WTYTIAAN Chapter 236

Chapter 236

Arthur Grevin had a reputation as a bookworm at Sigrid Academy. In this academy of swords and magic, he and his teacher, Theresa, were obsessed with archaeology, to the point that everyone at Sigrid Academy had heard of it.

In a way, he was a well-known figure.

It was just hard to say whether that term was complimentary or derogatory.

At the academy, he didn’t have much contact with this bookworm, but he did have some contact with his teacher, Theresa.

The most memorable experience was when he had just completed his entrance examination and returned to the school to register, only to be ‘harassed’ at the office as someone who had connections…

Speaking of which, this matter was also related to the Radiant Church. It was said that Teacher Theresa extremely disliked people from the Radiant Church, and he just so happened to be using a recommendation letter from the Radiant Church at the time.

There was no helping it; the identity he was using was that of the ‘saint’ that the Radiant Church had picked up halfway.

If he had known, he would never have gone to Sigrid Academy with Xavier’s identity.

Yan Yunqing sighed inwardly. He already knew that the Eternal Divine Church was not a good thing, so how much better could the Radiant Church, which was secretly doing things similar to the Eternal Divine Church, be?

The ‘saint’ who was taken back by the Radiant Church after faking his death, the complicated reasons behind it were something that Yan Yunqing couldn’t even sort out.

He didn’t know how much information about him had been sent to the Radiant Church after he entered the academy. This feeling of understanding the enemy at the most superficial level, while the enemy had already thoroughly understood him, was really terrible.

Fortunately, he went to Sigrid Academy only to transition for a period of time. As soon as the players went online, he immediately faded out of the academy circle, and he didn’t use his original face much after that. With one alias after another piled on, even if the Radiant Church’s network of connections was vast, it was impossible for them to peel open so many of his aliases to find him.

Maybe they would even think in horror and confusion about where he had gone?

And once they became anxious, the attacking and defending sides on the field would switch.

Thinking of this, Yan Yunqing felt a little more relaxed. He had a premonition that he would have to make a trip to the Radiant Church sooner or later. After all, how could Western fantasy works lack such a classic villain character?

Just not now.

It was already afternoon when Yan Yunqing met up with [Yingyi]. Accompanying him were the other four members from the last time he went to ‘accidentally encounter’ him. It seemed that this was a fixed team.

[Yingyi]’s team was quite famous among the players. After all, the five players in the team were all named on the level rankings, and [Yingyi], as the team leader, was constantly fixed in the top twenty of the level rankings, so he had a certain degree of discussion in the forum.

Of course, as long as you intensely searched related entries, you would find that any detailed discussion posts in the forum involving the members of the team would deviate from the topic in a short period of time, and eventually be completely off-topic. So far, the [Yingyi] team in the forum still only had information from the game, without any information about reality.

Those shifted topics were very clever, and few people could see the problem in them, at most they just thought it was too coincidental.

And Yan Yunqing, who knew the inside story, could see that there were a large number of official people lurking in the player group in this forum, guiding the direction of discussion at any time.

To be honest, Yan Yunqing thought this was a little cool.

It was like… the work of the Dragon Group special agents that he had fantasized about when he was young. Of course, this kind of guiding the discussion direction was done by the supporting background of the Heavenly Dragon protagonist. As long as the Heavenly Dragon protagonist gave an order, a bunch of ‘Robins’ would serve him.

[Fire of Loneliness] saw Yan Yunqing’s arrival, and there was no extra emotion on his face. He reached out and waved at Yan Yunqing, saying very enthusiastically: “Hey, brother, we’re here!”

His game model was very much in line with people’s stereotypes of magicians. He was wearing a fairly gorgeous magic robe, with a magic wand in his hand, and looked a bit weak.

Of course, this was the effect under the cover of the wide magic robe. In fact, when he raised his hand and waved wildly in Yan Yunqing’s direction, you could see the muscles that were vaguely exposed under his magic robe.

Yan Yunqing’s thoughts were a little active, thinking about whether the game character’s modeling was completely random or would read real-world data, resulting in the current situation of a muscular magician?

As soon as [Fire of Loneliness] spoke, the remaining few people also looked in Yan Yunqing’s direction. [Yingyi], as the person who had been dealing with him, took the initiative to stand out and say hello, “You’re here.”

Yan Yunqing returned the greeting and waved his hand, “Yeah, it took a lot of time to rush over. Looking at you, you don’t seem to have rushed over. Were you near Freedom City before?”

Except for some specific settings that were very unscientific, Homecoming was very realistic in other aspects. For example, there were no so-called teleportation anchors, only large cities had teleportation arrays drawn for ‘superior people’ to use – after all, it was a real world!

