Chapter 18 A Self-Disciplined Game Worker

Gu Fei didn't take the guild matter to heart at all as he hurried towards the fountain plaza in the center of Cloudy City. He had arranged to meet someone there.

From a distance, Gu Fei could already see Hongchen Yixiao smiling and waving at him.

"What do you want to see me about?" Hongchen Yixiao asked directly as soon as Gu Fei arrived.

"I want to ask you about something," Gu Fei said.

Hongchen Yixiao smiled. "I am a self-disciplined game worker. I won't necessarily tell you everything you ask."

"If you can tell me, tell me. If you can't, then don't!" Gu Fei was also straightforward.

"Alright, tell me."

Gu Fei took out Eddie's Emblem from his pocket. Hongchen Yixiao had only glanced at it casually, but suddenly his eyes widened. Gu Fei in front of him had already disappeared from his vision, and all he could see was the emblem slowly swaying before his eyes, like a firefly in the dark night, so bright and outstanding.

"Where did you get this!" Hongchen Yixiao suddenly snapped back to reality, grabbed Gu Fei's hand, and pulled the emblem in front of him to look at it again and again.

Gu Fei explained what had happened, and Hongchen Yixiao was petrified in the wind.

"I checked the official website last night and there's absolutely no information about this emblem, so I wanted to ask you. If you can tell me, tell me. If not, forget it," Gu Fei said.

Hongchen Yixiao raised his hand and pinched his face, confirming that this wasn't a dream while reviving his petrified expression. After taking two deep breaths, he said, "This is a quest."

"I know…" Gu Fei said.

"Compared to other ordinary quests, this one has some unique features. We call it a quest chain," Hongchen Yixiao said.

"Quest chain?" Gu Fei suddenly understood. This term had been mentioned on the website. Compared to ordinary quests, it was more complex and had a strong degree of randomness.

The name "quest chain" was given for a reason. If an ordinary quest was seen as a point, then when several points were strung together to form a line, it constituted a quest chain. Such points were countless in the game. Perhaps even an ordinary quest on an ordinary street could become a crucial link in a quest chain.

A quest chain was thus randomly selected and combined by the system from these countless points. Then, a suitable storyline was selected from the game's vast storyline library to be attached to it, and appropriate rewards were given by calculating the difficulty of each link. When a player completed a quest chain, the system would re-select and combine to create a new quest chain. The total number of quest chains in the game was constant, but the content was always different. The probability of the system randomly generating two identical quest chains was negligible, though not impossible.

Under this setting, triggering a quest chain wasn't actually difficult because its triggering conditions weren't that strange or unbelievable. But whether or not it could be completed after being triggered depended on the player's actions. Because the points that made up the quest chain were arranged in no particular order, it was possible that the first step was a simple task of buying something and delivering a message, while the second step was a super-difficult battle… It was quite possible for a player to trigger a quest chain at level 0, but not be able to take the second step until they reached a very high level.

The quest chain that Gu Fei had triggered wasn't difficult to trigger. In the later stages of the game, it was an easy ordinary quest to accept and complete: Eddie in Distress.

But, and this must be emphasized: the later stages of the game.

Given the current level of the players, let's take a recent example: Han Jia公子 (Han Jia Gongzi), Jian Gui and those other legendary online game experts tried to kill Suo Tu. The method they came up with was to trap him in a small black room and grind him to death. However, using this method, the first to be grinded to death would certainly not be Suo Tu, but Eddie, who was in the same room, huddled in a corner with only half a breath left.

If you saw Eddie's dead body, you wouldn't be able to accept this quest.

To keep Eddie alive and hear his last words, there were two prerequisites.

First, Suo Tu had to feel safe, so he wouldn't proactively kill Eddie beside him out of a sense of crisis;

Second, Eddie had to feel safe so he could confidently explain his affairs.

To achieve these two conditions, players only had one path: fight and kill Suo Tu alone.

Only by coming alone would Suo Tu not feel an excessive sense of crisis; only by killing Suo Tu would Eddie be able to confidently entrust his affairs. In an ordinary quest, Eddie would only have a single dying wish; but Gu Fei had happened to activate a quest chain, so Eddie's dying wish also contained the content of a commission. But in either case, this quest only belonged to high-level, high-skill players. Only players at this level had the strength to go and challenge him alone.

Hongchen Yixiao knew a little about Gu Fei's skills, but upon learning that he had completed such a feat, he couldn't help but be greatly surprised. He had already considered the damage that people like Gu Fei could do to the game's balance. However, he had only thought that they would have the upper hand in the battles between players, but he had not expected that even the system bosses set up by the game would be so vulnerable.

