17 Chapter 17: Rewards
People may say that playing a game doesn't exhaust you, never believe them. Perhaps in the olden era people could keep playing a game for hours; now however, we can not. Nowadays when it's the era of virtual reality, everything you do in a game is what you might do in reality; fighting, fishing, crafting, exploring whatever you do in reality is how you do it in Chaos. That's why you feel fatigued in Chaos as well.
When you are fighting a tough battle, you concentrate very hard, after which your brain brings you out from that state because it needs to 'recharge'. That's when you feel fatigued in Chaos, because everything in a VR environment is controlled by your brainwaves, which is similar to how a human body works.
We fought against all these flesh and blood for more than a quarter of an hour. After the boss died, many of us fell down on the ground while others were breathing hard. Our sweat was falling down like raindrops on the barren land, devoid of any plant. We might not have too heavy of a casualty from the fight, but many among us were in no condition to fight at all and then we heard.
"We, the brave warriors who protect our home and the nature that gave us all; do not need to fear you. I call upon the power of stars, cleanse the filth that dares to sully the pure nature that we respect!"
{Congratulations! You have successfully defended against the tides of flesh and blood and bought enough time for the grove to prepare.}
We saw up in the starry sky; one star shone brightly, then another. Like these many stars started shining and together, they formed the image of a huge tree. The tree, which was created from the projection of the light from the stars, started descending.
"How?! Nature was cut out from this place! This is the lord's domain now!"
"Perhaps if your lord was truly present here. But without him, nature can always come in. The blood forest prevented natural influence due to that maniac's power residing in it. Now however, you have no hope at all."
"Listen to me! Enter the shrine. With the Lord's blessing, they can never harm it!"
Those blood cultists all entered the shrine under their leader's watch. It seemed their leader wanted to attack the grove members before going in, but the light tree did not give him a chance. The shrine being struck by the tree shone fiercely in bloody red light. The unholy light although couldn't defeat the tree, it didn't let the tree harm it as well. We watched in anticipation for what might happen, but none gained an advantage over the other.
"Hah! Filth, you have forgotten your weak entrance!"
{Grove master has struck the door of the shrine!}
We watched, as the door crumbled into pieces; with the red light weakening. The tree struck the shrine, causing cracks on its body.
"We will never let you infidels win! For the Lord!"
{Bloody Rounka has initiated the sacrificial ceremony!}
The red light suddenly flared, disintegrating both itself and the tree; but by then there was a big hole at the entrance where the door was. Grove master Rem'len turned towards us, while the rest of the keepers started resting.
"Thank you brave warriors, you have aided us to prevent a greater evil from destroying everything we hold dear, for now. We did stopped him from descending, but he will try again. That powerhouse among the enemies started a sacrificial ritual to repair the broken link and helping him to descent. Warriors, thank you for your service; and I once again ask you to aid us to completely erase the poisonous beings here and protect our home. Although, for now you all go rest; we will stabilize the entrance portal that got disturbed due to the fight and call upon you when your service will be needed. May nature's blessing always be with you."
{Congratulations! Zonal event "Madman's descent" is complete. All contributions are being tabulated and will be released. Players will receive rewards based on their contribution.}
{Planet notice! Zonal raid instance 'cathedral of gore' is released. Players of the same zone will for a raid alliance after three days and enter the instance to nullify the threat. Opening cooldown: 2 day 23 hour 59 minutes 57 seconds}
{Congratulations to players of B'onsa city to open the first raid instance that will decide the fate of the planet! All participating members will gain additional rewards. All players of the zone will gain a 300% additional experience until the opening of the raid.}
{Raid: Cathedral of gore
Level requirement: 10
Status: Closed (Players with the main quest must enter first)
Created as an anchor for an extremely powerful being to descent unto the mortal world. It represents the hopelessness of all beings against the madman and that he should be stopped at all costs. Inside countless unholy creatures wait in anticipation of the madness.}
[Hello players! First, congratulations to the alliance for opening the first raid, a great achievement; do finish it though. Next, A few players who have already reached level 5 are confused why the classes are not given yet. It is due to a change we did on the system.
Classes will now be given by class mentors in major cities across the planets. Combat classes will now consist of different class trees which you will unlock from the mentors. You can only choose one of them at lv5. Later you will be able to choose more. Each planet has their own unique classes as well. Also, the uniqueness of each player's class will be compromised; however we will solve that with a new feature that will unlock at level 15. Please look forward to upcoming features as well as fixes to certain issues that have already been reported.
Friend list is now working correctly, while guild feature and guild alliance will be off until you gain necessary items to register a guild which will be introduced soon. Thank you for your support.]
