One of the fairy guards escorted them kindly to the Queen. They ascended the tree, which had a tapestry of exciting objects he had never seen before. Leaves fashioned into items, royal wood that coursed magic surrounded the edges of the building, and many mushrooms, some of which glowed in a brilliant white light.

They headed towards a throne room with a council of members directly at the far edge. It was pretty significant, as many knights and bodyguards stood strong like guardian angels in the air. Upon gazing at the person directly within the centre of the room, he understood why she was considered the Queen. Her wings were outstretched the size of butterflies and glistened in the sunlight with a shimmer. Her beauty was also unmatched, as her demeanour looked graceful and elegant.

"Welcome to Elryia, The City under the Forest."

"Greetings," Woo-jin coughed, slightly bowing, "We are here to assist you in repairing the Healing Spring."

"Welcome, travellers. I am Queen Simila," She spoke, her voice melodic, "We have solved our problem regarding that."

Woo-jin frowned but took quick glances at Seungwoo. He shrugged in return, "I don't know what you mean?"

"Yes, some other travellers have already assisted us with restoring the Spring of Healing," She looked at one of her council members and exchanged short words, "If my memory is correct, it was just a few hours ago. They have conquered the Deeproot Dryads that have been tainting the spring."

"Oh..." Woo-jin shook his head, "I see."

Well, that was weird. Seungwoo didn't normally encounter games like this. It seemed like another person had already completed the secret quest. Usually, all hidden quests were available to people who found them. It seemed this one was a one-time thing? But then, why would the game still lead them to the quest if they could not complete it?

"Do you think it's faulty information?" Seungwoo turned and whispered.

"No, this source is reliable," He frowned, "We must be missing something."

"Are they lying, perhaps?"

"I don't think so," He replied.

"Is there anything else you might need assistance with?" Seungwoo asked, making sure to step forward politely.

"Perhaps," The Queen replied, after some consideration. Several murmurs could be heard around the room with her advisors before she answered back, "Since our Spring has healed, we can use divine water once more to replenish our youth and fertilise our lands. Now that we have healed our spring, we need a strong barrier to protect it. If you are willing to help us gather magic materials to protect our spring, we will reward you kindly."

"Yes," Woo-jin nodded, "We would be happy to accept."

"Very well," Queen Simila replied, "Our royal guard will escort you to the Crystalline Caverns. Deep within the cavern, you will find the necessary materials for us to craft the Barrier Node. If you gather me those items, I will reward you handsomely."

"Ah, fuck," Seungwoo replied, "Another dungeon?"

"I mean, it can't hurt, right?" He replied, "Besides, you could still get materials for the Divine weapon."

"Do we even know the dungeon capacity?" Seungwoo asked, "I'm upgrading my gear first before we do anything dungeon related."

"I think most dungeons have a max capacity of four people," He replied, "We can just get two random people to tag along?"

"Can't we just do it ourselves?" 

"Why take the risk of potentially dying?" He responded, "Besides, I'm sure we can make a Party Finder request when we get to the dungeon. There are a lot of people online, especially for today."

"Won't they have to do this quest as well?" Seungwoo tilted his head.

"Not particularly," Woo-jin shook his head, "There could be many reasons someone wants to clear a certain dungeon."

"Alright, fine," Seungwoo conceded, "But I want to upgrade gear before we go."

"That's alright."

He accepted the quest. 

Woo-jin bowed to the Queen, and she told one of the guards in the throne room to escort him outside. The guard greeted himself without much trouble, and they left the main tree, which Seungwoo must've guessed was their version of a city hall or something. They left for the entrance gates. Several people waved at them upon their departure. It seemed like relations between fairies and humans were neutral because he couldn't sense any hostility from them.

Upon touching the blue stone at the edge of town, they grew to an appropriate size and were whisked away to another place. It was most likely a safeguard since they were dropped at a random place within the forest on their minimap. The guard was now the size of Seungwoo's hand. He gave a salute and disappeared in a blink. Then, his minimap was marked with a circle, revealing an area on the upper edge of the map. The Crystalline Caverns were quite far away.

"How long do you think it will take to increase your gear?"

"Not that long," Seungwoo replied, "Why?"

"Since the location is far away, I can travel there while you finish your upgrades. You can warp to me once you're done."

"Sound's good."

Seungwoo warped into Camelot to find the nearest blacksmith. The city was already gaining a lot of traction with the other players. It didn't take long for them to find out that Guild Avalon already owned the new plot of land. It was pretty close to the central spawn area. Seungwoo smiled at the Guild Hall built, a fortified castle smack dab in the middle of town. 

