The logic in video games didn’t make any sense at times. When she wore her travel pack it expanded her inventory by only five slots. The good thing was that it was a backpack meant for traveling so her small tent and bedroll were attached to it and didn’t take any slots that normally would have taken.
As soon as she was dressed and ready she tried rushing towards the inn to escape and force the quest to fail. Especially because of the color of the clothes she was wearing. Tina let out a sigh as she wished she hadn’t given this quest in a panic. Halfway towards the inn, she saw her tormentor, FlatIsJustice, walking towards her with not just two but three other players and a tamed wolf. One of the other players she felt she recognized from somewhere.
The main reason Tina had him find other players is so they could protect her from him. She didn’t expect another person to be just as bad. KittenComplex had rushed up to Tina just as soon as they saw her all while shouting, “SHE’S SO CUTE!!!” Tina couldn’t help but wonder what she did so wrong in her last life to deserve this. Instead of making things better they only got worse.
Tina didn’t know which was worse this obsessed cat lover or the overbearing lolicon. No they both were just as bad in their own ways and now she had no way to escape as the final part of the mission started for the party to start their trip. She also finally remembered who the elf guy was. He was the one who she had scammed, SteamMuppet, on the first release day.
The party consisted of SteamMuppet the elf mage, MrFluffy a hunter with his pet wolf, KittenComplex a dual-sword-wield warrior. Of course, there is FlatIsJustice who has the rogue class but plays more like a speedy and agile yet strength-based fighter.
They all were already ready and started heading out of the village. Even if they weren’t keeping a close eye on her, Tina found herself unable to separate too far from them once she had gotten the chance to sneak away while they were fighting. She swore never to give out quests that made her have to be escorted. To make things worse the trip to the town would take two days possibly longer depending on how many encounters they run into.
What she didn’t know was that moving out of the village she broke a few quests. But no one would even find out about it till much later.
One might wonder how a game that isn’t sped up but plays in real-time. How players can travel to other locations that take two or more days both in real life and in-game as the time between both is synced. Especially since this full-dive technology is still brand new and a player can’t play the game while sleeping. A person actually needs sleep, especially to go into rem sleep, in order to function properly and that can’t happen while playing the game even if it looks like they are asleep at the time. Plus there is the fact that the players have to go to school, college, or jobs to live.
Well, the problem was solved in two ways. When a player logs out their avatar vanishes and depending on where they log out they may or may not get the well-rested stat if it’s been at least 8 hours. But that’s just for a normal logout and would ensure the player is safe. The problem here is that they have to escort and protect Tina for a quest so none of these four players have the option of logging out.
The game has something called a soft logout. When they finally set up a camp and started eating they set their avatars to take two-hour shifts throughout the night to keep watch. A soft logout is where a player lets the AI take over their character. The downside is that it can’t use the players’ skills to their character’s fullest extent or fight in the same style and way a player made for his character.
But in turn, while they are sleeping or having to work and not logged in their character can follow certain simple commands. In this case, it was to protect Tina and after packing up in the morning and eating breakfast to escort her the rest of the way to town. It was still the weekend and none of them had anything to do. But they weren’t exactly going to be waking up at 6 am on their day off. So they will be logging in as their characters are partway through the trip.
The downside to doing this is that anyone who has their character die will find themselves respawning at the last safe place village or town they had visited. Also, their characters couldn’t gain any exp and would leave monster drops even if a legendary item had dropped if their inventory was filled up.
As for Tina, she was having a blast that morning. She would purposely draw in monsters and fight them to gain exp but also got the four AI-controlled characters to be rushing to protect her. The quest still didn’t allow her to go too far away from them or the road. But she would throw rocks she’d find or make a lot of noise to aggro and up the encounter chance of monsters.
Tina had quickly realized a loophole in the game. She wasn’t sure if it’s because she’s considered partly a player in the game or not. But as long as she only hits the monster once and the others who are in a soft logout are unable to get any exp. It was all going to her instead of being split. Because she was causing so many encounters, the distance of what would normally take 15 minutes to travel had taken four hours of the day away. It was far enough to get the change of scenery and without having ever traveled in this game before when they logged in they wouldn’t have known the difference.
