Chapter 13: Solving the first clue

My badge gave a beep. I picked it up. It simply displayed the list of players who had already worked up their clue. And, from my team, Ivy had made it too. This made my stomach drop

"ALREADY! OH MAN!" I yelled causing some birds to take flight from a nearby tree. I tried to calm myself again.

"Ok, so the crown is either under a palm or an oak tree..." I started to say slowly. I took a look around once again. There seemed to be no palm in sight, if I wasn't blind. I decided to look carefully for an oak tree. After almost ten minutes of thorough looking, I finally found one hidden very cleverly between the others. I decided that I'll look here first and if I fail, I'll look for a palm tree.

I looked at it for a long time. I felt its trunk with my hand. This brought back many memories. I reminisced those beautiful days when my mom used to go pick up my brother from elementary school and my dad would take me to the park. In autumn, we used to go collect leaves and my dad would point out squirrels on oak branches. Then something more came back, something I would rather like not to talk about. I shook my head viciously to prevent the images to form in my head.

"Digging it shall be...." I said sarcastically. At first, I was digging with my hands but this Fren girl's talons were such a bother. How did girls even do normal tasks with these?! I stared at them for some time. They were metallic purple. Then I knocked some sense into myself. I realized I had a dagger. With immense difficulty, I dug deeper and deeper but all in vain. It was even getting frustrating now. Finally, with no more energy left, I threw the dagger aside and sat down under the oak tree. I wanted to drink water or eat something, but maybe something I associated with being in the gaming world and that CGI characters probably don't need to eat ( Even though we had dinner last night), caused me not to feel hungry.

Having nothing better to do, I decided to take a look at my badge to see how many people had made it, even though I knew that it would panic me more. I picked it up only to see it was beeping, sort of like it didn't make any sound but the badge kept pulsating with red light. I tried to click on it but it didn't work. Had it gone haywire? I wanted to throw it away but resisted the urge to do so. Then I tried shaking it but that didn't work either. I started to poke it randomly.

Nothing happened, until I clicked on the skull. Something popped out of it. I caught it just in time. It was circular, the size of a coin with a tree carved on it. It was copper in colour. The some words appeared in front of me;

"THE NYMPHS AWAIT ITS RETURN"

With that, another thing popped out of the badge. It was a red coloured arrow. I figured out I had to follow it. It began to rush in a trice. I ran after it.