“What Should Be Protected”

<<One hour until automatic resurrection. Would you like to respawn immediately?>>

<<During this event, there is no XP penalty.>>

<<The previous spawn point cannot be found. You there. do not have any other valid points. will at a random location within the starting zone.>>

"What?!"

When Wayne opened his eyes, there was an empty wasteland before him. The sun had nearly set, though, so in the fading sunlight he couldn't tell if this area was all wasteland or not. Overhead, a sea of stars twinkled around a full moon. Even after the sun was completely gone, it wouldn't be pitch black.

"I died… which is fine. Well, it's not fine, but well, not much I can do about it. If my spawn point couldn't be found, that means…"

Wayne's respawn point was set to that rundown Erfahren inn, meaning it must have been destroyed. Ever since the official launch, he couldn't remember ever logging out anywhere else. And since he had no other possible spawn points, he was forced to randomly respawn at one of the starting spawn points. Which meant that, even if he didn't know exactly where he was, this wasteland should at least be in the Kingdom of Hiers.

While this event was centered around monsters attacking various border cities, it had still only been one day since the event began. It seemed highly unlikely for every possible starting spawn point in Hiers to have been rendered unusable in such a short amount of time. So, since Wayne chose Hiers as his starting area, the game should have chosen from the available options within Hiers.

Normally, it was impossible for starting spawn points to become unusable. If the inn was no longer available, Wayne should have respawned back in that prairie outside the city. However, during that update after the official launch, the starting spawn points were adjusted in order to lower the difficulty level for new players. According to the game website, it was no longer possible to get a starting area that would be considered hard. Since Wayne didn't respawn at the prairie, that meant that the prairie had been designated a high-difficulty zone. So it must have been taken over by monsters, by those scary ants.

It was nice to know that newbies couldn't be spawn camped at one of the starting areas, but being transported to who knows where in the middle of an event was a pain in the ass. That said, at Wayne's level, he wouldn't have been able to survive more than a few minutes if he had respawned in that ant-infested prairie.

"Nah, it'd probably be the same for anyone… Those monsters never showed up in the forest. If it were Rare or someone else who had been grinding in the forest, maybe they could survive."

Rare said she would be PKing players within that forest. Even if she was a PKer, though, she wouldn't just ignore the monsters. So when she wasn't hunting players, she should have been grinding monsters. Maybe Rare could easily farm monsters like those ants. Groups of those scary-ass ants. It felt like she should be at least that strong. Strong enough to put up a good fight against a force capable of destroying an entire city.

"Dammit, I still can't reach her. But she can't farm XP like that forever."

The more XP you used, the harder it became to earn more XP. That's why most players would steadily change where they farmed as they progressed. If she kept hunting in the same place, no matter how many people she PKed, someone would eventually overtake her.

No, he had to stop thinking about Rare. What was more important was his current situation. The places that were safe in Hiers were far from monster territory. Aside from the event causing monsters to flow out from monster territories, any starting spawn point should now naturally be safe.

But since there was an event right now, that was a huge disadvantage. Since there was no XP penalty from dying, some might think that this was a big bonus stage where you could keep fighting forever without worrying about dying. However, they were wrong. If you die, then obviously you have to respawn. And if you lose your respawn point, then you end up like Wayne did.

He was too late to realize it. What the human side should have been protecting were not the cities themselves or the NPCs, but the inns.

No, that was also incorrect. NPCs couldn't respawn when they died. It was the right choice to protect them. Maybe because he had been thinking of Rare, his thoughts had begun to depart from the idea of valuing human life. He really needed to watch himself.

In any case, since Wayne was unable to protect either of them anyway, he was still too weak. The event wasn't over yet. Even if he had gotten transported to some remote, backwater place, there were still nine days left to go. He should still be able to do something. But for now, he would have to start with walking.

Since there were no visible landmarks in this wasteland, Wayne didn't know where he should be going. There could have been some city in the far distance, but in this darkness he wouldn't be able to tell at all. But there was nothing to be gained in worrying about it either. If he ended up choosing the wrong direction and found himself going away from where he wanted to be, he could just die and bet on randomly respawning somewhere better. There wasn't any permanent penalty to dying during the event, after all. He could just keep dying until he hit a jackpot. That was his plan: Respawn Roulette.

After picking a direction at random, Wayne set off. He first wanted to find a road. Starting spawn points were always near a city. And if there was a city nearby, then there had to be a road as well.

Wayne kept plodding forward while fending off the coyotes that occasionally attacked him. Without the sun to light his way, Wayne relied on the full moon and the stars. After walking for a while, the sound of his own footsteps changed. He had found one. A road.

"I'm finally on a road. Now I just need to decide which way to go down it…"

He stood in the middle of the road thinking. Then he realized that he could make out the faint sound of running water.

"Is there a river near here…? That means this road might travel along that river. So my options are to go upstream or downstream now… I feel like…going downstream gives me a higher chance of finding someone's house."

He didn't really have any basis to believe that. Although everything he'd done so far was without basis anyway.

"For now, I'll go find the river and see which way it…—!"

Footsteps. Lots of them. Wayne strained his eyes, staring into the darkness; a group of somethings was coming down the road. He stood there observing them for a while, but they kept on coming, giving no indication of whether they noticed he was there or not. As soon as he was finally able to make out their silhouettes, Wayne also reflexively started running in the opposite direction away from them.

It was a group of skeletons. They had a pretty dark color, but not one meant for blending into the darkness. They might've been a reddish color or something. However, he couldn't exactly turn around to check now.

Those were bad news. Wayne couldn't possibly beat them. It would be fine if he died here and got to play Respawn Roulette, but he didn't want to die either. If he was going to die, then it would be more efficient if he could take something down with him and earn even a little more XP. If he kept going down this road, he should come across a city. He would inform them of the skeletons, help them prepare their defenses, then wait until morning to intercept them. If he had a city backing him up, then it was possible for them to emerge victorious.

If any of the skeletons gave chase, Wayne wouldn't be able to outrun them. They couldn't incur the Fatigued status, after all. Fortunately, perhaps because they had no interest in him, he didn't get the sense anything had come after him. He didn't know how far it was to the city, but Wayne was resolved to keep running throughout the night.