After she woke up, Luna went to stuff her face for the second time. Her body was finally feeling a lot less fatigued in the real world. It was also nice to have her eyesight and right arm back to normal.
She may have been feeling healthier, But the current state of her physical ability wasn't that great. For some strange reason, with her previous sleep fatigue disappearing, Luna wanted to do something physical. Only her dad was home so she decided to slip out of the house and go for a quick run around the block.
Within a minute of running she felt like she was about to faint. It was a quick decision for her to walk to the rest of the block. Fitness would definitely have to wait a bit more before she could get back to her old self.
After she walked inside she was covered in sweat and needed to take a shower. After eating another quick snack and contemplating whether or not she was going to get fat, Luna checked some information on the wiki to refresh her brain. Finally after 2 hours of losing herself in a series of easy to understand pictures, Luna logged back in.
Wandering around the estate, Luna found herself entering in on a conversation. "I can't let you go out there alone. You know what those nobles will do to you if you spread this incident to the king."
"But there's no other option. I need to go or else your quest will be made into a failure and you'll be considered dead!" The conversation went back and forth. Luna's head leaned against the large doors as she listened in. Slowly the doors creaked open and Luna lost balance and fell into the room.
"Oh! DreamWalker! Welcome, I see you've finally decided to come in." General Braggart said. He was laying down in his bed comfortably with Jessica sitting beside him.
"Mrs. Luna?"
General Braggart spoke up. "Oh! I have an idea! Why don't you bring the DreamWalker with you?"
"Huh?" "Huh?!"
"Wait what's this about?" Luna asked with a confused expression. Even if she was listening to their previous conversation, she didn't exactly have any context to work off of.
"I'm sure she's told you, but Jessica is going into the capital to see the king. I would go myself, but she won't let me even leave my bed right now, let alone travel to the capital." General Braggart said while glaring at Jessica.
"What's wrong with going to the capital?" Luna asked.
"There's currently a lot of strife between nobles in the capital. They're trying to decide on who should be the king's next heir. On top of the inevitable war between the Ushain kingdom and us. The desperation people feel as the king is growing older makes them do drastic things to get ahead in the selection." General Braggart explained.
"Yes and that's why I'm going to enter the capital and report quickly so I can come back here safely." Jessica was frustrated with her grandfather's words.
"You know that isn't what's going to happen when you go there!" He shouted to shut her up. His tone was harsh, but Luna knew it was tough love. Her mom was the same way after all. There was no hate in his voice, but an overbearing love.
A love that showed through their strict protection. Luna remembered the information that was on Jessica's ring. It spoke of her father's last moments before he handed the ring off to her. Jessica's parents were most likely already gone. The only family that the two of them had were each other.
It was understandable for the both of them to be protective of the other. Luna remembered what it was like when her older brother went off to college. It took a month for her mom to finally stop stressing herself out over what could happen to him.
"So DreamWalker, would you kindly act as my granddaughter's escort to the capital?"
[A new quest has been triggered]
[Escort Jessica around the capital]
Difficulty - B
Quest Details: General Braggart has asked that you keep an eye on Jessica while she's at the capital. There's currently many internal conflicts between the nobles of the Cosal kingdom. If Jessica is killed then there will not be a successor for the Braggart family and their family will fall to ruin. Protect her for 3 days while she is in the capital.
Requirements - A trusted relationship with General Braggart
Rewards - 5 gold coins, 500,000 experience]
Seeing a quest reminded Luna of what she went to Kefria village for in the first place. "Umm.... before I accept, I have something I need to know."
"What is it?" General Braggart asked.
"When we killed the lich, were there any people being held captive?"
"Yes, I found them inside the back of the cave. I sent them back to their families after the two of you were safe back inside the carriage." Jessica explained.
Luna checked her quest list and saw that two of them were gone. Both the monster slaying quest and the Aurora's favor quest. The only one that remained was the DreamWalker book she had to find.
"Thank you for saving them. I also was wondering if you owned that DreamWalker book you previously mentioned?"
Jessica had one of those aha! looks on her face. She called one of the maids and made them leave the room. After a minute passed, the maid came back with a hardcover book in their hands. On the front cover was a sparkling star and the words spelling out: The legend of the DreamWalker.
"Ugh..." Luna's face made it seem like she was looking at a pile of garbage.
Luna reluctantly grabbed the book and put it in her inventory. "Alright... I'll act as a temporary body guard, but you could have probably gotten a mercenary or actual body guard for much cheaper. They're also most likely much stronger than me." Luna didn't want to disappoint the old man. If the capital was as dangerous as he said then Luna was in a lot of danger.
"But unlike them, we trust you." General Braggart smiled confidently. "There's no need for strength when this mission requires trust." Luna realized now why this man was a general. He didn't believe in strength. All he wanted was loyalty and trust from the people he placed his faith in.
"Thank you..." She humbly accepted his praise.
[You have accepted the quest]
-
It was late in afternoon and a small carriage could be seen riding along the main road. It's destination? The capital of the Cosal kingdom. Inside was a noble by the name of Trevor Montfort. He rode alongside a mighty warrior with long white hair.
