I sat myself back down and held my smartphone up.
"Highland Wolf. The system took the first class I obtained. I already had a guess because I spawned in that wolf form."
"Cute" came from my mother and sister.
"Our next plan is to find a map of where we are and how we best get together. If we meet, I can disguise Elly as my summoned elemental most of the times, so even she should be fine."
Ma father went on a little bit about his plans as a summoner.
We talked a little bit more for about half an hour and all went separate ways again.
I went back to my room and tackled the by now over 500 messages in the group chat where my friends were already sharing their stories.
The conversation revolved around their experiences, but also had a lot of complaints in it.
Most of my friends ended up being human. 4 out of 6 became human while the other two were humanoids at least. One became a draconian while the other became a wood elf.
The first few hours of each of my friends were similar to mine. Everyone spawned near a city and somehow got into the town.
With the starting gold that everyone got themselves a room and logged off.
After posting about my small adventure as a cute little wolf and the fact that I could change back to human form got me a lot of hate.
'Unfair' was the common consensus of my four now human friends.
After what I learned from them it was true what they said.
Level 1 was pretty harsh for human players. They had still to obtain a class for themselves and were as weak a normal human.
The draconians were physically strong while the wood elves had a special knack for archery.
The difference without a class was obvious.
Even as a wolf, I had at least more speed than humans and fangs and claws that I could use.
I laughed and described to them how I ran around the mountains and played in the grassy field.
"Go touch some more grass with your stinking paws alex!"
"Stupid mutt"
Remarked two of my friends.
I can see a lot of wolf puns in the near future.
After around 10 minutes of banter, all accepted that we should go back into the game and look for maps. That was the primary goal of me, myself friends and my family.
To get to know the continent that we were on was as important as getting stronger.
Without further ado I went back to my own capsule.
Logging back in I found myself back in the small inn I rented a room at.
Changing back to my human form, I got up and started exploring the town a little bit.
The inn was close to the front gate so I have seen relatively little so far.
My primary destination was the adventurers guild but if there is something else of interest, I will naturally stop for that.
Gather side quests is important. Especially since there was not a fixed quest system in this world.
People don't walk around with markers over their heads signaling a quest.
To my understanding of this world and the system itself, everyone or thing could possibly create a quest. The only indicator is if or if not, the system recognizes the quest.
I walked around the city towards the plaza. The plaza was the center of the city as well as the marketplace and central hub.
Sadly I did not have any money to spare on anything else other than necessary things.
The more important thing was to get to know more about the market.
What was being sold? What did the people need?
Even I know a little bit about economics.
Selling things was one of my plans to get stupidly rich. Otherworldlers like me were comparable to cheaters because we have an inventory that does not care about weight.
To transport something heavy from point A to B gives a good amount of money.
While I was pondering about what to sell for the quickest cash, I found a church not far away from the market. Its entrance was pretty standard sized, but the tower of the church was larger than I expected.
Talking about information gathering, shouldn't I consider the church a little bit? I am an apostle of the goddess of creation. Sure, she would help me a little bit.
I entered the decent sized church. The entrance was not grand, but the insides of the church far exceeded what I had expected. There were the normal features of churches present here as well as some things I have never expected in a church.
In this church not only one God got worshipped. There were a lot of statures in a circle around the main altar. All overlooked by a much larger statue that depicted a kind looking woman.
There were at least more than 50 Statues that surrounded everyone and looked downwards to the main altar.
The craftsmanship of the statures was incredible. As I walked closer to the altar, I found that the details on the statues were spot on. Even sculpting legends such as Michelangelo would not be able to produce such detail in his statues.
As I stared more at the different Gods, a priest walked over to me.
"Hello young follower of light. What can we offer to you today. It seems as if you are here for the first time."
The priest talked in a soothing calm way that reminded me of my grandparents.
"Hello. My name is Alexander, and I am here today for information as well as to offer a prayer to the goddess of creation."
The priest was pleased by my demeanor.
'I think he did not expect to be spoken to in a noble manner.'
"You can offer a prayer anytime in this church. Information on the other hand is a bit complicated.
It depends on what you are searching for. The churches in itself are not omnipotent, only the gods are."
