Chapter 77. Lundebarun (1)

 

Several things happened in the early morning when all preparations were made to leave Tikris.

 

First of all, the Street of Coins, which was the first thing we ran into during our stay at Tikris, was filled with sounds of hurrahs, just like the Lympu children said.

 

The Lympu children filled all the slot machines overnight, so the people playing on the slot machines would hit a jackpot just by pulling the lever down.

 

A huge crowd gathered for this, and all the coins in the slot machines ran out in an instant.

 

And eventually, the people gathered started to get angry.

 

It was because the advertisement saying that there were a few Ormachon tokens hidden among the countless slot machines was revealed to be fake.

 

Many tourists were very shocked at the fact that they were scammed by a single NPC.

 

It was only a natural reaction from them since most of the victims were only here for the purpose of ‘tourism’.

 

The usual players knew that most things that happened in the virtual reality game were no different from reality, and they developed a certain degree of tolerance.

 

However, most of the victims, in this case, were literally here to experience virtual reality for the first time, so they were even more shocked.

 

Soon, many people started to protest, and the officials from Tikris recognized this and immediately organized an investigation team consisting of Platinum Head and high-ranking officials from Tikris to raid Suyaman’s house.

 

Of course, the investigative team found him soaked in his own blood, and took action immediately. And the case was quickly closed as he acknowledged his fraudulent activity.

 

Just like what Khea said, he was put under judgment by many people.

 

In the end, Virens was removed from his position of Gold Head the next day after the incident that happened in the Path of Olives.

 

The Tikris Information Guild distributed the information to the mercenary market by placing a 3,000 gold bounty on him, who disappeared in an instant.

 

However, the huge organization behind Virens: The Silver Cat Society, as it is the same in real life, was not even mentioned or investigated since it seemed to have a complicated relationship with high-ranking people.

 

In other words, Virens was completely isolated now.

 

Considering the 3,000 gold bounty on his head, and the fact that part of their funds disappeared in an instant because of Khea and me, something made me think that the mercenaries won’t be the only people chasing after Virens.

 

Furthermore, I also learned a lot from this Tikris incident, which started with logging out to take a break.

 

***

[Translator – Dawn]

[Proofreader – Karane]

***

 

That was the first time I looked at ‘Circuit Wiki’, which was a wiki website that contained numerous experiences and knowledge of many players, and Circuit Master, which was the representative circuit community website.

 

And of course, the keyword was ‘Lundebarun’.

 

According to the article,

 

Much like Asparagan, Lundebarun was a metropolis that many players headed to after learning the basic rules of the Circuit world in their designated ‘Village of Beginning’.

 

Although located within Asparagan’s territory, these ‘Wizards of the White Tower’ of Lundebarun, which have established themselves as independent forces, acted as one gigantic guild like the information guild or the mercenary guild.

 

The Wizards of the White Tower are generally the same as the common ‘wizards’ in other games that players refer to, but in Circuit, they are treated as something more special.

 

In the existing PC online games, the class of a wizard was a very basic and easily obtainable class.

 

However, in Circuit, searching for a person with the wizard class was as hard as trying to find a needle in the desert, and that was why they were treated specially.

 

Before talking about the special treatment, it can’t be helped but explain the types of classes.

 

There are ‘extremely few’ people in the world of the Circuit who have a ‘rare job’ that many players desire to obtain.

 

Furthermore, the number of these rare classes is extremely ‘limited’ as players have to receive ‘inheritance’ from these very few individuals, or through ‘training’.

 

There is also something called a ‘hidden class’ which is different from the rare class. It is a class that can only be obtained through clues recorded in literature or ancient relics, not through inheritance or training.

 

Hidden classes are ‘one and only’, which means once the class is obtained, it cannot be obtained by any other individual unless that hidden class is recorded in other clues or ancient relics.

 

If an NPC or a player decides to spread this class through inheritance or training, the classification changes to ‘rare class’.

 

And when the number of people who possess this rare class increases, after hitting a certain number, its classification will be changed to general class.

 

And of course, classes that are considered rare and hidden are not considered an ‘OP character’.

