Chapter 3 - Companions
“Hey there!” The party waved over to her.
“H-hello” Demon replied
“Say, are you a player?”
“Huh? Ah, yes.”
“Ah I see, we guessed right then. Nice to meet you, I’m Garry.”
They looked at each other and nodded. Then the teenager – Garry - who was apparently their leader said
“Hey, we actually came over to confirm something with you if possible.”
“Oh, s-sure.” Demon grew nervous now.
“See, we’ve been playing another race until now and switched over here today. But all other races got some kind of overall goal or race quest when they started but we haven’t found anything like that. We’re going to report this as a bug since all races should have one but we wanted to confirm with someone else first. Did you find anything like that?”
“Uhm, a goal… like…”
“Don’t tell me, you really just started the game today?”
Demon nodded.
“Waaah, well welcome then!” They smiled at her. “Let me explain then… For example before this expansion the goal for Humans was to get settled and build a capital on this continent. But after this expansion they had achieved this goal and now received another one. So something like that…”
At that moment Garry got a whisper from one of his party members. ”Hey, I know we wanted to ask around but… there’s no way a newbie like that would find the quest if even we can’t find anything…”
He quickly replied “Well, that’s probably true, but we already asked so let’s hear her out, we don’t wanna be rude, right?”
“Oh, uhm…” Demon blushed. “Like... peace? W-with the other races?” She had remembered the quest the devil lord had given her.
“Yes, for example! Did you find it?”
Demon nodded again.
“Wow, really? We’ve been looking for hours and couldn’t find even a hint regarding it. There wasn’t anything on the website either! To think you actually found it…”
This time the party was getting annoyed, starting to discuss in party chat.
“There’s no way. Hey, Garry. Can’t you tell she’s lying for God’s sake?”
“Yea, let’s stop wasting our time, alright?”
“Agreed, what’s with that uncertain answer.”
“Is she making fun of us?”
“Well, well, calm down, guys. We asked her first. Who knows, she might really have found it. We’ll know for sure if she won’t share it, right?”
“Whatever, you’ll see she was just bluffing…”
Garry managed to pacify them somewhat with a wry grin on his face.
Demon blushed and quickly averted her gaze from the eyes staring at her.
“I actually hate to ask you this but… do you think you could share it with us?”
“Sh-share? How?”
“See? She’s getting nervous now. Trying to stall.”
“… We’ll invite you to our party. Then in your quest log there should be the option to share it with us. We’d be really grateful if you could do that for us. Or just tell us where you found the quest and we’ll try receiving it as well.” The guy who had just ridiculed her in party chat had spoken up. He looked at her triumphantly when she shrank away from his gaze.
“Final blow.” He bragged
“A-ah, when you share a quest it’s not like the rewards will change for you or anything, it just means that the other player will have the same quest as you, that’s all.” The party leader quickly said, trying to calm the situation.
“O-okay. I can share it.”
“Whoa, really? She’d go that far for her bluff?” The party smiled at each other knowingly.
“Nothing to lose for us either way.” Then their leader quickly manipulated his system window, inviting her to their party.
A system message popped up
Garry has invited you to join their party. Do you want to accept?
She quickly pressed yes and another system message popped up
Demon has accepted the party invitation
Completed Quest –Make a Party-
“Demon, huh. Well, thank you for doing this!”
“N-no problem”
She opened her character window and called up her quest log. But only the quest from the Adventurer trainer showed up on her list.
“Nnnn... Where do I see the race quest?” Embarrassed she looked at the others.
They quietly sighed and exchanged a glance that said ‘This isn’t even funny anymore’ clearly.
“There should be a separate tab for it. Like now you probably only see quests you accepted in Firchten. Try looking above the quest, you should be able to change the location to General.” Garry still explained patiently
“Ah! I found it.” Demon smiled.
‘Are you serious?’ The party thought in unison.
She selected the quest and then after a small while found the share button on the bottom right of the window. She quickly selected it and a system message popped up in front of her.
Share Racial Quest-Unity-?
She confirmed and heard surprised sounds from her party members. “Whoa, she actually found it.”
