Wild Fox mined.
Cold Autumn pushed the cart behind him.
Working day and night, players and adventurers alike put in two full days, and a low wall rose around the ruins.
Wild Fox was lean as a rail, ground down until night and day ran together, his face washed white.
“How much time left on the countdown?” he asked Ignorant of the Eastern Han.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han curled his lip. “Four hours, give or take.”
“I’m logging off.” Wild Fox stowed his chisel. Two days straight of use had eaten 87 of its durability; he’d need to find time to get it repaired at Mina’s Weapons Forge.
He’d pulled two all-nighters; a nap came first.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han stopped him, turning to look deeper into the woods. “Aren’t you even a little curious?”
Wild Fox knew what he meant: Ignorant of the Eastern Han meant that handful of players who’d been buzzing around the Divine Temple since yesterday.
Hugo, Mina, I Don’t Eat Eggplant, Alyosha, Alesu; those players seemed to have been the first to appear here, and the area’s only two NPCs treated them differently from the rest.
Stretching lazily, Wild Fox said flatly, “Special quests go to whoever’s got the goods. Why don’t you go ask Wusu yourself?”
Ignorant of the Eastern Han went quiet.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han stayed quiet.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han remembered the frenzied python dance.
Wild Fox was long since offline.
The Divine Temple.
Mina hauled bricks.
The pillars before the temple were broken here, cracked and collapsed there; restoring them all looked impossible for a handful of people.
In practice, though, all they had to do was move bricks: carry out from the temple’s interior the gray-brown stones that had shattered across the floor at some unknown time.
Stones in name only; under the Bell-Chime Tree’s light they gave off a faint glow, and deep in those gray-brown layers one could sometimes glimpse dazzling color.
Whenever Mina caught it, she wrote it off as a trick of the eye.
It never showed twice, after all.
“Wusu, are you sure you don’t need a hand?” While the players filed in and out of the temple with armloads of stone, Wusu sat atop the pillar before it, chin resting in both hands.
The very spot where they’d first laid eyes on him.
Standing in the hall and craning her head back, Mina could see only the little dumpled silhouette of his back.
The small silhouette shook its little head.
Alyosha calmly towed the chatty Mina away. “Stick to the quest.”
True enough; Mina and company’s quest was brick-hauling too.
Wusu swung his feet.
Perched atop the pillar.
This was his second time climbing to this spot.
Looking down over the same stretch of land from on high.
Tender green blanketed the whole of the ruins: goose-yellow, lilac, pink, indigo, flame-red, milk-white, brown-gray… colors vivid enough to scorch the eye assailed this forest that had once lain steeped in desolation. To mine and to fell timber, the players had once had to push deep into the woods, into ground the Bell-Chime Tree’s light could not reach; but as that ever-widening vitality spread, slowly, bit by bit, the radiance seeped into the darker reaches too.
No one could say whether the light was invading the dark, or the dark devouring the light.
Wusu’s big eyes shone, long lashes casting a fine, thin shade.
But in Wusu’s eyes, only one conclusion remained.
So pretty!
When he had first come here, all he’d seen was wreckage and ruin; a handful of days later, it was this beautiful. Wusu’s mind held no ready-made words of praise, but seeing the land blooming everywhere, that little face lit up, pleased as punch.
His little head tipped; Wusu flopped backward.
Whoops.
There lay Wusu’s little body, sprawled flat across the pillar top.
He rolled.
Rolled again.
Wusu fished out a little fruit, munched away with a crunch-crunch, and hurriedly poked open the semi-transparent frame.
That frame had been scorned from day one; when had Wusu ever once opened it of his own accord? The little bubble instantly preened with pride, even sending a pair of celebratory “hoorays” drifting across the top of the frame.
Wusu: Huh?
Understanding nothing, Wusu kept poking.
He poked the map open.
Quite a few points of light glowed on it; a small, winding line lay sprawled across the map, the harvest of these past days.
A street built ringing the Adventurers’ Guild, the Weapons Forge seated at its end, the tavern sitting square in the middle, houses of every kind raised by the players’ own hard labor.
The adventurers who’d been comfortable in the guild’s rooms hadn’t much cared, yet somehow, swept along by those driven players, they too had strangely begun raising houses in their off hours.
This street was the starting point.
Coincidence, or by design?
Before every finished house, at the steps, at the corners, upon the rooftops, bloomed flowers wholly unlike one another, every shape under the sun.
The building materials they hauled back each day were piled in the warehouse behind the street; they’d been wondering what any of it was for, but the moment the new quest dropped, adventurers and players alike finally knew what those stockpiles were for.
Clang and clatter, the low wall around the ruins neared completion.
The map had marked its position all on its own; poke the icon, and its stats appeared.
[Low Wall (unfinished): Its defensive function is barely passable. As a wall, it is a complete affront to aesthetics.]
Had the players who sweated two honest days over it seen that review, they’d have fainted with rage.
Below, players heave-hoed back and forth with their bricks; as they filed in and out of the temple, the gray-brown stones in the ruins piled ever higher, heaped around the very pillar where Wusu sat.
Wusu rolled once more across the broad pillar top; broken and barren as the old pillars were, the clown flowers rooted among them twinkled on and off.
[Looks like the required materials have all been gathered. Proceed to the next step!
(Be careful, Wusu!)]
[Accept] [Cancel]
Wusu’s right hand was still raised high; juice had dripped and stained his sleeve with something sweet.
He was unhurriedly fishing for his handkerchief.
Poke.
[Accept] turned gleefully into a little figure capering about the semi-transparent frame, then vanished off the right side trailing fireworks.
Bang.
I Don’t Eat Eggplant was bent down, just about to load a freshly chiseled gray-brown stone onto the cart.
The covered passage was dim, and he mistook the ground’s shudder for the poor light warping.
Clang.
The cart shuddered twice; the piled stones groaned.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han was prowling the ruins’ rim; several other players shared the idea, but no matter what, none of them could cross that invisible line into the ruins, and those who forced it… got hit by mental damage and booted offline outright.
Even with pain sensitivity at 0, the forced logout still took them.
Black.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han looked up, puzzled.
The lush canopy stood as ever; stray motes of light drifted down on the wind, spiraling along their worn paths, looking exactly like every other day.
He rubbed his eyes.
Strange?
His vision really had darkened.
Ignorant of the Eastern Han didn’t notice: beneath his feet, at the very edge of his boot, gravel was trembling, vines cowering.
A pressure beyond the reach of words settled, heavy, on Ignorant of the Eastern Han’s heart.
As if some terrifying existence were about to descend.
