BXBX NOVEL Chapter 22
Chen Mo stopped in his tracks.
“What information?”
Though his aim was not to play the game but find hidden weak spots, he was still interested. Especially if it concerned the Hidden BOSS.
“Heh heh! Don’t be too shocked when you hear it! That Flaming 3-Headed Wolf appeared in this valley partially because of me. I know a great weakness of the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf!” Gleason smiled smugly.
WTF!
And he claimed to be innocent? If he can make such an OP monster like the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf appear, a hundred years of imprisonment is not enough!
Chen Mo was curious about Gleason’s imprisonment but that statement made it all clear.
“What weakness?”
“The Flaming 3-Headed Wolf is afraid of water!”
Hearing his reply, Chen Mo felt an urge to punch the guy in the face. Speak more clearly, dammit!
“Afraid of what water?” Chen Mo persisted.
“Ordinary water wouldn’t work, of course. The Flaming 3-Headed wolf is afraid of a type of “Stone Cold Water”. If the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf gets some of this water on it, its power will be decreased by at least 70%! You, weak adventurer, should give up on getting your hands on such a rare material. However… Many years ago, I had some. Now… it’s in the hands of Soro, the mayor of Ayr Town.”
Soro, the mayor?
Does this mean he had to steal from the mayor?
This was no joke. He definitely was no weakling since he’s the town mayor. If he got caught, the punishment would be greater than just being thrown in jail for a few hours.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to let you just go like this to steal something from Soro. Didn’t you learn my harvesting skill? Go look for Soro and show him the skill, then tell him I’m dying and would like to see him one last time. Soro will leave his dwellings and you can find a way to steal the Stone Cold Water when he’s gone. Bring the Stone Cold Water to me and I will teach you a hunter skill that will let you catch monsters. You know what? I used to be a hunter too. Though 10 years have passed since and I’ve forgotten almost all my hunter skills, I still remember a bit of how to catch wild monsters.”
It was as if Gleason knew what Chen Mo was thinking and dispelled his misgivings with his words.
“But even if the mayor leaves, I can’t enter the mayor’s house. He’s got guards at the entrance”, Chen Mo said.
“Guards? I don’t remember him having any guards outside his home. He’s just a town mayor – what does he need guards for?” Gleason frowned.
“You’ve been imprisoned here for too long. He does have guards.”
Did the mayor have guards outside his door?
Nope!
Chen Mo had just seen an opportunity to test Gleason.
“Hmm… Guards… This is a problem. All right, I’ll teach you a hunter’s camouflage skill.” Gleason thought for a bit and made a decision.
System prompt: Gleason wants to teach you Camouflage Skill. Do you accept?
Accept!
System prompt: You have gained the “Dubious Camouflage” skill!
Hahaha! NPCs can be fooled!
Chen Mo’s eyes lit up. He’d gotten a hunter skill just like that!
Although it was a fake skill that couldn’t be levelled up, this was still the beginner village. Other than him, nobody else in the beginner village had camouflage abilities!
If he did as Gleason asked and got him the Stone Cold Water he would learn another skill too!
… … …
“Gleason is dying and wishes to see me?”
After getting to Level 10 in the Wild Wolf Valley cave, Chen Mo immediately returned to Ayr town and headed to the northern part of town to look for Soro.
Soro was an old man roughly the same age as Gleason. When he heard Chen Mo’s words, his brow wrinkled in thought.
“All right. Thank you for passing the message on, adventurer. I’ll go pay Gleason a visit.” After looking at the harvesting skill Chen Mo showed him, Soro still had some doubts but he wanted to know what Gleason was up to.
“Come, little guy. Watch the door for me.”
As he stepped out of the doorway, a huge old white hunting dog ran over. Soro gave a wave and it swiftly ran to his side and obediently sat in the doorway.
Shit!
Not so simple after all. There’s a guard!
Good thing he was smart and made Gleason teach him the camouflage skill or else he’d have to find some other way to lure this hunting dog away.
He waited a bit after Soro had left and used the camouflage skill to creep closer to the mayor’s home.
Gleason’s camouflage skill didn’t look too dependable but Chen Mo was able to get close to the door and open it a crack. He slipped in without the dog noticing him. This camouflage skill was not so bad. A bad thing about it was that his movement speed was too slow.
The most difficult part about this quest was to get into the mayor’s house. He found the Stone Cold Water after a brief search. He looked about for other good items but found nothing.
After waiting for the skill cooldown to be over, Chen Mo used it again and left the mayor’s house.
However, Chen Mo did not bring the Stone Cold Water to Gleason. He went to the Warehouse and put it in.
According to the quest sequence, a player would get the Stone Cold Water, hand it to Gleason and get a reward.
Of course, this quest involved the Hidden BOSS. Chen Mo knew it would not just end like that. Gleason probably wanted the Stone Cold Water to threaten Soro with so he could get out. And then, having been imprisoned for so long, he would want revenge on Soro after being released.
Since Gleason was related in some way to the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf, his revenge would surely involve it – and it would play a big role, too. When that time came, the beginner village would have a huge, region-wide quest event.
So the Stone Cold Water was the trigger to a whole chain of quest events.
Chen Mo knew that he had not guessed entirely right but it should be more or less right. He had first-hand information and who knows? He might get a whole lot of benefits from these quests.
Chen Mo had taken a look at the Stone Cold Water attributes. The item had the ability to weaken the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf but it was a quest item. Players cannot use it directly. It seemed that players can only hand it to Gleason after getting it.
However, Chen Mo had no intention of doing so.
He was not going to embark upon the nicely constructed route by the game designers. He had other plans for the Stone Cold Water!
He wanted to see what would happen in the game if he used the Stone Cold Water his way. He could maybe even create a bug in the game!
But now was not the time to use the Stone Cold Water.
After storing the Stone Cold Water, Chen Mo headed to the Slime Plains.
He had reached Level 10. It was time to meet the illustrious beginner village BOSS.
… … …
“What the heck is this guy thinking? He can just go get the reward and trigger the region-wide quest. Every beginner player will benefit. Why isn’t he continuing?”
In Ash Blue Tech, a group of young men waited in excitement for the next development in the game. Someone had started the chain of events related to the Hidden BOSS and the region-wide quest!
This hunter player was, without a doubt, very clever. The most difficult barrier had been easily crossed by him!
If the region-wide quest were to be activated, all beginner players on the Chinese servers would benefit. The Chinese region players would immediately get ahead of all the other regions and quite possibly have an advantage over the others too in future inter-region events.
But this hunter player just threw the very important and very significant quest item into the Warehouse! The young men almost went mad with frustration.
“This guy’s Level 10 already but he’s still going to the Slime Plains. Is he going to visit the BOSS?”
Seeing Chen Mo appear in the Slime Plains, the inquisitive group continued to watch this guy-who-does-not-hand-in-quest-items to see what he was up to.
They, after all, only had permission to monitor those in the beginner villages. Once a player leaves the beginner villages, they would not be able to watch him as closely as right now.
According to the higher-ups, as long as nothing went wrong in the beginner villages, the rest of the game would go well and there would be no further problems.
As to why it was so – they had no idea. They could only attribute it to the greatness of the holographic virtual network.
So while they still had permission to do so, they satisfied their curiosity.