Chapter 17: The Hares You Desired

Outside the village was a vast forest. Perhaps it was for the sake of making it easier for the newbies, but the trees weren’t very tall, you could faintly see paths running between them. Occasionally there would be hustling in the grass patches, and soon a little hopping creature would jump out.

No wonder it was a beginner mission, it was that simple, you could find the creature of the mission in no time. Yao Si had sharp eyes and quick hands, she hurried over and grabbed the bunny on the ground and began to seek the next one.

In less than ten minutes time, Yao Si had caught two. Only then did she return to the village, heading straight towards the butcher stall.

She placed the two thumping bunnies onto the chopping board of the owner!

The owner of the butcher stall, Qin just stared at her.

He gazed at the two poor hares in speechless dismay for ten seconds. “Cl…Client, what do you mean?” Why was she giving him hares?

Yao Si stayed quiet.

So there’s progress on the storyline, wonder what rewards will be given for two hares?

Qin was blank for a while, then looked up at the other person’s name and suddenly understood. “Oh, so my client you have been affected with the “Venom of Kindness” and require cultivation to build on virtue. Then I shall accept these hares. Thank you my client!” As an intelligent NPC, owner Qin immediately guessed what the person intended.

He then tucked the hares under the chopping table.

Waiting for the reward, Yao Si did not say anything.

Huh, what’s happening? Why isn’t there any reward for finishing the mission, were these hares not enough? But the person just then gave two as well!

Yao Si was a little confused and tried to recall the games that she had played in detail. Was this a repetitive mission? Were the hare number random each time?

Yes, this must be it.

Understanding the key to everything, Yao Si decided to go back and continue hunting hares.

“Hold on, my client!” Owner Qin finally remembered something. “Give me back my certificate of honor that you took before!”

Unfortunately, Yao Si had already walked out of the village without paying any heed to him again.

“…”

Yao Si spent an hour catching five hares and once done finally carried them back.

She placed the objective plaque and the hares onto the NPC’s table. This time it definitely had to be enough.

“My certificate of honor!” Owner Qin jumped up and hugged the wooden plaque, letting out a long breath. “My client, you scared me to death. I planned to pass this certificate of honor down the generations. Your “Venom of Kindness” was not serious, it could be easily unbound, why bother joshing me.”

He collected the hares on the table while pouring a cup of tea and passing it over. “Tired? Here here, drink a cup of tea to quench the thirst.”

Yao Si who understood nothing took the cup of tea into her hands.

Was this…the reward of the mission?

Just as expected, the missions in the newbie village were so cheap! Nevertheless, it wasn’t too bad to kill some time before the school teacher took her out of the game.

So she drank the cup of tea, turned and headed to the woods again to continue her hare-catching.

She wasn’t sure if it was just an illusion, but she kept feeling like after she drank that cup of tea, her entire body had become lighter. The sense of heaviness that appeared after the red-named boy had left suddenly was gone.

This was…the negative Buff being dispelled by that cup of tea?

What a worthy online game of the future, even NPCs could give out rewards according to the needs of the players.

She immediately felt more motivated and began thoroughly searching for the mission creature: hares. She took two hours this time… And brought back ten.

Butcher stall owner Qin could just stare.

Looking at the hares on the table that were kicking with all their might to free themselves from the rope, he felt a wave of distress. Why had this person returned again!

“Cli…Client, isn’t your ‘Venom of Kindness’ already detoxified?”

“…” Waiting for reward. 

“What are you planning to do with these hares?”

“…” What a long storyline.

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“My client, our stall doesn’t need hare meat anymore, how about…?”

“…” Is he still not finished?

“How about you sell it to some other stall?”

“…”  What’s the reward this time?

Qin was speechless, and what’s even worse was that he couldn’t forcefully turn her down. Since “The Legend of Commanding Celestials” was the trendiest game on the galactic network, to strengthen the gameplay, every NPC in the game was fully intellectual, some even having self-awareness. That’s why in this game, other than the newbie village, unless you requested for a system authentication, it was usually extremely difficult to differentiate between players and NPCs. In the game, it was a common thing for players to be fooled by NPCs.

