Chapter 3: Alyosha Had No Intention of Answering I Don’t Eat Eggplant

The prelude quest had been completed by an NPC, and the System showed no sign of following up. The players traded looks, and Hugo spoke first: “I pulled two all-nighters for that city defense quest. I’m logging off.”

I Don’t Eat Eggplant yawned and said, none too pleasantly, “Same.”

Mina and Alyosha felt the same way. Before coming to the Secluded Forest, they had in fact been lucky enough to pick up a city defense quest, a thousand-odd participants strong, and they’d just barely made the cut.

Where this game got real was that you could never skip the travel. You could shorten the distance with teleportation arrays, teleport scrolls, horseback, and the like, but without a single such item, instant travel like in an ordinary game was a pipe dream.

To finish that city defense quest, they had walked the better part of a day and then fought for a day and a half, snatching water like their lives depended on it before it was done.

Dog-tired.

No, worse than a dog!

Their livers had burst from the grind.

After the quest ended, Mina had casually saved a wandering bard who had been darting around the battlefield, and that bard had casually screwed them right back, tossing out who-knew-what and dumping the whole party in this pitch-black, godforsaken middle of nowhere. And then, as luck would have it, they had stumbled ass-backward into a legendary quest.

Even knowing the fun of exploration lay ahead, after two straight all-nighters, even the most energetic player couldn’t hold on any longer.

I Don’t Eat Eggplant and Mina logged off first. Hugo glanced at the dazed Wusu, pulled Alyosha aside to murmur something, and then the two of them vanished together. The only one still standing was the orc, Alesu.

Wusu stood beneath the tree, looking up at the lush, sprawling canopy.

Pearly white scattered down onto his shoulders. The bell-flowers swayed without any wind, as if a clear, crisp chime were ringing through the air.

“So what are you gonna do next, little buddy?” Alesu plopped down cross-legged on the ground, and his broad frame blocked the howling cold wind.

And yet, subtly, now that there was light, that bone-piercing wind seemed to have lost a little of its bite.

Wusu shook his head.

He didn’t understand.

The players thought he was the NPC who would guide the next stage of the quest.

But Wusu was a sheet of pure, unmarked white paper.

Alesu made idle small talk with Wusu, one line at a time, but Wusu rarely had much response to give. After holding out another half hour, the orc finally got too drowsy and logged off as well.

Wusu sat hugging his knees beneath the Bell-Chime Tree. The swaying bell-flowers stirred with no wind at all; the fallen pearly blossoms faded slowly in midair, their scattered light dissolving into nothing the moment it touched Wusu’s hair and shoulders.

The white-robed youth and the tree set each other off, beautiful as some unreal, pure portrait.

What is “I”?

Tender petals, huddled in tight little clusters, nuzzled against Wusu’s ankles.

After thinking a lot, and then a lot more, Wusu finally got around to the question of “self.”

“I” am an NPC.

That was how the Travelers saw him. Wusu had heard, very clearly, the word they used for him.

Am “I” called Wusu?

Tender sprouts quietly pushed up out of the soil, patting their own stems in contentment beneath the silver light. Green tips came up one after another.

Wusu held his breath, earnestly and stubbornly pondering the profound question of whether “I” was “I.”

【Wusu is thinking very, very hard. Finally, Wusu decides to restore the Divine Temple.】

Wusu knitted his delicate brows and said in a tiny voice, “Wusu can’t.”

Wusu had been sitting blankly under the Bell-Chime Tree for a long, long time.

The fresh flowers and green grass that had sprouted up practically cradled little Wusu in their midst, lending a touch of warmth to the broken, gloomy Divine Temple.

【Wusu really is thinking hard, and then he decides to make the Divine Temple a little cleaner. But Wusu is far too adorable; Wusu is not the one who should be doing the tidying. So let’s build an Adventurers’ Guild instead! Gather up lots and lots of people!】

【Temple Awakening Progress: 1%. You have 1000 points.】

【Please spend points to build your very own Adventurers’ Guild!】

Wusu didn’t like this System that kept talking… Noisy.

And what is a “System”?

He tilted his head and thought for a moment, shifted his little body, then stretched out a bloodied finger and poked the word [Build] floating in midair.

1000 points promptly lost half of themselves.

Pop.

A swaying, tottering building rose out of thin air. Milky-white stone formed its outer walls; a smooth carpet unrolled in from the doorway; reliefs surfaced across the walls, unfurling a grand, sweeping scroll of warriors vanquishing an evil dragon.

Blood and flame scorched across the milky-white walls, and candles flared suddenly to life, lighting up a small patch of ground outside the wrought-iron door.

Wusu stood before this building that had appeared out of nowhere, sprawling and vast.

A building with pointy spires, no less.

Wusu was puzzled.

How had he gone from the broken temple to standing in front of this building in the space of a blink?

What does “puzzled” mean?

Wusu looked back at the Divine Temple, far, far away, where the beautiful Bell-Chime Tree swayed. Flowers bloomed in dense, colorful clusters, and the swaying young grass brushed against Wusu’s ankles.

Ticklish, and nice.

A thread of curiosity slipped into his gaze.

For the first time, a living spark appeared in Wusu’s eyes.

Little Wusu walked into the big building.

The Adventurers’ Guild.

The moment he stepped inside, huge letters branded themselves abruptly onto the milky-white wall. The characters, as if scorched there by raging fire, pulsed with an ominous air.

The carpet was very red.

Wusu walked slowly, both hands resting quietly at his sides, blood dripping down in a soft patter.

The spacious hall held a row of counters. Rustic tree hollows formed the counter seats, and twisted branches wove themselves into chairs. Utterly unlike the milky-white outside, nearly every inch of the interior was made of wood, and you could almost catch the fresh scent of the forest.

