With the advance of alchemy, powering a carriage was no great feat anymore; public carriages ran along the streets, and a few pennies bought you passage.
The Rosa Kingdom was a fiercely powerful nation, and as its capital, Pythia City allowed only the churches of the great orthodox gods to establish themselves there, each ruling its own quarter.
At the far end of Felo Street in the Central District stood a small church.
Nothing about its exterior stood out.
Only its interweaving yellow and white lent the whole building a bright, youthful air, and carved into its peak was the mark of the Earth Mother Goddess, brimming with nameless life and vigor.
Past row upon row of empty pews, Bishop Elovsky, robed plainly, stood quiet and solemn within the church, listening to the sacred hymn drifting from the Divine Temple.
Rosa, Flosa, Wien…
Across the continent, the churches of the Earth Mother Goddess all held this same solemn scene within.
She was called the Mother Goddess, but in truth, a god has no gender.
Most of the faithful kept their silent vigil, but only the pope himself knew that the Mother Goddess had not answered in many years.
Nor was this the Earth Mother Goddess’s burden alone; it was the plight of every church of the great orthodox gods. As cultists grew bold, the balance that bound the great churches no longer held as easily as before, and the royal power that sat beneath divine authority began to stir.
The Earth Mother Goddess’s mark, silent and still for so many years, warped.
The pope seemed to hear the sacred relic give out a single call.
Blurred, murky, as if drifting from some far, unreachable sky, and yet like a secret whisper sounding at his very ear.
The pope trembled and threw himself prostrate, ecstatic past all bearing.
It had awakened.
In the Gloomy Forest, the rolling fog deepened, thickened, as if some divine majesty had been offended.
The bloodthirsty frenzy, after a long churning, was soothed once more.
For that touch of clean color was walking through its very heart.
Light green vines nuzzled against Wusu, then loosened their curled stems.
Plop. A few round little things dropped down. Their faces bore intricate patterns, too blurred to make out; their backs were stamped with a tiny 1.
“Huh?”
What was this?
Wusu squatted down and dug his plump, pale fingers into the mud. One flick, one scoop, and out came another. He counted without meaning to.
And again.
Two… three!
He squatted there.
From behind, that tiny little shape looked just like a small potato.
…What was Wusu muttering about, squatting there like that?
The orc sidled over, head bobbing and peeking, itself rather like a large potato.
And then he heard the little white dumpling say, very quietly, “Five!”
The little guy sat cradling four grimy coins.
Pfft…
The orc lost it. He wrenched his head away, clutching his chest, fighting down the laughter until his face burned red.
Oh my goodness, this little cutie. It’s obviously four!
The flowers and grasses all but swallowed the little white-robed boy; and just when they threatened to block him from view, the vines would carefully pinch off any blade that dared poke its head up.
The vines, fierce as anything: “Back!”
Alana, standing nearer, could see plainly what Wusu held. “Those are crystal coins from long ago. Where did you find them?”
Wusu stroked the vine nuzzling his cheek.
The vine wriggled as though it had a will of its own, then pointed toward the ruined Divine Temple.
Alana smiled. “Do you wish to use the teleportation array? These crystal coins will work for that.”
These crystal coins were not the kind in circulation now, but something earlier, more ancient.
Healing scrolls, ancient crystal coins…
The grand knight’s expression stayed perfectly calm; she had already concluded this was the site of some ruin.
Wusu handed them out.
One for Alana.
One for I Don’t Eat Eggplant.
…
Wusu made a full round of gifts.
He looked left.
He looked right.
He looked down at his own empty little palms.
As if he couldn’t understand why, after dividing everything up, he was the one left with nothing.
He wasn’t upset, though.
Having finished sharing, Wusu raised his hands way up high.
Mina smothered a laugh.
Did that little face mean to ask if there was none left?
Wusu finished handing out his treats.
His little legs went pitter-patter back to write up a quest posting.
Hugging the Adventurers’ Guild’s board, he copied his last attempt stroke for stroke and wrote out the task requirements.
But.
Sitting behind the guild’s counter, Wusu pinched the goose-feather quill, blank and befuddled.
No reward.
Before he could work it out, the board abruptly melted into a streak of light and flew back to the quest-hanging area, its faint glow announcing a successful posting.
[Teleportation Array Opened]
[Please help Wusu travel to Lakeside Town to receive the adventurers who have accepted this quest, and share the burden weighing on the subjects’ shoulders.]
[Quest Reward: Qualification to enter the Outer Library.]
The Elf accepted the quest in silence.
Mina jabbed him in the back. “Your hand speed is insane.”
I Don’t Eat Eggplant gave a light snort. “As if you wouldn’t have taken it too.”
If they wanted this game’s secrets, they had to go deeper; they couldn’t stay holed up here forever.
After they became Wusu’s subjects one by one, the players’ map finally stopped reading (?,?), and the territory’s name was marked in the map’s upper right corner.
“Gloomy Forest.”
Wusu noted the travelers’ quest down in his “Wusu’s Checklist.”
The players knew the quest routine well; they quickly sorted out the assignments and headed for the teleportation array.