And the [Portable Anchor] in Yan Yunqing’s hand also had time and distance limitations, and could only exist one at a time, preventing Yan Yunqing from teleporting back and forth.

[Yingyi] nodded, “We were in the newbie village on the edge of Freedom City before. We just received the task and came over.”

Yan Yunqing was curious: “Aren’t you participating in the faction war?”

Why didn’t they stay in Castella City and Lorrell City at this time and run to Freedom City? The task experience here was not necessarily more than those faction war tasks.

As far as he knew, about 60 to 70 percent of the current players had participated in the faction war, and experience was pouring into their pockets. The level rankings had been very competitive recently. Even his player alias had fallen out of the top twenty several times despite cheating – meaning he hadn’t had time to add levels to his alias.

[Yingyi] paused and met Yan Yunqing’s gaze, “You suggested it.”

Yan Yunqing:?

Yan Yunqing slowly typed out a question mark, and then he heard [Barking Squad] cough, “G、Great God, did you forget telling our team leader not to join as much as possible? After that, we all chose to wait and see, and the system didn’t force us to join any faction.”

They hadn’t even joined a faction, so what faction war were they going to participate in?

Yan Yunqing was stunned for a moment, and then he punched his palm, suddenly realizing.

He had forgotten that he had hinted to [Yingyi] not to choose any faction. The main reason was that too many things had happened recently, one after another, to the point that he felt a little like he was in another world.

That’s not right. He had hinted that the official people should not choose any faction, but he remembered that there were still many players on the level rankings who secretly belonged to the official side who had chosen a faction and were fighting very well in the faction war. There were even official people joining both sides, looking like they were betting on both sides.

Why was it that when it came to [Yingyi] and the others, they gave up the faction war so decisively?

It couldn’t be just because of his few words, right?

Yan Yunqing felt strange in his heart, but he didn’t ask, “So this time’s task is to take that Arthur to the ruins for archaeology – is that right?”

[Yingyi] nodded and said, “Almost, but there’s another task.”

Yan Yunqing raised his eyebrows: “What?”

Where did the official side receive another task related to the Eternal Ruins?

[Yingyi]: “Our guild is very interested in the ruins themselves and wants to explore more information. This task is also to follow the professional NPC to see if we can get any unexpected surprises.”

This is…?

Yan Yunqing was stunned for a moment, and then quickly recovered, not showing much surprise. He quickly understood what [Yingyi]’s words meant.

In his initial ‘accidental encounter’ with these five people, he had subtly reminded them to try to excavate the background story of this world. He didn’t expect that the official people had actually listened to it and taken action.

They even showed him that the official people were indeed trying to excavate the background story of the world, as he had said.

Another sign of goodwill.

A very obvious friendly attitude, so obvious that even a fool like Yan Yunqing could understand.

This was very strange.

Yan Yunqing knew that his current identity was very mysterious in the eyes of the official people, and might even be galloping towards the direction of a mastermind behind the scenes, leaving everyone else in the dust.

According to this kind of persona, the official people would not release friendly signals to him so quickly. At least they would have to go through several tests and completely confirm that he was ‘harmless’ before the official people would approach him and try to befriend him in exchange for information.

However, the testing phase was omitted, and the official side directly showed goodwill.

This gave Yan Yunqing an unreal feeling like he had won five million in the lottery… This analogy was not very appropriate, but Yan Yunqing did have this dazed, unreal feeling.

But he quickly understood that something must have happened that caught the official people off guard, and this matter might require him, this suspected ‘mastermind behind the scenes’, to give an answer or a solution…?

Yan Yunqing speculated, but he was not sure what this unexpected matter was?

Could it be the 40,000 players who were about to log in? This was indeed a troubling matter. In this short period of time, the registration page of the “Homecoming” official website had been reopened and closed again. 40,000 places had been issued, and in three days, these 40,000 players would truly log in to this world.

That was simply a disaster.

Because of the matter of these 40,000 players, Merlin could not even put all his attention on how to extract Amos from the blood pool without harming his soul, and by the way, destroy those hateful magic arrays.

Merlin had to devote a large part of his energy to arranging the upcoming players, and he, the true leader of “Flame,” was dropping the ball at this time and going to the floating island above the Eternal Ruins to confront Theodore…

As a result, Amos’s matter was temporarily put on hold. He had been soaking in magical potions to nourish his soul recently, preparing to wait for Merlin to free up time to carefully study how to extract him from the blood pool.

Haha, if he put himself in Merlin’s perspective, he was afraid that Merlin was already so busy that he wanted to kill him, this old friend of many years.