MrFluffy was the first to log in after having brunch. His eyes went wide as he found himself in the biggest encounter they had yet from this trip. He also cursed the game when he realized his first tamed pet was now dead. But it was a given as it was underdeveloped for this area. Sure it would have had a higher chance of surviving if he were logged in to give it proper directions.
The 20 goblins they were now facing were between levels 10-12. FlatIsJustice’s character was on the verge of death. Tina had been using his character as a meat shield and despite his high speed, he couldn’t dodge everything, and out of everyone in this party, he was the only one she was trying to kill off.
Her plan would have worked too if MrFluffy hadn’t logged in just now and threw a healing potion on him. The goblins may outnumber their party and be in the same level range. But they are still goblins being small and weak. That didn’t mean it still wasn’t easy. Tina knew her plan had to come to an end now but she was happy with the results. She had gained a rare enchanted bracelet that she stored away and a few levels. The bracelet wasn’t identified which is why she didn’t wear it right away although she knew most likely it was safe at these low levels. But the downside even if it is rare at these low levels it wouldn’t be useful for too long. Her main gain was the new skill she had gained along with her new level from hogging all the exp at the expense and speed of four players’ work.
While MrFluffy was complaining in his head and cursing the game because of bad luck. Tina was all smiles as she had brought up her status. She had gained four levels. The 15 attribute points she had spent before sure helped a lot in this fight since otherwise she would have had only the stats of a weak mage but still had her magic locked. She decided to keep her newly gotten 20 points for now.
Tina’s peace quickly came to an end when it was around lunchtime. Everyone else had already logged in but while they all went to take a break, both her tormentors started to fight over her. Normally she’d love to see them duke it out but she was in the middle as they were using her arms as a tug of war rope. She felt if she hadn’t gained her four levels they might have ripped her arms off already.
In the end, she found herself sitting on KittenComplex’s lap. She didn’t really want to be in this situation but she didn’t fight to get away either. First off KittenComplex needed to secretly be rewarded for taking a cheap shot. Secondly, she was a female and Tina figured she could lean her head back against her soft breasts and enjoy them in turn.
Like hell, Tina was thinking any of that last part. KittenComplex was wearing hard iron body armor. It would have been a different story if she wasn’t though. But she was grinning while sitting on her lap as she watched FlatIsJustice rolling on the ground in pain with his hands between his legs to protect the special area. He was lucky in the fact this game only allowed between 1-10% of pain being felt depending on user settings. The reason it couldn’t be set to 0 was that both pain and the sense of touch were interlinked together. Imagine trying to hold your weapon during a fight when you couldn’t feel it at all or how much strength you needed to put into your attack.
But that 1-10% was only during battles or when the game registers pain. The rest of the time it was as close to reality as the game would allow but still not 100%. So although he only felt a slight pinch in pain, it was still in the forbidden area and most of it was mental. Imagine someone in an iron boot kicking you in your most sensitive area and try not to panic when you are in a life-like simulation. As for Tina, she did feel everything without reserve. If it weren’t for the fact she was in her avatar and players being able to log in/out of the game. She would have sworn she got transmigrated into another world and not somehow inside a computer program.
Tina never thought about that even though she knew the truth. It would just have depressed her and she decided to rather enjoy her life as best she could. Especially in a world, she helped create along the side of tens of thousands of other employees.
The office she worked in was alongside the top staff. But a game of this size being worldwide each with their own areas. They had staff and servers that were interlinked together across the globe. Each staff member in their own countries built and designed the areas while also having to follow the guidelines of the game design. The players in those countries would log into those areas, provided they accepted the recommended starting zones of their own countries.
Because Tina had used so much time farming exp that morning. They ended up having to set up camp again. FlatIsJustice had been thinking while staring at Tina even more than usual. He finally decided to ask what was on his mind, “Is there any way I can adopt you?”