The young warrior wore red and gold eastern style armor pieces and held two long, sleek blades at his waist. His figure was thin, but his muscles were tightly built. It looked like it was reinforced with countless hours of training. Countless scars covered his arms and chest. His eyes were sharp, it almost looked like a green flame glowed in the warrior's eyes.
Trevor took another look at the warrior and giggled. 'Looks like it will be another easy win this year.'
Every year the the capital of the Cosal kingdom, a competition between warriors was held. The public loved to watch the fights between the strong. The nobles were able to show off their wealth by promoting and sponsoring warriors that they nominated into the arena. The competition also invited foreigners to the kingdom every year who brought in loads of gold and promoted the kingdom's economy which pleased the king.
Trevor was now sponsoring a new warrior this year. He was young and an upcoming genius in combat. Using his personal funds, Trevor spent a lot of money this year, trying to find who was the strongest warrior in his territory.
Strangely enough, this boy appeared on stage and dazzled everyone with his swordsmanship and magic. It was quite the sight, seeing every other challenger give up after the young boy appeared. Of course Trevor immediately gave this boy the rundown on what he needed him to do.
Last year his warrior just barely won. It made him earn 1000% profit back from gambling with other nobles. He was proud of his previous warrior, but Trevor only felt happy when he completely overwhelmed the opponent. But this year was different. This year he was sure that it would be a bloodbath.
-
Luna woke up late into the afternoon. It had been a couple of hours since they started their journey to the capital. There wasn't any need to worry about bandits or Ushain soldiers attacking while they rode along the main road. With Noll's new ability to read Luna's thoughts, he could act as the most annoying, unending alarm clock ever. Which Luna wasn't very happy about, but it would be useful for future battles when she would need to suddenly wake up.
Noll was bugging her for the first 30 minutes of the ride to read the book, but Luna didn't feel like getting carsick while in a video game. It was getting annoying after awhile so Luna just went to sleep for a majority of the ride. When Luna woke up, Jessica was looking outside the window and fiddling with her ring. It looked like she had a small bit of anxiety because of what her grandfather had said earlier.
Jessica had previously said they would be arriving around nightfall. Seeing as there wasn't much of a need to fall asleep again, Luna opened her status and tried to understand the changes that appeared. There were also some leftover stat points from her huge jump in levels. 340 of them to be exact.
Her earlier research was on two things with people's status. The first was the crazy increase in HP and MP after she previously checked her level. Apparently for some balancing reasons, the devs decided to develop a divider between high level and low level players. It was a system that increased the effectiveness of each stat every time the user passed 50 levels.
She looked through her chat logs and found this message:
[You have reached level 50. Your status will evolve along with your newfound power.]
Some players were so crazy about the game that they put entire math equations on the wiki. The formulas increase until level 150 because apparently players haven't reached level 200 yet. Luna wasn't sure how they hadn't reached that high considering how crazy some of the people seem to be about playing this game.
The second was the title feature which she hadn't really paid attention to until recently. Unlike what she had previously thought. Titles could be a huge benefit to players. They could provide skills, stats, or even in game benefits. The only issue she noticed was that they were only limited to a couple of people depending on the title.
Some hardcore players went out and tried every possible limited achievement. Obviously they didn't take every title because millions of other players were trying to get them at the same time. But the benefit that they got would be a significant boost for the early game. Luna already had three titles, two of which were limited.
Legendary one was a title that was vague to Luna when she first saw it. She got it the moment she obtained her class. The description behind it was similar to how everyone spoke about famous people in the real world.
[Legendary one - You're untouchable by the common people as a legendary existence. Tales are told about every legend as they get stronger. Every legendary tale gets recorded in Yggdrasil's roots.]
After the fight against the lich, Luna remembered the title's effects. Somehow every legend's tale, including her own was recorded in the roots of a tree. It sounded weird, but this game did have a legendary class that's powers were related to sleeping. So it wasn't too hard for Luna to believe.
The other limited title she earned was called:
[Lich Slayer - You have slayed one of the most renowned evils in the world of Silver skies. For your achievements you have taken the strongest stat point from your opponent. +500 Intelligence]
This one did really show the benefits of having a limited title. Almost every "Slayer" related title could only have the 5 first players obtain it. It gave a whopping 500 intelligence. There were some that were already obtained by players and were put on the wiki like: "Knight Slayer" or "Beatle Slayer"
There was high competition for limited titles. But Luna didn't want to get herself involved in any of that. She didn't have any desire to be the best or something like that.
Luna was content with just playing the game for fun. Currently her objective was to protect Jessica as a truly legendary hero would do. She was having fun with her new quest. Luna even nicknamed her Jess as she got more familiar with her.
The more Luna got to know Jessica, the more she realized that they had a lot in common. Jessica's common interest towards cool swords was a bit surprising for Luna. As she was a noble in a video game, Luna thought that Jessica wouldn't be interested in things like swords. But Jessica was completely absorbed in military tactics and weaponry because of the household she grew up in.
Apparently it was tradition for the Braggart family to grow up as generals or people with high positions in the military for the Cosal kingdom. Jessica's past was a lot different from Luna's, but as the stories dragged on. Luna pulled down her visor on her helmet and planned to sleep until they reached the capitol. Hopefully Jessica wouldn't notice....