Translator: Sparrow Translations Editor: Sparrow Translations
When Wang Yu and Li Xue handed the key to Winston a small smile finally appeared in the stoic man’s face.
“Not bad, not bad! Didn’t I say before that you could do it?” Winston praised
“These NPCs really change their tunes very quickly… he was just calling her trash before we left…” Wang Yu thought to himself.
“You’re exaggerating sir. This is what I should be doing in the first place!” Li Xue recited from system’s script.
“For the next part of the quest, you’ll need to go to the Old Nun’s Monastery north of the city to find a scared medicine called ‘knotweed’ and bring it back to me!” Winston declared.
Hearing his words Wang Yu was slightly shocked. A western game like that this would even include chinese medicines… truly interesting…
The moment Winston finished speaking, Li Xue received the quest notification.
<System Notification: Hidden quest “Old Pharmacist’s Wish” final stage “Miracle Medicine”, Difficulty: A, accept?>
<Accept!>
<System Notification: You have accepted hidden quest “Old Pharmacist’s Wish” final stage “Miracle Medicine”, Difficulty: A. Retrieve the “Thousand Year Knotweed” from the Old Nun’s Monastery>
<Reminder: Due to the special nature of the quest, players are recommended to form parties before starting. There is no limit for the number of members and this quest can be shared. Experience will be halved upon failure.>
Looking at the reminder Li Xue frowned lightly before sharing the quest with Wang Yu.
“Brother Yu this quest is really weird…” Having experienced the whole situation with Howard Li Xue could tell something was amiss.
“Ah? What’s wrong?” Wang Yu asked.
“Well the previous stage of the quest was also A rank difficulty but it was difficult to the point of vomiting blood. But this time all we need to do is pick some medicine and it’s still the same difficulty…” Li Xue replied.
“Look closely. It’s telling to retrieve the medicine from the Old Nun’s Monastery. Not buy it. Not borrow it.” Wang Yu pointed out.
“So we’re stealing it?” Li Xue gasped.
“With how brazen these NPCs are, we’re definitely supposed to steal it. It’s not like the previous stage told you that you needed to steal the key!” Wang Yu flatly said.
Li Xue pondered for a moment before she answered: “No he didn’t. He just told us to go to the Dusk Mountain Range to retrieve the key…”
“Exactly! These bastards are all the same!” Wang Yu muttered as he glared at Winston who was still grinning as though he didn’t hear it.
“Then should we go find some more party members?” Li Xue asked.
“There’s no need. If it’s just an A rank quest then just the two of us are enough!” Wang Yu casually replied.
Having completed a few S rank quests alone Wang Yu was rather confident in himself.
“But in the last stage we could only share the quest with three people and it was already so hard… There’s no limit this time! The boss is probably beyond monstrous!” Li Xue hurriedly said.
After thinking for a moment Wang Yu said: “If that’s the case the all the more we shouldn’t invite more people. If the Old Nun is anything like Winston then no matter how many come it’ll still just be a massacre!”
Independent Mode bosses didn’t have aggro like traditional bosses. When the time came, the boss would simply wipe out the weaker players first. At this stage of the game which job could survive a direct hit from a boss other than the tanks?
“That’s true… then let’s just wait for Mary and the rest before we go…” Li Xue obediently nodded.
Hearing this Wang Yu quizzically stared at Li Xue and asked: “Do you have some grievance with the three of them?”
“Ok! Ok! It’ll just be the two of us!” Li Xue blushed.
The three other girls all had very limited combat abilities and after the last time they died, each only had about 5% of their experience left.
The Old Nun’s Monastery was located in a very remote location. After following the quest marker, Wang Yu and Li Xue made a huge round around the city before finding the the actual monastery.
As they approached the monastery, Wang Yu noticed that it’s gates were surrounded by a large group people with the same emblem on their chest.
These people all had an impatient look on their face and were either sitting or squatting. Based on their spaced out expressions, they were likely in a chat window.