Tina’s face turned ghostly white at that question. Her mind needed rebooting. She looked at him and said coldly, “I’d never let the likes of you adopt me.” KittenComplex went on to add, “Ya that’s because I’ll be the one to adopt her.” Tina shuddered as she felt the girl tighten her grip before she replied, “Who said I wanted to be adopted you? Neither of you will…”
Tina’s words were cut off as FlatIsJustice glared at his rival, “I found her first and if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t even have known she had existed. I’m going to be the one to adopt her.” While the both of them were arguing, Tina snuck away into her tent and got some early rest. As for SteamMuppet and MrFluffy, they both had to step in and stop the two before they tried to tear each other apart.
The next morning after packing up and eating breakfast. Tina started to farm exp from monsters again. This time she didn’t go too out of control. As much as she’d love to see FlatIsJustice die she had to admit his character was at least useful in helping her more when he wasn’t logged in. The weekend was over and they all either had school or jobs to go to.
The few players that passed by and weren’t in a soft logout state were wondering what kind of a nightmare escort quest the four players escorting her got into. They had never imagined that an NPC would intentionally be trying to draw monsters in.
Six hours had passed before making it to town. The monsters near the road were no longer giving her much exp after she had gained another four levels. She now had 40 attribute points saved up not to mention the NPC part of her had her stats raised as normal. As for the four players that had accepted her quest they wouldn’t have known that she used them in such a way. Their characters fully logged out once they got into the safety of the town and would get the quest completion box as soon as they log in again. Before looking around the town Tina logged at her status again.
Name: Tina (Hidden unless revealed/introduced. Otherwise first title is shown.)
Age: 12
Race: Neko
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Titles: Flower Girl, Orphan, Demi-human Mage(Hidden/Locked)
Jobs: Flower girl, Elemental Mage(Hidden/locked), Secret/hidden Questgiver(Title hidden from appraisals by the system, needed for quest system to work and easy quest editing by devs.)
Level: 16 Attribute Points: 40
Health: 210 Stamina: 240 Mana: 940
Strength: 22
Constitution: 21
Dexterity: 24
Intelligence: 47
Perception: 36
Charisma: 31
Skills: Florist, Herbology, Climbing, Claw Slash(Racial talent), Short sword (NEW),
Spells: Firebolt, Airblade, Waterblade, Mud Bullet, Electric Shock,
The first place Tina went off to was a clothing shop to get rid of her bright pink clothing. She felt weird having to look through clothes that were made for girls that she was going to wear herself. But she wasn’t going to do the injustice of letting her creation that she had painstakingly created when she was still alive and a guy by not just throwing anything to wear. But the main thing is that it can’t be pink. She had never hated the color pink so much until she was forced to wear these clothes.
Tina changed into a royal-blue dress. It had a glittering silver-colored belt around her waist while the skirt reached down to just above her knees. The shoes to match with the dress were velvet with two small white roses designed at the top. One thing most girls and a few guys would be jealous of is that she never had to spend any time having to take care of her long hair. After the dress shifted to fit her perfectly her hair changed into a waterfall braid.
Being the lead NPC designer she made sure to give her creation certain hair dues that wouldn’t be put on or found any other NPC. At least in this area of the game and this hairstyle was one of them.
The dress along with the shoes had cost her three silver. This early in the game it was like spending gold pieces to most players. Her next stop was the bank to deposit all her money and items she wanted to keep but not have on her. Wearing a travel pack broke her image while wearing this dress. She’d lose five slots but now that she was in a town there were some better options she could get if she needed more inventory space.
***
Hidden Quest: Escape the starting village (Completed)
Help the flower girl get to the next town (Chain quest)
You and your party have protected the flower girl and helped her reach the town of New Beginnings. You and those in your party have been rewarded.
Quest Reward:
+4 Bonus Attribute Points (FlatIsJustice, Quest Holder)
+2 Bonus Attribute Points (MrFluffy)
+2 Bonus Attribute Points (KittenComplex)
+2 Bonus Attribute Points (SteamMuppet)
This box was the first thing FlatIsJustice saw when he logged in after work. He didn’t expect that the quest reward would have been split up between everyone. After closing the window he decided to look around the town. As for video games go this place was huge. There were a lot of stores. Some stores looked run down and others looked fancy and expensive all depending on the district he walked through.