“To be honest from her reaction I really thought she was lying…”
“H-heyy! I-I can hear you!” Demon blushed and complained.
“Haha… Sorry, Demon.”
“Yea, sorry. We shouldn’t have doubted you. And thank you.”
“…” She was still moping, putting them at a loss
“H-hey, I know! Demon, why don’t you come along with us? We’ll show you around a bit since we’ve played NPO before… as an apology, okay?”
Surprised she looked at him, her mouth open. But misunderstanding her reaction another team member quickly added
“H-hey, Garry. There’s no way she’d wanna do that, right? After how we were so suspicious and all.”
Hearing this, Demon quickly snapped out of her daze and stuttered “I-I w-want to.”
“Huh?”
“Really?”
“Y-yes, please let me join.” Her voice had trailed off and she was blushing again, silently cursing herself. ‘Damn! I bet they didn’t even hear that…’
‘Somehow she seems way too happy’ The party thought again. Then they shrugged and cheered.
“Alright! We found a new member!”
Nao smiled at them happily as well.
“So since we’re all set, let’s start questing!”
“Yess!!”
“Demon, did you already accept any normal quests?”
They were looking at her again, so she blushed and nodded. “One”
“Which one?”
“T-the party quest from the Adventurer trainer…”
“Whoa, you actually found the trainer as well… we’ve been looking around but we haven’t found him yet. But we accepted 2 other quests from the blacksmith and alchemist NPCs. Let’s share them as well.”
“S-sure.”
“Ah, yea. Not trying to boast but we’re kind of senior players in here so we might do things you don’t know about naturally. But don’t hesitate to ask us anything, alright?”
“Okay. T-thank you.”
They smiled at each other again, then took out an item, looking at her expectantly. “Let’s fly!”
“Uhm… what’s that item you’re holding?”
“This? You don’t have one? It’s for flying.” Garry showed her the item he was holding with a surprised look on his face. It was a controller similar to the bottom part of an old Nintendo system. She often used to play with the old system her dad had from childhood so she knew about it. But instead of a screen it had 2 additional buttons for gliding and floating in one place. Its color was red and it seemed like all of them were using that to control their wings.
‘Weird…’ Demon thought ‘Tim hasn’t told me about that at all.’
She called up her inventory for the first time, checking the contents. But there was only a Basic guide book, a Map and some bread in it.
“U-uhm, I don’t have one…”
“Weird, every devil should start out with one, even if you skip the tutorial like us.”
“I did the tutorial properly though... this is my first online game after all, so…”
“Whoa, so we got hold of really fresh meat then, huh” The party looked at her hungrily for a moment and then burst out laughing at her scared face.
Embarrassed Demon coughed and quickly changed the topic.
“A-anyhow, I don’t need something like that. We can just fly normally, right?”
“What do you mean normally… controlling your wings is much easier this way, you know?”
“N-no one told be about that…”
“Huh, then how did you get up here?”
“I... flew without that… thing.”
“Ooooh, so you can fly without a controller, that’s unexpected!” They laughed. “Well anyhow, let’s get started then.” They closed their eyes, concentrating hard on something and their wings slowly started to grow. Nao was watching them closely wondering what they were doing.
Then their wings were fully grown and they opened their eyes, ready to use the controller to fly.
“Hey, Demon. Get ready.”
“Oh, um, right. Let’s go then! Wait, w-where are we going?” Nao got up now, stretching her shoulders.
“Let’s look for the Adventurer Trainer first then, since that quest is done already. Could you lead the way for us? We’ve never met him after all.”
“Ah, s-sure. T-then are you ready?”
“All set, just waiting for you.”
“S-sorry.” Embarrassed again Demon swiftly jumped off the gate, growing out her wings during the fall and opened her mini map as she flew towards the city again. Then she noticed no one was flying behind her and turned around.
Her party was still standing at the same spot, frozen in place while staring at her. Then one of them quietly said
“Somehow… I get the feeling we just found an awesome newbie.” They all nodded, still amazed.
She hesitatingly flew back towards them, hovering in the air next to the gate and said unsurely
“D-did I do something…?”