The priest spoke the truth. Although I never expected that churches knew everything. It would still be worth a try.
I was never a religious person, maybe until now I wasn't.
"Do you have a map I could copy of the world? I need it for my travels."
The priest looked baffled.
"You know how much map making costs young man? Cartographers require a large sum of money to even consider working. If you have close to 50 Gold, I could ask one cartographer I know but that takes a lot of time."
Oh well, what did I expect.
I am spoiled by the civilized world. Maps were a luxury good in the past.
"I did not expect that. Would maybe asking the gods for a map work?"
Now the priest looked at me shocked.
"You can always ask. But do it respectfully. At least if you don't want to provoke divine punishment."
I am still an apostle. I can ask for a little help.
Now where should I pray.
"Would anywhere be okay for such a huge demand to the Gods?"
The priest thought for a few seconds before pointing at the main altar.
"Please us the altar for such a demand. If you are lucky ,you might even get something."
I walked over towards the altar.
From afar, the statue of the goddess of creation was grand. But looking at it from below and standing right before it were different things.
"Oh great goddess of creation, please hear my prayer."
"Damn!"
That was the only word that came out of the mouth of the priest.
He was actually asking the goddess of creation for something.
"Bestow upon me a map of the world so that I can follow your command to extinguish evil.
This map should also highlight places and people of evil nature and have something like an indicator to show me the way."
My demands could be summarized in one word. Shameless. A map in itself would be considered grand.
A map made by the gods especially. For this map to be of a magical nature was asking for too much.
The priest panicked.
"Oh gods, please forgive this man for his shameless acts."
He prayed and rubbed the cross in his hands.
I looked up the great statue of the goddess of creation started shining in a warm golden light.
In a similar matter as with the angel Haniel, a stone flew from above flew and landed on my head.
It dealt zero damage but it hurt a lot.
[You really have the nerve to make such a shameless demand of me Alexander.]
Through the System I could hear the her voice. She did not sound angry but nonetheless, what she said was not good.
[There exists map magic, but not to the extent that you want. To mark evil, or rather to find it is a gods skill. The divine spark I gave you is still in his infancy. You need to kill a lot of evil for it to do the same things that regular angels can do with their divine spark. If it matures, you can feel evil around you.]
The goddess was right. I knew that. Still, how was I supposed to just run into many evil things that I can kill?
A good map is a necessity that I cannot go without.
[I understand that I ask much of you. You are so far the only one that knows the truth of this world. The players just enjoy their time here, but you are different. You immediately want to get as strong as possible. May it be through fear or anticipation.]
Yes, I wanted to be stronger. It just happened that my initial goal was the same as the goddesses though. But for what she asks of me I will need to have a competitive lead of the other players.
You cannot ask of me to mediate between hardcore players who may be 10 to 20 levels above me.
[As my apostle I shall grant your stupid wish. Just don't tell other players that your map covers the entire world. Now go on and slay some evil. Hush, Hush.]
"Thank you very much goddess. If I need your help again, I will pray a lot to you."
With that I departed from the altar and after I said goodbye to the priest I walked out of the church.
[You have the obtained the extra skill: Map]
[Map: Display a Map of the world and mark evil.]
The description of the skill was simple, as was the use of it. But the impact of having such a huge map was immeasurable.
Displaying the map functioned exactly the same as the system messages. While I was walking around with it on full display, no one batted an eye on the weird window flying in front of me.
The goddess sounded displeased, but she did more than just the things that I asked of her.
What I got was a fully-fledged gaming map.
I could even put markers on it.
Through the map I could see that in a nearby forest were many red points that were outlined black.
Those should be evil beings.
Hovering over them with my fingers to zoom in resulted in something different than I was expecting.
[Would you like to accept the quest: "Exterminating Goblins in the forest?".]
[Y/N]
And I thought getting quests would be hard for me.
Laughable.
"Accept"
[Confirmed]
This will be my first hunt. I am strangely filled with a wild feeling of anticipation.
Not only do I want to kill them because they are evil and give exp but also, I want to rip them apart.
Did I become feistier when becoming a wolf?
With my thoughts sorted out I left the city around noon. I could probably hunt better at night as a wolf, but I liked the daylight more.