The Three Kingdoms Online Overlord Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Chain quest

"Congratulations player Searing Sun for reaching level 10. You have arrived at Common World Eastern Han dynasty, Yanzhou province, Taishan state Juping county. It is currently the first lunar month of the 3rd year of Guanghe, Eastern Han (180 AD)! We hope you enjoy your time here!"

Yang Rui was still basking in the joy of leaving the Village of Beginnings when he heard the system announcement. He frowned, Taishan state, Juping county? It was quite far away from his planned location!

In his past life Yang Rui spent a lot of time at Yongzhou, he was more familiar with the geography of that area. Not to mention Yang Rui was a university student at Xi An city, so there was a hint of nostalgia present. Xi An city was the present day location of Yongzhou.

In War of the World, every player that has left the Village of Beginnings would be randomly assigned a birthplace in the game. So there was a chance to be assigned to any location within the game. Players can choose not to register for citizenship at their birthplace, however, transport fees are notoriously high within the game. The starting fee is at 1 gold coin, and it is increases the more distance you want to travel. To travel from Taishan to Yongzhou would cost at least 10 gold coins!

Yang Rui only has a few hundred copper coins. The conversion system in the game states: 1 gold coin = 100 silver coins, and 1 silver coin = 100 copper coins. Simply put, Yang Rui currently only has a little more than 1 silver coin. He is definitely not able to travel anytime soon.

What about getting there on foot? Well that is even worse! The location scale of War of the World is magnified a hundred times from the real world. So to travel from Yanzhou province to Yongzhou would take forever on foot.

From Yang Rui's observations, Taishan state was less developed than Yongzhou. The Yanzhou and Qingzhou regions were the areas that were the most heavily affected by the Yellow Scarves' havoc, it goes without saying that this would severely impede development in these areas.

However, it looks like Yang Rui has no other choice but to register at Taishan state. He would have to leave the decision of immigrating to other regions to another time! Yang Rui pushed his thoughts aside, he cut through the congested streets full of NPC and arrived at the registration point outside the magistrate's office.

There was no other players here to register citizenship, so the whole process was rather smooth.

After that, Yang Rui spent 20 copper coins on 10 white steamed buns, 30 copper coins on a bottle of wine, and started walking around randomly within 10 miles of the four city gates. It was not that Yang Rui was bored and wanted to window shop, instead he was trying to find an important mission NPC- a beggar. The beggar was supposed to give him the Settlement Order quest.

This was an important part of Yang Rui's plan. Under normal circumstances, a Settlement Order can only be looted from a leader-type boss that is at least level 20. Even then, the drop rate is abysmal. Just defeating the boss takes some work. Players must first reach a certain level, clear out the base camp of pirates or bandits, and finally defeat the camp boss to acquire it.

Needless to say, killing the boss is not the only method of acquiring a Settlement Order. In his past life, someone in the forums mentioned that a Russian player managed to build his territory in the second day of the game. It was pretty obvious the Settlement Order did not come from a level 20 boss! The quest that Yang Rui was searching for, was first discovered by a Chinese server player a few days after the game opened.

However, these quest types were rare, or else the Settlement Orders would be in excess. Yang Rui had searched the entire spawn area of the beggar NPC, yet he couldn't find a single trace of him!

Yang Rui knew that the beggar NPC would not spawn at every county, and every hour the NPC will only respawn in a small percentage of counties. Additionally, the position of the NPC isn't fixed to a specific spot in each county!

He searched the north gate for a final time while blaming his own bad luck, just as he was ready to leave and try his luck in the neighbouring states, he discovered a silhouette in the bushes by the city moat.

Yang Rui was delighted by the discovery. Although it was quite far away, but he was quite sure it was the NPC he was looking for. The hard to find bastard was fishing! And he looked really relaxed.

Walking around the city moat and stopping nearby, he could see that the NPC was the beggar he was looking for! Yang Rui was not in a hurry, so he decided to observe and wait for the beggar to approach him instead.

It was not recommended to disturb an NPC that is fishing. A direct interaction may disturb the behaviour of the NPC and cause unwanted situations. The IQ of these NPC's were all quite high. If the NPC misunderstood your actions, the quest would definitely be a failure!

"Sigh! I've run out of earthworms again! Why won't the fish bite today!"

Yang Rui didn't have to wait too long. The old beggar stood up and cast a glance in Yang Rui's direction.

Yang Rui quickly approached the old beggar and started a conversation. He took out the 10 white steamed buns that he prepared earlier.

"Old fellow, here are a few steamed buns, please accept them and satisfy your hunger!"

"Ah, thank you young warrior! Thank you…"

The old beggar hurriedly took the steamed buns and started wolfing them down, all the while repeating his thanks.

"Young warrior is truly a saint! A saint! With the current situation, everyone can hardly make enough for themselves, you have spent too much on me! Too much!"

"Old fellow, eat slowly, there is still a bottle of wine here, I hope you find it palatable. I'll go catch a few more earthworms for you!" Yang Rui passed him the wine and started to look for earthworms.

Even if Yang Rui hadn't taken out the wine, the old beggar would hint that he would like some wine to drink. The end result would be the same, it is only to test if the player is able to catch the hint. If they did, they would get the quest. Otherwise, the quest would be terminated. Yang Rui took out the wine beforehand, so it saved some time.

As for the earthworms, Yang Rui guessed that it was a conversation hint, to allow players to continue the conversation with the old beggar.

The old beggar's eyes lit up, totally forgetting about the steamed buns! After some hesitation, he snatched the bottle from Yang Rui, and took a large swig of it.

