[Cold Autumn]: “Have you noticed? This quest pays all of ten pence a day. Why are these NPCs tripping over each other to take it?”
They were all players from the Flote Kingdom; it was their first time watching adventurers snap up a quest this fast.
[Ignorant of the Eastern Han] shrugged and knocked loose a chunk of ore with one chisel stroke. “No clue. Even this place’s coordinates show as (?,?). Heard from those Rosa Kingdom players that the NPCs back where they are, for who knows what reason, keep wanting to come over like they’re possessed.”
[Wild Fox]: “You don’t know? Then what the hell are we even doing here!”
[Ignorant of the Eastern Han]: “Love and peace. Something’s definitely off with this quest’s follow-up.”
The players whispered among themselves, hidden among the adventurers, peeking around and observing.
The territory (ruins aside) had long stopped looking like the wasteland it had been.
Once, nothing had grown around the ruins but clown flowers, but Wusu’s little legs had covered plenty of ground. Lush, riotous color now blanketed the entire clearing, and construction crews these days even had to stop and pull the occasional weed.
Hammer and clang, a good hundred-odd people toiling away at construction, and soon the most basic structures stood: the food warehouse and the materials warehouse.
After all, nothing matters more than food.
Couldn’t exactly let everyone starve.
Speaking of food: there had originally been nothing edible anywhere near the Secluded Forest. Hugo and company had survived on the rations they’d carried in before the teleport.
Alyosha clanged away, felling trees and digging ore.
Trailing behind her: a small shadow.
Alyosha grew hungry.
The small shadow poked out its little head.
The human warlock pulled out a dry flatbread to gnaw.
The small shadow rustled about in the grass, up to who knew what.
Mina, watching from the sidelines, had held her laughter until her whole body shook. The Elf finally couldn’t stand it and went to fish the little guy out; only when his hands closed on him did he register how truly tiny the kid was.
“What are you sneaking around for?” the Elf barked.
Wusu’s big eyes fixed on the Elf; then, unhurried, he produced a few strings of little fruit.
The pink berries clustered like strands of beads, smooth to the eye, breathing an unnamed, tempting fragrance.
“Here. For you.”
The sight of the child about to stuff them into his hands made the Elf instinctively step back.
Yes. Child.
However he looked at it, this little one could not be called a youth.
Even though Asimi Village’s lore had told him Wusu was long past the age of a toddler.
And yet…
I Don’t Eat Eggplant looked down at Wusu quietly pushing fruit at him.
Tsk.
Little shorty.
Mina curiously took them and plucked one to taste.
“This flavor is unreal.” Mina paused for a moment.
Then she cried out, “Damn, this is heavenly!”
Clearly, during that pause, she had quietly cranked her realism value up.
Not everyone kept it pinned at a hundred percent year-round like that Elf guy; Mina usually set hers to 40.
Alyosha seemed never to have watched Wusu eat. “You don’t eat?” But even NPCs were supposed to eat three meals a day.
Since she’d comforted him, the little NPC seemed to have warmed to her, which left the aloof Human Warlock oddly flustered.
Mina stole a pat of Wusu’s little tummy.
Holy crap, so soft!
Wusu held the little pink fruit, small brows knitted, watching.
He patted his own tummy.
Soft. Nice.
Mina used the moment to pop a fruit between his lips; Wusu held it in his mouth.
Blinked.
And the next second he swallowed it whole.
Mina jolted and hurried to press his throat. “Not like that! You have to chew…”
Half-kneeling in front of him, she taught him to use his teeth.
The Elf rolled his eyes. Watching bemused Wusu and gesticulating Mina, he had the strangest sense of watching two people talk straight past each other.
And so Wusu began to “learn” how to eat.
Along with that awareness, the territory’s people started finding mushrooms, berries, and other food near the Secluded Forest, and the empty food warehouse finally earned its keep.
The players, for their part, no longer had to sweat what would happen if they starved to death and got shipped back to town!
Gruesome death aside, this place plainly had no resurrection point at all.
