The village was a quaint little thing, though I had to admire the walls. Apparently they had put more effort into those than the whole rest of the town put together. The walls were made of full tree-trunks. When I say tree trunks, though, I mean the kinds of trees we had in the outside world. So probably two year-old saplings round here. That was rather convenient.

  In the outside world we had to leave the trees alone for at least twenty, sometimes upwards of a hundred years for the trees to reach that kind of maturity. Depending on the kind of tree, of course.

  The villagers had pulled a move you would often see in things like fantasy movies or movies set in the Middle Ages. They had sharpened one end of the log then pounded that end into the ground before sharpening the other end to make some kind of IKEA crenellations.

  A pitiful few guards walked near the top. They carried bows, as was to be expected. But their fellows guarding the wooden doors carried spears and a side-sword. Again, too be expected. That was fairly standard gear for village guards.

  Though, why a village even had a wall in the first place was a mystery. Surely the men in the town were equipped with the ability to defend their homes, right? And the amount of guards for the size of the wall was small, as well. Was it just for show, then?

  Or was it a way to slow down whatever attacked them so people could escape?

  And what was it with the height of these people? Was everything on this floor supersized, or what? I almost found myself jealous and I was of a fairly respectable height already.

  Setting those thoughts on a low simmer in the back of my mind, I wandered out of the trees and toward the place. I waved to the guards as I approached. They, in turn, stepped forward and crossed spears.

  Really? Were they really that nervous they had to question every newcomer that showed their face?

  “State your name and business.” One of them said, moving his hand onto his sword pommel.

  Town Guard(Lvl 6) - NPC

  This guard is distressed. His town(considered such with you within its borders) has a problem and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He is well trained, perhaps one of the better trained NPCs on this floor. Even still, he needs your help.

  I just sighed. This quest was like one of those murder mystery slash scavenger hunt games, wasn’t it. Those were always rather tedious in my opinion. All the small little puzzles in order to open locks and find other keys to unlock other locks that lead to a single clue as to who the murderer is. Then you start the process over.

  Deciding to play along, I said, “The name’s Felix. And I heard you were having a problem around here, so I came to help.”

  The two guards squinted at me and burst out laughing. “You? A level two. Sorry, kid, this problem might be a bit much for you to handle.”

  “Can you at least tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Hmm.” The junior guard thought about it for a bit. “I don’t know. Gurney, whaddaya say? Should we tell the boy? Could get him killed.”

  The senior of the two guards looked at the town, then back at me. “I don’t see why we can’t. It’s his business whether or not he gets himself killed. Go ahead.”

  The younger guard nodded. “Alright. But be aware, if we can’t deal with this thing, you probably can’t either. Do you know what a treant is?”

  I nodded. I had heard the term before. That sort of creature was found in all sorts of places from ancient myths of tree gods to D&D in the modern era. A treant was a living tree usually thought of as a forest guardian. They were a mixed bag, though. Some were good, some where bad, some were just there to mess with you. It all depended on the source material.

  “Good. So,” the guard continued, “Every village has a treant guardian. They are the forest keepers, and they provide much of the lumber we need to survive from day to day. But recently, within the last couple months, our treant has gone rogue. He has attacked our village every night now, banging on the door and nearly knocking down the walls.

  “We’ve lost one man so far, and if it continues on, we won’t be able to sustain ourselves. We can’t use the wood from the old trees. Those are way, way to dangerous to cut down. And the treant is the one responsible for our supply of younger trees. We really need the wood.”

  The senior guard chose this moment to interrupt. “Actually, you know what would be really helpful? If you could help gather wood for the town. We might not survive the week without it.”

  Ding.

  Floor Quest: Keep the villagers from running out of wood.

  Figure out what’s wrong with the treant.

  Do note, this is a solo quest. If you do not complete it on you own, you will be given another.

  Great. Just great. This quest was in multiple stages. That wasn’t a good sign at all. At least it wouldn’t be that many stages. But it didn’t bode well for the rest of the floor quests in the Great Dungeon.

  “Sure, I’ll help with that.” I said, grumbling internally about doing manual labor. It wasn’t the most healthy of attitudes to have, but I would have to work on that later. For now, I had work to do. There was only one problem, however.

  “Do you have an axe I could borrow?” I asked the guards.

  *****

  Being a lumberjack was hard work. I decided that on the tenth swing of the rusty axe I had been given. It was pocked in a few places and had a great many chips in the blade, but it did the trick. Sort of. An axe like this in the outside world would have been ground down and reforged into something more useful. As it was, it did the work of an actually healthy axe in at least three times the number of swings. It was great! I loved working harder than I should have been.