“What are these people doing? Why’re they bumming around here instead of grinding? An office to rest in can’t be that expensive right?” Wang Yu asked Li Xue.
“It depends on the size of the guild actually. It’s normally 1 silver coin a person so for a large guild like the Sanguine Alliance it’s probably about 5 gold coins a month.” Li Xue replied. As a professional gamer, she would refinery be familiar with something like this.
“So expensive? Luckily mine is so small… and we’re usually at the inn anyway…” Wang Yu gulped in shock.
5 gold coins was roughly 5000 dollars in the real world. Though the exchange rate for in game currency had started to depreciate, this estimate was still rather accurate.
“This isn’t really a problem of money actually. It’s because people aren’t allowed to gather in the streets like that that guilds started to catch on. In one of the games I used to play, the guild leader loved to have gatherings in popular levelling spots.” Li Xue explained.
“Then wouldn’t those monsters be completely surrounded?”
“Exactly. So many members eventually couldn’t stand the leader and began to quit one by one! Eventually the whole guild was disbanded!”
“…” Wang Yu was rather speechless. There really were all kinds of weirdos on the world.
The two of them loitering around the monastery gates and chatting eventually alerted the men surrounding it. A few of them walked over and arrogantly shouted: “Hey! What’re the two of you doing?”
“Oh we’re just here for a quest! You guys can continue with our meeting. There’s no be to bother with us!” Wang Yu laughed.
Hearing Wang Yu say the word quest, these men immediately tensed up. The rest of the immediately stood up and began emitting a assisting killing intent.
The leader of these men glared at Wang Yu and viciously barked: “Are you here to steal the medicine?”
“No no.” Wang Yu shook his head. The quest did say “retrieve” after all.
“Oh well that’s fine then.”
Hearing that Wang Yu and Li Xue weren’t here to steal the medicine the surrounding players relaxed slightly and said: “Brother I’m sorry but it doesn’t matter what quest you have. We can’t let you past this gate for now.”
“How come?” Wang Yu asked.
“We accepted a quest to guard this place and prevent anyone from stealing the Old Nun’s medicine. If you really have a quest here then it’s best to wait until we’re done.” The leader explained.
Hearing the explanation Li Xue hurriedly sent a message in the party chat: “Brother Yu this is bad! It’s a two-way quest!”
“Two-way quest? What’s that?” Wang Yu asked.
“It means that the system arranges two groups of players to have opposing quests to go against other!”
Two-way quests weren’t something new at all. In traditional games, they often came in the forms like protecting a target, killing a target, defending a city or attacking a city.
It was obviously more fun to fight against other players afterall. Constantly going against NPCs would get boring after some time.
However, two-way quests were generally very difficult. No matter how high the AI of an NPC was, it was still nothing more than a clump of data. Players on the other hand were generally of a much higher calibre. At the end of the day, no matter how monstrous a boss was, it would still be defeated by players!
Hence, for these kinds of PvP quests where there was no limit to the number of players, what was most important was who had the most party members!
“F**k! The system really is to shameless!” Wang Yu gasped.
“If I knew it was going to be like this then I would have invited more people… Brother Yu… maybe we…” Li Xue worriedly said.
However before Li Xue had even finished speaking, Wang Yu had already walked up to the leader and said: “Since we all have our own quests to do there’s no need to be so tyrannical! Just let us through!”
Hearing this the leader of the group pointed at his emblem and said: “See this? I’m a member of the Dusk Manor! If you’re not happy then f**k off! You look like a good guy so I won’t shame you in front of your girlfriend!”
“Firstly, this lady isn’t my girlfriend. Secondly, what do I need to do to make you let us through?” Wang Yu lightly coughed.
“That’s easy, you just need to kill us all!” The leader chuckled.
The moment he finished speaking, the other players immediately rushed over and surrounded Wang Yu and Li Xue.
“Oh that’s it? Then I guess I’ll just have to kill you all!” Wang Yu casually laughed.