Hugo paid the crystal coins himself; players did have their own savings, and that ancient crystal coin they kept.
Something that special ought not be squandered.
Ripples of light by the thousands; the seams of time and space seemed torn apart, and the travelers’ figures vanished from before the Adventurers’ Guild in the blink of an eye.
Wusu blinked.
He counted heads on his little fingers.
“Not the same…”
Alana didn’t know what Wusu meant, but watching him so soft and helpless, like some cub, her deep blue eyes filled with warmth.
She resisted the urge to smooth his hair.
Wusu was gentle and adorable, yet whenever she drew near, Alana felt an inexplicable, creeping dread. Even against the mightiest of foes she had never once felt this small, this helpless.
Lakeside Town.
Out of the teleportation array’s hall, along the long, winding street, flowers scented the air on both sides, green things sprouted, and the moist air nourished everything.
The travelers moved fast: two went to wait at Old Joseph’s tavern, while the other three handled reception at Lakeside Town’s teleportation array.
In less than half a day, semi-transparent frames kept popping up.
[Subject Count: 106]
But the territory’s recruitment count for subjects still read 6/10; apparently only those Wusu recruited personally counted.
Alana took over reception at the Adventurers’ Guild for the time being. Early on, some glib-tongued recruits had tried to flirt with her, but after the grand knight twisted a few arms clean off, not a soul dared step out of line again.
These adventurers seemed to have received the quest from guilds all over; once they took it, they were teleported to Lakeside Town, then escorted by the players waiting there into the Gloomy Forest.
Only the five players who held the Gloomy Forest’s coordinates could take on this guiding duty.
When the count broke a hundred, the players’ guiding quest completed, and they returned to the Gloomy Forest at once.
It was already a scene of roaring, one-of-a-kind bustle.
The System kept chiming. Wusu gave one little wave of his hand.
Too noisy.
So the System set them to construction quests, same as the five players. Pay: 10 pence a day.
Ordinarily, a quest like that would never have caught the eye of adventurers who dance between life and death.
Yet somehow, from the moment it appeared, the adventurers had scrambled to snatch it up; even a few players, seeing the NPCs so anxious, tried to fish in muddy waters and grab it too.
And incredibly, it worked!
This was the first time players had ever been able to take an NPC’s quest. Just as they were celebrating, they discovered a few players seemed to have gotten in touch long before them.
Namely Hugo, I Don’t Eat Eggplant, and the others who had guided them in.
Setting the players’ musings aside: with the adventurers’ numbers swollen, they filled the whole row of rooms behind the guild to bursting.
Two or three to a room.
Nobody dared to squeeze in with Alana.
They liked living.
Wusu toddled along slowly, leading Hugo and the others to the Divine Temple’s Outer Library.
One player tried to sneak after them; the moment he touched the ruins’ edge, his mind felt as if lashed by an invisible whip, and he rolled on the ground in agony while his friend thought he’d suddenly developed epilepsy.
After Wusu’s “cleanup,” the Outer Library had regained its old brilliance.
Even Mina and the others, who had seen every wonder of the modern age, were struck deeply watching the Outer Library shift and come alive the moment Wusu stepped inside, vivid and ancient.
[Congratulations to all players on completing the quest. You may enter the Outer Library to obtain 1 book.]
The Outer Library was vast beyond measure; its unreachable dome glittered with starlight; tassels on the curtains swayed in the breeze, mingling with drifting motes from the Bell-Chime Tree, from who knew where, until one could almost hear the chime of swinging bells.
Ancient, silent shelves stood in ranks, heavy as stone with the dust of history; the players wandered through that sea of years, not daring to reach out carelessly.
The Elf looked up without thinking.
At some point, Wusu had climbed to that great height.
The dome seemed close enough to touch; pale little feet rested against the top of a bookshelf, and the tall ladder leaned beside him, apparently how he’d gotten up there.
“What’s Wusu doing?”
Only when he heard Mina’s voice did the Elf realize she had drifted over too.
The Elf shrugged. “How should I know?”
Wusu patted the vines.
They were greenery trailing in from the windowsill; but hidden in all that green was one black tentacle, muddying the waters.
It had snuck a rub against the small of Wusu’s back.
That subtle bearing sat somewhere between arrogance and dignity, yet betrayed, invisibly, an intimacy it could not suppress.
Prrr…
Wusu pinched the tentacle and looked down.
Ugly thing, so unlike all the other green; bristling with spikes, it lay stiff in Wusu’s tender little palm, turned over and over by the curious dumpling.
A small hand stroked along it.
As the spikes passed across Wusu’s palm they simply melted, naturally, into the softest, most waterlike thing in the world.
Slippery and soft.
Wusu hugged the tentacle, happy as could be.
A power vast and surging heaved and rolled within the tentacle; the avatar that could hold the divine descent for only a moment split open, bloomed, and knit itself whole, again and again. Its advent should have birthed numberless maddened, twisted things. But now…
The tentacle went rigid.
Then, soft, it curled itself against Wusu’s chest.