{Event contribution list published, the rewards will be mailed to you through the account mail. Please check them.}
And so it ended. While everyone was trying to catch their breath and resting, Order gave us all these notices and showed us the rewards and I saw all those tired sweaty faces lit up. The least contributed player got a lot of EXP, money and a title. I was ranked fourth among all 92 of us. Above me on the third position was Suo, Suko went to sixth position. The first position was given to Sky rain for his enormous contribution on the stable tanking; not to mention he was at third place in damage dealing, myself being fifth due to not having many damage oriented skills.
Opening my mail, I found my rewards placed inside.
[Congratulation player! Here are your rewards for successful completion of the event:
15,000 EXP, 12G, 35 Natural energy, 32 Blood energy, Restraining wrist guard, Burning blade skill book. You have cleared one of the requirements for certain specialities, please continue doing your best.]
[Restraining wrist guard
Quality: Hard
GS: 60
Level req: 7
Durability: 100/100
P.DEF: 700
M.DEF: 450
S.DEF: 400
Additional effect: Decrease damage received from corrupted energy by 15%.]
[Skill book: Burning blade
Incorporate flame elemental energy into any blade infused weapon used; grants 5% chance to incinerate the enemy, dealing 200 fixed damage for over a period of 10 seconds.]
[You have received the title: "Corruption's nemesis"]
[Title: Corruption's nemesis
You easily detect corrupted beings and folly their plan. Gain additional 10% damage to corrupted beings.]
People may think these rewards are very few for completing a zonal event that once failed could destroy the planet; however, you will never get too many stuff from events. The real good stuff actually belongs to the raids or dungeons created due to those events. Another way to get good items are by crafting them; however the difficulty is very high and unless you spend some considerable time to research and learn from a superior craftsman, you will not be able to progress much from blindly trying.
"Hello, thanks for your efforts."
"Ah! Oh! Hello, Firmament guild master."
While I was checking the rewards, Sky rain approached us.
"This was a fun fight and a lot of good rewards as well, thank you for initiating the event."
"Well, I can't take credit for that; after all we didn't knew it would escalate that much. Although, now we got a raid instance before the rest of the planet at least."
"Considering how annoying the event was, the raid will probably gonna be worse. I'll take my guild to level up before the entrance opens. By the way, what shall I call you as?"
"Akrosh, we are also leaving to do some grinding. The buff is a timely assistance."
"Indeed, thanks for the aoe zone at the end as well. We took very less casualties due to that."
"No problem, no one wants to die after all. Alright then, we'll meet after three days."
"Have a good grind."
"You too."
We left the forest and went back home; although we got the buff period to grow stronger, not everyone can maximize the effects due to not having access to best ways. We discussed and agreed that we should take some rest; after which we will go to the class mentors and proceed to get our classes, then we'll try to get some quests done. If nothing else, then we can take missions from the guild but we will try to get some clues about the various quests hidden in this city. Which is why I will head towards the library, which is the only place I can find details about the city and it's customs.
Customs of a zone are indicators of places where you may find quests or treasures. For example, the recent quest was due to the conflict of grove that worship nature and a crazy person who wants to destroy nature in his own way. That guy has a good amount of back story behind him which the players will learn as this raid progress. In our dev team, we track certain natives that have extreme potential. This guy is also one of them, so this will not be the only place where his influence reached.
Reaching home, I went to the fifth floor of the library. Folktales from the past, details of various incidents are all in recorded in this section. This city is five and a half century old. Created after destroying a huge nest of a kind of deadly bug that harms all living beings, this city back then was structured after the bonsai trees.
The giant tree in the middle of the grove is actually the center of the old city, surrounding which people started living at that time. They created huge barriers around them with the tree as the center to protect them from further invasion of those bugs. Later on the city was restructured and expanded covering the entire nest.
A hundred and seventeen years ago a botanist is rumored to have found something that he claimed to me from that bug community, however due to lack of proof from the investigation it was said that what he found was just an old remnant. I noted the botanist's family and kept on reading. There is a chance that what you find from these books might be wrong, but in most cases they do lead you somewhere.
Another point of interest I found was a little bit far from the city, it is a small barren rocky mountain like structure. That place apparently existed before the city was built and no rainfall occurred in that region. Generally, it means something or someone made in so that no water elemental energy can stay inside that area. A place worth exploring.
The Final point I found from this book is that towards far north, there is a village where thunder elemental activity is too high; however only outsiders might get struck by it. Another very unusual area where even a seed stage expert could not find any reason for this to happen. I noted down all the coordinates and necessary information about the incident, location and people involved.
Right now after all this excitement, it is time to log off and just take some good amount of break. Suko and Suo already went offline as I can see from my friend list, I went to father and uncle to fill them with all the details about what happened today and what will happen three days later and went off myself.
