Chapter 180 - History Quests (1)

[History has reached a turning point, so the world’s time will be halted. One week from now, five years will advance!]

[For the next week, these actions will be forbidden.]

- Obtaining new quests.

- Talk with important NPCs.

- Obtaining new achievements.

- Changing factions.

- Approaching restricted areas.

- Things that influence the world - <Expand +>

(※ Alert: Quest you didn't complete within the time limit will disappear!)

Hyun's eyes widened after reading a certain part.

'Five years?'

It was the number of years that the story would advance after Louise's quest was over.

He'd expected it to be three years, but it ended up being more time than expected.

'It's longer than I thought!'

Hyun turned to tell Louise about that, but she'd already disappeared.

According to what he'd just read, he wouldn't be able to interact with certain NPCs for a few days.

Since he'd finished the main quest, he wouldn't be able to talk with Louise for the next seven days.

He was feeling anxious when Ain suddenly mumbled something while making a weird smile.

「In five years, she'll… be the same age as you, right?」

「Yes, probably. Although I'm not sure of her exact age.」

「She isn't a kid anymore… so there's no need for you to be so worried.」

「Is that right…?」

Hyun laughed after hearing Ain's words.

Yes. When they met again, Louise would be an adult. She would've already passed the age of him worrying about her.

「That's kind of true.」

[You're in a restricted area! This area is closed for the next 7 days!]

[Moving to the closest city or town!]

Paf-!

After a while, the scenery changed. Hyun and Ain were moved into the plaza of a small town.

Hyun could perfectly tell the difference between users and NPCs among everyone mumbling.

All of the users were staring into the air at the announcement.

"An announcement!"

"Why did the world’s time suddenly stop?"

"History reached a turning point…? Is there anyone that knows what's going on?"

"Ah. There's a maintenance announcement on the official page!"

There was a lot of noise going on.

The noise made by users also influenced NPCs, and because of that, the plaza turned into a mess.

「Ain, wait for me. I'll be right back.」

Hyun changed the capsule to rest mode after looking around to check the situation in the real world.

Just like someone said, there was a new announcement on the official page.

[O month O day, 12 hours maintenance.]

There was a brief description of what he and Louise had gone through to make users understand why there was a sudden maintenance.

「And that's how Darkness appeared in the world… To make the changes stable, the time in Asrian will advance five years. Players can keep growing while the world’s time is halted! More stories will come about in a week when the patch is over!」

Asrian communities were full of threads related to the announcement.

- Why a sudden maintenance? Lol.

- Why are they doing a maintenance?

- Asra players said that once a big story was cleared, the server entered maintenance mode.

- Story? When did someone do that, and when did they finish it? Lol.

- Maybe the Black Town Quest was related to the Main Quest.

- That's right. According to the announcement, Darkness woke up because of that quest.

Even users that hadn't played the previous game knew about Darkness.

Knowledge about the previous game world had spread a lot among the average users, but only a few users understood the flow of the story from start to finish.

Even the developers hadn't expected that a few users would end up monopolizing the story.

That's why Robert did his best to convince Director Kwon DaeHo to organize an event.

[Update: History Quest!]

After the maintenance announcement, a second one was posted.

Robert wanted to tell all the other users about Asrian's entertaining story, although it wasn't by experiencing it directly.

「Sculptures of history will appear in every city and town. You can do a 'History Quest' in front of the sculptures. Experience a wide variety of episodes and feel Asrian's story! You can do the History Quest even while time is stopped!」

- There isn't a time limit for History Quests, and if you fail, you can re-try them as much as you want. (When you enter, all of your skills’ cooldowns are refreshed!)

- Every time history flows, a new quest will be added to the sculptures.

- The History Quests are divided into (Easy/Normal/Hard/Real) categories. Every time you clear each difficulty, you'll be able to obtain a wide variety of rewards.

[Reward list based on the episode and difficulty] - [Open +]

They were quests you could do regardless of your level, job or faction. They were mostly things Hyun and Ain had gone through. Robert had taken them and turned them into History Quests.

Users were probably going to be able to feel what it was like to follow history with their jobs.

As soon as the quests were announced, users were, of course, mostly interested in the rewards rather than the story.

- Woah, this is crazy! Look at the rewards! The rewards are crazy, lol.

- What's the reward of the second quest from the last???

Of course, all Asrian communities around the world were in an uproar.

- It isn't that much. It's just 100 gold.

- That's one of the easiest difficulties. Check out the real difficulty's reward!

- Holy Knight of the Chain Sword…? Just what is it for it to be giving five skill points?

- All the rewards of the real difficulty are huge…

- This is a god patch!

There were already more than 10 history episodes, and among them, there were some Hyun and Ain hadn't experienced before.

"Ha…!"

Lattice laughed out loud after checking the list of episodes.

[The Dying Candles of Iluna]

That was something he'd already gone through. It was definitely the quest about turning off Iluna's seven magic circles.

"Real difficulty, huh…?"

Lattice remembered what had happened at that moment.

From the day the servers opened up until that moment when he was about to reach level 200, he'd done numerous quests, but he'd never gone through one that had been more bothersome than that.

