---Third POV---
"Done!"
Looking at the results of his work, Viktor was very satisfied.
"Now we just wait for player feedback."
After all, it was a regional event.
Players disconnected outside the Great Oak Forest wouldn't receive the event notification anyway, and that was fine.
The time limit was set to give players a sense of urgency. He didn't want players to end up killing Edgar and the sirens, who might be waiting to be rescued, just for fun.
After settling everything, Viktor beckoned behind him.
The black sand covering the chair flowed like water, transforming into a sleek, modern-looking wheelchair. It carried Viktor to the door, which opened automatically, and he quickly left.
---
Players who had just turned in quests gathered together, chatting.
"Did you guys see the new event that just dropped?" A player who had just finished a quest asked the ones still in line.
Someone quickly responded. "Yeah, I saw it. Ten new map slots, this time, I'm definitely in!"
"You guys really plan to go out there?" One player sounded hesitant.
"I saw a post on the forums, some veteran said they're all doing hard labor on the new map!"
"Pfft, you believe that nonsense?" the first player scoffed. "If it was that bad, why haven't they come back?"
Another player nodded in agreement.
"If it really sucks out there, we'll just come back. The point is having the right to go."
"Look at Hedgehog, he's always whining on the forums, but the moment he found a way back, he left again."
The hesitant player thought for a moment. "You guys… actually make some sense."
Everyone knew veteran players never told the truth. He quickly changed his mind. As soon as he turned in the quest, he dashed off without even waiting for the NPC to finish talking.
"Let's go do the event!"
"Yeah! We're not missing a single NPC!"
"For those new map slots!"
"For stripping the NPCs of all their secrets!"
Uh… was something weird mixed in there?
Viktor calmly passed by the eternally energetic players. He could already picture the tragic scenes of town NPCs being harassed. But for the NPCs affected by this chaos, he planned to allocate a subsidy from the territory treasury.
You could say, aside from the "core NPC" Cobb, who had to put players through multiple quest rounds, the others wouldn't be too affected.
As for Cobb?
These next three days of "soul-draining" attention would serve as punishment for not reporting the truth earlier.
Don't be fooled by how nice he sounded at the time.
Viktor never had much faith in Aeltians like Cobb, who grew up in the grey zones of society. Their so-called sympathy for slaves and desire for a peaceful life all boiled down to one thing: self-preservation.
Any suffering he was due, Viktor wasn't going to let him off easy.
He calmly crossed the street.
Players turned their heads repeatedly.
"Damn, what was that just now? So fast!"
"A motorcycle?"
"Uh… looked like a wheelchair?"
---Viktor's POV---
Inside my house, a mountain of tasks still waited. I kept working until the sky was ablaze with the evening glow. I finally put down my quill and looked out the window.
"Phew, what a troublesome day, finally over."
"Grandpa!" came an urgent knock at the door.
"Okay, not over after all..."
Looks like I'd be working overtime again. I sighed and looked toward the door.
"Come in."
The next second, the door flew open, and Gaeman's gaze locked onto me behind the desk.
"Grandpa, I knew you'd be here!"
"I'm not your grandpa. And if you want to swim, go to the river, and stay away from the regular folks."
"It's not about swimming!"
"Until you find your great-grandmother, I'm not giving you any work."
"Why do I need your permission… no, wait, it's not about work either!"
Gaeman choked, struggling for a moment before finally finding his words again. He sat down seriously across from me.
"I just saw the human who brought me back. Do you know where Child is?"
"Child?"
I thought for a second. That edgy player with a natural talent for spatial magic? Since he was a newcomer who hadn't been in the game long, I didn't have much of an impression of him. I only remembered that the guy dyed a camel-colored, high-collared trench coat himself, always wore it draped over his shoulders, saying it matched his wind-element aesthetic, and then nearly died of heat stroke in the middle of summer.
I continued sorting through the documents on my desk, casually replying, "Only Lux and Hedgehog came back. Child should still be in Nary Town."
