Reading the post about a kingdom that made a bounty quest available to players Eldrian found many things strange and interesting.

The players in this kingdom were asked to sign up at an adventurer guild from which they could get the quest. After signing up they had to go out and hunt down the monsters which were slipping into the kingdom. Much like what had happened with Phallos, but in much smaller numbers. Every group of monsters being between 5 or 20 monsters. Or so the players were informed when taking the quest at the guild.

Reading this post Eldrian felt like this was likely the next step for Phallos too. Where more and more smaller monster packs would make it inside the kingdom. Which the army and players would be tasked with killing. Trying to keep their numbers to an amount that would allow relatively normal lives for the people of the kingdom.

In the post, the player highlighted that after killing a monster or a few, they had to then go back to the adventurer guild. There they would give in their quest and get the promised reward. Surprisingly this seemingly basic system has not been broken. If a player tried to lie then the NPC would know immediately and revoke the player’s rewards.

This action had made the other player follow the rule. Realizing that when they lied they wouldn’t just be denied the reward they were trying to gain extra, but also losing all other rewards they were eligible for.

Eldrian found it interesting that players could simply state their kills, and the NPCs could verify it. He had no idea how the NPC verified it, but it seemed to be very effective. Seeing as no player had claimed success in duping the NPCs.

‘Do they have a method to check our system quest log or something?’ Eldrian asked himself, wanting to turn in his own quest so he could try and figure it out. He knew he would likely not confirm anything, but if they could confirm all his kills then he felt they likely could connect to the system in some manner.

After finishing the post Eldrian turned to the comments, quickly becoming bored of them. Unlike the post which was well structured and explained things, the comments simply complained about how hard the quest was for them.

Eldrian felt these complaints were simply dumb, seeing as these players weren’t even used as bait. There were many comments about this, in fact, other players were trying to shame the people for complaining about their nice and easy quest.

Flashing through the rest of the comments Eldrian found that the smallest group of monsters that players had run into was three monsters. This group was stumbled upon in a D-ranked event quest, the players had failed in killing all three. Only killing one while having lost two players in the fight, which allowed the other two monsters to escape.

This made Eldrian realize that players seriously had to learn how to fight well. And not just alone, but also with others.

After this, he continued to glance through the top posts which were informative. Finding one which explained how a kingdom took an active role. Sending scouting parties into their neighboring Tier 4 kingdoms. Both wanting to confirm the invasion’s progression and wanting to offer help if they could afford it.

Eldrian felt some relief after reading this post. Finding that there were indeed some NPC kingdoms that were smart enough to try and do something actively. Instead of just waiting until they came under fire.

He also knew this was far smarter since their kingdom would be completely fine. So they could keep their economy strong while helping the kingdom which was under fire.

‘Are the Tier 2 kingdoms going to do that for us?’ Eldrian asked himself. Hoping that it would indeed be the case, as it was the only way he saw hope in the situation.

After a few more minutes of surfing the forum, Eldrian failed to find any more informative posts. Running out of stuff to read he decided to start creating his own posts and asking the developers some things.

The first thing he did was send a bug report as well as a player question about both his experience in resurrection and random pain spikes. He made both a bug report and question for each, since he didn’t know if it was a bug or a feature. In these messages, he asked the developers what was going on and why.

He wanted answers to these questions, he felt something was off and wanted confirmation on it.

The pain during the fight had been too real and his death experience really scared him. He wanted to confirm that the developers knew what they were doing. Thus he hoped they would give him a clear and informative answer. Not just glancing over it, as this would inform him that something shady was going on.

He also sent another question, where he asked if there was a way he could make a post that would be protected. He asked if he could make all the readers bound by a contract that would limit their actions after agreeing to it.

He asked this because he wanted to make a post where he would share all his knowledge. But before doing that he wanted to ensure that it wouldn’t be used against him or what he wanted to accomplish.

Next, he moved on to write some other posts. Which would contain some of the things he had learned so far. He also wanted to make a post calling other High Elves to form a community.