The players who entered the city needed to pay a small tax fee for everything required interacting with a merchant. Things such as blacksmithing, personal storage, setting their waypoints, etc. The NPCs already set up were already providing services to the town. He didn't understand exactly how the logistics of everything worked, but he trusted Yoona as a leader to worry about that for him.

The blacksmith wasn't far away from the Guild Castle, but the people that would stare at him as he walked around were unnerving. At first, he thought he had done something wrong, but he realised that it was his Guild Tag that everyone was looking at. The whispers of people as they moved out of the way of his walk around town were... interesting, to say the least.

There it was.

Finding the blacksmith, he talked to the NPC, Boris.

"Hello, young lad," Boris replied, "Can I help you with anything?"

"Can I hone my equipment?"

"Of course," He replied, "If you have the materials."

"I should."

"Which item would you like to hone?"

"My weapon."

"Very well."

A screen popped up.

He clicked Upgrade.

He waited several seconds.

He pressed it once more!

3...

2..

1.

One more time!

3...

2..

1.

Why not another?

"Oh..." Seungwoo was slightly disappointed, but he was happy that he increased his weapon. His armour was the next step, but he decided to wait on improving its stats on the off chance he found a better one later down the line. His weapon was the only good item he had currently on him.

Upon looking at his weapon, he smiled. The higher the Star level the weapon had, the lower the enhancement rate you got. It also cost more materials to upgrade, which meant he had to do more dungeons. From what he could observe, enchanting materials only dropped from dungeons. He had yet to find anything else that dropped Chaos Shards or Coloured Crystals.

It was a significant damage increase.

Saying goodbye to the Blacksmith and closing all of his tabs, he looked at the map. The map was large, and his Guildmates were already uncovering the land on the first floor. The team put on several shared guild markers the map, which he presumed were locations of interest that the guild members found. Moving his fingers around, he located Zhang and Si-Long in the mountains, Yoona was still close to their land of Camelot, and Aaron seemed to be doing his own thing. He didn't know.

He located Woo-jin and teleported towards him. He was close to the destination.

"Welcome back," He said, "We're almost there."

Remounting on his horse, he joined him.

"How was your enchanting escapade?" Woo-jin asked, "I got my weapon to +2 before failing another two times." 

"I got +3 on mine, but I ran out of materials."

"Yeah, they're pretty hard to get." Woo-jin replied, "Especially Chaos Shards. You can always buy the Red and Blue Crystals from the availableauction house, but the Chaos Shards are untradable."

"Why is that?"

"It's to prevent whales like us from buying out the marketplace," Woo-jin replied, "Supposedly since we're capped on the number of Chaos Shards we can get from dungeons per week, there's no use to buy more. Each dungeon has a weekly or daily cap to stop players from hard grinding. It's to stop progression creep since players like me would just farm dungeons over and over from sun up till sundown and spend as much money as possible to ascend the higher floors."

"I mean, I guess that makes sense, but wouldn't you need other players to match you since dungeons are usually four-man?"

"Yeah, I mean we have the whole guild, right?"

"I see," Seungwoo nodded, "So it's to stop the market from crashing immediately."

"Yeah, but it gives the new players chance to make money, too. Once we find the most cost-effective daily and weekly dungeons on this floor, then all we need to do is reclear the dungeons every day and then focus on something else worthwhile."

"Ah, so the game gives us time to do other things like professions, trading, or house building," Seungwoo replied.

"Alright, focus up," Woo-jin replied as they headed towards a mountain clearing. It was a rough terrain mountain in an open plain that was a little windy. From what he could tell, there were already players in the distance, but he couldn't tell entirely what they were up to. He saw several players setting up custom chairs or sitting on their mounts upon getting closer.

"Selling carries for 1,000 gold!" Someone yelled.

"Looking for two more players for our group! Healer and DPS needed."

"Buying dungeon drops, PM for info."

Seungwoo looked at Woo-jin, who was surveying the player's movements. Several mages with robes, some assassins, others warriors. There were plenty of distinct faces and people, but he couldn't recognise anyone significant. He dismounted and told Seungwoo to do the same.

"They're most likely noobies?" W00-jin scratched his head, "It's up to you if you want to party with them."

"Yeah, we can go meet them."

"Well," He spread out his arms, "You go right ahead, I'll be behind you."