The merchant cart was called "Doby's trivia".
There was a blue goblin standing inside, shouting at the crowd.
"Come one, come all! Participation costs 20 coppers! All you have to do is answer five of my simple trivia questions and you can win some coins!"
The goblin Doby kept waving his hand, showing a coin with a lustrous golden color.
The prize piqued Finn's interest, so he joined the crowd and decided to watch the following player try his luck.
Soon a player detached himself from the crowd and went up to the cart.
He was wearing a leather vest with a white undershirt, brown pants, and black leather shoes. These were the clothes everyone was wearing when they first logged in.
"I'm next"
The player paid the participation cost, and the goblin started asking questions.
"Okay, my first question for you is... Can dragons fly?"
"Yes."
The player immediately answered without even taking his time to think about it.
"That answer is... Correct! You won 50 copper coins and you can cash them out or continue for a bigger reward!"
Doby excitedly shouted the last part louder so that the player wouldn't give up.
If every player just guessed the first question, which was the easiest, and then cashed out, Doby would be penniless and would have to close his cart.
Meanwhile, two players standing next to Finn were whispering to each other.
One had long blonde hair, and the other had red curly hair.
"Everyone always gets the first one, and only one guy got the second question so far. But when he chose to be greedy and continue, he got completely baffled by the spike in difficulty of the third question."
The blonde player whispered to his friend, who, like Finn, had just arrived, and soon after, Doby asked the next question.
"Second question is... what color do a health potion and a mana potion have?"
Doby had to think about what question to give because he couldn't just keep giving the same ones, as that would make the next player, who also got the same questions as the previous one, just breeze through all of them.
"Health is red, and mana is blue."
The player once again confidently answered with a smile.
"Correct! You have won 1 silver coin so far!"
Doby shouted with excitement and clapped his hands.
"This is so unfair! My second question was a lot more difficult than his!"
One of the players, who had previously lost, suddenly shouted at Doby.
"Boo fucking Hoo, I don't care!"
Doby glared at the player and pointed at him with his blue finger.
"If you think it is unfair, then go cry somewhere else and just piss off!"
He pointed away with his finger, gesturing for the player to leave, and went back to asking questions.
The player threw some curses at Doby and left.
"Third question! If a person enters a dungeon and sees a Scarlet turtle, what rank is the dungeon he entered?"
This time, when Doby asked the question, he had an evil grin on his face.
'C or B rank, it depends on his surroundings.'
Finn answered in his mind, unbothered by the difficulty of the question.
'Uhhh… Scarlet turtle? What's that? ...Screw it, I'll just try to guess.'
"C rank?"
The player answered after some thinking.
"Wrong! It was C or B. B if there was magma around the turtle, and C if there wasn't! Too bad!"
Doby shouted as he laughed at another unlucky player.
"That's bullshit! I answered C, which was half of the answer and is pretty much correct!"
The crowd was also murmuring to each other about how unfair Doby was being.
C rank was technically a correct answer, but it was still deemed incorrect by him.
"I don't care. My game my rules. If you don't like it, then don't play, but if you do play, then you better abide by my rules!"
Doby slammed the table, silencing everyone and the player who lost chose to leave, knowing that arguing with an NPC that had a higher level than him was most likely not the best idea.
"So, who is next?!"
After seeing the player leave, Doby once again shouted at the crowd with his greedy smile, but he was met with silence.
When the others saw how the last player ended up, nobody wanted to step up.
If the game was this rigged, they would just be losing their money, so they would rather spend the money on something that will actually help them level up.
"Me! I'll play your game."
Suddenly the silence was broken when Finn confidently volunteered to play.
Players would know another player's name only if they added each other as friends, so nobody knew who Finn was.
Not that it mattered, as the game was new and there were no famous players yet.
"Good, come here and pay up."
Doby's smile returned, and he started rubbing his palms as greed filled his eyes again.
Finn paid the 20 copper coin fee, which was all the money he had, and sat down on a chair next to Doby.
He crossed his legs and put his interlocked fingers on his knees as he kept confidently smiling.
When the players saw Finn's confident posture, they wanted to believe that he could embarrass that shrewd goblin, but they knew that it was probably mere wishful thinking.
"First question! What is the name of the village we are currently in?"
Doby once again presented an easy question because it was the first one.
"Dragon's Maw Village."
Finn answered while maintaining his smile.
"Correct, that's 50 coppers! Do you wish to continue?"
"Yes."
Finn nodded his head without breaking eye contact.
"Second question, how does one classify the strength of a dragon?"
Doby asked, getting slightly pissed off at how confidently Finn was staring at him.
"By the color of their scales. I want to continue."
Already knowing that he was correct, Finn agreed to continue with a smirk.
"Correct… Third question. There exists a forest that has trees with black and blue leaves. What is it called and where is it?"
Doby spitefully said through his gnashed teeth.
"The Silent Forest, Elven continent. I want to continue."