Yan Yunqing felt a little guilty, and turned his head and sneezed unnaturally, rubbing his sore nose, even more guilty.

Merlin must be talking about him in his heart.

A drop of cold sweat slowly flowed down Yan Yunqing’s face.

However, even if there were so many of these 40,000 players, it wouldn’t cause the official people to skip the testing phase and directly show goodwill to him, right?

There must be other more important factors.

Yan Yunqing glanced at [Yingyi] thoughtfully and nodded, “In that case, I’m also very interested in this background story. Do you mind if I participate in your task?”

“… I don’t mind.” [Yingyi] blinked.

The two sides’ gazes met, and in just a few seconds, they seemed to exchange a lot of information, or perhaps not.

“Then let’s go.” [Barking Squad] saw that the team leader had already negotiated with the other party, looked at the sky, and suggested: “Next, we have to find Arthur Grevin, the NPC who released the task, and ask him about the next arrangements.”

The preliminary process of this protection task was described very clearly in the task details. The players who accepted the task first had to find Arthur Grevin, inquire about and obtain the NPC’s archaeological arrangements, and then officially start the task.

It could be considered a very considerate task description.

The other two people, who had not spoken all along, nodded at Yan Yunqing and silently followed behind [Yingyi], heading towards the task guidance.

Yan Yunqing took a few more glances at these two people. When he saw them before, these people were quite lively. Why did they become so restrained this time? Only [Fire of Loneliness] looked normal.

Could it be that they didn’t realize his identity last time, and after they went back and were informed of his ‘identity’, they honestly stopped talking this time?

*

Under the task guidance, Arthur Grevin was staying in a hotel near the city gate area, waiting for the mercenaries who had accepted the commission to come to him.

“Speaking of which, how did you receive Arthur’s task?” On the way to the hotel where Arthur Grevin lived, Yan Yunqing asked curiously.

As soon as this question came out, the [Yingyi] team all turned their eyes to [Fire of Loneliness].

Yan Yunqing also followed suit, only to see this somewhat unrestrained young man grinning and saying: “Hey, I was just strolling around on the road, and suddenly I saw that NPC being surrounded by a few guys who looked like they were not easy to mess with, shouting to hand over something or something. When I saw this, wasn’t this the preliminary plot of the task? So I rushed up!”

“I helped him drive away that group of people, and then I found out that this NPC was robbed, or rather, scammed. Those people were a mercenary group that made their fortune by robbing employers’ property. Usually, they would take on some normal tasks, but if they encountered a big employer, they would take the employer to the remote wilderness, kill them, and then loot their property.”

Yan Yunqing understood that there were quite a few mercenary groups like this. After all, with the existence of monsters, no one could guarantee that the escort task would definitely arrive safely. So if they were really targeted by this kind of mercenary group, they could just kill the person and go back and say that they encountered monsters on the road and the employer unfortunately died, and they could gloss over the matter.

After all, dead men tell no tales, and this was not the technologically advanced 21st century Blue Star, where there were surveillance equipment everywhere, and the police would investigate whether the employer’s death was due to a monster attack.

Therefore, employers also had risks in these bounty tasks. Most of them chose to privately issue tasks to mercenary groups they were familiar with, rather than randomly find a mercenary group and set off.

“That NPC just hired these mercenary groups to go to the ruins in the north to explore, but before he had just walked out of the city, the hired mercenary group tore off their faces and asked him to hand over his property or something… I would say that this NPC exposed his wealth. This kid looks like a bookworm and says whatever you ask him. It is said that he is a student from a particularly wealthy academy. As soon as those mercenaries heard that, how could they bear it? They didn’t even have time to take him far before they took action.”

The rest was self-evident. [Fire of Loneliness], who was single-mindedly focused on ‘there’s a task, let’s rush!’, appeared and drove away those third-rate mercenary groups.

“Don’t say, I really got the task.” [Fire of Loneliness] said happily: “At that time, I thought it was just a very ordinary rescue task. I didn’t expect there to be a follow-up.”

Yan Yunqing was speechless.

He looked at [Fire of Loneliness] strangely. Although Arthur Grevin did have the nickname of bookworm, he was able to enter Sigrid Academy’s magic academy, which meant that his talent in magic was not low. Otherwise, how would he dare to go to the dangerous ruins to do archaeology again and again?

And [Fire of Loneliness] was able to drive them away alone, and it was an extremely unskilled mercenary group that tore off their faces and robbed him outside the city… Obviously, they were no match for this Arthur who was able to enter Sigrid Academy.

If [Fire of Loneliness] had been one step later, he might have already taken care of that group of mercenaries himself.