There were even houses from small to large that players could buy. But mixed up in the player houses were NPC-owned ones so the neighborhoods don’t look dead and empty. You could see the NPCs reading books, drinking tea on the porch, or working on other projects such as taking care of their garden.
Unlike renting a room at one of the inns where the rented room was a separate instance. The houses, shops, and most other buildings that were sold were first come first serve. With the exception of the smallest and first guild building. All the larger guild buildings and those who are wanting a more serious guild rather than a casual one were also first come first serve.
It didn’t truly dawn on FlatIsJustice or the many other players who arrived at their first towns how big this world truly must be for a video game. This town alone could easily hold a population of 200,000 people in the real world. And this was just one of the first low-level area towns. Currently, there weren’t all that many players that had arrived so it looked almost dead and abandoned. There were only 25,000 NPCs currently populating this town. Even more amazing is each had its own schedules and simplified AI. Well simplified in this game standards but more advanced than most other games. They can hold a limited conversation, give directions, and were at least smart enough not to get stuck or block someone's way.
FlatIsJustice screamed in his head as he couldn’t find Tina. He even found an orphanage and although there were a lot of cute kids none of them compared to how well designed Tina’s avatar was created. He knew it wouldn’t be this simple to just adopt her but he had to try. At least he got the basic information of what was needed to adopt a child in this game. A player at least had to own a house and had to have a fully furnished room just for the child.
(Think of it as Skyrim with no mods vs Skyrim that had the highest quality mods for the NPCs in the game. But more life-like where the NPCs in this game were rush jobs and most were randomly generated between sets of assets while Tina’s avatar was modeled by hand and higher resolution.)
Adopting wasn’t the only way to get kids in this game. Players can also get NPCs to fall in love and marry them or even each other. But all the pregnancy and early baby stages were set up. The player had the option of advancing their children's age by one year every week till they reached adulthood. Or the player could keep their child at their preferred age for a longer time or even have their NPC child stop aging altogether.
He ran off to the adventurers guild to start earning money so he could buy a house. KittenComplex also had the same idea as she dragged MrFluffy along to help her.
***
FlamingKitten finally reached the town of New Beginnings as well. But she didn’t do a soft logout as she wasn’t on a quest. But she did have more time to play the game than most other people because she lived off the money from streaming the games she played. When she went to the bank she saw a girl selling flowers. She wondered if this flower girl could also give off secret quests never thinking that it was the same NPC in the village. Sure the face and basket looked the same but there was a world of difference in the clothes and hairstyle.
Because the monsters dropped more money than at the beginning village. Tina had raised the price of her flowers to 5 copper each. This just made FlamingKitten confirm that it couldn’t be the same flower girl as back in the village. She just dumped 250 copper buying five bundles of 10 coppers each. She gave up when no quest came to her.
Just as she was about to leave she watched as another player bought a couple of flowers from her. He had only bought five flowers and exclaimed in joy, “Sweet I got a hidden quest.” He then ran off to go complete it. Of course, it was just Tina trolling her. But this also caused a storm causing the chat on her stream to light up as well as becoming one of the top topics on the forums once again.
A lot of different arguments came up. Some believed that it must be a random chance and the number of flowers a player bought at a time didn’t matter. Other’s believed that the quests must be linked to special flowers that were bought with a hidden code in them to activate a quest when they were bought.
There was also the topic of the flower girl in the starting village going missing. A lot of people were starting to come up with theories as she was now seen in the closest town to the village but no longer looked homeless, poor, and dirty. Was she a daughter of some rich merchant NPC? Or did some other player adopt her or spend a few silver to dress her up?
Then another storm hit the forums a day later. A player lucky enough to learn the appraisal skill had posted a screenshot. He wasn’t skilled enough in his skill to see her stats but it did show her name, age, race, level, title, and job. This shocked everyone because she was an orphan and nothing showed up of her being adopted or it would have shown the player or NPC that was to be her parent. More investigation revealed that she was homeless and living at an inn when that player followed her.
