VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 103: The Inevitable Fetch Quest
The first floor was bustling with activity as always as countless mage players filled the tower. Mage was a popular class, after all, with plenty of sub-classes and variations to keep people entertained - even if most of them inevitably went with a fire based mage for damage and fireball based purposes.
But considering how many were here and how many had actually unlocked their source, it showed how difficult the class was to progress. The Esoterica stat was known as one of the worst, and many of the more popular sub-classes were popular solely because they offered easier ways to progress that stat.
Battle mage, Magic Swordsman and yes, Fire mage. All of these were examples of classes that offered easier progress. The classic Fire mage, for example, simply had to make their flames better.
It didn’t take a genius to know that oxygen helped fire, so by pumping some oxygen into the mix they could make them bigger and hotter, increasing their Esoterica to a limited degree. After that came control and learning new spells.
Classes that were known as having a low floor to entry, meaning they were extremely easy to pick up, but with low or medium ceilings too. Which meant that they had a limit on their growth.
If it came so easily, why would it get great power in exchange? Instead those who took this path would be forever relegated to the average, which was fine for most people.
Belladonna thought briefly about her friend, and hoped that she was doing well. She had messaged Vestra, telling her to check out the tower, but she wasn’t sure if she read it. Still, no point worrying about it too much, she was probably just busy.
Her eyes scanned the crowds of fledgling mages, trying to see if the mysterious Necromancer was here but her search bore no fruit. She did, however, catch the eye of this floors receptionist.
A beautiful woman who looked exactly like the one that was on her floor. The woman behind the counter even gave Belladonna a little wave when they met eyes, before going back to talking with the individual at the counter.
That wasn’t suspicious at all.
Shaking it off, Belladonna focused on the request board. It was filled with some incredibly basic requests, "Pick 12 Sun-weeds" "Bring me 2 bags of Maxite Ore." etc. etc. It was fetch quests galore.
There was even a posting actually for Boar Butts, which was the exact thing she had heard Saige muttering about once. She was almost tempted to take it, just to satisfy her curiousity about its uses, but she squashed that impulse.
Instead she scanned the locations of some of the requests and compared them against the map of the area she had memorised. Some were too far, some were more effort than it was worth and some just didn’t appeal to her.
But one in particular caught her eye, half buried underneath more recent requests.
[Request Type - Subjugation and Retrieval
Lost Soul activity has been detected in the ruins of Baruk Village, including that of a Phagan. I would like you to deal with the infestation and bring me the heart of this Phagan.
As a reward, you shall receive 1 Regil and a private lesson of your choice from yours truly.]
All in all it was a simple request, so simple that it offered no details on what a ’Phagan’ was, and had an honestly dreadful reward to boot. Why it had sat there for so long made plenty of sense.
However the reward, while awful, wasn’t what concerned her. A derelict village filled with undead? What better place to find a flower of death!
She snatched the request from the board, as well as one that required some mushrooms in the same general location and took them to the receptionist to say that she was indeed taking these requests.
The entire time the receptionist processed her requests, she kept looking at Belladonna with a knowing smile, with a hint of teasing in it. Which was doing nothing to stop Belladonna’s suspicions and was probably why the woman kept doing it.
It was from this receptionist that she finally received actual directions to the request location, although she did so with a coy smile.
Eyeing the receptionist suspiciously, Belladonna left the Tower of Mystica and followed the directions she had received, which led her out of the city. Naturally, before leaving, she did try to find more Lord’s Orchid, such as at the players respawning Cemetery, but that had been picked clean too.
So she had no choice but to walk down the roads leading out of the city, and hope for the best.
***
"BOO!" Belladonna leapt from the bushes and she shouted, landing in front of the two headed cow. She bared her teeth, making sure that it could see the teeth that could rip out its throat and made as many horrifying faces as she could.
But the cow simply lifted its head from the delicious patch of grass and looked at her with lazy, half closed eyes, before lowering its head again.
"Uuuuugh, What the hell! How is fear this hard?!" Belladonna groaned loudly, kicking at the grass which made the cow snort in irritation that she was messing up its meal.
To spice up her travels, she had been trying to collect the ’Intense Fear Blood’ but it was proving much harder than she thought. Blood was easy, blood was her entire thing.
But fear? Much more difficult. Thus why she had resorted to using childish tactics out of desperation.
This two headed cow was a perfect blood bag, but it didn’t seem to fear anything she did. Although considering that it had a head on either side of its body, and not two heads next to each other, she could only imagine the horrific things it had experienced.
She wasn’t even sure which end was the front...
Letting out another sigh, Belladonna looked over her small list of skills, before landing on the one she had only ever used once, [Blood Frenzy (Partial Transformation)]. Now that did sound pretty scary.
