“Hey ho, dig that hole.”
“Hey ho, come on let’s go”
“Dig her down deep, just like you should.”
“Come on boys, dig her down good.”
Elijah smiled as he listened to the villager sing the silly song he came up with. When he started helping the villagers with the construction, he noticed that they silently went about completing their task. They didn’t even engage in idle chit chat.
Uninterested in enduring the silence, Elijah suggested they sing a song while they worked. Surprisingly, the villagers didn’t have a single song that they could sing. Elijah considered singing a song from real life, but he couldn’t think of a simple and relatable song.
One thing led to another and soon Elijah created an enjoyable song that the villagers could sing while they worked. Elijah’s actions encouraged the villagers to create a few songs of their own. Also, Elijah was able to take another step forward in completing his quest.
Quest: If I Can Do It, So Can You
Description: A ruler leads by example. Assist or lead your people in completing five non-combat tasks.
Tasks: 4/5
Rewards: Skill Experience
Penalty: None
Other than singing, Elijah helped, chop down trees, dig holes and skinning some animals. He was never the best at any of these tasks, but his participation was a powerful motivation for his people. His participation gave the villagers a boost to their actions, and it also gave Elijah the opportunity to improve his Ruler’s Presence skill.
Skill: Ruler’s Presence
Tier: 0
Stage: Middle
Effect: Emit a presence capable of strengthening people that have acknowledged you as their ruler. Gives a 15% boost to all abilities and stats as long as a person stands within a 20-meter radius from you.
Cost: None
Ruler’s Presence wasn’t the only skill Elijah improved. Three days passed since Elijah first sparred with Elder Jeb. In that time, he had improved his Ruler’s Strength, Ruler’s Defense, War chief, and several other skills.
“It’s time to eat,” a villager announced.
“Hold on, we still have five minutes left on our buff,”
Buff
Digging speed increased by 30%
Time remaining: 0:04:52
Currently, the main traps and defenses had already been constructed. Right now, Elijah and the other villagers were working on a few minor things that could prove useful in the final battle. Since the main construction was completed, Elijah suggested they hold a small celebration.
After the remaining time on the buff elapsed, Elijah and the other villagers went to eat. They gathered in the communal building and the environment was warm, happy and hopeful. Before he sat to eat, Elijah took his time to talk and interact with the various villagers. He considered this a duty and a privilege.
Talking to the villagers helped Elijah become more immersed in the game. Like any other virtual reality game Fallen Heaven had status screen and game mechanics. However, conversation with the non-player characters in the game or NPCs was very different.
Gone were the stiff conversations that he was used to. Each conversation made Elijah feel like he was talking to a real person. But that wasn’t the craziest part. The craziest part was that Elijah was actually enjoying himself.
If Elijah had to use one word to describe himself, extrovert wasn’t the word he would use. He wasn’t afraid of social interactions, but he did find them tedious and, in some cases, unnecessary. He loathed the idea of engaging in idle chit chat about mundane topics.
Normally, Elijah wouldn’t be very active at large gatherings like the one he was having with the villagers. He would attach himself to one person or find a corner to lay low in. He definitely wouldn’t be the social butterfly that he is now.
What Elijah find truly strange was that his mindset didn’t change. When he thought about going to a party or organizing a social gathering, Elijah could feel himself becoming exhausted. This was a huge contrast to the sense of satisfaction and energy that he felt when he talked to the villagers. Elijah truly struggled to make heads or tails of the situation.
Perhaps it had something to do with his cultivation technique. Maybe it was because Elijah was in a virtual reality game. It could have been that he felt a sense of purpose in the idle chit chat that he was engaging in now that he was a ruler. Maybe it was a combination of all three.
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“Ah! Ch-Chief! One of my goblins died!”
“Hmm, really. When did it happen?” Elijah was about to sit and enjoy some nice virtual reality food when he was interrupted by a shout from a warrior.
“Right now. I told you as soon as I received the message.”
“I received a message that my goblin died as well.”
“Me too.”
The villagers stopped talking as more warriors mentioned the death of the goblins they took as slaves. Even a fool could tell something major was happening. Before Elijah could address his people, he received a notification of his own.
Your slave had died. By chance, you managed to obtain a memory of his final moments. Would you like to view the memory? Yes, or no?
“Everyone, please relax.” Elijah announced. “The death of the goblins is an indication that Justin, Elder Jamal and the other have begun their assault. We will have to wait a few days before we can receive information about what’s happening, but I’m confident that our warriors will be able to slaughter many of the goblins coming our way and return safely. What we should do now is stay calm, pray for their safety and continue our preparations.”
After Elijah saw the message about his slave’s death, in an instant he made the decision to not tell the villagers he had the opportunity to view the final moments of one of his slaves. He had no idea if the final moments would be positive or negative. If it was negative, it would make a lot of the villager worry and possibly panic.
