20 Just A Little Bit More Grinding as Well as Sales.

A new announcement had swept the overall gaming scene as a whole. The public beta would officially release in just under a week.

Already the pre-registrations on the website were going through the metaphorical roof.

Checking the time, the little digital clock on Rowan's laptop showed how it was only 4 PM.

It was only 4 PM on the day of the announcement yet there had already been over a million pre-registrations and counting.

Since the Closed Beta had first opened, the popularity of the game had only grown as well-known figures within the industry posted a variety of content involving the game.

From doing basic documentaries (despite the fact that there really wasn't much to document) to streaming their day-to-day life in-game, to completing guides, all kinds of content were made available.

Seeing this starling degree of realism combined with game elements caused this to be incredibly attractive to the overall public as a whole.

If Rowan wanted to make the most out of the early start he had been given, then he would need to hard grind it out now.

Sending a quick message to the group chat they had created, "Hey guys, you up for another grind session? Maybe we can see if we can obtain any quests now after we run some sales."

Not too long after, they replied with "Sure", and "I'm down."

Rowan quickly responded, "Aight cool. Just gimme a minute to hop on real quick."

Logging in, he was swarmed with notifications, people asking him when the weapons would be sold, discounts, custom orders, etc.

Looking back at his most recent post, he realized he probably should've clarified some of the details.

Oh well, he'll just write a follow-up one later.

Since the people didn't necessarily know when they were going to be selling the weapons, it would be kind of pointless to just show up at the village gates now, wouldn't it.

Eidiri sighs, they'd have to establish some sort of schedule or something, damn it.

He didn't want it to become too professional, mixing friends with business is an idea that is heavily advised against.

Damn it.

He'll figure out these issues later, maybe figure it out while looking for quests.

Sending out another message to his friends he said, "Slight oversight on my part, but we won't be selling the weapons today given how we don't have a public schedule so the people wouldn't even know when we'll be there."

"We'll just sell them along with the next batch."

"Come to the gates btw," he ended the message.

Soon enough, the group of friends had all assembled at the gate, Eidiri and Ken (who had come together) were greeted by a waving Edgar.

"Hey guys!" he cheerfully said, "Look at what I got!"

Something pops up in their notification tabs, thankfully Eidiri had changed the settings for is to "Friend" status long ago.

"No. You didn't," Ken said with disbelief.

The wide grin of Edgar's smug face only grew wider, the disbelief only serving to further feed the beast.

"You goddam lucky son of a *****," Eidiri cursed. "You actually got a quest?"

"Damnnn... and here I thought Ken and I were doing something with the professions and all that, but look at you! Putting in the real work and all that!" he cried.

The quest was incredibly significant due to their scarcity, quests should probably become increasingly common as the player's strength increased but as of right now, there really wouldn't be too many who actually wanted to hire people of their strength.

"Wait look at it, the game actually has a language filter. Who would've known?" remarked Edgar.

"Oh neat," said Ken, "Anyways, can you share the quest with us or..." he trails off.

"Yea this quest is available for sharing, I mean I already sent it to you guys, just accept the damn thing so we can get moving," Edgar bluntly said.

"Okay, Okay, geez," they press the green checkboxes, confirming their participation in the quest.

"Okay, now that you've accepted the quest, here's the rundown, we're basically going to be guarding this merchant group that's passing through this village."

"The head of the group is a cheapskate and doesn't want to spend a lot to ensure their safety, here is where we come in."

"We're going to be joining a rag-tag group of other players that have accepted this quest and escort them to Fallrow."

"To be completely honest, he probably wants to use us as cannon fodder."

"On the bright side, we get paid. About a silver per."

"With this cash, we can like fund a bit more of our operations, because, and I mean no offense but your professions don't pay too much," Edgar finished.

"Okay, so when's this thing going to start?" Eidiri asked.

"In about an hour or so," Edgar replied.

"Okay well, I've got some ingredients prepared to cook some like recovery food or something if we need it, pretty sure Eidiri's created some new weapons we could use," Ken said.

"Yep, indeed I did, they're pretty much just upgraded versions of the sub-par ones you currently have. Low-Grey Tier, but they're still better than what you had before," Eidiri said handing the two their weapons.

So if we got an hour left, Ken you're currently a bit behind on levels since Edgar did some grinding of his own, so why don't we just work on some teamwork stuff on the Giant Rats while getting a bit stronger.

"Sounds good," they replied.

The rat field was only a short distance away, and they quickly arrived at it.

They organized themselves rather quickly as well, deciding that Edgar would draw some of them over, Eidiri would take the brunt of the charge, and that Ken would pick off the stragglers that were chasing Eidiri.

At times, the Rat's would shift their attention to Ken, but some well-placed Fury Fists into the group on Eidiri's part swiftly took their aggro back.

Slowly but surely, they leveled up, Ken catching up to their levels at 7. Eidiri and Edgar being at the cusp of reaching Lvl 8.

But for now, they had a caravan to catch, a quick journey to Fallrow, hopefully, there wouldn't be much danger, oh geez, the thought alone jinxed it huh?