Chapter 49: Meeting The Shrine of Life Elder
Bloom started his travel journey towards the white mountain far away from him without realizing what he just did. He didn't open the forums as he didn't have any reason to do so, however he opened his personal quest page, as he checked on his intelligence agency.
For his surprise, there was no one now participating in the agency! Even those who took the gold coins from him before had already returned them, breaking the contract between him and them.
"So you went after that clown and were blinded with your greed," he muttered before he found only one name still present in the early one hundred batch of players who joined him.
His name was Armond, and he was a swordsman like him. Bloom found it interesting as he was the only player out of the whole lot who joined or linked to join his agency!
He thought of expanding the agency, but after this setback he decided to wait, closing the doors of admission to the agency for now.
He never thought one topic would do such harm, and that gave him slight insight over what he could do with topics at the forum.
He decided to contact this player after he finished his upcoming test. He knew this task of tricking both NPCs would be hard, but not that impossible for him.
He had what each wanted, and if he played his cards right, used the right words, he could set a perfect trap for the two NPCs to fall in.
He knew the mindset of each NPC, only focused on the quest on hand, especially if this quest was related to the future perspective of the NPC life.
He knew this point well enough, and he decided to mainly focus on it, using their utmost desire for power and upgrade against them, and he was the perfect player to do this in the entire game.
Throughout the long journey that took six hours, he didn't meet any player. It was strange, but he thought they were terrified of his last battle. He never expected all the ruckus that he caused, and now all players were fervently trying to level up, mimicking his approach in clearing dungeons.
The secret that was supposed to be revealed after a few months about the importance of the dungeons was discovered by many players already. The failure in clearing the whole dungeon didn't continue to frighten any of players now, as they all knew the amount of Xp gained from killing monsters would overtake that was lost by one death!
With the immunity they had in the first ten levels, they weren't afraid of losing anything from their inventory of gears, which made them more daring in facing the monsters.
In just six hours, players had already learnt the routine of monsters inside dungeons, knowledge that was only revealed to the public after months of playing the game!
This was only the beginning, as the mindset of players had already changed, and with it the whole future path of many players had already changed, all thanks to Bloom who was now standing in front of the great white mountain, looking for that NPC of the shrine of life.
The mountain was a huge mountain indeed, much grandiose than the one with the skull he had visited once before. As he marched towards here, he met a lot of level ten monster packs along the way, which he avoided so they wouldn't delay him.
He reached the base of the mountain, where he stood in front of a place full of white rocks, with no path to walk. The moment he reached there, he felt the observing eyes of someone, and he knew that NPC was watching him nearby.
"Esteemed elder, I'm here for the quest of the shrine of life," he yelled, towards the area surrounding him, as he learnt that from Derick.
"Are you the player who had the seed of the tree of life?"
Suddenly an NPC jumped from a nearby rock, descending a couple of meters only away from him. Bloom checked that NPC, as the NPC was checking him.
He was in early thirtieth, with long brown hair and dark brown eyes. He was a staff holder class, with a long, slightly curved at its end, pale brown staff in his hand.
"Yes esteemed elder, I'm," Bloom admitted, without hiding this truth from that NPC.
"Good, I will assign you a quest then, accept it and then I can take the seed from you," the NPC said, before adding, "accepting and succeeding in that quest would be enough to make you climb to the next level. also you will acquire an elder son rank at the shrine, something needing many sacrifices and great effort to achieve," the NPC added, while trying to seduce Bloom in accepting his quest.
However, Bloom shook his head, which baffled that elder as he asked:
"What's wrong? is the prize not enough for you?"
"It's not the issue of a prize," Bloom replied, in a respectful manner, "I have another problem here," he added.
"Just tell me what it is so I can solve it. no matter what the problem is, I promise you to solve it for you," he promised, and Bloom knew that NPC had already fallen into the net of his trap already.
He didn't speak, instead he took out one compass out of his inventory and showed it clearly to that NPC. That moment this compass came out, its needle stopped fixedly over the direction of that NPC, confirming the previous assumptions of Bloom.
"Do you recognize this?" Bloom asked, as the face of that NPC changed abruptly when he glanced at this compass. "How did you get this?" the NPC muttered before his eyes shone as he added, "wait a minute, did you accept already that distasteful elder of shrine of death quest?" his eyes turned dead serious as he added, with extreme vigilance, "are you here to kill me?"
Bloom didn't hesitate to shake his head, again, as he explained, "this isn't my intention, esteemed elder of the shrine of life. I stumbled upon this quest and met that scary elder of shrine of death. He wanted to kill me, so I had to accept his quest to avoid his threat."