Her scared statement finally snapped them out of their daze and they looked at each other, exchanging whispers.
“Hey, Garry. I get the feeling we’ve hit jackpot with this one.”
“Isn’t she just acting the newbie part, look at how she’s flying around like that…”
“But she really does look like a newbie, right? Maybe she just got lucky. Let’s just have fun together”
The team members then shrugged and started flying.
“Sorry, we forgot to make sure of something. Please lead the way.”
“O-okay.”
Nao then happily flew off, making sure that her party doesn’t stay behind while checking the map every now and then since Fido kept moving. ‘She’s fast…’ the party thought and had trouble keeping up. They had to stop to rest 3 times on the way and Garry ended up explaining her how to use the different chats ingame during one of the breaks. But then Demon spotted Fido, shouting
“There you are!”
Surprised the NPC turned around at the sound of her voice cheerfully waving up to her.
“Demon, huh? Ya sure came back fast, eh? Those yer parteh ya bring along?”
“Whoa, does he always talk like that?”
Nao just nodded towards them with a depressed gaze, shrugging her shoulders and landed next to the still grinning NPC.
“H-hey there, Fido. Y-yea, I found some companions.”
“Nice going, nice going. I see ye alreadeh shared yer quest with ‘em, nice thinkin’.”
He started patting her on the back again, making her cough and addressed her Party.
“Nice ta meet ya’ll. Am Fido, tha adventurer trainer. A’ll be takin’ care of ya’ll for a lil while, eh?”
“H-hi.” The party said alienatedly.
Then Fido walked over to each of them, handing them a large bag.
“Here ya go, yer rewards like A promised.”
“T-thank you, Fido.” Demon said as she received the bag.
The others thanked him as well and took the reward bag.
“Go on, open et, ‘tis something ya’ll need for tha next job I got fer ya.”
“O-okay.”
Nao took a peek inside the bag and found a wooden club.
“Whoa, are you serious… what’s with that geezer…”
Nao quickly forced a smile and said
“W-what would you like us to do with this club, Fido?”
“Well, don’t ya’ll look like there’s no tomorrow, ‘tleast it’s a weapon made o’ good wood, eh.” Fido said mopingly. Then he sighed and added. “Actualle there’s another favor I need o’ ya’ll. The citeh’s been getting too small fer all tha devils that’s been comin ‘ere lateleh, so tha lord had us scout out new caves ta expand. But theres been trouble, ya see.”
“Trouble?”
“Ye, tha goblins sometahmes go there ya, see ‘nd they just don’t want ta let us build there in peace, eh? Reason won’t help with those folks ‘t all. So could ya’ll scare them a lil fer us? Knocking out ‘bout 50 of ‘em should do fer now.”
“What the… is this geezer crazy? Sending us out against goblins at lvl 1… and 50 at that.”
The party was panicking visibly, unsure whether to accept the quest or not.
“C-can’t we always do it later?” Nao finally voiced her view, making the others unable to retort.
“True…”
“Then let’s just accept for now” Garry said with a smile.
They all accepted the quest and the trainer added: “Be careful ya’ll. Don’t cha die on me ‘ere, ya hear!”
‘Then stop giving us dangerous missions like this.’ They couldn’t help but think.
“W-we’ll be careful.”
“Good. Off ya go!”
They waved their farewells and turned towards each other, saying
“Well, we found him at least.”
“Yea.”
“H-hey…”
“What’s up?”
“Why can’t we kill Goblins yet?”
“Ah. Goblins are generally lvl 15 so it’s impossible for us, even with 5 people…”
“Oh…”
“Uhm anyhow, let’s start with the other quests first, alright?”
“S-sure. But… before that… where do I put this?” Demon held up her wooden club.
“Right, you don’t know yet. Just call up your equipment window… it’s in the same window as your stats. Then take the club and hold it over the window, like this.”
Garry called up the window and held the club next to it, then confirmed a system message and the club vanished, having been equipped successfully. Nao imitated him.
“T-then how do we get them out again… like when we have to fight…”
“We call them. Just imagine the feeling of it in your hand and call for it.”
