25 December 2022, 11am
Usco Village, 4th Floor
I stepped into one of the very few inns found in Usco discreetly. The price for a night's stay in here was at a measly 50 col, but that wasn't the reason I arrived in this unknown place of hospitality.
Walking straight to the corridor of inn rooms, which only numbered about 10, I picked a certain door before gently opening it. There sat my elf companion, sitting on the bed while holding her longsword. The quest exclamation mark was floating above her head again.
Legolia looked up at me and said in a surprised tone, " Zenalyth! What a pleasure meeting you here. I have been trying to find you. It must be fate for me to encounter you here in this place."
"Uh, no, it's not fate." I said bluntly. I wouldn't want to tell Legolia that I used the quest navigation system to find and track her exact location just because she's a quest NPC for the Elf War campaign quest.
I closed the inn door behind me. Normally, inn rooms can't be accessed by other players except for the player who rented it. But since this inn room was rented by a quest NPC, and I'm the player associated with the quest NPC in question, the system must have made an exception for that.
Legolia sheathed her longsword right after the inn door clicked shut. She had a serious look on her face now.
Sensing that she's going to explain details of the campaign quest on the 4th Floor, I started on a conversation.
" So, since we.......coincidentally......met in a place that we unlikely would have met in, what kind of mission are you doing in the 4th Floor now?"
" You are right that I am currently doing a new mission. The reason I am in human territory right now is because I am investigating the recent rumors of enemies in places near forest elf territory."
" You mean the forest elf castle near this village?"
" Right. To my people, it is called the Castle of Kales'Oh."
To the map system in my menu, however, the place was simply titled 'Forest Elf Castle'. But it was true that the castle was quite a short distance from Usco. Getting there wasn't easy though, due to the geography of the place. (I've never been there before, so this was what I'd intelligently assumed from the map system)
A quest description window popped out in front of me, along with instructions to head to the Forest Elf Castle. I did what any player would do at this point: touching the 'Accept' button without hesitation.
An hour later, the 2 of us were standing in front of the giant doors of the Castle of Kales'Oh( It seemed pretty plain to call the place 'Forest Elf Castle'). If I didn't have the boat I crafted in one of the quests found in the main city of Rovia a couple of days ago, I wouldn't have gotten to the lake-surrounded castle, let alone trying to travel out of Rovia.
I went on to, as Legolia had phrased, 'seek an audience' from the forest elf superiors in the throne room of the castle. I wasn't sure if they were the royal family of the kingdom of Kales'Oh, but since Legolia had addressed the elf sitting on a high throne at the far end for the throne room as 'Your Majesty', I couldn't bear to not follow her way of speech.
The elf sitting on the high throne explained Legolia's current mission after I got introduced, and added another piece of news that just surfaced today. Apparently the elf watchers of the castle had spotted something suspicious near the edge of the lake surrounding the castle, and they wanted my assistance in the investigation.
Knowing that the investigation was the main objective of this quest, I politely agreed to the request, all while trying not to fidget about in a half-kneeling position beside Legolia. Trying to show respect in front of superiors suddenly seemed a lot more difficult than what I had seen on TV in the real world ( It didn't feel like I was living in the medival times, though).
The giant doors closed behind us 15 minutes later, as I was stretching my legs outside the castle. Legolia asked," Are you still not accustomed to the kingdom of Kales'Oh?"
" I'm still not used to the way you guys do stuff. From where I come from, we never did those things before." I replied with a sigh. "Are your legs sore, too?"
" Of course not. I respect His Majesty very much." Legolia simply said as she walked to my boat docked at the lake.
Wow, what commitment and loyalty, I thought with a pinch of sacarsm. I wondered if the other elf NPCs had the same way of thinking as Legolia. Probably so.
It didn't take long to notice the 'suspicious thing', for halfway through the lake, we noticed a small cave at the foot of the mountain range, coming into view. I could see the quest marker there, so it was easy to confirm that my progression for this quest was on the right path.
Legolia looked as if she couldn't believe her eyes. "The last time I visited the Castle of Kales'Oh, I had never seen this..." she said.
5 minutes later we were already starting to explore the cave. Rows of firetorches were placed at the walls of the cave to provide light and seemed to lead further into the cave.
It was obviously clear that the cave had been occupied by someone else.
"This place's well built." I commented as I walked, having nothing to say apart from looking at Legolia muttering away while being deep in thought. She must have known something I don't.
" Don't worry too much." I continued. " I'm sure this cave's probably been abandoned or something... I'm probably wrong though...wait, is that a quest marker?"
Sure enough, a quest objective marker suddenly appeared to be floating in midair. A few seconds of walking later, I could see wooden crates scattered about 100 metres away from us. By then, the quest marker was now on top of an elf NPC I had never seen before. Another elf was also in view of our vision.
Legolia drew her longsword instantly while shouting, " I knew it! The Fallen elves!"
I took out my spear in relfex, and ran after her sprint. The elves instantly noticed us, of course, and started to engage us in combat as well.