The first post he wrote he called [On Mastering Weapons.]. In this post, he shared what he had learned so far.

First reinstating what he had previously posted about gaining proficiencies, adding some of his speculations and thoughts into this post. As well as adding his experience in fighting, telling people to treat it like reality as it had worked well for him. He did this in a roundabout way, where he stated how he approached the fights, aiming to kill his enemy without getting hit. Aiming for vitals and using stats as a precaution and not making it the beginning and end of fights.

In this post, he also mentioned that he felt the game would be very much group orientated. Adding that he felt people would have to form groups of over five people. If they wished to successfully play the game as an offensive class. He also added that they should practice fighting together, not just group when they wanted to.

He tried to support this claim from the situation in both the S-ranked quest kingdom and bounty quest kingdoms. Asking players to not expect themselves to be able to kill more than one monster when they are still in the training phase.

Eldrian felt this post wouldn’t do much. But he wanted to make the basic information available to the new wave of people who joined yesterday. Hoping that they would take some of his information to heart.

Next, he created a post called, [Learning Magic.]

In this post, he first explained what he knew of the world. How things seemed to be defined by tiers, much more than levels.

He briefly explained how he had started training at one of the magic towers. And about how he had failed due to being a High Elf. But he encouraged others to go out and try, adding that they might be lucky that some of the mages in the towers would take them in.

He also added a short explanation of the differences between magic spells and skills. Asking players to let him know if they managed to learn, and how it felt for them.

His last post was called, [High Elves Group].

In this post, he asked other High Elves to join in him the journey of learning. Adding on what he had experienced and asked if any others had had similar experiences to him.

His main hope with this was to find out if his situation was that of normal High Elves, or if it was special.

After all, this Eldrian saw that the time was nearing four in the afternoon. Shutting down his PC he headed to his bed, wanting to log back into the game. Only to be disappointing as the headset told him he still had to wait two hours before he could log back on.

‘Dangit, I forgot that I stayed on so long. What now?’ Eldrian asked himself, turning his PC back on.

In boredom, he browsed the forums again while listening to some music. Finding many of the same and not much new.

After getting fed up with this he decided to try and play with the browsing options. Turning it to kingdom mode, and finding that the entire Phallos kingdom thread was being drowned with complaining.

Next, he changed it to empire, finding that the only comments were coming from Phallos.

‘Are we the only players in the entire empire?’ Eldrian asked himself when he saw this. Curious he looked at the others, finding that some of the empires had no threads. While others seemed to have from two or even three kingdoms.

‘Is it random?’ He asked, quickly decided to abandon his question seeing as he had no way of knowing.

Browsing on he quickly lost himself to his music, time flying past as he scanned most of the interesting posts. But failing to find anything of significant value to him.

During this time he found a few threads which really infuriated him. These posts had been about players retaliating against NPCs. Seemingly wanting to kill the NPCs to gain revenge for being used as bait. Eldrian wanted to strangle the post creators, finding it really infuriating that players who could resurrect, wanted to kill NPCs who would die for good.

He had to stop browsing every time he found such a post. Taking some time on his bed with his music to calm down.

Just before he could log back on he looked at the announcement channel. Not having given it a good look yet. This channel was almost empty, with fewer than then threads. Looking at them Eldrian found that there were actually new announcements which were important to all the players.

One of the announcements was about the new players. Stating that around 2 million players will be joining in this wave. Which was the Friday on which Eldrian joined the first story quest. Making him wonder where all these players were spawned. But he hadn’t found any posts from these players so he continued looking at the announcements.

The same post also stated that one more wave release will be done, also 2 million. Eldrian found it interesting that it was stated the headset prices would rise after this last wave. And from the tone he felt when reading it, Eldrian felt that the rise will be very high.

‘Need to convince Jen to sign up before it is too late. I should also ask Erik if he managed to join with this wave.’ Eldrian thought and sent the corresponding messages to them.