“…”
Nao closed her eyes and recalled the weight and shape of the club in her hands and was just about to call the weapon name out, but she already felt the weight of it in her hands. So she opened her eyes again, looking at the club in surprise.
“I… didn’t call yet?”
“Well, if you’re familiar enough with the weapon you can summon it just like that… “
“Hey… are you sure this is your first time playing?”
“Y-yes, I just got the hardware today… so…”
“…”
“Well anyhow” Garry coughed “since you already equipped it it will vanish again if you let go.”
Demon quickly let go of the club and as he said it vanished.
“Back to topic. The Quest we got from the blacksmith is closest. We’re supposed to collect stones with a high portion of metal or similar in them. The problem with this one is we didn’t get any identification tools so I have no idea how to distinguish the quest stones from normal ones…” Garry explained
“Yea, it’s possible to buy those kits but we don’t have enough money for that and it’s not really worth it” Added another member.
They silently thought about it for a while and just as they were about to suggest skipping the quest, Demon said
“Uhm… t-there’s a quest area written there. So m-maybe if we go there we’ll… figure it out…” Her voice got quieter till the end again, but her comrades knew what she meant.
“Well, I guess trying it out won’t hurt us, at worst we spent some time getting used to our wings, huh?” Garry said and they all agreed, patting Demon on the head.
“Good thinking, newbie!”
“Let’s fly then!”
“Yush!”
They headed towards the area described in the quest description, landing and resting 6 times on the way. Nao’s Flying skill was now Basic lvl 7, so she could fly a little longer than before now. But it seemed as though flying with the controller doesn’t make you mastery go up at all, since they were still moving at the same pace as before. But Demon was too shy to ask about it so she just adjusted her pace to her party, happily humming as they went.
“Hey, Garry… is it just me, or is she getting faster?”
“S-scary…”
“…” he didn’t answer.
They finally reached the destination and landed with some difficulty, stretching their tense muscles. “Made it!” they sighed.
They took a look around the area, piercing through the shadows with their night vision and quickly confirmed their fears.
“After all… everything here looks normal… the floor and walls don’t look any different from the other caves around here…”
The others nodded, visibly disheartened.
“Seems like we did come for nothing after all…”
“H-hey…”
“Hm?”
“Would they really… give a quest that can’t be solved?”
“Well, it does happen sometimes… either you don’t get a key item or the quest is bugged, but I wouldn’t have expected a starting quest to be bugged already…”
“Yea, maybe it was a bad move to recreate our characters for this, Garry…”
Nao panicked and blurted out
“D-don’t say that! Isn’t being a devil fun?” She had just found a team, she wouldn’t wanna lose them again right away.
“Well yea, but what’s the point if we can’t move on at all… I mean it’s been hours and we still haven’t lvled at all.”
“Eh…” she didn’t know what to say to that.
Then she noticed a sound, quickly looking up towards it, letting out an ‘ah’ sound and froze
The others quickly followed her line of vision, becoming even more depressed.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Isn’t that…”
“Yea…”
“Looks like… cocoons…?” one of the others nearly fainted at the sight of several big monsters looking like cocoons crawling across the ceiling like slugs, leaving a trail of slime behind. They were covered in what looked like white sticky threads, the only sparse parts of the body looking out were a leathery black color, they looked like insects captured by a spiders thread.
“Uwaaa… gross…”
They had all gone pale at the sight.
“W-what are those?”
“No idea…”
“Think we can beat them…?”
“I don’t think we have a choice but trying… lucky they didn’t notice us till now…”
The whole party gulped hard.
“L-let’s try.. luring them one by one… somehow?”
“Y-yea.”
They kept staring at the unknown creatures for a while. ‘But how…’
“D-do you… see any eyes… on those?”
‘Now that she mentions it… I don’t see any…’
They all shake their heads.
Garry then finally reached a decision, catching his breath he said
“Hey, Demon… you’re the best flyer among us, so do you think you can try throwing a rock at one? If it fails they’ll all attack, but if we just fly out they might notice us as well… either way, please try it.”
“O-okay.”