I charged at one of the Fallen Elves, as Legolia had called it, with half-reluctant adrenaline. I had preferred to approach the Fallen Elves in a more stealthy way rather than just going all out against them. I guess Legolia's really prideful about her way of doing things.
"How did you know where our hideout was, human?" my combat opponent asked in a sneer tone as I clashed blades with him.
I didn't answer. I wanted to focus my fight with the Fallen Elf. I easily took down 40% of the Fallen Elf's HP just as he finished speaking. My opponent tried to land a hit on me by using Horizontal Arc, one of the basic sword skills found in the One-handed sword skill tree.
As experienced as I was in the knowledge of sword skills (most of the basic ones found in the weapon skill trees), I backed off from the forward, horizontal sword swing covered in purple light effects and quickly sidestepped, ready to answer my opponent with a sword skill of my own.
The blade of my Pagoda Spear +7 was covered in a red light effect as I unleashed Fatal Thrust at the one-handed sword user. Happening in a split second, the Fallen Elf never had time to move his sword to defend against the rapid spear that impaled him on his side. Many red pixels leaked out of the elf, and right after that disappeared in a bunch of shining blue crystals. He didn't even have time to scream in agony for the fact that he was about to...well...die.
I looked just in time to see Legolia finishing off her opponent as well, who was a dagger user. Witnessing the burst of shining blue crystals again, I tried to push away the possible fact that Legolia was actually programmed to defeat her Fallen Elf opponent if the player(which was me) defeated my opponent. If I decided to retreat from my fight, she might have retreated with me as well.
Reflecting that I defeated the Fallen Elf pretty easily, my player level must have been way above the levels of the Fallen Elves. I checked my quests section in my menu, and it showed that I had completed the quest objective of searching the cave, and that my current objective is to head back to the Forest Elf Castle.
I later realized on the way back that this short quest was only introducing me to the Fallen Elves. No contextual knowledge was given to me about them, and I never did try to raise a question about them to Legolia, who obviously looked deeply concerned that she had encountered Fallen Elves. I wondered what that meant for her people.
We went back to the Forest Elf Castle to report our investigation. The elf on the high throne was looking grim after Legolia's report, and thanked me for the assistance. I was given 50000 col as a quest reward. And thus the Elf War campaign quest of the 4th Floor concluded, with me still being confused of the reason for the Fallen Elves' existence.
-----------------------------------------------------*******************--------------------------------------------------
25 December 2022, 3.30pm
Rovia, 4th Floor
"An underground cave? I think it's actually an underground passage that leads from the Forest Elf Castle to the Bear Forest. I had info about that during the beta test, but I ain't been there before."
Argo and I were sitting at a table situated in a corner of a cafe commonly frequented by players in Rovia. It was a nice place to relax in after quest progressing, and meeting Argo again gave me a chance to be 'social' again, despite me being a solo player.
"If you haven't been there before, then you must have bought the info, isn't it?" I said.
"Yep, from the players who did the Elf War campaign quest back then. Anyway, where's your good old elf buddy?"
"Saw her off at the Spirit Tree on this Floor, you know, where they can teleport to the next Floor. I tried to wish her a 'Merry Chirstmas' before she went, and she wasted 10 minutes asking me about Chirstmas Day and 'how humans celebrated them'. Now that I think about it, I wish it's snowing now."
"I don't think the elves had any snowy weather on their land, though." Argo pointed out. "And us players'd have forgotten about Chirstmas Day and focused on clearing the Floors. Actually, I've also forgotten 'bout it till you mentioned it yourself."
"I don't celebrate Chirstmas Day, though." I leaned back on my chair. "By the way, I'm gonna visit the 4th Floor Labyrinth to grind EXP later. Wanna party up?"
"Great timing, Z." Argo replied. "I was just 'bout to ask you to join the Floor-clearing party for this Floor."
"Me? Nah. Doesn't the Floor-clearing team have a full 49-player party already? I mean, they need to have a full party, else we won't have a chance against the next few Floor bosses. Plus the Floor-clearing team's got the guilds, DKB and ALS as the leaders. It's already strong enough."
Argo smirked a little." I can always ask Kibo to get you in the party."
I smirked back." You should know that Kirito's connections with the guilds aren't that good. But the Floor-clearing team needs the Beater more than it needs me. I got my hands full with the Elf War campaign, in case you forgot."
"You're only doing the forest elf side of the campaign." Argo said. " Kibo's doin' the dark elf side of the Elf War campaign and tryin' to clear Floors at the same time."
I shrugged." I don't have the as much resolve as the Beater, that's all I can say. Anyway, what's the boss of the 4th Floor?"
"Wythege the Hippocampus, though I'd assume that its attack patterns would be different from the beta test." Argo replied. She stood up and brought down her menu to equip her dagger, which appeared right beside her waist. "Ain't you gonna hit the Labyrinth, Z?"
"Yep." I got onto my feet slower than Argo did, my Pagoda Spear +7 already strapped on my back. "Let's go EXP farming."
We walked out of the cafe, with only the NPC cafe owner waving us farewell.