"I wonder how many people will clear it."

There was also another very famous episode…

After the announcements, Salon began reading the description of the quest.

"This quest…"

[Run Across the Snow-Covered Plains]

(Suggested Members: 2)

It was definitely the quest that recreated Iluna's last moments.

"Beat it as a group of two? Are they serious?"

Salon began wondering who the person who organized this event was.

He was wondering how many users would be able to clear the real-difficulty quest if that really was a recreation of what had happened at that moment.

"Director!"

"Oh, did something happen?"

On the other hand, Director Steven Young stopped what he was doing and turned his head toward TarrTarr.

He wasn't someone who judged people based on their age.

There weren't many people who could edit and understand high-difficulty gameplay at the same time.

In that sense, TarrTarr was someone very important to him.

"It’s done…!"

"It…?"

"The script of the video you're making! It's been added to the list of History Quests!"

"What was added? History Quests…?"

TarrTarr gave a detailed explanation to Steven, who didn't have a deep understanding of the game system.

After a while, the director understood what that meant.

"What?! All of the users will be able to experience what happened during the battle?!"

"Yes!"

"Haa. If that's right, we'll have to do a great job. Haha, okay. Let's make the world tremble with excitement!"

* * *

There were millions of users in Asrian, so a normal user didn't have much opportunity to meet rankers.

Basically, it wasn't easy to recognize Ain, who was standing alone in the plaza.

Most people just thought she was a look-alike or someone who customized her character so she would look like her.

—Except for one person.

'Amazing.'

Mayday, who was a user as famous as Ain.

The funny thing was that there also wasn't anyone who recognized her.

She'd flown in atop a bat and watched the battle from a distance before being forcibly returned like they were.

'History Quests… I guess half of them were done by them?'

Mayday became sure of that after checking the name of each episode on the homepage. She also became interested. How close was her current self to them?

She would soon be able to figure out how much of a gap there was between them, but she thought it wasn't going to be that big.

Ting-!

"Ah."

While Mayday was burning with desire, she suddenly heard a voice.

It was a message from Darkness Guild's vice-leader, Reina.

「Mayday, the quest 'Defensive Line of Darkness's Land' is the quest you've just completed, right?!」

「Oh… Yes.」

While in the Darkness's land, Mayday had told the executives of the Darkness Guild her current situation.

Reina had figured out the quest thanks to that.

「What? Mayday appeared in a quest?」

「Really? As expected of the 2nd ranker. This is something that was really recorded in Asrian's history.」

「Yes. Thanks to this, the Darkness Guild’s influence will rise.」

After Reina, the voices of the other executives could be heard as well.

Mayday coughed and changed topics before they kept saying embarrassing things.

「Ehem, more than that… I've obtained a bigger achievement.」

「What achievement?」

Mayday sent a screenshot to the guild's message window.

It was her friend list, and there was a name among the ones she'd recently added. Everyone's eyes were focused on that ID.

「Hyun…?!」

「Yes. I think that I've reached quite a good deal with him.」

「Don't tell me you became friends.」

「No. Not everyone that's on your friend list is your friend…」

Mayday sighed and laughed at someone's question.

After she met him, she became sure of it… They were going to cooperate, but that was it.

Hyun had no intentions of having a good relationship with Darkness.

Maybe it was obvious. After all, one couldn't share the throne.

Mayday thought it was huge that she'd been able to decrease the negative relations between them.

「Adding someone to your friend list is just a way to communicate with another person. We agreed to exchange information.」

「Exchange information…?」

「Yes. Isn't this quite good? I'm sure Hyun has some information not even Keiji knows. Ah, wait…」

Mayday cut her story short because she saw Ain leaving the plaza.

She knew it even if she didn't tell her where she was going…

She felt her body tickle because of the History Quests, so they were probably the same.

「I'll give a detailed explanation at the next meeting.」

Before being a ranker, Mayday was an Asrian user.

From the Black Town's Quest, meeting an unknown vampire, fighting against the Heavens’ Knights, and looking at the entire land starting to float…

Even though she'd gone through all that, she still wasn't sure how Asrian's history was flowing.

She just followed Hyun's orders and blocked the invasion of the Heavens. She wasn't sure how that had influenced history.

「I'm busy right now!」

…But being on the forefront with him was fun.

Fun enough to make her think that she wanted to be at the forefront of history again.

* * *

The patches of most game companies lasted only for a few hours—a few days if it required a long time.

The History Quest being added was definitely a large-scale patch.

How were the developers able to add all of that content so fast? They'd also added incidents that had happened that day.

- Did they already have it prepared?

- Maybe they were doing the last part of the patch while the users were doing the first part of the quest.

- Is something like that even possible?

- There's a theory that says that the skills of the developers are alien. If it's Kwon DaeHo, anything is possible.

There were many guesses, but most of them were wrong.

The correct answer was that Asrian was a simulator.

They could take a parallel event from a certain point in time and minimize the required programming.

All the episodes were created in a few seconds; NFM had just added those episodes to the interface.

Since most users didn't know that, they just praised how fast and effective the developers and game management were.

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