She slowly picked up a nearby stone, silently spread her wings and carefully drew closer to the cocoons, trying not to make any noise. Her hands started sweating and she noticed herself getting nervous.
‘Calm down, calm down. It’s only a game… only… a game… nothing bad… will happen…’continuously telling herself this, she forced her body to comply and continue, nearly jumping out of her skin whenever she made a noise.
As the cocoons entered her throwing range, her eyes, sharpened since she concentrated on every move of the creatures, ready to bolt away, suddenly caught something behind under the weird creatures.
“G-guys… I think I… found them… the stones…”
“Huh?”
“For the quest…”
“That… we don’t really care about that at the moment, please be careful.” The others were also getting nervous and really couldn’t understand how she calmly looked for the quest items right now.
“O-okay…” Demon slowly drew in her breath, then closed her eyes tightly and threw the stone with all her might. As soon as the stone left her hand she bolted backwards as fast as she could, only stopping when she nearly hit the ground besides her party who were still looking up surprisedly. Then she looked back. Towards the cocoon she had hit.
“…”
Nothing happened to it. It wasn’t falling down, neither was it attacking or showing any other kind of reaction whatsoever.
“… …”
“… You said you found the quest items, right?” Without a word the party had unanimously decided to just ignore the creatures.
Demon was still staring at the cocoon alienatedly, starting to shake with anger because she was actually scared of them before and didn’t listen. ‘Something like that... I actually panicked… because of that…’
As Garry lightly tapped her shoulder she snapped out of her daze and looked at her party, still carrying an angry stare.
“Uwaa… that’s quite the glare alright…” Garry coughed.
Demon blushed deeply and quickly fixed her expression.
“What were you saying… about the stones?”
“R-right.” Demon quickly averted her gaze and added “W-when I was close to them I saw some blue stones on the ceiling. They… were eating them but I thought maybe…”
“…”
The party members imagined killing one of them to get what’s inside their stomach and went pale. ‘Luckily we don’t actually have to look for the drops on the monster…’they all thought. ‘That would be more realistic but… really gross.’
“We could try looking for a spot where the stones aren’t being… eaten. But I don’t know if we’ll get attacked when we steal their food. So I think beating a lone one of them would be the easiest way.” Garry decided.
“Roger.” The party went along with him.
“Somehow… Those things really creep me out though”
“Yea…”
Demon was staring at them gloomily and didn’t say anything.
“Even if I say that… it’s actually already past 7 am over here, I really have to get going.” Garry said apologetically.
“Whaaat? It’s already that late? I OVERSLEPT!!” another party member named Merlin screamed. He had also checked their local time, and one logged out immediately.
Demon laughed slightly. “It’s okay.”
“Thanks for the fun we’ve had, Demon! We’ll be back later today! We should all be able to fade in in around 8 hours real time… so 40 hours in game or so. B-but that doesn’t mean you have to wait or anything if you can still play…” Garry trailed off. “I also want to post on the forums that the race quest works fine before everyone else starts sending bug reports about it…”
“N-no. I want to wait. I like this party and I understand you have work or so…”
After hearing that he blushed slightly and said
“I’m glad to hear that. We’ll hurry back!”
“Yea, I’ll be waiting” Demon said.
The rest of her party quietly waved at her and then they logged off, leaving her alone in the cave full of Cocoons.
‘Is it just me… or was I abandoned.’ Quickly shaking off that thought, Demon thought about what to do now She also confirmed her local time. She still had plenty of time before even breakfast. She had checked earlier as well and confirmed that the time in game really was 5 times faster than outside of it. Which meant it ran at the same pace as in ‘hell’. The irony made her smile a little.
You didn’t have to sleep when you played the game, since your body was resting in reality. But they still advised you to take some breaks now and then and sleep for real to rest your mind as well. She looked at her watch again and quickly did the math. She had 4 hours until she usually got up so she decided to fade out as well. She left the game and went back to the control panel room, calling up her browser.
She could now read up things by herself using the fade in technology she had gotten so she wouldn’t have to be bored alone in the empty room anymore. ‘I need to find something to do while the others are gone. I don’t really want to lvl without them, since I like playing with them a lot…’ with this thought in mind she decided to do some research on the game first.