[Wusu’s Territory lacks a Weapons Forge, and so cannot help its subjects improve their weapons and equipment! Start building the Weapons Forge with gusto!]
[Shop Construction]
[After obtaining Lord Wusu’s permission, shops may be opened within the territory.]
[Requirements:
1) Subject status in the territory
2) The Lord’s approval]
When the chiming quest notification rang out, [Wild Fox]’s eyes lit up, and he extricated himself without a second’s hesitation to find the Wusu the prompt mentioned.
A player’s madness and unbridled destructive urge is to a game what a locust swarm is to a harvest; expecting them to lie low was pure fantasy.
The infiltrators had been delighted at first to snatch the NPCs’ Adventurers’ Guild quests, but once the paltry rewards came to light, other ideas began to brew.
This was, clearly and simply, a fresh, unexplored map.
Someone had even started a livestream thread on the forum, meaning to broadcast the whole land-opening process.
By the time Wild Fox wandered over, players were already swearing; the few standing around looked short on patience.
[I Want to Eat Chicken] snarled, “You blind?! What’s with the silent treatment?”
He was a towering orc, rugged enough to go toe to toe with Alesu in the looks department.
I Want to Eat Chicken had pounced the moment the quest notification arrived, slipping in whenever players like [Hugo] and [Mina] stepped away from the NPC’s side, and somehow the surest thing in the world had stalled out right here at Wusu.
The NPC ignored him.
Wusu, meanwhile, had been curled up in the grass like a little dumpling, daydreaming and busily logging entries in his “Wusu’s Checklist”; only when [I Want to Eat Chicken] brought people over to surround and curse at him did he come back to himself, and then only glacially.
Wild Fox frowned and drifted closer.
Then he heard I Want to Eat Chicken click his tongue and crow to his friends, “This lord is actually an idiot. Head down the whole time; couldn’t even get a look at his face… Tch. Wonder if I off him whether I can take his place as lord?”
NPCs in this game did not respawn.
But that was exactly where the fun lay, in these endless possibilities. Sometimes you cut down a mayor and slipped into his skin to run a whole city; sometimes you were trading pleasantries with an NPC one heartbeat and receiving a marriage quest the next.
Nobody had ever found the pattern.
Pop.
At Wusu’s pale little feet, a tender sprout pushed up without a sound.
Thanks to Wusu’s wandering, the players’ whole activity zone thrummed with life; there was hardly a barren patch left. Save for Hugo and the others, no one knew that every place Wusu’s feet touched burst into flower and thicket.
“How about we kill him and find out?” I Want to Eat Chicken paced a few steps, long axe in hand, itching to try, a vicious grin spreading as he eyed the dumpling NPC who never lifted his head.
This game was too much fun!
Even murder was fun.
He raised the axe.
Wild Fox wavered over whether to stop him.
The instant the blade fell!
Flowers opened and fell, wind stirred and leaves drifted, and the Bell-Chime Tree’s radiance went on dispelling the forest’s eerie gloom, as though nothing at all had changed.
All things have a voice: some low, some deep, some humming, some soaring; the murmur no human ear could receive climbed from whisper to swell, ever weaving along the same river an illusory, intoxicating song.
I Want to Eat Chicken shuddered hard.
In the space of one breath, his ears were roaring, his vision swaying; his senses, his whole world, seemed to sink into some thick, suffocating paste.
The cool breezes stopped, no one knew why; the rustle of leaf and grass cut off mid-note; the scent of flowers seemed to rot into reek in a heartbeat; and the swing of the axe in his hands slowed to a frame-by-frame crawl.
Could he touch Wusu?
No. You may not.
All things said.
[No.]
Ding-dong.
[Players I Want to Eat Chicken, Nuclide, Seventy Bucks, and Eight Hundred Mile Trek attempted to murder the Lord. For 24 hours, all players on the server may attack the listed players without restriction.]
[Each kill will grant an achievement: Affection with your affiliated Church +100!]
[Countdown: 23:59:59]
