Chapter 35: The Quest, Chapter One

The kobold tribe showed up at the mouth of the Spider Nest, went on the offensive against the players outright, and even camped the dungeon's front gate!

Naturally, this little incident set off earthquake-grade chain reactions across the forums.

Players cooked up all kinds of theories about the monster siege that had just appeared in the game.

In 【Speculation Thread: The Monster Siege Quest】, posted first thing by beta tester 【xX_ShadowBlade_Xx】, xX_ShadowBlade_Xx simply ran down the whole story of what had happened, then pasted up the full details of 【Monster Siege: Defend the Eternal Kingdom Dungeon】 — and then the forum's players dove headlong into a heated debate:

After scouting out the kobold tribe's situation, Sharlock returned to the dungeon, skimmed the official site for a minute, nearly got sucked into the rabbit hole, hastily closed the tab, and started drafting a post of his own:

"The Eternal Kingdom is a dungeon on the rise! Under the leadership of Lord Sharlock — cruel, treacherous, evil, tyrannical, greedy, and terrifying — the Eternal Kingdom is bursting forth with vitality the likes of which the world has never seen! But now, this beautiful dungeon faces a threat unlike any in its history!

The kobold tribe, long hidden in the bowels of the earth, has launched a brazen, unprovoked assault on the Eternal Kingdom!

Subjects of the Eternal Kingdom, take up your arms! Fight for the future of the Eternal Kingdom! Fight for the freedom of the Eternal Kingdom! For Lord Sharlock — cruel, treacherous, evil, tyrannical, greedy, and terrifying!"

"Lord Sharlock, may I offer a suggestion?"

After Sharlock finished typing all that up on the official site, the core, "Bru," hesitated a moment, then continued:

"Could we trim a few of the adjectives? The part that goes 'Lord Sharlock — cruel, treacherous, evil, tyrannical, greedy, and terrifying' — what if we just made it 'the wise and mighty Lord Sharlock'?"

Sharlock mulled it over:

"You think I'm hyping myself too hard?"

"No no no, it's not hype, it's all documented fact. But we do have to account for the otherworlders' reading habits. That many adjectives back to back might be a lot for them to digest. Boil it down to 'wise and mighty' and I think we're in the clear."

The chapter belongs to the author's publication on the NovelPhoenix site, not this unapproved copy.

Taking Bru at his word, Sharlock deleted a few words and kept on typing.

Soon enough, with help from Bru — who actually understood otherworlder culture — Sharlock finished writing up the main story. After one last proofread, he fired the finished product off to the official site and the forums simultaneously:

"Deep in a remote and unknown stretch of the dark Underworld, the Eternal Kingdom is a dungeon on the rise! Under the wise and mighty Lord Sharlock's leadership, the Eternal Kingdom is bursting forth with vitality the likes of which the world has never seen! But now, this beautiful dungeon faces a threat unlike any in its history!

The kobold tribe, long hidden away in the Spider Nest, has attacked the Eternal Kingdom with zero warning. The Eternal Kingdom hangs by a thread! There is no time to investigate the cause!

Subjects of the Eternal Kingdom, take up your arms! Fight for the future of the Eternal Kingdom! Fight for the freedom of the Eternal Kingdom! For the wise and mighty Lord Sharlock!

Sharlock read it over once from top to bottom, confirmed there was nothing too glaringly wrong, and hit publish on the announcement.

Once the announcement was out, Bru promptly pushed the bounty on Kobold Chief Kramo out through a whole-server notice, delivering the quest to every last player. The bestiary, of course, was only viewable on the official site and the forums.

The otherworldly players were still mid-debate — what was the suddenly-appeared kobold tribe's deal, would it trigger some hidden quest, etcetera — when Bru's quest dropped on their heads.

"Called it! This quest write-up — this is a quest chain, right?"

"Finally, it's here. This is the main quest line, yeah?"

"It says Chapter One. Obviously it's the main quest line."

"The game's very first main quest and it's already THIS hard? Isn't chapter one of a main quest line supposed to be tutorial-tier?"

"This game's been hardcore since day one, and only NOW you're crying about it being hard?"

"So what's the plan? Do we form up and go fight them?"

"Fight my ass. We just got wiped, and half of us don't even have full gear. Grind coins and gear up first, obviously."

"I wanna go too! Carry me!"

"Can we get to the part where we figure out HOW to fight them? That's the actual priority here?"

With these players spamming chat around the clock, plus the built-in advantage of there only being a hundred beta testers, the benefit showed itself right about now: with forum ace 【xX_ShadowBlade_Xx】 stepping up to take point, one round of heated debate later, everyone quickly settled on a course of action — go scout the enemy first.

Deleting the entire kobold tribe in one glorious push was, realistically speaking, a little too spicy for the time being. It wasn't like they hadn't tried. Never mind the trash mobs — Kobold Chief Kramo with that giant iron hammer of his was basically one swing, one pancake. Holding up a shield did nothing; the shield wouldn't break, sure, but the player's arms couldn't take it — one hammering and the arm snapped clean, second hammering, and whoever was due to die died and whoever was due to be crippled got crippled.

But hey, no sweat. As far as the players were concerned, the kobold tribe might be strong, but nobody's untouchable. Observe hard enough and sooner or later you crack the right strategy and the right route to beating them.

Back when they'd first gone up against the subterranean spiders, hadn't the players figured those things were borderline invincible too? And how'd that turn out? They got farmed anyway.

That's the thing about games — how could there possibly be a hopeless, uncompletable quest? Unless the system deliberately designed one players couldn't clear!

The players sprang into action fast, doing recon their own way!