After a long and heated discussion, Lizzy finally summed up what everyone in the party believed was the hidden objectives of Magradas’s quest.
“So, the first and most likely one is to eliminate all of the lycans in the castle before handing him the Weeping Willow’s Heart.”
“Yup.”
“Another objective could also be to revive the Weeping Willow, but that’s a little–”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough!” Maria said as she cut into the conversation and interrupted her friend. “Instead of just talking about it here, we should just start exploring already! The only clue you guys got is the cutscene we saw earlier! We might find some hints while exploring the West Wing, so let’s go!”
“Uhh, yeah, I guess Mary’s right. We’ve been going on and on about it for over half an hour already…” Sky said after looking at the clock.
“Even if we don’t find anything, I can still just coerce Magradas into giving us the best rewards…and if he doesn’t,” Maria stuck her thumb out and swiped it over her neck, gesturing that they could just kill him.
Of course, the girls didn’t take Maria seriously when she said that, even though she actually meant it. Magradas was previously her enemy, she didn’t have any qualms about killing him if he didn’t reward her well enough after retrieving the heart of his so-called friend. Since she didn’t kill him in the previous battle, Maria didn’t get any EXP nor did she obtain any loot!
Sparing Magradas did give the party a quest, but the trade off was that their efforts in the battle against him weren't rewarded. Maria has had her fair share of being duped by an NPC because she has had to deal with the cunning vampire nobles who pretended to join her after they were defeated, but secretly didn’t approve of her and only wanted to exploit her ambition.
Her very capable subordinates were able to help her overcome many of those vampires’ schemes, but this did give her some experience in dealing with an NPC’s cunning nature.
Magradas, by all accounts, wasn’t an NPC to be trusted. From Maria’s perspective, Magradas ended the fight and enticed everyone in the party with a grand quest, only because he knew that he was losing and was about to be killed.
Maria was the one who suggested that everyone stop the battle because she could smell a quest coming from the boss monster, but this didn’t mean she trusted Magradas.
They may have received a quest, but the rewards would judge whether or not Magradas was a trustworthy NPC or not. If he did turn out to be a good NPC, Maria would spare his life, but if he didn’t properly reward them for their troubles…Maria wouldn’t hesitate to cut him down or pressure him into subordination.
She saw the potential of Magradas. A Dryad was the male equivalent of a Dryas, so Maria saw worth in Magradas’s existence. Her nation just so happened to need an environment and vegetation specialist that could help with the crop production. Who better to serve as someone in that position than a being who was, quite literally, nature itself.
Maria hoped that Magradas was the ungrateful type or he was just someone who was so out of touch with reality that he didn’t know how to properly reward someone for their efforts.
If he was like the former, then beating him into submission would be easy for Maria. If he was the latter, then it was even easier. Maria only had to manipulate Magradas a little bit and pressure him into a ‘debt’ that he would never be able to pay back.
Lizzy was looking at her friend who was having an all too familiar look on her face and went up to her and asked, “You’re scheming something bad again, aren’t you?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t ‘hm’ me. I know that look, Mary! What are you up to?”
“Hehe, don’t worry. It’s nothing that bad~”
“That still doesn’t mean it’s NOT bad!”
“It really isn’t!”
“Spill it! What aren’t you saying, huh? Is this something about the quest?”
“Well…more or less…”
“Come on, just say it already!”
Maria scratched her head and replied, “Even if we were to complete all of the quest’s hidden objectives, the chances of Magradas properly rewarding us is still 50/50. All NPCs that give those kinds of ‘option hidden objectives’ quests, are usually the type that’ll underpay you for your work.”
“So they’re exploiting us?”
“Yeah.”
“But the system–”
“The system doesn’t decide the rewards. The NPCs do.”
Lizzy was confused and asked, “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. Please remember, Liz, that I’m also someone that can hand out quests to players. The structure of the quests I give are more or less the same as an NPC-given quest. Following that structure, then it means the way I reward players who complete my quest is also similar–if not completely the same–to how NPCs reward players for completing their quests,” Maria explained.
Everyone had been listening to Maria’s rant as they explored the castle’s West Wing. The monster mobs in the West Wing weren’t too different from the previous areas they passed through. They posed no difficulty to the party whatsoever, so Maria was able to leisurely have this talk while they continued with their exploration.
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“Please continue and elaborate, Maria,” Sky listened with interest as she cut down a Lycan warrior with a water trident.
“Like any quest, there’s always an objective to complete and the number of objectives are dependent on the quest’s difficulty, etc. right?”
“Yeah, and?”
“The way quests are rewarded is half from the NPC and half from the game system. The system rewards you with EXP and Skill Proficiency EXP, but the gold and item rewards are given to you by the NPC.”
“And how do you know that?”
“It’s because when I have to reward someone for completing a quest I issued, the gold and item rewards are something I have to provide with myself. That’s why, prior to the war with Vanargand, I announced that I would be opening my nation’s treasury and rewarding those who enlist in the army with an item directly from my coffers, remember?”
Lizzy quickly recalled that her friend had done that and replied, “Oh yeah…you did announce that. I just thought it was for publicity’s sake, but I guess there’s more to that…”
“Yeah…but anyway, that’s just assuming that the NPC’s quest system is the same as a player’s quest system. There’s no comparison at the moment because I’m the only one who can give quests to other players…and NPCs,” Maria said.
“You can give quests to NPCs?!” Lilith asked in surprise.
“Yes, I can, though they don’t treat it as a quest, but more like a favor.”
“Still, I have to give them a reward if they complete my request. Most of the time, it’s just money, but there are some times where a prompt shows up that this NPC likes this item from my inventory or storage, and the system will prompt me if I want to give the NPC the item as a reward.”