  At least I was already a third of the way through the tree. I had no idea what I was doing, and I could still carve through wood like styrofoam. That was the advantage of stats.

  I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again. I love the system. Stats are the greatest thing to ever happen to mankind since sliced bread. Maybe even better than that.

  The tree fell after about five more minutes of chopping. That was by no means a professional job, but it was better than most people would probably ever be able to do. Especially to a tree nearly three feet in diameter.

  I had to hop aside as it fell. Stupid tree, falling right towards me. I tried to put the log into my inventory whole, but it just wouldn’t go. Did that mean It had to be in smaller pieces? Time to run some tests.

  Marking the tree with an axe chop at the supposed halfway mark, I sized it up. The thing had been about a hundred feet tall from root to crown, but it was still too early to tell how much of it would be usable for building and how much would be small firewood. The limbs needed to be trimmed off and cut down to size, the trunk needed to be smoothed out, and the tree needed to be made a neat log. That meant whatever waste came off would go into my inventory and would probably just sit there probably til my death. If I did die, that was. Nobody really knew how long Paragons lived. None of them had ever died to less than an arrow to the face.

  The scraps were useless, anyway. What did I care?

  The branches made a neat pile that I stuffed into my inventory without any difficulty. But when I went to move the big log inside, it just wouldn’t go. So I chopped it in half. Still no luck. In quarters? No luck there either. It was only when I chopped the quarters in half that I could pull the logs into my inventory.

  Interesting. At twenty-five feet I couldn’t fit them, but at twelve and a half I could. Fascinating. What about fifteen?

  The experiment continued until I realized the results were based on my strength. For each point in strength I had, I could put one more cubic yard into my storage. That meant at five strength, I wouldn’t have quite enough to put a twenty-five foot log in, but I would at six.

  Weird, but logical up to a point. I assumed that measurement depended on the density of the material, but then again, that would require more testing with material I didn’t have. It would have to wait for a later opportunity.

  At least my basic education in math was coming to fruition. I wouldn’t be able to do more advanced calculations, but I could figure out the volume of a cylinder and convert it to cubic yards easily enough. That was something, at least.

  The next few hours were spent gathering as much wood as possible before it got dark. I was in no mood to be caught outside that village when the sun set and all the things that went bump in the night came out to play. It was unpleasant enough dealing with wolves and foxes in the daytime. Now I had to deal with a treant in the dead of night? No thank you. I would do that from the safety of the walls.

  At least the forest had no shortage of things to come bother me while I was working. Thanks to a few different foxes and the occasional small critter not worth looting, I figured out the axe was just as good of a weapon as it was a tree-chopper.

  I even went up a level from the critters, so I decided not to be too annoyed by their interruptions and the pain they inflicted. They ruined my clothes too, but their corpses would pay for that.

  When I wrapped up my tree harvesting, it was slowly getting darker. I had probably stayed out too late, what with the journey I would have to make back. At a dead sprint it would probably take me twenty-five minutes.

  Starting out, I examined my surroundings for the markings I made in the trees to help me find my way home. They were fairly clear. Carved arrows in the bark of massive trees leaking transparent sap the color of molten steel in the evening light. It was beautiful.

  Until I came across one specific arrow. It was still there, of course. It couldn’t have gone anywhere. However, there was a giant mess of deep grooves in the wood that covered it up. They looked almost as though someone with a large steel whip and persistent anger issues had come along and hacked at it until they felt better, then hacked at it again for another few minutes just for kicks.

  What I was trying to say was it was a mess. It looked like a massive, impressionistic carving of a tumbleweed spanning the entire length of bare trunk and even some of the branches overhead.

  I had a feeling that whatever had done this was bad news, and I needed to get out of here fast. The sun was sinking faster now. Or, at least, I thought it was as I couldn’t see it through the trees. And I was in no mood to meet anything unsavory when I couldn’t see it. Even the foxes had enough sense for that. I hadn’t seen one of them in at least an hour if not more.

  The journey back to the village was pretty uneventful, and the sun finally sank completely. The dark was suffocating, though I could still see somewhat. Maybe that was my intelligence stat coming into play. I would have to up that when I got to Initiate.

  If I got there.

  Because right now, that was in question. I had just spotted something I really did not want to see. It had pale green eyes that glowed softly in the dark, and off its old, wrinkled bark. The throat was lit slightly from inside as well, the same color as the eyes. That was all I could see of it, but that was all I needed.

  I had just met the village treant, and it was standing directly between me and safety.

  Gulp.