These questions didn't pose a problem to Finn, who was a regressor, so he just kept smiling at Doby.
"…You are correct."
Doby, on the other hand, was in disbelief because he didn't expect someone to get past question three.
When the other players heard that Finn was correct, they understood that he wasn't just putting up a front.
They didn't know how he knew the answer to the third question, but they didn't care and broke into cheers.
"You go, dude!"
"Show him who's the boss!"
"Three done, two to go!"
They knew that they had no chance of winning this trivia game, but as long as they could see that blue goblin get embarrassed, they would be happy.
"Fourth question... what are the ingredients for the potion of night vision?"
Doby asked with a slight smirk.
Looking at Finn's clothes, Doby knew that he was new in this world.
He thought that Finn must have read some books in the small library this village had before coming here, but potion recipes were something a person had to buy in one of the big cities to know.
His smirk kept getting wider, but when he saw Finn's confident smile not leaving his face, his evil smirk froze.
"80 ml of warm water, 25g of mandragore's root, 10g of suntulip, 5g of dried moontulip, and a drop of holy water."
Finn continued naming the different ingredients, and by the time he was finished, Doby was standing next to him, shaking.
Doby was sure that Finn must have somehow cheated, but he didn't know how.
His body kept trembling in rage, and he was clutching his fists until his knuckles started to turn a light shade of blue from not having enough blood flowing through them.
"You are correct... but how-"
"Oh, I forgot." Finn remained smiling as he stared at Doby, "I want to continue. Next question, please."
When the other players, who were still stunned to hear Finn know all those ingredients, heard his last remark, they broke out into cheers.
"Four done, one more to go!"
"Four done, one more to go!"
"Four done, one more to go!"
They kept chanting, feeling like they were part of this trivia round.
"Shut up! Everyone shut the fuck up! Fifth question!"
Doby started waving his hands around while shouting at the crowd, and then he looked at Finn again.
"What did I have for breakfast?!"
Not caring about his image anymore he asked with bloodshot eyes and a smile that showed his yellow teeth.
The crowd instantly turned silent, not because Doby told them to but because they couldn't believe his shamelessness.
Finn was first stunned to hear the fifth question but then quickly calmed down.
He had a god who could access his forgotten memories in his head, after all.
'You want to be shameless in front of the God of Tricksters? You are a million years too early for that.'
Loki then read all of Finn's memories about goblins, and in one of them he saw that they liked to eat Kuku nuts the most.
It was just a random sentence in one of the books Finn liked to read in his previous life, but now it could make him money.
Loki quickly relayed this information to Finn, making his eyes brighten up in joy.
"You had Kuku nuts."
Finn's calm voice echoed throughout the crowded square and the crowd remained silent.
"I thought the fifth question was supposed to be the hardest one, not the easiest."
Hoping he was correct, he also added a snarky remark.
Doby didn't say anything. He just fell to his knees, acting like his life was falling apart in front of his eyes.
Goblins were known to be extremely greedy, so knowing that he had just lost a gold coin to someone made him question his life choices.
"How do you know that? There is no way you know what I ate this morning… You must have cheated! It doesn't count! You cheated, you filthy cheater!"
Doby then stood back up and shouted as he kept pointing his finger at Finn, not wanting to accept the reality.
"Prove it then. If you can't prove I cheated, you will have to give me my prize. 1 gold coin, right?"
Finn got up from his chair and walked over to Doby.
"Thank you in advance. Now give me."
He held out his palm and kept gesturing with his fingers that he wanted his gold coin.
The other players all knew that Finn must be cheating, but seeing the blue goblin lose after he embarrassed all of them felt so good that they just kept cheering and shouting at the top of their lungs.
Doby knew he had no way of proving that Finn cheated because he didn't know how he did it, so he unwillingly handed him the gold coin with his trembling hands.
Finn tried to grab it, but Doby was tightly holding onto it, not wanting to let go.
When the other players saw this, they started throwing rocks at Doby while booing.
All of the players present were level 1 though, so those rocks didn't do anything to him, who was a lot of levels higher than them.
Suddenly one of the rocks hit Doby's hand that was holding the coin, which helped Finn finally take the coin from him.
Finn grabbed it and placed it in his inventory.
"Thanks. I will come again if I ever need more money."
He added as he turned to leave.
"Fuck you! You are banned! I hope I never see you again!"
Doby shouted, and because he wasn't in the mood for trivia anymore, he started packing his cart.
Some players asked Finn to add them as their friends, but he rejected all of them and started leaving.
He wanted to finally buy some supplies for his forest trip.
But unknown to him, Finn attracted the attention of a three-player group by winning the golden coin.
They looked at his back, which was slowly getting further away, with a greedy look in their eyes.
"Once he leaves the village, there won't be any guards protecting the players, and that will be our chance to strike."
A player with a black mask chuckled as he kept eyeing Finn.