 

{Circuit} is very much different from games that only move through simple commands of pressing a button and executing with perfect precision.

 

This was mentioned many times before, but {Circuit} was a game with too many variables.

 

In {Circuit}, an individual’s ‘mindset’ would have a great effect on the ‘spec’ of a character.

 

Therefore, no matter how great and rare a class was, in the end, the key to victory was how much one understands his or her own class and acts accurately in accord with that.

 

In other words, it is a game where ‘control’ made up of thoughts and actions dominates.

 

Of course, there are additional factors to consider besides just control.

 

After all, because it was a game world, your quality of gear exerted a great influence as a powerful factor.

 

However, excluding all these factors and discussing which classes are the strongest and weakest was nothing more than just a childish discussion. 

 

Rather, ‘general classes’ were proven to be much more advantageous to the general public since there are many players and NPCs who had already established much information with numerous derived traits and individualities of the class that has been verified hundreds of thousands of times.

 

‘General classes’ offered for various types of classes which could satisfy all the personal preferences of numerous players.

 

People with ‘Rare classes’ had to find their own styles after they had to finish a hardship called ‘inheritance’ or ‘training’.

 

And the ‘Hidden classes’ in which forced the player to find, establish and achieve everything by oneself from start to finish.

 

These three class classifications are the crossroads that players who play {Circuit} have to think about the most and choose.

 

Okay now, which classification does this class named ‘Wizards’ belong to?

 

Wizards, who are evaluated for their extreme difficulty in earning this class, are surprisingly classified as a ‘general classes’ group.

 

The surprisingly hard difficulty of the tests to obtain the wizard class was very famous among players, and three major obstacles were the main reason for the extremely difficult tests.

 

The first was that ‘knowledge’ had to be accumulated. In other words, in order to get a class as a wizard, an extreme level of ‘studying’ was necessary.

 

Anyone who was curious as to why wizards in any other general games required high intelligence stats, I’d suggest they play {Circuit}.

 

Because as they try to become one in Circuit, they will find out why.

 

One would only be able to pass the tests of the White Tower only with the knowledge accumulated on the basis of reading the countless amount of books with high intelligence stats in {Circuit}.

 

The test site was literally like a battlefield, where the test taker had to solve its contents that change every day on the same day, at the same time, and in a limited area.

 

The second factor was the closed characteristic of the wizards themselves.

 

Even the NPCs knew only little about the wizards, so players had great difficulty ‘accessing’ them in the first place.

 

The White Tower was not even accessible in a normal way, and one can only enter it by passing the ‘exam’ with the ‘knowledge’ described in the previous explanation.

 

Even after passing the test, one would need to be prepared to be rejected by the countless wizards.

 

Because they were all picky little children with hundreds of colored glasses in their pockets, but at the same time gentle and capricious boomers.

 

Considering the nature of {Circuit}, it is necessary to establish a social relationship with NPCs. And it is certain that someone would punch a wizard who acts horribly toward them.

 

And last but not least, one would need a ‘recommendation written by three or more wizards’ to be able to get a formal title of a wizard, even if one passed all the tests and gained new knowledge in the White Tower and have the basic power equivalent to a wizard.

 

This was the part that showed the peak of the closed characteristics of the wizards explained in the second part.

 

If someone was to act as a wizard, ignoring this rule of recommendation, then that person would be chased by the White Tower’s pursuers until death.

 

Even with a tremendous amount of effort, the final result is ultimately decided by a single moment of emotion, so it was only natural that an extremely few players could acquire the class of a wizard.

 

If you ask why a wizard job with such a difficult acquisition difficulty is classified as a ‘general class’,

 

It was because the wizards class was the most prestigious class in the world of {Circuit}, and the number of wizards produced from the White Tower was actually a lot. And lastly, the class had the characteristics of a standard ‘general class’ which was to have many information and traits already established by the previous pioneers.

 

As such, within {Circuit}, the childish argument saying that a ‘hidden class’ is stronger than any other class doesn’t work.

 

Suddenly becoming a pioneer of that class would put that person in a situation to try all kinds of things, which could be nothing more than just some bothersome chores.