“Oh…”
“Anyway, it comes directly from my own possessions.”
Cindy nodded at Maria’s explanation before saying, “Okay, but that’s still just from a player’s perspective, right? NPCs could have a whole different system and, for all we know, the game’s system handles everything for them.”
“That’s certainly true. What I’ve said before was just my hypothesis, but I’m only confident in saying it because I’ve conducted a few experiments to prove it!”
“Elaborate.”
Maria started explaining to the party what she had been through with regards to the random reward quests while they cut through the castle's West Wing, room after room and killing any lycans they encountered.
“So you’ve even received one from a child and the reward was only EXP and a handmade necklace the little kid made that purely served as decoration?” Sky asked after listening to Maria’s story.
“Yup, I had to kill this and that to avenge her parents before erecting a grave for them using a certain rock that’s extremely hard to find and all I got was that handmade necklace that held absolutely 0 monetary and effective value plus a handful of experience points–no gold by the way,” Maria said, though she didn’t seem unhappy about it at all. Instead, she talked about it with pride, for some reason. “Arguably, the drops I got from the monsters who killed the parents were better–if you looked at them from an economic standpoint.”
“Well, the necklace might not have monetary value, but it did have a lot of emotional value, no?” Lilith said.
“Yes, the reward I got from it was more meaningful than any other reward I could hope to get, but don’t you see, this fact basically strengthens the theory of my hypothesis!”
Maria pulled out the handmade necklace she mentioned and shared its property with everyone in the party.
“It really is just decoration…”
“I’m sure the system regulates all of the 'normal' quests that the ‘normal’ NPCs give, but the unique quests like these are likely something the system doesn't regulate at all besides the EXP and Skill Proficiency part!”
Lizzy quickly asked, “What do you mean by ‘normal’ NPCs and quests?”
“You know how there are regular monsters and abnormal monsters that have extremely well-developed battle AIs, right? Well, the NPC equivalent of those monsters that have better battle AIs would have to be the NPCs that give these quests with random rewards!” Maria said. "I mean, think about it. Why reward us according to our performance instead of the quest's outcome? It's obvious from there that the NPCs are 'processing' the quality of our work to give us a better or worse quest reward."
“...So, the items you receive from those random reward-type quests must be something the quest giver must personally own…” Lizzy mumbled to herself after giving the theory some further thought.
Maria nodded and said, “Anyway, let’s just say that what I said was the truth and things really are like that, so then let’s look back on Magradas. I’m sure that guy doesn’t have a single penny to his name, nor does he own any valuable item that he could give to us as a reward… Going by that logic, he might reward us with something very useless or he tricked us into doing this request because earlier, he was about to die and didn’t want to fight anymore to preserve his life!”
“To sum it all up, you’re saying that our discussion earlier was pointless?” Cindy asked after understanding the message she was trying to say.
“Yes. Extremely pointless!” She replied without hesitation.
“You could’ve just said that and not have gone on this tirade!”
“Well, I got bored and this is revenge for making me listen to you guys argue for half an hour!” Maria jabbed back.
“Ugh…”
"..."
“L-Look on the brightside everyone…At least we made it to the West Wing’s final room very quickly!” Rafflesia, who had been silent all this time despite being extremely vocal in the party’s earlier discussion, suddenly spoke up and said.
While listening to Maria’s long tirade about how useless their earlier discussion was, the party somehow had arrived at the castle’s West Wing’s boss room.
“Hey guys…are you sure we explored and thoroughly looted everything?” Maria asked as she scratched her head in confusion.
“I-I think so…my inventory is nearly full…” Sky said in surprise.
“Wow…how the heck did this happen?”
It was like the party was on autopilot earlier while Maria was talking. They unconsciously did everything and somehow, they did things right. Thinking back to everything they did to get here to the West Wing’s boss room, everyone recalled doing some odd puzzles to get into the different rooms and halls within the West Wing while also avoiding and disarming the traps that were in their way.
Rafflesia took a look at her private stream’s chat and realized that they were only able to get here because she had been subconsciously doing what her mercenary friends were telling her to do while she listened to Maria.
“Oh, so you’ve been streaming everything to your mercenary group this entire time, Raffie?” Lilith asked.
This was the nickname everyone decided to call Rafflesia, since it rolled off the tongue much better than her character’s full name.
Rafflesia nodded at Lilith’s words and replied, “Yeah, I got permission from Maria before we started the raid. It's a private stream though, so no one but my merc group friends are watching.”
“Ah, dang it. I should’ve asked Maria for permission too! My friends from my party wanted to watch the dungeon raid!”
Maria quickly spoke up and said, “Uh, I don’t actually mind if you guys stream it as long as it’s set to private. Although I do like to keep my abilities a secret, it doesn’t mean I’ll ban anyone from streaming if they are in a party with me. Just let me know beforehand, so I won’t do something stupid and embarrassing…”
“Then I’ll stream the West Wing’s boss battle to everyone in my party!”
Sky chimed in and said, “Same here then. I’m sure all my friends will love it.”
“I’ll do it too! Gerald’s been begging me to ask you if I could stream the dungeon run. I just forgot to ask because I was too excited,” Cindy said as she too started streaming.
“How about you, Liz?” Maria asked.
Without missing a beat, Lizzy replied, “My stream’s been on since we started…”
“Of course…”
“Anyway, what should we do with Magradas if he really does give us something useless as a reward?” Rafflesia then spoke up about the previous topic that they almost just forgot about.
The girls all turned to Maria and she quickly replied, “Just leave it to me. For now, let’s focus on defeating the West Wing’s boss! My hands are getting a little itchy again~”