BornAndTorn 22 The cocoon 1

There were many wild theories, what this cocoon is really about. Is it an easter egg for the next event? Is this some kind of special monster, that will spawn at the end of the event, as a final boss. Is it a hidden dungeon, people can explore to find hidden treasures. Is it some sort of advertisement?

Is it a portal to a hidden world?

Okay, I admit I spread the last one. Regardless, my concerns about my safety are currently proving me right. Those people are in a craze, trying to get an edge via every possibility. A mysterious cocoon is quite a lure and I am not particularly happy about that. Especially after I saw their fighting capabilities over and over again. They do not kid around when the Church is involved. Even if their melee capabilities are subpar, I still would have to pass a barrage of offensive magic in order to a have a chance and actually hurt them.

And most likely they are already used to enemies closing in on them. I have not heard of a monster using magic as their primary weapon of choice. Furthermore, depending on the location of the cocoon, many escape option will be limited in some sort or another. If the cocoon happens to be in a wide field, there will not be many options to hide or flee if the cage is surrounded. A desert, in general, is a place that hostile to human life without the necessary preparation. A cave provides a limited amount of space to work with, A castle in the air seems very unlikely.

Certainly speculating about what I am at the current moment is pointless, because even I myself have no clue what the actual hell I am right now. Am I a bug am I human? Will I end up like one of those poor souls that are part of the human centipede? With bad luck, my story will end like the Lord of the flies.

The worst case scenario is that I get surrounded and have no option to flee in any direction. Then they can either cook me alive if they set it aflame or slowly destroy it till they find me. To sum it up, no matter what happens, I am royally fucked.

Praying for sure as hell will not help me at all. I can't expect help from the Observer as well. When even was the last time I talked to it? There won't be another forced shutdown of the server in the near future. And the worst thing is, that more and more people are taking notice of this mysterious cacoon. It seems more and more likely, that someone with a big audience will take notice and begin his own research. More and more people will follow suit and after you just blinked once, the whole world knows about my existence.

I am worried by the fact, that their first interaction with me is just the tip of the iceberg. Whether this hypothesis is true or not, quite frankly I don't want to know. The only feasible option I could come up with is to try and distract the crowd with another topic they can dive headfirst into.

The topic needs to be enticing, but also verifiable. Just always using the name of the Church is going to backfire sooner or later so using it again without a foolproof plan will lead to disaster. Loot? Stats? Rare Monsters? All those options will not look to good enough on their own. But maybe, we can use the cacoon as a basis and spread a rumour that the entity inside will hatch due to the results of the event. Even though this discloses my existence, it does not attract every single little attention possible either. It is a risky plan without a doubt, but I need to waste as much of their time as possible so that my evolution can come to a closure.

But as it turns out, my logical thought process has still not adapted to their behaviour patterns. In the end, it had the polar opposite effect. They confirmed that I played a vital role in the story and therefore spent extra attention to what was happening to me.

I had the sudden urge to swear at myself for acting so stupid, but due to my inability to speak, I was forced to calm down again and begin to assess my situation anew and try to deal with it accordingly. Total mayhem was not something I wished to witness as the first thing after the whole ordeal passed by.

In times of need you need to act properly and plan or every possible outcome, but if you never take risks you will never move forward. So I will just hope for the best, what's the worse that can happen either way? Oh yeah, I can get tortured, can be influenced by a neverending cycle of agony and wishing to die but not being able to. Grasping for every chance of survival just to escape their grasp, with every possible hope of slowing being crushed.

Yeah, that might happen, I sighed. Life truly is never easy. Even though defeat will mean my demise, I will have to give it my all and keep on struggling. Monsters or players will stay in my way, but I will not pay any heed to them, after all, I am going to walk a different path. I will not take a path that is predetermined.

But still this will be quite a long arduous journey, I will have to walk. But what's the use of a bright future, if there is no chance to surpass the current situation. I felt a headache building up inside of my head. Having no clue, no way to guess how long my evolutionary process still might take, I can't make any real plans. Even after spending a considerable amount of time on thinking about this topic, I still could not come up with plans, that would work out if my hideout became surrounded.

I had way too few information to make a decent judgement. So the only possibility was either waiting it out and hoping for the low odds of the storm just passing by without anything happening, but that was out of the question considering I knew the sort of luck I have. The other option was spreading misinformation and false rumours so that the truth becomes more and more obscure.

Rather than focus on the quality of false rumours, I can't compete against several thousand voices at once. Therefore spreading all kind of rumours will hopefully lead to a diverse field of voices believing different things and hindering the crowd on forming a general opinion. A neat side effect is the time it will take to prove what's right or wrong and due to the fierce competition for the Top 10, not many people will be happy to spend so much time figuring out the truth behind it.

It is time for some propaganda.

Chapter end