Long Island

Chapter 25: Experiments and Results

After the exam, Swamy arrived at the mess hall to a table containing three dejected bodies. Or maybe they were simply sleepy. Late night study was taking its toll on most students and half of the heads in the mess hall had started lolling as soon as they reached a seat. Swamy was no exception. He had kept his routine of playing during the night even during this period. That meant he had to do his revisions before he started playing. Fortunately during this exam period students did not have classes. They only had to appear for 3 hours for the exams and then they could go home afterwards. Which meant that Swamy had ample time to study.

Not that it helped. Late night playing was not recommended during these stressful times. Not when you wake up to a doubt filled morning and you start trying to remember if you had missed something or if that thing you read was the right thing.

But then he enjoyed the game so much and if possible, he didn't want to stop playing it.

"Hey guys...how did it go?" Swamy asked the dropped heads in front of him. Slowly they moved and lifted their heads.

"Hey Swamy" replied back Himali.

"mmmhsnhmm" said Sneha.

*snore....went Manish.

Swamy almost laughed remembering yesterday.

"By the way where is Rajan? Doesn't he not like staying in the classroom long?" Swamy asked referring to the missing person.

"He was here earlier. But then went somewhere saying he'll be back soon." replied Himali.

"Must be the toilet!ghghgh *snore" went Manish.

Both Himali and Swamy stared at him but he was really truly asleep. Then they broke out laughing. Their laughter broke the solemn sleepy silence around the mess hall, breaking off more than a few dozen fantastical or erotic dreams.

A little while later Rajan returned. Contrary to his usual exam-depressed-sleepy-mood, he was quite excited. He walked quickly up to them and in a voice which seemed louder in the relative silence of the mess hall,

"Hey hey hey....why are you guys asleep! Wake up and hear the most exciting news. Raka has posted again!"

Swamy almost fell off his seat.

The voice carried over to quite a few ears, not all familiar. Quite a few perked up after hearing this and started looking towards Rajan. Then they dived into their cellphones probably to access the forums. Who knew so many people around Swamy played Long Island.

"What? Did you say Raka? Did he post another video?" Himali quickly asked. The exclamation and the resulting noise woke up Sneha. Manish however chose to be oblivious to real world or virtual world problems and snored some more.

"Yes. It looks like the quests you guys did, the one to capture the beastmen and then the one Raka did, the one with the naval battle, both of them started from a difficulty C quest. Seems like the first person to leave the village gets some kind of difficulty C quest." Rajan continued.

"What?!" Sneha exclaimed. "Hey hey but we didn't get something like that. Does that mean it did not happen in Dalmund?"

"On the contrary. It means that the first person actually failed the quest. That's why the other quests did not happen." Rajan answered. "But that is not the only news. It seems that the first people, the 4 who were the first to leave the starting villages and got this quest, all of them replied to this post. See we have Firelord from Dalmund, Raka from Ilmentia, Raven from Brittanica and now Thadian from Khardoum. All of them have confirmed that they got this C difficulty quest. But they all died, failing it, except Raka ofcourse. Man, they all posted this morning like a few minutes from each other almost like they were waiting for this."