However, no matter how intelligent the NPCs were, there were still some system restrictions which could never be disobeyed for the sake of game stability. If one took owner of the butcher stall Qin for example, he could change industries and go sell vegetables, but he could never cultivate like the players do.

The other thing was the central principle of the game: rules didn’t only affects the NPCs, even players needed to abide by them. This was for game balance, preventing the existence of major bugs which might cause the system to crash.

The “bot player” authentication that Yao Si had experienced was one of them. The Legend of Commanding Celestials had a principle which only allowed one person to one account, but as long as there were online games, there would always be power-leveling. Some players gave their accounts to people who helped them power-level, paying them some galactic currency for the fast level-ups. These people would install special programs which disguised themselves as consciousnesses into the game.

These kind of plagiarism practices were called power-leveling, and the more popular the game was, the more power-levelers there were.

All the power-levelers had one thing in common, and that was leveling up. Repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again on the same spot, such ashanging ¹ on the game or killing beasts and etc.

On some level, this would affect game balance, so the authorities introduced the anti-botting system. All NPCs had been set with this authentication functionality, scanning the mind of the player and then judging their actions to decide whether they were power-levelers who were hanging.

The ‘Venom of Kindness’ was the minimum punishment for hanging. This condition usually targeted those players who had passed the mind scanning without any issue but had suspicious behaviors. For example – Yao Si who had sat on the birth spot for two hours back then.

However, towards players who were affected by the ‘Venom of Kindness’, the NPCs also had a special rule. They couldn’t forcefully turn down the kindness offered by players, and they had to grant rewards. Otherwise with the intelligence of game NPCs, the players that were misjudged would have a difficult time in removing the Buff and returning to playing again, which consequently would cause the loss of players to the game.

To players, the negative buff although annoying could be relieved by doing some small charitable deeds, which were very convenient. Gifting things to nearby NPCs was the most common method. Of course, after the buff had been canceled, no one would be so bored as to continue gifting, especially under the condition that the NPC had clearly expressed that they didn’t need it.

After all, offending a NPC in the game was nothing good.

This mechanism had absolutely no problems logically. After all the years that the Legend of Commanding Celestials had been running, they hadn’t met any loopholes yet.

That was until… they met Yao Si who didn’t understand the language of the NPCs.

After seeing the player who had been turned down continue to stand silently in front of the stall, Qin had no choice but to accept the ten hares on the tabletop with great awkwardness; he couldn’t turn down the kindness of players by force.

He turned and fumbled out a rusted iron sword from the general cargo container behind him and passed it to Yao Si; he had to provide a reward.

Like Yao Si had expected, the reward of the mission was now different! The NPCs here were so intelligent.

Yao Si who understood nothing of the situation happily accepted the iron sword and headed for the woods to hunt hares again.

Maybe it was because she had caught too many, she didn’t find any signs of hares near the woods this time. She could only head deeper into the forest. There, with the aid of the iron sword, catching became much easier.

It was basically a swing of a sword and one hare obtained, soon she had captured ten already.

She bundled the hares together in a high pile. It’d be great if there was a bag to place them, she thought as she extended her arm to drag the bundle. Her arm swung in the air, touching nothing, the hares had disappeared in thin air right in front of her.

Shoot! What was happening?

Where are the hares? How could they suddenly disappear, where did they go? How do I get them back? 

Something flashed on the ground and the hares appeared beneath her feet, looking exactly like before they had disappeared.

Yao Si was stupefied! Was this… her game backpack?!

Her mind racing, she pressed her hand to the hares and muttered in her mind “backpack”. Just like that, the hares disappeared the next moment once more. She then thought of it again, and the hares reappeared on the patch of grass again.

This was way too convenient!

This was awesome, it seemed like she could catch some more hares this time.

So… She caught two hundred!

Receiving a mountain of hares, Qin said “…”.

Lord! Can’t you plague some other NPC, can’t you just let me be?

He really didn’t need any more hares!

–

Meanwhile in the Royal Kindergarten.

The bloodlings who were dead set against disturbing her highness’ gameplay were thinking, “When will our ancestor be willing to come out from the game and meet us?”