"I can't see anymore. No idea how far the plan has gotten, either."
The signal relayed by Little Green had cut out. This was part of Plan B-using the death of the seeds along the route to mislead the enemy.
But with all the seeds dead, the man and the tree were now effectively blind, having completely lost their grasp on what was happening on the other side.
"It's fine. You have to trust the Tree Worship Church's intelligence. They worship trees. How smart can they be?"
Ed mocked them aloud, but inwardly, he hadn't let his guard down in the slightest.
As an experimental subject with extraordinary regenerative abilities, the original owner of his body had practically died dozens of times just to barely escape the Tree Worship Church's clutches.
Ed certainly wouldn't underestimate an organization like that. But he was still developing, and in combat, he could only borrow someone else's might to bluff.
After all, who in the barony, or even nearby, didn't know there was a terrifying alchemical golem here?
Though the golem had already succumbed to rust, they didn't know that yet, so its deterrent effect still held.
Ed went over his short-term plans in his head, then asked Little Green:
"How are our players doing?"
Little Green immediately switched to the players' first-person views, displaying them before Ed like a bank of screens in a surveillance room.
Ed frowned and reached up to tap lightly on the sapling in his eye socket.
"Why are two screens black-no, three? Is the signal bad?"
"That's not it."
Little Green said:
"They just died."
"..."
In the real world, group chat: [Disordered World Closed Beta Group (5)].
The group now had five members, three of whom were currently passing the buck-
[Zhongde]: "Are you two the noob brothers or something? You can't even pull mobs properly?"
[Chief Shit Appraisal Master]: "Do you have any tolerance for newbies? There are only five people in this game, and you're already excluding new players. People like you are what ruins a game's community."
[Zhongde]: "Quit throwing accusations around. You can't even handle full immersion. Anyone who didn't know better would think you couldn't walk."
[Do Some Farm Work]: "Ahem, final payment, ahem, forty-sixty split, ahem..."
The group fell silent.
[Do Some Farm Work]: "Objectively speaking, everyone bears some responsibility. But we're playing a game. Having fun is what matters. It's not like anyone was deliberately throwing. Besides, you're bound to die in a game like this. Last time it was A-Jing, this time it was us, and next time it might be Pothos."
Whether or not the internet troll was being fair this time, blaming everyone equally was still better than taking sides.
The other two stopped passing the buck, and [Chief Shit Appraisal Master] asked, "How do you revive in this game? I just put the helmet on, but nothing happened."
[Zhongde]: "Of course nothing happened. Your body's in pieces. Some of it might even have been digested by now."
[Do Some Farm Work]: "All we can do now is hope A-Jing and Pothos can pick us up and bring us back. Hopefully they'll collect plenty..."
[Chief Shit Appraisal Master]: "We can revive once they bring us back?"
[Zhongde]: "Heh. You'll learn what 'stitching close before departure' means."
"Then how do we know when we can revive?"
"There's no way to know. After all, this game doesn't let you..."
At that, all three of them outside the screen remembered something [Howling Pothos] had told them, and [Do Some Farm Work] supplied what the other two had left unsaid:
"Screen-peek."
The three quickly opened the game's official website, found the map that Pothos had mentioned, and enlarged it to fill their computer screens.
Sure enough!
The live-updating map had undergone earthshaking changes.
The icon for the pile of timber had disappeared, replaced by a small boat on the opposite bank.
A path had also been opened through the Black Forest, and at its end, two big-headed icons were maneuvering back and forth against two monster icons.
The map refreshed extremely quickly, as responsive as a real-time minimap in a MOBA.
The three realized they had actually managed to screen-peek into the game world from the real world...
"Oh, awesome. Looks like they're retreating."
[Shit Appraisal Master] cheered from behind his screen. Of course he cared whether they won the fight, but he cared even more about how many of his pieces could be recovered.
A problem suddenly occurred to him: given how realistic this game was, in the future, they might win a battle and still suffer a net loss...
"Does it have to be this realistic...?"
Muttering to himself, [Shit Appraisal Master] watched the two retreat to the riverbank, board the boat, and begin crossing the river, with no idea how many of the three dead players' parts they had recovered.
World of Disorder, the old castle.
With blood all over his head and face, [Good Times Don't Last] shoved the doors open and saw Ed sitting in the baron's seat at the head of the hall, seemingly planning something in his mind...
Feeling the blood running down his cheeks, [Good Times Don't Last] suddenly felt several times more immersed. He darted forward, dropped to one knee, and cried out in anguish:
"My lord, our army has been defeated!"
Seriously, dude, are you out of your mind...? Ed forcibly suppressed the twitch at the corner of his mouth and gently asked a question he already knew the answer to:
"How did the battle go?"
"Sixty percent of our army fell in battle! All remaining forces withdrew."
Damn, I learned something new. Three deaths out of five can be phrased like that? The art of language really is worth studying for a lifetime.
As Ed marveled inwardly, he saw [Howling Pothos] enter through the castle doors as well, carrying a large burlap sack on his back.
He had clearly also been startled by [Good Times Don't Last]'s self-directed immersive experience. Once he understood the situation, he tipped the sack onto the open floor ahead, and the three players' body parts tumbled out with a clatter, spilling everywhere like a butcher's stall at a market.
One person obviously couldn't carry three people back. The two had done their best to retrieve large, valuable parts such as heads and thighs, but it was still nowhere near the full amount.
Ed wasn't angry to see the bodies he had shaped cut up like this. He simply began his actual work.
Helping the players through their growth phase was perfectly reasonable.
Besides, it wasn't as though he had no other way to revive the players. His current strength was simply limited.
Ed separated the chunks of flesh one by one and laid them on the floor, carefully inspecting the missing portions. Then he dragged the unfinished Vine Sheep over from the storage area and began working on the bodies.
[Howling Pothos] had already seen this scene the day before yesterday and showed little reaction.
[Good Times Don't Last] had been the dead person involved last time, so he hadn't seen this before. Though he found it a little disgusting, whether because he was in something like a dream or for some other reason, he wasn't frightened at all. He simply found it morbidly fascinating.
After watching for a while, [Howling Pothos] patted his friend on the shoulder.
"Come on. Let's go chop some trees."