A few minutes after Abel logged out, 3 girls logged on at an inn not far from the central square. While players could log out anywhere, there were some buff’s a person would get if they logged out at residence or inn.

The 3 girls looked relieved to finally be done with their school work and excited about the “day” ahead of them in Faeron.

*Ding*

You have a whisper!

“Hmmm”

Sophie looked at the notification before her, slightly confused since she barely had any friends on her in-game contacts list. Beside her 2 besties, she had a few other real-life “friends” she was forced to add when they knew she started playing Realm Quest.

“I have a piece of information I thought you’d want to know. Don’t disrespect your instructor in the training citadel, it’s easy to earn their ire. If you’re humble then you might be able to build up favorability and get a better reward.

-Red Sky”

“How interesting…”

Sophie lightly spoke to herself but her friends still heard her. While it was obvious she was looking at her interface, they didn’t know what she was doing and simply waited for her to explain.

“It’s Red Sky, he sent me a message.”

When she saw their inquisitive look, she went on to explain the gist of his message,

“He’s telling us we should be modest when we face an instructor, apparently we can build up favorability and get better rewards.”

“It was nice of him to mention…”

Mia said as she felt the young man was quite kind to mention this bit of information long after they paid him.

“Yeah! He didn’t have to mention it be he still did.”

Aria also chimed in, still feeling embarrassed deep down about their first encounter. She seemed to recall something before asking,

“By the way, how much did you pay him sister Sophie?”

“15 silver coins, why do you ask?” Sophie replied honestly.

“WHAT? Only 15 silvers?”

Aria found it too little for the information they received while Mia looked to be in agreement with their short-haired friend.

“Well, I didn’t want to come across as us pitying him. You should be able to tell he isn’t well off financially and 15 silvers would be enough to get a profession and buy some armor. Besides, although 1 silver is only 3.8 coalition credits right now, it’s increasing every day. It was just 3.5 yesterday and I’m sure it will be worth more than 4 by tomorrow.”

Sophie explained her thought-process to her friends. Although they both knew she wasn’t the cheap or ungrateful type, they were confused why she paid ‘so little’ in their view.

After hearing her explanation, they felt it made sense and agreed that it was an appropriate amount.

“Have you girls decided what you want to learn?”

She changed the subject after sending Red Sky a message in thanks and asked what they had in mind for the training course.

“Although I already have the bow proficiency, I still think I should still take the archery course”

Mia was the first to reply. Although she had the skill for the weapon, her arrows would often be too weak or miss their target entirely. She would usually deal damage through active skills she learned from skill-essence crystals but they were a major drain on her mana.

“I want to learn the staff, a shaman like me should be able to fight and tank hits in close combat with a proper staff!”

Aria chose to specialize in a weapon fit for her profession, she hadn’t purchased the close combat skill-essence crystals because she was averse to fighting up close. She wanted to play a more supportive role in the background since a shaman was a jack of all trades, but her recent experiences changed her mind.

“What about you?” Mia curiously asked her lavender-haired friend, she didn’t know what she had in mind seeing as she took up a pure support profession.

“I think I’ll go for the hammer…. I can then advance to a paladin instead of remaining a pure magic-based support in the future.”

 

 

While the 3 girls were discussing what weapons to learn, Abel had stepped out of his room and was assaulted by the bright rays from the sun. He squinted his eyes and looked around before seeing a small stack of wood on the side. He hadn’t noticed when he logged out in the middle of the night as he was in quite a rush.

‘Ah shit… I completely forgot about the wood I asked for!’

He pulled out his phone and gave Frankie a call.

“Hey there Abe! It’s rare to hear from you nowadays hahahaha” Frankie’s lively voice came through after a couple of rings.

“I’m sorry Frankie, I totally forgot about the wood-“ Abel started apologizing but Frankie quickly cut him off.

“Don’t worry about it, Reggie dropped me off last night after swinging by Savory Crusts. I unloaded the wood myself. It’s not like he was stuck outside or anything so you don’t have to feel bad about it!”

Frankie understood what Abel was probably feeling bad about which was why he explained the situation right away.

“It seems like things are going quite well in-game seeing as how you’re so busy” he followed up curiously, not knowing what Abel was up to these past 2 days.

“Yeah, I stumbled on something big that could help me out a lot. I’ll tell you about it when it’s over, I don’t want to jinx it just yet”

Abel didn’t go into much detail seeing as he still hadn’t finished the quest, “I’ll probably not be around for dinner tonight, maybe even breakfast in the morning but definitely dinner tomorrow. It’ll be on me!”

