Upon seeing the Altar, Arthur knew that he had found what the resident Mage had asked him for.
"This doesn't look all too good. The forums mentioned to be careful with this place." Arthur muttered and first took a look around the hall.
The hall had crumbling walls and debris fallen all over the place. If one didn't pay attention, they could easily trip and fall which could cause one to take damage or in worse cases, break a bone and get a debuff.
This was actually rather common during the start of the game and many players faced these unexpected setbacks. In fact, it was said that even after six years of the game's launch, the players had still not discovered all the debuffs that existed in it.
Broken bones was one of the first major debuff they would face. And with how realistic the game was, one could break it easily at the starting levels. There were even some insane players that tried to intentionally break their bones so as to let them recover and grow stronger.
This was something that could work in the real world, but in game, since a player could recover quickly once they logged out and logged in while being in a safe zone, it just turned out to be a waste of time.
After looking around a bit, Arthur was sure that there seemed to be no danger lurking.
"Strange…" he said not finding any enemies here.
He moved towards the altar next, feeling as if its red glow was getting brighter the closer he got to it. And when he was standing right in front of it, the altar was glowing like a lava lamp!
The red runes on it flickered and alternated, while a few lines started to appear on the top. These red lines took form of various patterns before finally settling in a circle and diamond shape that were concentric.
Arthur extended his hands towards it and placed it on the altar, making the lines change.
Flicker!
The lines seemingly molded around his hands, before a small indent appeared at the center of the altar.
"There it is…" Arthur noticed a small statue rising from the indent.
The statue was barely the size of a finger, but was intricately carved. It seemed to be made out of a black stone that had hints of red speckled throughout its body. It faintly looked like there were cracks on it through which the red was shining through.
Wrapping his fingers around the statue, Arthur lifted it from the indent, alert for any unexpected change. His nerves were tense and he was ready for more danger, but nothing really happened.
"This is certainly not what the forums said. Even the number of enemies coming here were less. Is the time difference between original quest and my current one changing the quest to this extent?" Arthur couldn't help question the authenticity of the information he had.
Even if the change was favorable to him, it was still a matter of having concrete information. After all, he didn't know if these changes would snowball into something great later on.
Letting out a sigh, Arthur simply decided to go with the flow and get out of here fast.
"Let's just get this over with…" Arthur looked at the small statue and used the Inspect skill.
>Inspect Skill Successful!<
>Target: Esoteric Statue<
But once he saw the information he furrowed his brows.
"That's all?" Arthur said in a low voice.
But as if mocking him, the quest notification finally popped up.
>Quest updated<
>You've discovered an Esoteric Statue hidden within the ruins. Take it back to the Resident Mage for further appraisal.<
"We're not done here though." Arthur shook his head.
He had seen the vague hints in the quest information as well as knew a lot more from the forums. This was not the only thing that was hidden in the Ruins. Or rather, this was just one of the things that was hidden here.
"There's still the other section I need to find. But to access that, I need something else… I need some extra help." Arthur said with a smile.
This part of the quest was perhaps going to be the most dangerous part. He would have to take a detour for this first and get a certain someone to 'open' the way for him.
With that in mind, Arthur returned the way he had come from. He ran all the way back to save as much time as possible and left the ruins without looking back. Arthur now needed to look for a certain enemy that he had a quest for already.
>Quest Updated: Hunt for Razer Tooth Boar!<
>The Razer Tooth Boar is nearby, please hunt it and obtain its meat for the beggar<
"Ah good! I knew they wouldn't make it too hard this early on." Arthur was pleased.
When one did certain quests like hunting beasts, they often needed to spend time searching for them first. But in some of the early quests, there would be a notification when one was within a certain range of the quest target.
Of course, one still needed to have some skill to find the said target, but it did make it a lot better than searching blindly for a long time.
'Finding its tracks shouldn't be that hard.' Arthur started to look for boar tracks around him.
Thankfully with how the Razor Tusk Boar acted, there were plenty of clues nearby.
Just a few meters from him, Arthur could see a tree that had its bark gouged out. And right next to the tree, he could see a few trampled bushes.
"Found ya!" Arthur smiled and inched towards it.
There were deep hoof tracks that were heading towards the east. Arthur followed them and soon chanced upon a large beast that was seemingly digging for something in the ground. It used its large razer sharp tusks to skillfully dig through the ground and pull out tubers.