The very first opportunity to fight with a monster, now stood right in front of Rafael.
A big-ass cyclops.
And Rafael was already executing his grand plan.
He was running in a zigzag.
The only problem was that this was the Great Forest of Hammon. Running between big ass tree trunks in a zigzag was fucking hard, but he couldn’t do anything else.
He just kept zigzagging, making moves like a fucking running back, up until the point he run out of breah.
"Fuck!" he shouted as he dropped to the ground. "Shit..." He tried his best to control his breathing, but at that moment, he realized that... only his breathing was audible.
Nothing else... there was silence in the forest. Silence meant that a big-ass monster wasn’t running after him at all.
So he peeked out, and realized something... embarrassing in a way.
He ran like two meters and no more.
"No way I’m this weak."
He’d zigzagged, made sharp turns, yet he could still see the clearing where Tim’s bungalow once stood.
And, more importantly, he could see the cyclops standing still, staring straight at him.
"What the fuck are you doing—"
It moved.
"Huh?"
That big ass cyclops turned the fuck around, and literally sprinted away, smashing through trees and tearing them apart as it went.
"It ran away... from me?" Rafael whispered as h looked at his palms. "Maybe I gained some powers tha—" He stopped as he looked back up. "Oh... no, I am stu—"
"Hey."
A voice suddenly came from behind him, and he fucking froze.
He didn’t move nor breathe as he was trying his best to make himself invisible.
Because the voice came at that exact moment, he realized that the cyclops hadn’t run away from him... and with that realization came the second one.
He was in the Great Forest of Hammon.
"Hey, I see you."
He was truly unlucky, but at least this time, he had a plan.
And far far away, someone had received a very strange message.
"What the fuck?" Tim jumped up from the table. "Rafael... he’s back, but..."
"But what?" Leila stood up as well. "What happened?!"
Tim looked up at her. "He sent me a message saying, ’Fort, fary.’"
"Eh?"
"I don’t know, but let’s teleport him." He raised his hand. "Level Five Great Magic, Tele—"
[The selected player is currently completing a quest. Cannot be teleported.]
"Level Five Great Magic, Telepor—"
[The selected player is currently completing a quest. Cannot be teleported.]
"How can he be... this fucked...?" Tim’s voice came as he stared at the notification. "It’s impossible!"
Tim’s emotions took over, but all he felt was sheer frustration.
Since arriving in Eldoria, only one thing had been happening to Rafael... getting fucked in every possible way, shape, and form.
Though while Tim was crashing the out, Leila was actually thinking, more than thinking she was solving.
"Fort, fary." she whispered, repeating the words that Tim said.
Fort... it can be a fortress, but if not what it is... fort, fort...fary...
"Fairy." She looked at Tim. "He meant forest and fairy."
She cracked the code. Rafael indeed meant forest and fairy. But this time, for some mysterious reason... he wasn’t getting fucked by anything, more so, he was helping.
"So you want me to move it?"
"Please."
This is a... Mythical Quest...?
He couldn’t believe what was happening.But the notification screen said the same thing.
[Mythical Quest: Helping Hand]
[Help the Fairy.]
This fairy just appeared out of nowhere, scared off a cyclops, then the quest started, and he literally followed her through the forest, all the way to this tree.
Something’s gotta be off... This can’t be Mythical.
"Can you do it, or is it too much?" the fairy’s voice came as she flew next to Rafael.
"Uh, yeah," Rafael said. "So I just need to move this, and that’s it?"
"Yes, please. That would mean the world to me."
What’s the catch...? No way, Rafael thought as his eyes fell on the corpse.
There was a human skeleton, with armor resting on its skeletal body.
And all Rafael needed to do was move it from the tree trunk it was leaning against.
"So... just push it to the side?" he asked again.
"Yes, just push it away from the tree trunk," she said again, her voice as sweet as ever. "Nothing big."
Nothing big?
Rafael was sweating like shit, because Eldoria’s quest system was built on consequences.
It wasn’t just about accepting a quest, completing it, and then getting a reward. Even the lowest-ranked quests had consequences, whether you failed or completed them.
One of the biggest examples was a Mythical rank Quest that led to a genocide and the extermination of an entire race in the game.
All because a player stumbled upon the quest and decided to complete it... yeah, he completed it.
[Time Remaining: 4:34]
Fuck... what if I complete it? What if I don’t complete it?
His mind was flooded. This was something that wouldn’t affect just him, but the whole world around him.
With one single move, he could become somebody who saved a race. With one single move, he could become somebody who was responsible for countless deaths.
"Uh, what’s behind it?" Rafael asked as he turned toward the fairy.
"A tree," she answered.
"But something’s gotta be behind the armor, right?"
"Yes," Her voice came. "A tree."
... a tree...