Players from other starting villages and even some who had reached the nearby towns started to head to this one town. Most didn’t care about her living status but came only because they were hoping to gain the quests she offered. Almost all the rewards she offered in her quests were much better and she was a known NPC to give out special quests. Those players didn’t want to put the time and effort into possibly finding other NPCs in their areas that might give hidden quests.
Tina had unknowingly become the face of the game. Well at least for the players in this area of the game. By the next weekend, Tina didn’t know what to do. The game was originally designed to have the players spread out into the different towns. But she couldn’t even step outside without a group of players waiting for her as soon as she was seen. The town was overpopulated.
Tina was at her limit so she walked out of town. All the players were even calling their friends, guild-mates and whoever was online they could contact to tell them to hurry over as something was happening. Around 400,000 players had gathered together in the middle of a field that was quickly wiped out of monsters.
BOOM!!! A bomb just dropped during the middle of a Saturday. Every player in the zone ended up with the same quest.
Event Quest: Last Man Standing
Be the only one standing in the end.
You all have annoyed the cute flower girl and wouldn’t leave her alone. The god of cute lolis is PISSED! But she is kind enough to spare one of you.
Quest completion:
Be the last player that is still alive by any means possible.
Reward:
Being able to walk out of this zone fully alive and a full elixir.
Quest Failure:
Logging out, leaving this area, or attacking the flower girl will result in instant death. As you all have pissed off the god of cute lolis death will result in double the usual penalties.
There was nothing but silence for a few seconds before the chaos erupted. GMs were being swarmed with complaints while other players didn’t even hesitate to start killing other players off. Spells of all colors and elements were being shot out as well as swarms of arrows and bolts with some glowing from skills being used on them. The viewers in FlamingKitten’s stream were chatting up a storm in shock while she was desperately trying to survive. She didn’t expect something like this to happen at all. Other players were just as shocked and a lot of them only followed wondering why a huge mob of players had gathered up.
With so many players in a single area and so many spells and flashy skills being thrown out. A lot of players died just because of the lag they were getting and having their connection drop out because their internet speed wasn’t good enough to handle it. Even the game server dedicated to this zone was having to be overclocked to handle all the stress put upon it.
As for Tina she had come with an almost empty inventory and had two expensive pouches on each side of her waist. Each magical pouch gave 15 extra inventory slots giving her a total of 55 slots. She walked around in the chaos picking up items that players dropped upon their death. With so many players gathered she only picked up rare or higher ranking items.
This day will be forever known by gamers as the day of Tina’s rage. The last player standing didn’t get to enjoy it for long. After he accepted his quest reward Tina had backstabbed him. His health was already low and she lucked out and grabbed the full elixir he had dropped.
Full elixirs in this game were rare as they came. They can only be obtained by quests or by a very low chance of loot from bosses. No matter a player's stats and level one of these will fully fill up all health, stamina, and mana after being used. This elixir was to be one of her last resorts in a life or death situation. Even if her avatar might respawn she didn’t know if she would remain intact or alive if she were to die. After picking up the elixir from the ground and ignoring the other items that dropped, she headed back to town as if nothing happened. She left millions of items still laying on the ground. Lucky few players that weren’t a part of the quest and came by had a field day of having their pick of items. But the majority of the items despawned and went unclaimed.
This event got so much attention it even caught the attention of news stations and players from other countries. The top devs and higher-ups in the company had to hold an emergency meeting as they couldn’t just stay silent. It didn’t take a genius to learn that Tina wasn’t just some common NPC with a normal AI after an event like this happened.
During the meeting, the door suddenly slammed open. The next bomb of the day hit as everyone looking at the guy who rudely interrupted the meeting shouted, “Tina the NPC has somehow posted a video on the game forums…” Everyone thought that he was trying to pull some kind of prank till the topic on the forum was pulled up and inside the topic was a recorded video. If that wasn’t proof enough the username was Tina with her avatar's face under the username. The game's forums were interlinked with a player's character. Of course, other people who wanted to remain anonymous or who didn’t have the game could create an account. Only players who owned the game and had logged in and created a character at least once could post in that section of the forum. How could an NPC post on the forums or her AI be this advanced? They didn’t know as with trembling hands the CEO clicked play.