She accessed the official website of the game and skimmed through the content there, but as expected only the basic controls were listed here. That’s why she looked for the most popular NPO forums and browsed through them, looking for interesting topics.
The first thread she accessed was about the devil race quest.
‘Whoaaaa… so many replies.’
Someone had started the thread after looking for the devils’ race quest for a few hours without luck and wanted to report it as a bug, similar to her party members.
Many others soon had the same problem and soon complained on the same thread as well.
‘Should I describe how I got the quest…?’
She browsed through the replies, finding no one else had said anything regarding it. Some of the Game staff even promised to check if it was indeed a bug.
‘Whoa… is that quest really so hard to get?’
She decided to make a forum account and quickly went back to the thread, carefully writing an answer. She actually just wrote that she had created a character and received the quest normally, figuring the staff members would sort out the issue later. She then went on and accessed some other threads. She soon found what she was looking for.
‘This is it!’
Someone wrote about how he had trained his skills through repeatedly hitting objects that don’t give any experience points. Your stats could also improve by doing that and you could experiment with new moves, even creating new skills.
‘Why didn’t I think of that…’
She excitedly wanted to close the browser when her first private message (PM) came in on the forums with a loud ‘ding!’ and stopped her. Curious why someone would message her, she opened the message. Just when she started reading, new messages came in in fast succession, leaving her perplexed about the whole situation. ‘Maybe I did something wrong?’
She quickly skimmed through the messages. Basically all of them had the same content. They were asking her about the race quest and asking if she could tell them how to get it or share it with them. Then of course there were the ones asking her to stop lying and calm down. She just ignored the latter. ‘What do I do… I don’t want everyone to know my character…’
She decided to contact one of the staff members. In the first place she wasn’t even sure it’s allowed to post about this so she’d rather play it safe just in case.
She told them about the situation and asked them if she should tell them about it. The reply came soon after.
Dear user,
Thank you very much for contacting us about this matter. Since the difficulty of obtaining this quest seems to be higher than we first expected we’d actually like to ask you if you agree to Furan Corp putting together a promotional video about this quest.
We’d just require the video file containing the quest acquisition and we’d cut it to the right length, replacing the face of your character so you wouldn’t be recognized.
We would really welcome your cooperation in the matter,
Best regards,
Your NeoPangea Online Team
“…”
Nao was speechless for a moment. Then she wrote back
Good morning,
Sorry about this but I don’t even know where to find the video files and such… could you try asking someone else who got the quest?
Regards,
Demon
She had decided to use her character name to sign after some thought. After all her forum account also ran under that name.
She really didn’t know about this… after she behaved that shamefully during the quest as well… she’d rather they ask someone else about it. After taking a few minutes to calm down she remembered Julian. He had even helped her set up everything and yet she hadn’t contacted him at all… she wanted to thank him again.
While browsing through the forums she had learned you could send offline messages to players if you knew their name, so she accessed the NPO website again, leaving Julian a message.
Good morning Julian,
Sorry for taking so long to contact you, I only just found out about these messages.
I wanted to thank you again for setting up all this hardware for me and even offering your help in the game. I was really happy.
I actually tried whispering you a few times but somehow it didn’t go through so I figured you were offline and just decided to write you here.
Hope to see you around soon!
Nao
She hesitated a long time before sending it. ‘This… should be alright… I hope?’ but finally pressed the send button.
Then she returned to the forums, finding another load of messages had arrived for her. She just ignored all normal messages for now, already guessing the content, silently apologizing to the other users about it and looked through her mailbox if a reply from the staff had come already. It had. She quickly opened it
Dear Demon,
Thank you for your fast reply. The FI system automatically records a copy of your gameplay in the temporary files of NPO. This was implemented as a safety measure for the users to make it possible to record bugs or scams in the game. You should be able to find it here: [Click to Copy Data Path]
Unfortunately there has only been one player to successfully obtain the quest without sharing until now, so we’d really like for you to share your footage with us.
As a compensation for any trouble this may cause you we’d like to offer you a completely free access to NPO with a premium membership for 6 months starting today.