[Time Remaining: 3:25]
He looked at the armor itself, but nothing. It had no engravings, and he didn’t feel anything coming from it... it was simple medieval-style armor and nothing else.
Don’t think about it... just pretend it’s not even real...
Rafael thought as he finally placed his hand on the armor.
Nothing bad is going to happen... nothing bad.
He pushed it aside.
[You have successfully completed the Mythical Quest: "Helping Hand."]
The notification popped up, but nothing happened at all.
That’s all?
"You have no idea how much this means!"
The fairy’s voice rang out as she flew around Rafael, and a moment later, she stopped right in front of his eyes and placed her hand over her heart.
"May Sylvara, Mother of Fairies, watch over you, shield you from all evil, protect you from those who wish you harm!"
For a moment, Rafael said nothing because he was still confused as fuck about what was mythical about this whole shit.
"Uh... thanks for your blessing," he finally said. "But can I ask what—"
[Forced Teleportation Initiated by TimTheTimber.]
Rafael didn’t have time to even ask his question before he was teleported and finally reunited with them.
"Rafael!" Tim immediately hugged him. "You dickhead, where the fuck have you been?!"
"I love you too," Rafael whispered. "That masked bitch tortured me." he answered, and Tim immediately stepped back.
"That bitch..." He looked at Leila, then back at Rafael. "Should I put a spell on you? A healing spell or—"
"I am good," Rafael said. "The Forsaken Spell helped a lot. Moreover, she finished fast. I was just knocked out for days."
He needed to lie about it. There was no way he could tell them about anything that happened.
So he lied. Lied about the masked woman and her motives. Lied about where he was for days, and didn’t even mention the ancient or anything close to it at all.
On the other hand, Tim and Leila had interesting information to share.
They explained how, out of nowhere, players pulled up on the bungalow, but there was no fight because they teleported away as fast as they could.
They didn’t have an answer for how they found them, but they didn’t need to have an answer because Rafael already knew it was because the masked woman was cheating her ass off.
Though he kept that to himself.
Then Tim explained how they were now in another house of his in another region, and with that, it was all done... up until Leila asked the obvious.
"What was the quest? The reward?"
Again he needed to lie about it.
"Oh, I got scared first and sent the message in a hurry, but it was easy." He told the truth this time, but continued with a lie. "There was a fairy stuck in a big spiderweb, so I needed to get her out."
He tried his best to sound believable.
"So anyway, I helped her get out and got a title for it, nothing else."
Neither Tim or Leial said anything, they just stared at Rafael’s kinda suspiciously, but then Leila spoke.
"But did you accept the quest or it just started off by itself?"
"It was a timed type one. You know, the ones that don’t need to be accepted or denied. It just has a timer, and you decide whether to do it or not."
He was lying his ass off. He knew very well that the reason there wasn’t any notification or option to accept or deny the quest was because it was a Mythical one.
But it gave him the perfect opportunity to learn more about Mythical Quests because he only knew the basics.
"Fuck, at least it could’ve been a Mythical Quest itself. Who knows what reward I would’ve got?"
"That’s the worst thing you could ask for," Tim said, his voice suddenly turning a bit aggressive. "I’m sorry," he added. "I’ve held it back until now, but I know about the Mythical-ranked quest that’s in the Great Forest of Hammon."
Rafael thought he misheard Tim... not just thought he was praying for it. But that aggressive way and the fact he apologized just told him that he heard the right thing.
And Tim saw Rafael and Leila reactions and knew they wanted to hear what he knew.
"Back in the day, somebody leaked all the quests on the forums. If I remember correctly, the one in that forest is a Catastrophe-level one."
"Catastrophe...?" Rafael’s voice slipped out. "What do you mean?"
"Every Mythical Quest has a sub-rank to it. The highest and worst is the catastrophe level."
Tim explained but he could see that Rafael wasn’t understanding shit.
"Back in the day I told you about that guy who did a Mythical Quest and got an entire race wiped out, right?"
"I remember that." Rafael answered.
"That was also a Catastrophe-level quest."
Rafael immediately started sweating like shit as he heard it, but at the same time, he didn’t remember seeing any sub-ranks for those quests at all.
But he couldn’t even ask directly whether he had seen it or not.
"I-Interesting." He slipped up a bit. "I never heard about sub-ranks or saw any while I played."
"The sub-rank was invisible in the game." Tim explained even more. "But from what I have read, usually these Catastrophe-subranked Mythical Quests are absurd."
"Absurdly hard?" Rafael asked.
Tim shook his head.
"Absurdly easy. That player who started a genocide, all he did was pull a sword out of the ground and give it to a beastman. That is the help for the players."
"Help...?"
"Like, you gotta be on a whole other level of stupidity to complete a Mythical Quest that’s absurdly easy. Don’t you think?"
"Uh... yeah."