"Wine? Gulp… It really is wine!"

The old beggar took a few more gulps, stared at Yang Rui who was walking further away, and stared at the wine bottle in his hand. He shook his head and continued drinking.

When Yang Rui was back, the old beggar was already tipsy.

"I have let the young warrior see a shameful side of me, ol' me was an alcoholic, shameful… but the young warrior is really a saint! A true saint! How about this set of fishing equipment as thanks for the young warrior!"

Yang Rui rejected the offer immediately. The broken state of the fishing equipment aside, it would be terrible if this delayed the Settlement quest.

"Old fellow need not be so gracious! The situation can't be helped, old fellow did not willingly end up in this state. Is there anything else I can do to help?" Yang Rui continued to hint.

Yang Rui was very sure that the old beggar was going to ask for some sheepskin clothes, however the request would require some nudging and prompting, and the conversation hints were very vague. Might as well stop beating around the bush and ask directly!

The old beggar was stunned for a while, but turned sheepish soon after. He hesitated before asking, "then if it is no trouble, ol' me is rather weak to the cold. Was wondering if the young warrior could provide some clothing? The hill to the south has some sheep, its skin can be tailored to clothes and it if very warm…"

As expected. Yang Rui did not delay another second, he agreed to the request, set a meetup location at the north gate, and immediately took off to the south hill. He successfully killed a herd of sheep and collected some undamaged sheepskin.

With only a few mountain wolves in the way, the hunting was quite successful. Yang Rui hardly broke a sweat while fighting them. The only real obstacle was the long winding mountain path within Taishan. Not to mention the numerous mounds that block his path. Yang Rui spent most of his time trying not to lose his way.

All that is left is to get the sheepskin tailored into clothes. For this, Yang Rui was slightly worried: he needed to go to the tailor shop to complete this step and he only had a little over 100 copper coins left!

Luckily, the order for a sheepskin outfit was exactly 100 copper coins! Yang Rui sighed, he was only left with a few copper coins. Who knew that in his mission to satisfy the old beggar, he became a poor beggar himself! He should come up with a way to earn money fast!

Yang Rui tried to remember the shortcuts to making money as he walked back to deliver the sheepskin outfit.

"Young Warrior is a compassionate soul! I have nothing to repay you, please accept my gratitude!" the old beggar looked ready to cry as he kowtowed in front of Yang Rui as he accepted the sheepskin outfit with shaky hands.

"Please, old fellow, it's fine!" Yang Rui held the old beggar and supported him to the stone bench at the side of the city moat. He helped the old beggar put on the sheepskin outfit and kept quiet, waiting for something to happen.

As expected, once the old beggar wore the outfit, he seemingly changed into a different person. His back was straighter, even his demeanor seemed to have changed! His speech seemed to have improved instantly. The old beggar thanked Yang Rui profusely for all his help and told Yang Rui about his past.

The old beggar revealed that he was actually a village head a long time ago. However, years of continuous poor harvest and disasters, with constant harassment from bandits and pandemics caused the village to fall apart. He and his daughter relied on each other for survival, wandering the world.

Yang Rui was familiar with these words, but the last sentence was what he has been waiting for.

"Oh? Where is your daughter now?" Yang Rui grasped at the opportunity.

A wave of sadness washed over the old beggar's expression. After taking a shaky breath, he confessed that when his daughter went to harvest medicine in the mountains alone, she was killed by the tiger in the south mountains.

Yang Rui accepted the quest to kill the tiger without question. This is the final step of the Settlement quest! After calming the old beggar and leaving him, Yang Rui set off to find the tiger with haste.

The Settlement chain quest itself isn't that difficult, the key is in actually receiving it. Additionally, to trigger the quest, the players must also satisfy certain criterias. The beggar quest criteria was to have sufficient food with them. After activation, the player still had to prompt the NPC for information and act accordingly.

These kind of quests fully showcased the uniqueness of quests within War of the World. Trigger criterias, acquiring and deducing information… the NPCs within War of the World have intelligence rivaling that of humans. They are all very humanized, thus the missions within the game do not follow any fixed patterns and are constantly changing.

The last part of the quest is not that easy, it required the player to defeat a level 15 monster! Luckily, it did not require the specific tiger that killed the old beggar's daughter, nor does it require the player to defeat a boss. All Yang Rui needed to do was to bring back 10 pieces of tiger skin.

The area behind the south mountains was populated by a level 15 monster called "Taishan short-legged tiger". It was strong, but the main concern for Yang Rui was that this area did not only contain tigers, but also packs of level 12 wild wolves!

Yang Rui was only level 10, his equipment was poor, so each tiger was a tedious process. He had to recover HP after each tiger! As for the packs of level 12 wolves, Yang Rui could only try to avoid them.

In total, Yang Rui spent around 3 hours before finally acquiring the 10 tiger skins. Yet after killing so many mobs, the exp bar did not increase by any significant amount! Levelling after 10 is really hard.

As he handed the tiger skins to the old beggar, he noted that it has been 10 hours since the game has been opened. The time ratio between the real world and the game was 1:1, Yang Rui has been busy the whole night!

"Mission complete! The old village head is grateful and wishes to give you a Settlement Order. Do you accept?"

When he saw the Settlement Order in the old beggar's hands, Yang Rui completely forgot about the troubles he took to finish the quest and selected "accept" immediately.

The Settlement Order is finally in my hands!

Translated by doodlebleh

Edited by trivialking and Sage

Chapter end