Gu Fei was still saying something, but Hongchen Yixiao was completely oblivious. As one of the game's core planners, he was already subconsciously considering whether it was really necessary to restrict these kinds of players in order to maintain the game's balance.

"Hey! Hey!" Gu Fei's calls pulled Hongchen Yixiao back from his reverie.

"What are you thinking about?" Gu Fei asked in surprise. "I'm asking you, why isn't there any explanation about this quest on the website?"

"Oh…" Hongchen Yixiao came back to his senses. "Quest chains are randomly generated, so it's impossible for the website to have any introductions to their content. Players can only explore them on their own."

"Then can you give me a little hint?" Gu Fei asked.

Hongchen Yixiao smiled shyly. "I am a self-disciplined game worker."

"Alright, I get it!" Gu Fei said decisively. "Then I'll go explore it myself! I'm leaving!"

"Take care!" Hongchen Yixiao waved his hand.

"Goodbye!" Gu Fei turned and left.

After a dozen minutes, Gu Fei arrived at his leveling spot. Since the experience required to level up increased dramatically starting at level 30, Gu Fei had no idea how many days he would be staying in this place. Compared to Gu Fei, the vast majority of players no longer chose this single route of grinding monsters to level up. The game had a dazzling variety of quests, and the experience rewards were quite generous. Although it wasn't as efficient as grinding monsters to level up, it wasn't as boring. Running errands, chatting, and occasionally fighting a few battles, what could be better?

But for Gu Fei, fighting monsters was using his kung fu, and that alone could make him enjoy it. Boring? If he thought kung fu was boring, would Gu Fei still practice diligently day after day for over twenty years?

What's more, ever since he started playing online games, Gu Fei had found that his kung fu had improved.

Why? It stemmed from what Jian Gui regarded as extreme operations.

With so many real combat opponents sparring with him, and more importantly, he could fearlessly chop at the other party's vitals until he killed them. This was unprecedented in Gu Fei's years of martial arts experience.

In reality, when sparring with people, you had to emphasize stopping before you caused any real damage. With so many concerns, many of the moves were somewhat distorted. Gu Fei understood, but he was also helpless. Life wasn't like the martial arts world in wuxia novels, where you could lick blood from the edge of a knife every day to make up for this deficiency. Nowadays, online games helped him fill this gap. Although it was a bit of a pity that his opponents couldn't exchange moves with him, at least he no longer had any concerns when making a move.

Arriving near the monster spawn point, Gu Fei bent over, stretched his back, loosened his muscles and bones, drew his sword, and charged forward.

Relaxed, he really felt a lot more relaxed.

Gu Fei knew that this was all due to Eddie's Emblem. The additional thirty points of attributes made his strength leap forward qualitatively. The monsters surrounding Gu Fei were being cut down to the ground at an even faster rate. He already felt that this monster spawn point could no longer fully meet his needs, and perhaps he should explore a more advanced place.

At this moment, not far from Gu Fei, a pair of eyes were watching him.

It was Hongchen Yixiao. After Gu Fei left, he secretly followed behind him, his purpose being to see Gu Fei's strength.

"So fast! Full Agility build…" Hongchen Yixiao thought to himself. Compared to guys with rich online game experience like Jian Gui, this high-level game planner obviously had an unparalleled advantage. Jian Gui could see that Gu Fei had added Agility, but Hongchen Yixiao could even see how many points of Agility Gu Fei had specifically added. The error would definitely not exceed five points.

"He also has Strength… But this should be the effect of Eddie's Emblem."

"Attack power…" Hongchen Yixiao mentally calculated Gu Fei's equipment, the attack power achieved by his character points, as well as the NPCs' defense and HP, and gasped: "Every attack is the maximum attack… This… This is too perverted! We wouldn't dare to make the data so stable even when designing NPCs! This guy…" Hongchen Yixiao's facial muscles twitched a few times. He saw a fact.

For Gu Fei, he was equivalent to a character who already possessed a full set of skills. This was his kung fu. Moreover, the initial proficiency of his skill was quite high, and no one knew if his skill also had a proficiency cap. Even worse, this guy's skill would also become stronger as the player leveled up and changed equipment, just like in the game.

"Should we restrict this kind of character a little?" With this question in mind, Hongchen Yixiao ended his Peeping Tom act and returned to the safe zone in the city to log off. As for Gu Fei, he simply glanced at Hongchen Yixiao's departing figure.