The entire left side of the building was filled with tables and chairs of every shape imaginable, as if the trees had simply decided to grow bent and twined, contorting themselves into round or square tabletops and casually sprouting mushroom-shaped chairs while they were at it.

Yeesh. Genuinely wicked.

On the right side, the side nearest the tree-hollow counters, wooden boards hung by the dozen, clinking and swaying.

To reach the counters, you had to pass through those swaying boards.

They carried a very, very ancient aura.

Wusu raised his hand, and a damp, bloody handprint landed on one slender board.

Whoosh.

He seemed to hear a sound that wasn’t there.

【Wusu has touched an ancient aura.】

【Reward: 5x Healing Scroll for Wusu】

【Wusu’s fingers happen to be injured. Use a healing scroll to treat them, quick!】

【Use】 【Reject】

Two options appeared before Wusu.

He glanced at [Reject].

A cold, oppressive wind swept past; when the chill, thick with the reek of blood and enough to freeze the back of your neck, faded away, the [Reject] option was swept off along with it.

Wusu’s lips pursed into a pout.

Wusu chose [Use].

A scroll neatly rolled and tied off with a delicate knot appeared out of nowhere, tore itself open, and with a flash of pure white light, Wusu’s fingers were good as new, white and tender as ever.

Then the other four scrolls tumbled into Wusu’s arms.

He stood clutching the scrolls that had popped out of nowhere, dazed for a tiny while, and then said softly, “Thank you.”

He didn’t know why he said it.

But Wusu felt he should.

The air seemed much fresher somehow, like… the smell the air has when something is happy.

What is an “ancient aura”?

His white, tender hand gripping the board, Wusu “pondered” with his little brows knit together.

He pulled down the board he had just touched, dropped it onto the scrolls, and carried the little pile around behind the tree-hollow counter.

After earnestly deliberating where to sit, Wusu carefully placed everything inside the innermost counter.

Then he climbed up onto the tall chair.

On the left was blank paper; on the right, a quill, plus a bottle of ink.

Already uncapped, at that.

Wusu grabbed the quill, soaked it full of ink, and only after pressing the nib to the board did he belatedly remember something.

Can “I” write?

【Need】

Wusu looked at the first word he had written.

Apparently he could.

Wusu earnestly wrote his first line on the board.

【Need people to come】

Then Wusu looked at the healing scrolls stacked on the counter, “thought” back to the quest from before his treatment, and imitated it to write out a reward.

【Reward: Healing Scroll x1】

Wusu bit down on the quill, hesitantly crossed out [1], and added a [2].

The moment the quill was set down, the board dissolved into a streak of light and reappeared among the hanging quest boards.

Lakeside Town.

The town’s name was simple: it sat beside a lake.

No one knew how many towns like it existed in the Continent of Divine Silence. On the bustling, clamorous streets, magical shops and strange, wondrous creatures were packed in cheek by jowl; flowers blanketed both sides of the road, winding around ancient stone bricks; moss brushed the inner walls of ale casks, and the scent of ale came drifting on the wind from the window of a shadowy shop deep in the alleys.

Lakeside Town had only one main road, and then alleys branching off it like vines.

Players and NPCs brushed shoulders, walking the same slightly narrow streets.

Lakeside, Lakeside. Simply put, a town that had grown up around a lake.

If not for the IDs floating above players’ heads, you could hardly have told the players from the NPCs at all.

Returning wanderers laughed and traded greetings with the neighbors, swaying their hips in a little dance as they stepped into that ale-scented, shadowy alley. That was Old Joseph’s tavern.

Also the gathering place for quest intel from every corner of the map.

Some new players would follow along enviously, only to be lectured by the veterans: “Going in is fine and all, but we can’t take those quests, not unless you get lucky and trigger one.” That was simply how this game’s mechanics worked.

That was the Adventurers’ Guild that belonged to the NPCs.

Old Joseph wiped at a wineglass. Sticky fruit-wine residue had rotted onto the bottom, and it would not come clean no matter how he scrubbed. The raucous tavern was crammed with shouting; muscle-flexing young punks mixed in with quiet, vicious old hands, and Old Joseph could hardly be bothered to spare them a glance.

Damn it all. It was high time he made Mary drop that cutesy little habit of hers!

Fruit wine was no drink for warriors!

Ale wasn’t, either, but at least it was strong.

And foul enough.

Two coppers a cup.

Clack.

Ten coppers slid across the counter to Old Joseph.

A drunken sot sprawled against the counter, hiccuping, “O-old… Jos…eph. Any good… hic… quests lately?”

Old Joseph frowned, grizzled beard dabbed with blueberry sauce, tucked discreetly down toward his neck. “What good quests could a dump like this have?” Even as he groused, he snatched up the ten coppers, groped around behind the counter for a bit, and uncovered the quest board hidden under a rag.

“There. One quest, vaguer than fog. Looks like something a five-year-old scrawled to fool around with. Who even has healing scrolls these days?” Old Joseph grumbled on, venting his displeasure.

He gave up on that glass crusted with rotten fruit.

The loss would come out of Mary’s wages.

Then Old Joseph remembered the two hungry little boys waiting at Mary’s home, and glumly crossed the thought back out.

Fine. He’d just tack the hours onto her pay instead.

The sprawled drunk suddenly reached up and snatched the paper off the quest board.

“I’ll take this quest, then—”

And bolted.

Nothing about that speed said drunk.

Old Joseph’s roar filled the tavern. “Arthur! You little brat, you didn’t pay for your ale again!”

The tavern went dead quiet for a beat, then burst into roaring laughter.