Bickering about lollipops with a little thing who didn’t even know what a lollipop was would be an exercise in sheer idiocy, so whenever Guoguo brought the subject up, Ye Tianxie wisely kept his mouth shut. But this little thing — who looked utterly harmless, so guilelessly innocent it drove a person to distraction — clearly had schemes of her own. No matter how Ye Tianxie prodded and angled for answers, she never once told him who she was, why she existed inside the Hour of Fate, or why she called him master. She’d either answer “not telling you,” or trot out an “Oh la la, I really don’t know!” that not even the devil himself would have believed.
The novice village.
Standing at the village entrance, gazing at the enormous crowd streaming in and out and meeting all those staring eyes, Ye Tianxie glanced rather speechlessly at little Guoguo perched on his shoulder. With his looks adjusted up 20% — on top of an already fine face and that faint, barely-there demonic charm and dangerous air — he drew a great many gazes wherever he went. Yet not one of them ever landed on the Guoguo at his shoulder.
Could it be that in the World of Fate everyone came with a little thing like this? Ye Tianxie caught himself wondering, then promptly strangled that brain-dead guess on the spot.
“Guoguo, they can’t see you?” Ye Tianxie asked tentatively.
“Oh la! Master’s so clever. How could a little loli as cute and well-behaved as me let so many people see her? Guoguo’s really something — as long as I don’t want them to, they can’t see me and can’t touch me. Right now the only one who can see and touch me is master.” Guoguo said it all smug and giggling. Evidently the other players not only couldn’t see her, they couldn’t even hear her — not one person looked her way while she spoke.
Ye Tianxie shot the little thing on his shoulder a strange look. There was no telling how many more secrets and surprises this creature of unknown origin was still hiding.
“Then can you go back inside this?” Ye Tianxie pointed at the Hour of Eternal Fate on his chest. Guoguo had floated out of it before, so if she could come out, she ought to be able to go back in.
“I can, sure. But it’s so dark and gloomy in there — I don’t wanna go back.” Guoguo pursed her lips and toyed with her own soft, wispy hair with tiny, tender hands, her pitch-black eyes surveying the scenery and the passing crowd with a lively glimmer.
Ye Tianxie asked no more and set off toward the novice village. He had once been so accustomed to roaming the world alone, and now there was a little sprite at his side, chirping and chattering away like a small bird — but this feeling of having company along didn’t seem half bad… At the thought, the corner of his mouth tilted up almost imperceptibly. As for Guoguo’s origins and the secrets the Hour of Eternal Fate held, time would give him the answers bit by bit; he longed to know them, but he wouldn’t fret over it needlessly.
It had been less than an hour since he’d entered the World of Fate. That ornament, which had no business existing in this world, and the Hour of Eternal Fate, this world’s own energy core — the link between the two had already made him dimly sense just how far from ordinary this World of Fate really was.
The novice village had only a sparse scattering of houses. The crowd, though packed, was at least no longer the absurd crush of when he’d first entered the game. The aged village chief stood at the very center of the village, dealing with the throngs coming to take on quests. Ye Tianxie walked up before him and said politely, “Hello, village chief. Might there be anything I can help with?”
Whatever one’s status or temperament in the real world, staying courteous toward NPCs in the game world was forever an essential rule. Otherwise what you got back might not be a quest at all, but a malicious steer instead. Every NPC here had its own independent personality and mind, no different from a perfectly ordinary person.
“Ding… Owing to your superhuman Charm, the No. 60001 novice village chief’s favorability toward you increases by 20.”
The chime made Ye Tianxie bare his teeth in a grin — those 10 base Charm points really hadn’t been added for nothing, and with the 10 more the Hour of Eternal Fate tacked on, his Charm now ran far above the average player’s.
The village chief, worn ragged by the players coming and going, visibly brightened on seeing Ye Tianxie, a smile rising to his face: “This world’s energy core — the Hour of Eternal Fate — has vanished, drifted off to who knows where. Without the power of the Hour of Eternal Fate, the sealing force of the Tower of Fate has finally crumbled apart, and the Eight Demon Kings have all escaped. The demonic energy spilling out has affected every land, until even the gentlest of animals has turned savage…”
The village chief’s opening lines were word for word identical to those of the strange old woman from before. Ye Tianxie listened patiently until, at last, the chief came to the point: “Adventurer from another world, you let me see the hopeful dawn of yet another hero being born. The once-gentle chicks are now tainted with a dreadful demonic nature — would you be willing to help me wipe out thirty Angry Chicks?”
“Ding… The No. 60001 novice village chief asks you to help him wipe out thirty Angry Chicks. Quest type: Ordinary. Time limit: None. Quest reward: 80 experience, 5 Minor Recovery Potions.”
This was a basic quest a Level 0 player could take, and it held not the faintest appeal for Ye Tianxie. Rather than accept it, he fixed his gaze on the village chief and said earnestly, “Village chief, since you see in me the hope of a hero being born, then a quest this simple would be an insult to a hero. I imagine you’ve already handed it to a great many people from the same place as me. I’m hoping I might receive one they’d have no ability to complete.”
Had these words come from any other player, what they’d have earned was surely a scornful look and a lecture about being rash and full of himself — or a flat dismissal on the spot. But faced with a Ye Tianxie whose Charm ran as high as 20, the village chief, after a brief moment of surprise, only smiled more gently and nodded. “Very well. You show me the pride a hero ought to have. Your aura, your gaze, that unyielding spine of yours — they make me believe more and more that you’ll become a true hero, one who’ll stand against those evil demons soon to plague the world. In that case, I’ll grant your wish.”
The chime announcing the cancellation of the Angry Chick hunt sounded in his ears. The smile faded from the chief’s face, and a touch of remembrance and sorrow surfaced on his aged features. “In the not-so-distant north lies a Fierce Wolf Valley, where all manner of savage wolves roam — beasts turned violent and bloodthirsty under the influence of demonic energy. They often come darting out of the valley to plague our once quiet and peaceful village. Back in those years, my son was just about your age. To rid us of the Fierce Wolf Valley scourge, he went there all alone — and never came back…” He let out a long sigh. “Brave adventurer, could you make a trip to Fierce Wolf Valley and bring back 100 fangs from the fierce wolves? I want to use them to forge a gravestone for my son, to honor his brave and short-lived life.”
(End of Chapter 13)