 

As a result, I went through Azharus and Tikris to get various information, but I could not get almost any information about Sharan. Rather, the above-listed information obtained by searching the Internet for about 30 minutes while logged out was more overwhelming than the information I got through my adventures.

 

The fact that the information I acquired through surfing the web for 30 minutes was much greater than the information I acquired through 3 days, 9 days in Circuit time, almost made my head turn white.

 

It was also a moment when I desperately realized once again that a game is ‘just a game’ in the end.

 

However, even though I had to leave Azharus because of the hidden quest that I unexpectedly encountered and the concentration of attention that resulted from it, I was able to find some clear information in Tikris after suffering through some turns and twists.

 

This meant that the time I spent in the world of {Circuit} wasn’t just a waste of time after all.

 

If I searched through Circuit Master beforehand and focused on searching the wizards, the opportunity to visit Khea’s homeland would’ve been pushed much further.

 

Then I wouldn’t have encountered a hidden quest, and Khea would’ve been stuck in sadness, unable to find out the cause of the death of her dear friend.

 

It even could’ve made my relationship with Khea worse.

 

‘Play the game with guides’ vs ‘Play the game without guides’.

 

In {Circuit}, the latter option was overwhelmingly advantageous. Of course, this was just my personal opinion.

 

There wasn’t such a thing as perfect ‘guides’ in the world of {Cricuit}.

 

However, based on the information recorded by the pioneers, the number of players who blindly followed their footsteps was very large. And as a result, that information was starting to get treated as ‘guides’.

 

Also, due to the nature of {Circuit}, where there were almost no duplicate quests, many players tend not to carelessly speak of the quests they were currently on.

 

And that was just a natural thing, even when I thought about it too.

 

One may ask why the players who were victims of the secret gambling that took place at Tikris didn’t reveal any facts to the public through a community website.

 

That reason was obvious.

 

It was because a quest not owned by anyone else appeared in front of them.

 

And if they were to leak this information?

 

Countless players would move to Tikris just to get a piece of this quest, and the quest would end up being solved by some other random player.

 

No matter how painful the death was, every player could come back after 7 days. So what kind of idiots would tell you about a quest that they can challenge over and over again as long as they have time?

 

If the reward of the quest was 2 Ormachon tokens, it was only obvious that nobody would want to speak of that quest to anyone.

 

And as a result of that natural mindset as a ‘player’ caused the Path of Olives to be even more confidential.

 

As such, the quests in the world of {Circuit} were intertwined with very realistic problems and complexities.

 

The NPCs had an effect on the ‘connection’ of a player in this virtual reality game of {Circuit}. And since I wasn’t able to find any clue or traces about her even in a community website like Circuit Master, the thoughts on the traces made my head even heavier than it needed to be.

 

‘Let’s go to the place where the contact crystal ball doesn’t reach without any plans. It would be better if the starting point was Khea’s hometown, right?’

 

Was my mindset when I first started this journey, and here I was.

 

And only now have I realized the reason for Khea’s sensitive reaction to my attitude toward rescuing Sharan.

 

What if she was in the situation of the celebrities that were tortured back when Lidornn threw his declaration of war?

 

What if she was captured by NPCs and was tortured while being unable to log out?

 

I would expect her to call for my help by leaving a thread in ‘Circuit Master’, but since she wasn’t even doing that, there had to be some form of problem.

 

As long as I recognize her as my ‘colleague’ in my head, I couldn’t just overlook the situation.

 

Honestly, I might’ve wasted too much time already.

 

“Elsha, next destination is Lundebarun.”

 

In the huge hall of the cabin where the sunlight was splitting in through the window, I stood tall in the middle of the hall and opened my mouth to speak. Then a pillar of smoke rose from the floor.

 

“My master, you have suggested a new direction. I shall prepare to take off.”

 

Soon the smoke that had changed into the shape of an elf spread its arms,

 

“Lark, Eldo, Padra, with maximum speed.”

 

A resonant voice filled the hall. Then after a moment, I felt my body’s center of gravity shift to one side of the ship and I could see the golden city of Tikris getting smaller and smaller through the window.