Chapter 24 - System Quest?

ASTORIA is truly big world. Even at launch it had over million novice villages. So...even a billion people had logged in on 1st day, it would have amounted to less than 1000 per village. And despite the great ambition and anticipation, total number of players had not reached 1 billion. This meant many villages did not have any players and in others... amount was obviously less than thousand.

In such scenario, if majority of players either died and reset or voluntarily reset , the system would not have cared.

The problem was PK. In all the scenarios envisioned, this sort of I-hack-you-hack would have occurred in towns and cities which ruled by different sets of logic. The portion of AI incharge of villages didn't have such logic included in it. So when it realised that the PK players were going to outnumber normal players, it just send quest directly to them.

COMPULSORY QUEST -

Geet rid of PK players from village limits till they reset themselves or game resets them automatically.(.... blah blah blah.... details about how such automatic reset occurs)

Every kill equals 1 honor points. Honor points can be redeemed into reputation points or kept aside for redemption later.

The map would refresh every 15 minutes to show position of PK players as red dots. Early completion gets better rewards.

PK players got notification - COMPULSORY QUEST-

RESET ORDER.

Reset yourself or get automatically reset. Your location would be updated every 15 minutes for others to hunt you down. Surviving more than 24 hours( game time) would get you a bonus and reset order would be void. Voluntary reset will not cost extra. Automatic reset will now come with liabilities.

The lifestyle players who had huddled inside their work rooms were jolted awake. What? PK players had already killed so many players? How red would their names be? (Each PK would affect the name of players, the murderous aura forming a red tinge on name. More the killings, more deep the red. This red colour was very different than the red colour depicting danger in monsters. This was literally blood red, looking like blood was dripping from the names.)

They were quaking in the virtual boots. And then....there was an update.

PK players -32.

Voluntary reset - 6.

Remaining - 26

Location updated.

Few in Smithy were prepared to hunt. They had high constitution and high strength, thus HP and attack power on higher sides. But they needed backup of priests or healers. Addition of DPS would be cherry on top of the cake.

While they were dilly- dallying, a motley crew had rushed towards location of PK players. They were bizzarely dressed and the tank and mage were not holding out their weapons, but big bundles. Yet, they moved in pace with healer and hunter.

Bree, the healer had sharp hearing, sharper than the hunter Kylie's vision. So she identified that the players were nearby.

Kylie found a ambush spot nearby and put an arrow directly. Was he so confident of Bree's hearing? So the mules- Royo and Niyam also dropped their things and took over their weapons. Were they so sure of each other too? Or the belief was on someone else, like a healer? Fact was these monsters had poured attribute points into constitution, thus had high HP. Unless it was a critical hit, their HP won't drop to red(come very near zero percent) on first hit.

So the ambush was a failure and Kylie got 1 honor point. Apart from few elite PK players,. others were normal players at best which meant they had died many times and each time the penalty would be stageerring. Basically, now they were cannon fodder. Kylie's arrow had hit critical part too. Royo and Niyam felt like checking their body parts, just by reflex. It was ouch moment.

Then there was free for all. Now, a bunch of level 1 weapons were laying around with some coins and very little consumables but they all went into inventory. The big bundles underwent change again. Royo, who was carrying two bundles, felt the weight inspite of his constitution and strength. He was mumbling about excess pay and all, Saachi filtered them out. They were his gains from mines, after all.

A level 4 mage with attributes similar to that of level 7 or 8 mage ...can wreck havoc. On top of it, Saachi was now good in manual control. Atleast, he was at the level of normal player, thanks to continuous usage and understanding of the methods of execution.

So Royo's shield was not used much. He got so angry at that, he barged in first into PK players's lair which was found accidentally.

He had to thank the stars and Bree for saving his a** , again and again, when he got struck in some or other contraptions or when he was sneak attacked. The turns, twists all made Kylie's skill useless. MVP turned out to be.....Bree and Niyam. Yay!!!