"Still in Nary Town?" Gaeman frowned. "Then how long until he comes back?"
"It'll be a while. Even if he does return, he might not stay in town."
Once the second and third maps in a game opened up, players' time spent in the starter village plummeted. At least until their sense of exploration was fully satisfied. Given Aeltia's massive landmass, Honeyvale Town would eventually just be a safe zone or transfer point. The only players sticking around long-term would be newbies and life-skill players. And from what I knew, Child didn't fall into either category.
I gave Gaeman an amused look.
"What, just a few days together and you've already fallen for him?"
He looked utterly horrified. He hugged himself and shrank back in panic.
"Why are you gossiping like Helena?! I've already chosen a male differentiation path!"
I shrugged indifferently.
"Before Claire came of age, she talked tough too. Love's unpredictable, you know?"
Gaeman's eyes went wide like saucers.
"R-Really?"
"So, do you actually like him? I'll give you a heads-up: chasing someone like him is even harder than chasing a Wingkin."
"What are you even talking about?!"
Gaeman slammed the desk, face turning red.
"I just want to thank him for bringing me back!"
He'd been in Honeyvale Town for a week now. Thanks to the siren's deceptively delicate but actually superior physique, he'd earned quite a bit of magicoins. He'd heard that players were greedy for money, so he wanted to use that to repay Child.
"But the other three helped rescue you too..."
"Grandpa!"
Gaeman's face turned red, then nearly black with frustration.
"I don't have enough money right now! I can only repay one person first!"
I tilted my head, ending the conversation under his increasingly sharp gaze.
"Fine. I'll help you keep an eye on when he comes back. Anything else?"
"Uh…"
Hearing my response, he suddenly wilted. He hesitated for a moment.
"I want to go to Nary Town too."
"Hmm?"
I looked up, slightly surprised. I neatly packed away the last of the documents on my desk.
"Your throat isn't healed. Aren't you afraid of getting caught by the White Dove people and being sliced up like sashimi?"
"..."
That was just me pretending to be clueless, again.
Gaeman took a deep breath and spoke all of his thoughts at once.
"I want to do my part to help rescue Helena. Sirens are very familiar with each other's voices and scents. Though my throat is damaged and I've lost most of my combat ability, it actually makes it easier for me to hide. Nary Town is full of mixed smells. There, they won't be able to find me, but I can still find them by their voices. I'm the most suitable one to do the tracking!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the room fell completely silent. He patiently held my gaze, his eyes full of sincerity.
After a long while, I moved and closed the drawer.
"You want to go find Child?"
Gaeman's face, tense for several minutes, finally cracked.
"I told you, I don't! Our other companions are all suffering, how could I be at ease playing around here!"
He placed both hands at his temples and softened his tone.
"Please, I can protect myself. I absolutely won't cause you any trouble. Please let me go… Oh, great and legendary dark mage…"
I rested my head in my hand and listened to Gaeman's pleading go on for ten minutes straight. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
"Sigh, fine, I give up. I'll send you off in a bit."
"Great!" His face lit up with joy, and he stood up without hesitation. "I'll go get ready now!"
I tapped my buzzing head and let out a helpless sigh.
"One after another, all such troublemakers."
From the moment I heard his fluent English, I knew. Claire had sent them to deliver things as a cover, what she really wanted was for me to shelter these sirens. But these young people… still so hot-blooded. Just barely healed from their injuries and already eager to change the world on their own.
There was no stopping them…
A white light flashed in the teleportation array within the space-warping chamber.
Gaeman excitedly waved at me in farewell. "Don't worry, I'll bring everyone back safe and sound!"
Next to him, Lux, surrounded by a large amount of cargo, was still in a daze over "the rescued human child turned out to be a siren who speaks English."
In the next second, both of them vanished.
The dimension crystal embedded in the array turned to dust from energy depletion. I casually replaced it with a new one. We weren't lacking these in the territory anymore.