Of course, Elijah planned to share the information with the village elders. However, he planned to wait until the small celebration was over. Although the villagers were less happy after they heard about the goblins dying, the celebration was still a pleasant affair, and everyone left in a good mood.
After everyone left, Elijah received four more notifications about four of his other slave’s death. Sadly, Elijah didn’t obtain any memories from the other goblins. Once everyone was gone, Elijah told the Elder and village leaders about the opportunity he obtained.
“It was wise of you to not mention this to the other villagers,” Elder Jeb said. “Take a look at the memory first and we can talk later.”
Nodding his head, Elijah turned his attention to the message. He selected yes and his vision darkened. When his vision returned, Elijah realized his line of sight was lower than before.
Fire spread throughout the area. Tents were in disarray and goblins ran around screaming in fear and confusion. Elijah was assaulted by several sights, smells and sounds.
Currently Elijah was running around with other goblins in the chaos. Occasionally, he would attack a goblin when the other goblins weren’t paying attention. There were times when he saw humans darting back and forth targeting goblins with good looking armor and weapons.
Sometimes those goblins were swiftly assassinated and other times there was a brief battle which always ended with the humans being victorious. Suddenly Elijah saw several humans run toward the edge of the goblin camp. This happened right before Elijah felt an intense feeling of dread.
Suddenly, Elijah saw a goblin appear nearby surrounded by a large amount of astral energy. The goblin was wearing red robes and holding what looked like a powerful magic staff. He pointed it at the fleeing humans and a powerful flame appeared on the edge of the magic staff. The flame was shot from the edge of the staff and one human fell down screaming in pain.
“Allen!” One of the humans screamed. The human foolishly rushed back to help the fallen human and in that instant Elijah knew it was Allen’s twin, Alan.
Unfortunately, while Alan’s actions were moving, they did nothing to change the future. Allen would die and the only thing that changed was Alan would now be dying beside him. Another flame was shot from the magic staff and another human fell down screaming in pain.
Once the twins were taken care of, the goblin turned its attention to the other humans. At that moment, Elijah, or the goblin he was in, felt the urge to attack the goblin throwing out fire balls like candy. He managed to stop the goblin before he could injure anymore humans, but the reward for his efforts was death.
Darkness consumed Elijah’s vision again, and then he was back in front of Elder Jeb and the others. All of them were looking at Elijah with solemn expressions. Elijah took a deep breath and spoke.
“There were two casualties,” Elijah said. He saw all of their bodies tense up and their faces twist with worry.
“Can you tell us who they were?” Elder Jeb asked
“Alan and Allen. Two people from my world.”
Immediately, everyone relaxed. Elijah could see how relieved everyone was and heard a few audible sighs of relief. One person even uttered an insensitive comment.
“That’s good.” The moment the words left the man’s lips he immediately regretted it. Several elders gave him a look of rebuke and he quickly tried to fix his mistake. “I’m sorry Chief. I didn’t mean what I said. I was simply relieved that my son was alright.”
“It’s alright, I agree with you. The people from my world don’t experience a true death when we die in this world. We simply return to our original world and if we want to it’s possible for us to return to this world in another form in the future. It would be truly unfortunate if one of our warriors died as this would be a true death.”
Seeing that everyone had calmed down, Elijah continued talking about what he saw. “The goblin’s memory that I was experiencing spent most of his time randomly killing goblins and spreading chaos. When Alan and Allen died, my goblin was ordered to attack a goblin that was attacking our people with fire balls. My goblin died after, but I’m sure the other goblins under our control were given the same order. Justin and the others should have been able to escape safely. What we should focus on is the goblin that could use magic? From what I saw it looks like he was someone at the first tier, the Qi Condensing realm.”
“It is worrying,” Elder Jeb agreed. “But I’m confident that I will be able to deal with one using Qi Condensing realm using my sword qi. And I doubt the goblins have more than one person in that realm.”
“It’s good that your confident, but we should plan for the unexpected,” Elijah said. “Perhaps the goblin leader also has a tier one specialty and job as well. Also, we don’t know the cultivation level of the goblin. It could have recently entered the first tier, or it could be close to the peak.”
“Unlikely,” Elder Jeb refuted with a shake of his head.
“But not impossible.”
“You should know that it took decades before I gained the opportunity to bring my specialty to the first stage. When it comes to learning and developing specialties, the goblin race definitely pales in comparison to us humans. Even if this very impossible situation does happen, I’m sure that the two of us working together will be able to deal with that goblin.”
Elijah gave what Elder Jeb said some thought and realized he was right. Elijah and the others continued to talk about what he saw and discussed what else they could do to prepare. However, it didn’t take long for them to come to the agreement that there was nothing left for them to do. They had already made the major preparations and they were currently handling the minor things they needed to take care off. Seeing that there was nothing left to discuss, Elijah was about to call for a dismissal, but another message suddenly appeared in front of him.
Someone is attempting to free your slave by breaking the mental shackles you placed on them. Do you wish to release your slave from its shackles or enter a battle of wills to keep it under your control?