Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 216: Ch214. [Dark Forest] (18) - The day after

Chapter 216: Ch214. [Dark Forest] (18) - The day after

Jake sat among the dead.

Not just the fallen, but the truly, irreversibly gone. And not just people. Friends, comrades. Pieces of his own soul that had fought, laughed, bled, and burned alongside him in this cursed Dungeon and even before that, during his first months as a true player, when he decided to start fighting for real.

Cass, Alric, Elise, Riven.

He stared at the still bodies arranged in a line, each covered by a torn cloak or scorched blanket. It was all they could afford them now.

Graves would come later, maybe. If they lasted that long.

He’d helped carry the remains and the bodies himself. Had taken each one from the battlefield in silence, refusing to let anyone else do it.

Refusing to let them be just another number in the cost column of the war that had not even begun.

Jake had known what it meant to fight in the Dungeons. But nothing... No [Tutorial], no raid, not even skill, had prepared him for this. This quiet, this emptiness.

He knelt beside Cass first. Her face was slack, peaceful. The stubborn, fire-eyed smirk that had mocked him countless times because of his fear was gone.

She’d been the first to join him when he split from the main forces, trying to cover the rear and make way for as many players as possible to retreat. She’d died trying to cover his flank, screaming for him to keep moving.

Next to her was Alric, the shield bearer, the tank of the group. His chest plate had been caved in, a fatal blow, but he hadn’t let go of his sword, not even in death. The metal of his tower shield was fused to his gauntlet, melted together by heat and impact.

Jake placed a hand over Alric’s and bowed his head.

"I’ll miss your laugh, big guy..." He murmured, forcing back the solitary tear that was trying to find its way out.

Elise had fallen shortly after, and from her, only pieces remained. She’d been a wildcard, an unpredictable but brilliant archer. Her quiet smile had been loudest around the fire. He hadn’t even realized she was gone until hours after it happened.

Riven, the quietest of them all, had died saving three other players. They made it. She didn’t. That was the kind of person Riven was.

Jake clenched his jaw, his fingers dug into the soil.

Daylight came slowly, a pale and reluctant thing. The sun barely pierced the canopy of the [Dark Forest], but enough light filtered through to make the world feel cruelly real again.

The battle was over, the monsters were dead, and Shinji was gone.

But the war hadn’t ended.

It hadn’t even started, and it already felt like it had no end.

The System didn’t pause for grief. It didn’t care that nearly a hundred had died in one night. It didn’t mourn the fallen, it didn’t send kind words or soft rains.

It simply ticked forward, line by line.

[Day 7: Dawn]

[Time remaining for the commencement of the event: 02 months and 23 days]

A quiet chime echoed across everyone’s minds, gentle and indifferent. The start of a new day.

The remaining players stirred.

Those who had survived gathered what little they had left. They moved with heavy steps, slow hands, and dull eyes. No speeches, no plans, just the instinctual drive to continue, because they had no other choice.

Jake finally stood, his body aching in ways he couldn’t explain. His wounds had been healed by some remaining potions, but the pain inside, what sat behind his ribs, remained.

He walked through the camp, past makeshift pyres and bloodied tools. The central fort had been destroyed, half the walls collapsed under the weight of the enemy’s final charge.

They had already started rebuilding.

Miles wasn’t here. He had disappeared shortly after confirming that Shinji had escaped. Sarissa had taken over organizing the defenses, moving like a ghost through the chaos. She didn’t speak much, only gave nods or brief commands, relieving him of the brief weight he had felt on his shoulders when trying to shout orders to retreat.

And no one questioned her, after all, she was the leader of the first guild that there had ever been, and no one had forgotten that.

Jake picked up a hammer, and began to rebuild.

Wood had to be cut, walls re-erected, traps refitted, barricades reshaped. Every piece had to be reset, every splinter counted, and every edge sharpened anew.

Others joined him. Not many, but enough.

As he worked, Jake’s mind wandered.

He thought about the early days, the first time he’d entered the [Dark Forest], eyes wide with wonder and fear. Cass had joked about finding talking trees, Alric had nearly been poisoned by a mushroom, Elise had drawn faces in the mud, Riven had watched quietly, a faint smile barely visible.

Gone.

All of it.

He hammered a beam into place, Hard. Then again, harder, until his knuckles bled.

The structure groaned but held firm. A wall completed.

He stepped back and looked up.

The sky above the trees was still that sickly gray-green. But there was light now. Something warm, if only barely.

The others were setting up a new perimeter, reinforcing traps with scavenged gear, cleaning weapons, eating whatever they could find. A group of healers tended to the wounded.

Jake noticed Sarissa checking on a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve. She didn’t smile, just gave him a hand and pulled him up.

They didn’t have time for comfort.

Only for war.

The words [Dungeon War] hung over them all like a guillotine.

It was coming. And Shinji would return, stronger, meaner. With more monsters, with whatever lay beyond that rift he had vanished into.

And this time, they couldn’t count on another miracle.

Jake leaned against the wall he had just rebuilt. The world was quiet again, but it wasn’t peace. It was the silence that came when everything worth screaming about had already been screamed.

He looked back toward the graves. Four cloaks, unmoving.

Four stories, ended.

Jake whispered their names, each one etched into his memory like a scar. Cass. Alric. Elise. Riven.

He would remember, because if he didn’t, no one else would.

One more day had begun.

The System did not stop.

And neither could they.