Gazing at the now-empty center of the array, I sighed.
"So young, so impulsive…"
A juvenile siren with a damaged throat, trying to infiltrate the enemy's lair? Hopefully he really thought it through and wasn't just talking big.
Otherwise, if he ends up triggering the failsafe I left behind, he'd better be ready to have his backside smacked by Claire.
I stretched my stiff joints. Under the respectful gaze of the array guards, I turned and left.
---Third POV---
Late night, in a secret chamber of the Ship-Carriage Guild branch no bigger than ten square meters, seven players sat around a circular stone table, on which was laid a large hand-drawn map of Nary Town.
It was much more detailed than the system's built-in map, covered in black markings.
All the players were familiar faces.
NeverShowOff sat at the head of the table and scanned the varied expressions of the players one by one.
He was the first to speak.
"I called you all here because the main quest is progressing too slowly. I won't waste time, there's only one focus today: information sharing."
The others looked at each other.
CowardlySurvivor chuckled: "Phew, you scared me. I thought something big happened. Isn't there already a dedicated thread on the forum?"
Thor nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I posted the info about the bakery lady myself."
Child gasped, "So you're the fishing guy!"
"Ahem, let's keep it low-key," Thor replied modestly.
NeverShowOff's expression didn't change. He waited until everyone finished their banter before calmly continuing:
"I mean the intel you haven't posted on the forum."
He placed three scrolls of papyrus in front of him.
"Our team is willing to offer three pieces of information to show our sincerity."
As soon as he said that, the room fell silent. Seeing no one spoke, the arms-crossed Garble finally broke the silence.
"Yesterday alone, we lost four people."
"Four?!" Child looked up abruptly.
Player deaths were common. But after a week of settling into Honeyvale Town, everyone had already found their footing. It was nearly impossible for players to still be killed by NPCs for breaking unknown rules or drawing suspicion.
There was only one possibility: the local underground forces operating from the shadows had begun actively hunting players!
Garble nodded and pressed on, "We know what everyone is worried about. But if we don't unite soon, all players will be purged from Honeyvale Town!"
NeverShowOff tapped the tabletop with his finger. "Working together is our only way forward!"
Silence.
Still, no one spoke.
After a week of exploring the new map, players had split into various small groups, each with different goals and power levels.
The largest among them was the Lucky Stars Team, backed by popular gaming content creator NeverShowOff.
Anyone invited by the team to attend this meeting could be considered a representative figure of their respective faction. Their decisions would affect not just themselves, but also the players they represented.
Seeing that the others were starting to waver, he threw on the final piece of fuel.
"This evening, the ID badges Viktor gave us could no longer pass the gate guards' verification."
The whole room was stunned.
CowardlySurvivor shot to his feet.
"Then that means... after we die, we can't re-enter?"
Because Honeyvale Town's situation was so complex and it belonged to an unknown faction, players had set their respawn points in the wilderness outside the city. If they couldn't rely on the ID badges to get in and out of town, both their respawns and saved progress would be severely impacted.
Child furrowed his brows deeply.
"Is that information reliable?"
Garble spoke, "Lux went back to Honeyvale Town. It'll be easy to verify."
Once Lux got stopped at the gate, that would prove their claim. Though the consequences of being discovered… probably wouldn't be good.
Child's expression hardened.
Most players on the forum probably thought she was still at the church.
The fact that Garble knew her real whereabouts… said something.
"You guys keep talking!" Child said hastily.
With that, his gaze locked onto thin air, unmoving.
NeverShowOff smiled quietly.
His communicator could indeed reach outside the city.
But… whether Lux would see the message before trying to re-enter was another matter entirely…
He swept his gaze across the other players.
"I'm sure all of you here have the means to verify this info yourselves. But I hope we can move this meeting along, before something worse happens!"
Though no one else moved, like Child, their gazes occasionally focused into the air.
Clearly, they were using private messages to contact others outside.
Finally, the first player to take a stand… stepped forward.