This will grant you initial access to all public areas of libraries in game for this amount of time as well as some other benefits, please look up additional information here.
Please let us know about your decision and we apologize for the trouble this may cause you.
Best regards,
Your NeoPangea Online Team
‘How can I decline now!’ Nao silently complained. ‘Wait… how come nobody else has found the quest yet… am I that weird?’ Nao sighed audibly. Well, if she was the only one to have received the quest then she really didn’t have a choice. She didn’t really care for the reward, but she still wrote a short confirmation as a reply and enclosed a copied version of the video file she found when following the data path in the message. She clicked send and finally closed her browser again, still depressed.
Then she went back into the game to look for a good place to train.
She found herself back in the cave with the cocoons and decided to just ignore them and fly out. As predicted they didn’t pay any attention to her at all and just continued eating blue stones.
She decided to improve her stats first, seeing as she couldn’t use magic yet. Therefore creating skills wouldn’t prove useful yet.
Determined she made her way back to Firchten and asked around for the library. She had read in the message that she should have access to most areas now, so at least this she could use. After all reading should make you smarter… right? A nice elderly devil finally guided her to a plain looking entrance leading underground.
She thanked her and made her way downstairs. Since the steps seemed to continue for a while she flew down. The stairway was wide enough anyways.
After a few moments she found herself inside a huge underground dome, measuring about 500 meters in diameter. It also went about 200 meters high, giving the whole hall a magnificent touch. And every inch of the walls and floor was stuffed with books. They had placed bookshelves in every possible place, making the hallways cramped, but it just didn’t seem to be enough space for all the books the devils had gathered.
Beholding this view Demon unwillingly let out a sound of astonishment. ‘I thought us devils had escaped from hell not long ago… to think I was worried there wouldn’t be enough books…’
She smiled. The library was a public place so she could come here whenever she wanted. Overflowing with enthusiasm Nao flew to the bookshelf labeled with ‘Magic history’ and started devouring book after book about this game’s magic. Her head filled up with spells and how to use them, with history and legends about great magicians and about devils in general.
Since she had completely forgotten the time, she was happy she had set an alarm in advance earlier. After reading 3 whole books her intelligence went up by 10 and her wisdom by 30. Even her stamina had increased some, since she had held out reading for over 5 game hours straight. Swiftly she finished reading the current paragraph and faded out.
It was breakfast time.
[Meanwhile on the NeoPangea Online Forums]
Nao’s post had started an avalanche of questions and excited posts about the race quest. She hadn’t been precise and just posted that she had the quest so the staff members had been kept really busy with replies to their messages and verifying if the quest really worked.
They had accessed the game logs and found out that really only a single player had been able to find and accept the quest by themselves.
“Are you kidding me?” The staff member who had noticed it said “Come on, the quest is working since someone obviously accepted it, all this trouble over nothing…”
“Yea, well the dev. might have overestimated the players… only one of them found the race quest… guess we’ll either have to ask them to come up with another one or just give the players some info on how to accept it… personally I think the 2nd option is best, we can get working on that right away.”
The director agreed. The only question now was how to get the info out flashy enough to catch the players’ attention. That was when Nao herself contacted them.
“Director, we got a message from the player about the issue. They’re asking if it’s alright to tell them how they got the quest.”
“Right, the player! Reply to them right now! Request the video footage of the incident. We’ll cut it together and put a nice promo video on our website. No one’ll be able to miss that. Get the team on standby right away.”
The director made the decision to grant the player 6 months of premium membership of NPO as a reward and was overjoyed when they agreed.
The whole staff had been waiting impatiently and were now watching the footage together.
“…”
They were speechless. Depending on the actual perquisites of the quest it was a miracle someone had actually been able to find it at all.
“Director…”
“Yes, cut it together! And replace the player’s face. Get done asap!”
“Yes sir!”
Two hours later they had finished the clip and posted it on their website, giving credits to the player for letting them use their footage for it.
The users were in turmoil to say the least.
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Alright, thats it for today, I'm moving tomorrow and still need to do loads of things so... [th_0tive.gif]
I hope you enjoyed the new chapter :hi: