After that sudden scare, they no longer dared leave the NPC on his own.
Right now they had no teleportation array, no positioning, no light. Opening the map showed nothing but question marks for coordinates; of all their means of communication, only the party channel worked, and even the world channel was beyond reach. They might as well have been sealed off in the middle of nowhere.
If this NPC croaked, they’d probably go down with him.
Wusu trotted along, pat pat pat.
Mina followed in silence.
Splat.
“Aaaah, why did he fall over again?!”
The dwarf bombshell let out a wail of despair.
Two broken pillars away, the elf player dug a finger in his ear, handsome face full of irritation, and hollered back, “Mina, you’re too loud.”
“Shut it, you damn eggplant! You want to do it, then?” Mina hollered right back without a moment’s hesitation.
“I Don’t Eat Eggplant” was the elf player’s username.
While everyone else in the party had gone with perfectly respectable Western fantasy names, I Don’t Eat Eggplant’s stood in a class of its own.
Hugo and the human warlock ignored the commotion. They were crouched down examining the faintly glowing plants scattered here and there, hoping to dig some quest clue out of them.
The fallen Wusu slowly picked himself up.
He looked down.
Oh. His white robe had caught on something.
Something?
Wusu didn’t stand back up. Instead, he crouched down for a closer look.
What a prickly flower. Where the petals should have been, sharp little scales grew in their place; the stem was covered head to toe in dense, crowded bumps, like festering blisters packed one against another. It was ugly enough to make your eyes sting, and even the faint glow it gave off suddenly turned sinister.
Carefully, Mina crouched down beside Wusu.
She didn’t quite dare get close to that flower.
In this darkness that swallowed everything, the thing putting out light was a flower this ugly.
Mina studied Wusu’s every move. After all, this NPC hadn’t said a single word since appearing except to state the quest requirement.
But this NPC…
Mina couldn’t have said whether it was the hideous flower that kept her from getting closer, or the NPC’s picture-perfect face, the kind of beauty not even the dark could hide.
Wusu stood about as tall as the dwarfish Mina. In the faint glow of that pitch dark, you could just make out the small white-robed figure. Crouched down, he looked like a tiny dumpling, and his earnest air held Mina completely captivated.
Even in the Continent of Divine Silence, a face like Wusu’s was one in ten thousand.
“Oh. Your foot hurts.”
Wusu said it to himself.
Mina: ?
Then Wusu made a motion like he was trying to pry something loose.
Mina finally couldn’t hold back her curiosity. “What are you doing?”
“Soil’s hard. She says her foot hurts.” Wusu obediently loosened the dirt.
Mina: ? Flowers get sore feet?
Wusu’s fingers were so pale they were nearly translucent. Digging them into the ruins’ hardened earth was like poking a soft brush against a steel plate. Watching him scrape the skin off his fingertips after two strokes and keep clawing at the flower’s roots anyway, bloody and all, Mina couldn’t suppress a shudder.
They say the fingers run straight to the heart. Didn’t that hurt?
Mina stared blankly, then collected herself. It was just a game… The realism really did have her in too deep.
Even so, she couldn’t stand to watch him wreck himself like this, and she scooted over. “Let me.”
Pretty people always got a few privileges.
She set the hammer from her shoulder down on the ground, rummaged in the little cloth pouch at her back, and drew out a dagger. Turning her face slightly away from the ugly flower, she found her mark and drove it down hard.
Clang!
The dagger let out a cry of protest and snapped clean in two.
Mina stared at the hilt in her hand: !
That dagger was the first weapon she had ever forged successfully. Plain-tier, sure, but it had 1-2 attack and 10 hardness, at least. What was up with this soil?
“Alesu, get over here.” Mina, refusing to accept defeat, called the orc’s username.
The orc, who had been stooping behind Hugo and the human warlock Alyosha, scratched his head and came rumbling toward Mina’s voice, kicking up countless shards and sending grit flying the whole way.
“Alesu, you lunatic!” I Don’t Eat Eggplant shrieked, frantically swatting at his long silver-white hair.
“Try digging it open yourself, then.” Mina pointed at the ugly flower.
The orc muttered (and even his mutters were deafening), “Real ugly.”
“Not ugly.”
Wusu, quiet and obedient all this while, suddenly spoke up.
“She’s sad.”
Orc Alesu: ?
Wusu reached out and stroked the prickly, ugly flower. The spikes tore open the wounds already on his pale fingertips, and blood dripped down into the blister-like petals.
Mina noticed the flower dip its head, just barely.
Mina: Fck! This flower can actually feel sad?!
Alesu’s attempt failed too. The soil of these ruins looked ordinary, but it seemed to be guarded by an invisible layer of mana; tools and weapons couldn’t do the slightest damage to it. Even Hugo’s longsword, which had received a divine blessing, couldn’t dig into it.
The party players who had gathered around frowned, at a complete loss for where to start.
Wusu was still huffing away, digging.
The Travelers are good people, Wusu “thought”.
Even if they weren’t any help.
His nails bent back, tender flesh scraping against dirt, and the dust-caked roots slowly came free under Wusu’s hands. The flower’s roots were surprisingly short, and after a good stretch of self-mutilating effort, Wusu finally dug the little clown flower out whole.
His dirty little hands cupped the ugly flower, and Wusu held it protectively against his chest.
“You’re not ugly.”
He tried to comfort it.
And the players watched the flower droop even more pitifully.
Wusu stood rooted in place, thinking.
Is “pondering” the same thing as “thinking”?
Never mind. It probably is.
He “pondered”: Where would the soil be most comfortable?
Wusu walked slowly.
“Hugo?” Alesu asked in his guileless boom, watching a captain who seemed to be planning to follow the NPC.
“I turned pain sensitivity down and tried digging up some of the other flowers just now. Forget uprooting them, I couldn’t even leave a scratch.” I Don’t Eat Eggplant frowned, lifting his chin to point at Wusu. “Following him is the only way we’ll find any clues. That’s what you’re thinking too, right, Hugo?”
Hugo gripped his longsword and said gravely, “That flower is different.”
The big orc mumbled, “Different how? They all look the same to me.”
The human warlock said flatly, “Ugly like that? One of a kind.”
The other players: …
Hugo forced out the rest of the sentence: “…Let alone responding to what people say.”
“This spot should be soft enough.”
He had walked for a long, long time.
Wusu whispered to himself.
His voice was soft and faint, like a cold hidden spring, gentle and just a little chilly.
Wusu crouched, set the little clown flower aside, and kept digging.
At the center of the ruins stood the broken Divine Temple. Gravel and sand caked the stone slabs that should have been carved full of magic runes; the dome, riddled with great holes, let in no light at all, and surging black mist buried every trace of the past.
The only source of light was the little clown flower beside Wusu.
“The longer you look, the easier it is on the eyes.” The orc grumbled loudly.
They had been following silently this entire way.
Mina hid her face behind the warlock Alyosha and lamented, “Watching hot guys torture themselves right in front of me? Just kill me now.”
The elf rolled his eyes and mocked her with zero racial solidarity, “Then go kill yourself right now and let us find out where the resurrection point is while you’re at it.” If the resurrection point turned out to be the main city, they’d have to be careful.
A resurrection point in the main city meant they absolutely could not die for the rest of this legendary quest.
One hit and gone. Die once, and everything was toast.
“Pah. Why doesn’t damn eggplant go kill himself, then!” The pint-sized Mina swung her hammer like she meant to pound him into paste.
“Look.”
The human warlock Alyosha’s voice cut in, cold enough to smother the party’s usual banter, the mood snapping to quest-serious in an instant.
Wusu had finally dug out a little pit.
All ten fingers were a bloody mess; you could nearly see the bone beneath.
Cradling the little clown flower with the utmost care, he bowed his head and gently kissed its blister-like stem.
Then he buried the little clown flower in the pit.
Filled the soil back in.
Packed it down.
All in an instant.
The short little rootlets plunged deep into the bottom of the pit, and the stem swelled into a stout trunk. Surging, overflowing vitality poured out like a current, sprouting countless branches that climbed and climbed like things possessed. Black-and-white grain twisted upward through the growing wood; the climbing treetop plugged the gaping holes in the ruined temple’s dome, and the flourishing canopy swallowed the whole sky above the temple.
Then the blister-like spiked scales unfurled one after another, and countless tender buds crowded the tips of the branches. Pop.
As if some small sound had gone off.
The lush canopy burst into bloom, countless buds opening all at once.
Like countless bell-flowers swaying in the wind, a faint ringing at the ear, silvery-white softness scattering through the air, pearly light blazing bright in that instant.
The long-dark forest had its very own Bell-Chime Tree.
“Hugo!”
Mina’s startled cry shook the dazed captain awake. Hugo turned toward the woman’s voice, and behind him was…
Under the swaying pearly-white glow.
From the ruins to the Divine Temple, that gentle light poured over everything, as if the gloomy forest had driven out the eerie dark. Before the broken Divine Temple lay a small path.
Tender flowers bloomed in clusters; young green grass beaded with sweet dew.
Clump after clump,
Handful after handful.
Surging vitality surfaced through the wasteland wherever Wusu had walked, vigorous life unfurling its vines and shoots.
The players whipped around, staring at the tiny figure standing quietly beneath the flourishing canopy.
Wusu had said he wanted light.
And so there was light.
【Legendary Quest “Divine Temple Revival”: Prelude: Please help Wusu obtain a light source!】
【Complete √】
【Reward: All players, all attributes +1】
I Don’t Eat Eggplant: “Holy sht, NPCs can complete quests too?”
Continent of Divine Silence Forum > Discussion Boards > Off-Topic
[Can NPCs Complete Quests Too?]
OP picked up a quest today. The quest NPC posted it, we had zero clue what to do, and then that NPC just sorted the whole thing out and finished it himself in a couple of moves. What even is that? An NPC who can finish his own quest handing out quests, is he trolling us?
1F Savadika
Gotta be fake, right?
2F You Know What You Don’t Know
Maybe it’s a new type of NPC? Don’t look at me, I’m no mod.
3F Land of Blooming Flowers
Never heard of anything like it. How about you tell us where this quest took place?
4F Us Later On
Could it be the prologue to some big questline? Speaking of which, we ran into one before. He wanted us to kill him, and the system said it was the trigger for some legendary quest. But before we could even get into position, the NPC up and died of poison, fck! I was seconds away from a legendary quest! And since he completed it himself, the follow-up was gone too!
5F HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
My ID says it all. Rest in peace, poster above.
…
Cold-faced, Alyosha deleted the post and returned from the forum to the game. “It’s normal. Someone on the boards said they’d run into it before.”
I Don’t Eat Eggplant ruffled his head of silver-white hair. “By the way… why do you delete your posts every single time after you make them?”
