NPC army to Elwynn Fortress from their monthly border patrol.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment, is a two thousand men army. One of the armies that would make routine patrols on the towns and villages near Elwynn Fortress, especially those places near the Forest of Despair.
The journey that would have taken a week, now only needed need over a day of travel because of a speed buff that came from the cavalry army that Michael had the great luck to go with, and he wasn't the only lucky player, as there were also ten others with him who joined the cavalry regiment.
*****
"I need to get three more" Michael said, putting another Redthistle into his [Storage] space.
Michael needed to harvest twenty Redthistle to complete his quest, and now, he only needs to get three more of it.
Michael suddenly executed Shadow Blur as he appeared fifteen meters away from his original position.
Boom!
Three fireballs suddenly struck the spot where Michael was standing from earlier.
Michael immediately scanned his surroundings, it was because there are no such things as mini maps or whatnot in Fate Online unlike its predecessors, but that doesn't mean players don't have a map. They do have area maps and world map, but everything inside it are obscure, and players would only get a detailed map unless they had already gone or passed through that specific area of the map.
This is why players would need to rely on their gaming instinct or skills to locate their enemies, and for Michael, doing that wouldn't have been that hard unless he's in a complicated terrain similar to where Michael is, where there are a lot of vegetation good for hiding one's self.
Michael immediately went into Stealth and hid behind an underbrush, as his eyes continued to scan his surroundings.
The surroundings were so still that Michael could the birds tweeting and their wings flapping along the wind, the sounds of insects and the roaring of monsters from a distance, but at the same time and even with those distracting sounds, Michael could still make out some vague whispers coming from his surroundings, but he's not sure where it's coming from because the wind direction inside the forest is random.
'Why do I always bump into players that wants to kill me the moment they see me?' Michael thought bitterly to himself as he can't understand why he's always getting himself into this kind of situations.
Michael suddenly took out a vial full of green liquid from his [Storage] space, and dipped his crossbow bolts in it.
[You have applied poison to your weapons!]
[+20% to inflict poison status to your targets!]
Michael showed a satisfied smile after reading the notification that appeared in front of him.
Michael then started moving around as he tried to follow where the whispers are coming from, and then suddenly, he noticed multiple bushes shaking twenty meters from him.
'Huh? Did they camouflage themselves by putting vegetations or whatnot in their clothes or armor like how an ambushing sniper does when he/she is hiding inside a forest?' Michael chuckled as he didn't expect for these ambushing players to do this.
Then Michael quickly dashed towards their direction, immediately coming out of his Stealth, but his enemies didn't immediately notice him!
And when Michael dashed passed five meters, he suddenly disappeared and appeared beside his enemies!
But what he saw startled him, because the enemies he was expecting wasn't players at all, but monsters!
'F*ck!' Michael cursed as he saw a huge ball of fire, five times bigger than the regular fireball heading towards him!
[A Level 25 Bloom Flower have killed you!]
[You have lost 10% of your current Experience Points!]
Michael was immediately sent to the nearby graveyard in Elwynn Fortress!
"Dammit! So that's the reason why I never received a prompt that a player attacked me!" Michael cursed while in soul form.