*I'll just post my CV to a random company hiring for Crisper programmers. I have a master in IT with Crisper as my main focus, though I'll still put down Forester developer in my resume. Even if I wrote a few line in a function, I still did help develop the damn program! Anyway, nto really looking for a job, but a backup is always welcome.*
Sam warmed up a chicken dinner for himself in a microwave and sent his CV to 3 different companies hiring programmers before napping for a couple of hours, waking up only at 4pm to log back into Realms of Conquest and looked a bit surprised when he saw Gama coming back.
He flinched a bit when he saw Sam's body suddenly stand up and Sam chuckled at his bashfulness.
Whenever players log out of Realms of Conquest, their in game characters don't disappear. The character stays in the exact same spot it was when the player was last logged in and the body becomes unmanned. The player is allowed to turn their unconscious body into an NPC character and leave it instructions, such as tell it to go fishing, kill mobs and etc, but the AI is the simplest one possible, so anything more is impossible.
Due to the consciousness given to player characters being as simple as imaginable, even basic tasks like killing a mob becomes impossible. Mobs have better stats at the same level than players, so when the character meets said mobs, they are guaranteed to die and having your character continuously die is not a welcome event considering the harsh penalty for death in Realms of Conquest. At most, you can have it do a simple task, such as swing a sword, throw and reel a fishing rod, pluck weeds, but nobody did that.
The player character needs sleep. There are several hidden need bars, which if not maintained regularly, will cause major downsides. Not sleeping will cause a decrease in attributes. The decrease in attributes is 1 in every attribute and this decrease will keep stacking if the character keeps not sleeping or fulfilling another meed, until one of the stats goes into the negatives, killing the player character.
Most players can't afford to waste any stat points on useless stats, such as creativity for combat classes, so most rankers have 1 in creativity. Only some really dedicated rankers will have 2 in creativity, so the biggest decrease they can take is -1 to their attributes and have to remedy it immediately, or else another hidden need might tick down at any moment, causing instant death.
Because if this, most, if not all, players assigned their NPC characters, when they log out, to sleep and continue sleeping. That's exactly what Sam, Violet, Luci and Gama did when they logged off and left their NPC bodies to sleep in a small hotel near the starter place to save on having to buy a room in an inn and saved a couple copper coins.
"How long have you been playing?" Sam stretched a bit, as he stood up and decided to chat with Gama for a bit.
Gama smiled awkwardly and answered "I came back about an hour ago and have been looking around to find any quests or special villagers. I was given a quest by a w-woman with a snake tattoo. S-she wanted me to go into the forest and help find her some mushrooms and I just got done with that and came to check on you three and see if anyone else had woken up."
Sam raised an eyebrow at how ridiculous what Gama just said sounded "Getting a special mushroom for a random woman with a snake tattoo. I am not saying she is a darkened, but that description doesn't fit a normal person either. Was she in a bar or somewhere?"
Gama looked a bit surprised and said "I-I was going to a bar to see if they had a place similar to K-Kats and the woman came up to me after I sat down and a-as-sked me for help."
Sam stroked his chin, as a thought came to his mind. "Was it a hidden quest or a normal one, because I think you just discovered traces of a smuggling ring!"
When Sam finished his words, Gama looked at him with confusion. With Realms of Conquest being realistic to the point of each NPC having a story and personality, quests pop up in all forms, some can be accidentally stumbled into at any time, but randomly finding something as bad as a smuggling ring still sounded unbelievable to him "W-what d-do you mean?"
The social awkwardness of the college kid brought a smile to Sam's face "*Remember when I was still in my edgy wolf phase. Good thing at least it wasn't my final one.* If you think about it, this whole situation seems like a scam. A good looking woman finds a naive boy and "asks" him to help the damsel in distress by finding a Special mushroom, which she needs to do something with. You are being used as a pack mule or the might have planted said mushrooms to use you as a trafficking mule. They plant said mushrooms in a rather obvious spot, tell you how they look and make up a bullshit reason as to why they need it, teach you how to harvest them properly and then use you to get the illegal items in here.
At best, they pay you a few coins for the service. At worst, the guards check you randomly, find the illegal items on you, arrest you and the stash still makes it in, through the guards as evidence to be destroyed or given up, which will then be picked up by a corrupt guard or maybe they have a highly skilled thief inside copper town, who can get the stash away from the guards and into the hands of the dealer. Maybe the guard himself is the dealer! Hell the guard captain might even be the client, whom the mushrooms are being delivered to, through you, along with the benefit of an extra arrest of a "drug dealer" to his record. A rather perfect plan, with them coming out on top in every situation.
I am guessing the quest you got was a normal one, so it just had the clue of a good looking woman, snake tattoo, suspicious request and another clue is the personality type of who receives the quest. The hidden quest here is for those who look underneath the underneath and rather than fall victim, manage to turn the tables on said woman."
Sam nodded at his own deductions and finished "in conclusion, the true nature of the quest is to confront said woman and demand she gives you a cut of the smuggling ring and the true reward is access to the smuggler faction of this town, rather than the few copper coins for the initial quest!"
Gama stood there, speechless, as if he got lost by the half way point. Sam sighed and said "simple terms, dodge guards and make a quick copper, or take a risk and become a criminal to make a quick silver."
Gama nodded his head, but pointed at himself even more confused now "But, why m-me?"
Sam nodded and continued "No offense, but you are kind of an antisocial introvert wimp. There is nothing wrong with that, but your lack of social skills makes you a good target for scammers, especially good looking women type of scammers.
Everything can be ignored and summed up as standard quest giving peocedures, but giving the quest to you, a naive teenage looking person just sums it up as a potential hidden quest we need to dig up.
Well, I might be COMPLETELY wrong about it, but my instincts are rather sharp in general, so let's go check the situation out and tell the others later, you know, when we make a quick copper. Don't want to drag them along based on a hunch. Can you show me where you met her?"
Gama nodded his head and the two of them quickly ran off. With the potential of having discovered a hidden, Gama himself was quite excited. He hoped what they had discovered was an actual hidden quest and managed to repay Sam for the pendulum he bought him. was quite excited and he couldn't wait to show off to his friend
He looked back at Shanks, who was following him and saw his serious expression. Sam nodded at Gama, who nodded back and kept leading Shanks toward the bar, where they could gather the necessary information.
*I hope Shanks is right. If we have actually found a hidden quest, we will most definitely be able to make a lot of money and maybe even expedite our leveling progress! With Shank's deductions skill, even if this isn't a hidden quest, we will most definitely find something!*