“Heh, alright good luck! I have to go, my break’s pretty much over.” Frankie quickly ended the call as Abel heard someone call out to him in the background.

‘I should go check on the trap, even if it didn’t catch anything I should replace the bait.’

Having made his decision, Abel first checked on the live rabbits and wanted to add some carrots and water for them but he found it already there. He quickly cleaned out their basket from all the rabbit shit they pooped everywhere. He then grabbed some bait from the fridge before speedily changing his clothes and making his way out to the forest.

When he finally reached the location of the trap, he found the pungent and half rotten rabbit intestines still there. It remained untouched from the prior day, except for the few flies buzzing around it. He carefully removed it and replaced it with fresh rabbit lungs before making his way back home.

He had worked up quite the sweat going back and forth so he took a quick shower and slipped himself into bed. He was still feeling bloated from the pies in the middle of the night so he figured he’d have a light lunch after waking up. He set an alarm for 1:30 pm and drifted off to sleep within a minute.

“Beeep – Beeeep – Beeeeeep”

With the buzzing of his phone, Abel groggily opened up his eyes. It took a second for his mind to catch up to the reality before him. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes and slowly made his way out of bed.

Although using the pod could shorten the need for sleep, he felt like he could sleep for another hour at least but he didn’t want to waste any more of the precious double EXP period within the dungeon.

He didn’t forget the lunar bane cycle would make the monsters more difficult to kill at night. After washing up and brushing his teeth, he made himself a light sandwich and checked on the drying boar pelt.

‘Although it looks dry, I should leave it for a couple more days but under the sun’

He unhooked the breaks and rolled the stretcher outside to place under the sun. He had checked the weather report to make sure it wouldn’t randomly rain or drizzle in the next couple of days. It was showing clear skies with minimal clouds so it was perfect to fully dry out the pelt, he just had to trim it and take its dimensions before ordering a customized rug pelt to affix onto.

‘Now let’s get back to slaughtering rats.’

Abel got back in to his pod and speedily logged back in to Faeron.

*Ding*

You have a new whisper!

‘Did she reply? Open Panel Menu’ Abel opened up the message, wondering what Sophie had to say. It had to be her replying since she was the only one on his friends list.

“Thank you.”

‘Huh, that’s it…? She wasted 5 copper coins just to say thank you?’ Abel checked and rechecked the message, but all he saw were those 2 words.

‘Well, it didn’t look like she’s short of money. Whatever, I should get my weapon and armor back and head out already. I have to be careful not to get followed as there’s a lot more people online now!’

Abel made his way to the smithy that handled his repairs and picked up his equipment. Once he went over his supplies ensuring he had everything, he swiftly made his way out of the city.

He was quite careful on his way to the dungeon, the last thing he wanted was for a nosy player to follow him and discover this new dungeon so close to the city. It was a great place to make money as rat meat sold for so much while the monster itself was quite weak. Stone-toothed Rat’s were quite hard to find within the Hollow Forest as Abel merely came across 3 of them over the span of 3 hours the day before.

Once he got close to the dungeon he didn’t immediately make his way inside, he acted as though he was hunting small monsters in the area for the following 20 minutes.

He wasn’t worried he would come across others while he hunted as the location was quite off the beaten path that most players took. If he did come across someone then it was likely they were following him.

Fortunately, after another 10 minutes, he didn’t see any sign of other players within the vicinity. Even after he circled around the area a few times, he didn’t come across anyone so he figured the coast was clear. His caution was reasonable but Abel forgot that not a lot of players chose to start off in Caelondia in the first place.

The majority of players either chose Elyndor, Valtoria or Kaelia instead. Of those that chose Caelondia, a large proportion would pick areas around the MerEmpire instead of the far-off Veridia.

Abel had no idea how many players were currently in the Veridia Kingdom but if he had to guess then it might be a few thousand. This number was across the entire kingdom and not just the capital. It might increase as more players register for Faeron over the coming months but at the same time, they could also choose other more ‘prosperous’ regions instead.

Abel pushed aside these idle thoughts as he checked up on his equipment and loot on the first floor. After confirming everything was still there and untouched, he made his way down to the next level.

‘Alright, 2 more paths to clear out, let’s get started’ Taking the left-most pathway, Abel resumed his slaughter of monsters.