After ten minutes, Ibro grabbed the scroll again, opened it, and whispered the chants slowly.
The bright red dot reappeared to be controlled by Ibro. This time, he made it fall far from the village gate, close to the tree where he was hiding.
As before, he felt MANA gathered in the place rapidly. A violent tremble appeared, accompanied by a sea of raging flames that showed no. Cries of pain were mixed with a flood of alarming alerts in his ears.
He waited in his place for about two minutes. After this, the area was completely void of any monster.
As soon as the fires faded away, he quickly descended from his place and moved quickly to pass the village gate in seconds. His target was the village governor's house which was located at the village center.
If there were any remaining monsters in the village, they would be around that building. Once he reached the big square where he started his journey from, he found that it was completely devoid of any sign of life.
Ibro did not move directly towards the building which was located on the opposite side of him. He stayed for a few minutes observing the square carefully. He feared to have a monster lurking in the shadows in an ambush.
When he realized that the place was empty of any monster, he carefully moved towards the building with extreme caution. The building was considered the largest building in the village with a height of four floors.
However, from his recent experience of destroying strongholds, he predicted that the Village Founding Stone was on the ground floor. He entered the building and crossed the wide hallway to find three rooms in front of it.
He opened the door of each room in a hurry, as there were only four minutes left for his quest. As soon as he found the stone in the third room, he moved in a hurry and placed his hand on it. Ibro heard a pleasing alert followed by soft sound saying:
"System Prompt: Player managed to liberate the novice village of Ishka from the hands of the monsters. The Player completed the quest in the given time. Do you choose to take it, move it, or destroy it completely?"
He almost chose to take it, but he backed down. What if he took it and then the game asked him to defend it again? He couldn't trust this cunning game.
"I choose to destroy it."
"System Prompt: Are you sure?"
Ibro felt strange, as this was the first time he had heard an alert like that. Had the game just warned him not to do so? Was the game trying to scheme against him again?
For a while, Ibro hesitated about destroying the village. As he didn't trust the game words, he decided to deviate from the context of the text that the game wrote for him.
"Yes, I am sure."
"System Prompt: the player chooses to destroy the novice village of Ishka. Players will have half of the village belongings in gold coins.
Congratulations, you've got a hundred thousand gold coins.
System Prompt: The player destroyed a novice village in the vicinity of Memphis city. Because you liberated the village from monsters, you will not face any penalties from Memphis city and your quest reward will be reduced a lot due to your rash decision.
To go to Memphis city, a player has to find another village to move through it to Memphis city or walk directly to Memphis city.
System Prompt: You succeeded in saving the village of Ishka from an attack by monsters. As the reward was reduced because of your actions, you will get 2000 gold coins + 1 million XP."
Ibro stared at the flashing words that were passing slowly in front of his eyesight and his brain suddenly froze. He was now in deep trouble.
He lost his novice village. Amidst the zeal of fighting, anger, anxiety, and doubt, he forgot something very basic to any player.
'To be able to go to Memphis city, I must do so with a scroll from the village governor! How did I possibly forget that info?'
The governor of each village was a wizard that had special teleportation scrolls. He personally gave them to the players to move to the city.
Now the city governor died, and the village itself had been destroyed. Even the resources of the village were all turned by the game into gold coins.
He remembered the game warning to him. Apparently, he overreacted and the game did not mean any harm to him but rather tried to help him.
He felt how stupid he was back then! He remained silent trying to control his feelings, as now was not the time to feel regret. He must find a way out of this crisis.
Among the devastation of what was the novice village of Ishka, Ibro stood alone, completely unaware of what he should do.
Amid his personal despair, he heard the sound of an alert suddenly to find a communication request from Oya. He was unwilling to talk to anyone now, but nevertheless he accepted the request.
She appeared in front of him with a wide smile, which gradually changed to an expression of great concern.
"What happened to you Ibro?"
"Nothing, just another bad day."
"This is not a bad day. I had many bad days before. You are in a disaster. Tell me what happened?"
Ibro looked at her with a sorrowful look. The closest way to reach Memphis city would take him an entire month at least.
If he died once, he would go back to square zero and start his journey again. As for the search for another novice village, it was an impossible solution. He knew the location of Memphis city, but he did not know where these novice villages were.
"Well, I will tell you everything. What happened is that I took advantage of one of the game secrets and developed my level very quickly as you noticed. It seems that the game became dissatisfied with what I did so it set a trap for me.
It schemed against me and forced me to have an impossible quest. This quest was related to the destruction of strongholds that the game announced my success in.
When I destroyed the first stronghold, I found a special stone. This stone allows me to establish my own stronghold.
It supplies me with monsters to train my soldiers when I establish my own village. This will also help my guild members to upgrade when I establish my guild.
That is why I attacked and destroyed a large number of strongholds. In the game, there is a quest that appears when the players destroy five strongholds.
That quest story was that the monsters create a great army to attack the village and the players in it have to protect it from that army."
"Did you protect your village then?"
Ibro shook his head in remorse, and said with regret:
"Unfortunately no, I thought there was no point in being there. I am alone in the novice village anyway. In order to defend it, I have to use the scroll of the land of fire, which is a legendary scroll."
"Do you have a legendary scroll Ibro?! You are cheating! How did you get that scroll?"
Ibro made a sore laugh before saying:
"I got it in my legendary quest regarding the Enog store."
"Did you buy it from this store?"
"No, I got it as a reward after I succeeded in that quest."
"Ah, I see. And what happened to your novice village?"
"The monsters seized them, and then I was forced to accept a quest of liberating the novice village from their hands. If I don't do this quest, my account will be reset. This is the scheme that the game designed for me."
Anxiety was evident on her face during his talk. At this moment he felt very grateful to her… grateful that he wasn't alone and she was by his side.
"What are you going to do now Ibro? Have you scouted those monsters and knew their numbers and levels?"
"The number of monsters can be described as huge. At the very least, there were 10K monsters! Their levels were at least level 10 Elite monsters, which was their weakest ones. "
"This is terrible! What will you do Ibro? Will you start the game again?"
"Don't worry about those monsters, I got rid of them and liberated the village."
The shock seemed clear on her beautiful face. She did not imagine that Ibro could get rid of all these monsters. But after seconds of confusion, she understood the reason for his ability to do so.
"You used your legendary scroll, right?"
"Yes, I had to use it indeed. I can sum up the game plot against me in a simple choice, either I survive and lose the scroll, or I lose and lose everything I have including the scroll."
"You chose to lose the scroll? That is why you are sad."
"No, I'm not sad about the scroll. My scroll can be used up to five times. In this fight, I have used it only twice."
"Why are you so devastated then?"
"Because when I liberated the village, I was extremely angry with the game, so I destroyed the village."
"What did you do?!"
"I completely destroyed it."
"You are insane!"
"Yeah, tell me about it."
Ibro laughed at her direct and spontaneous comment. He was really crazy at the time.
"If I told you that the game warned me of destroying the village, but I decided to destroy it. What would you say about me then?"
Oya laughed and then said:
"I will say you are crazy, crazy, crazy, and crazy."
They laughed together for seconds before the silence returned again to cloud them. Oya was not a rookie player, but an expert.
She realized that there was a penalty on Ibro for destroying the village. His despair came from this penalty which she was sure that it was very heavy.
"What is your penalty for destroying the village?"
Ibro smiled in response to her question. It was very convenient to talk to an intelligent person like her.
"You guess."