Level 1 Fallen

Chapter 206: Interpersonal Relations

Bella’s training atop the hill continued, requiring very little intervention from Diane and I at first. Since she already had her silent shooting down, she just had to practice her long-range sniping. This was not an easy skill to master, but the books that she read in the library had given her some clues.

The first prerequisite was the Scout skill, a common skill for archers to let them see targets at long ranges. However, that wasn’t what the skill would be used for here. Instead, she needed to channel the skill while focusing on various factors such as how to track wind speed, distance, and relative movement with only visual cues.

After mastering this method, she said that she would be able to receive a skill called Marksman’s Eye, which served as the foundation for long-range snipers. At the novice level, this skill would simply tell her the various factors that she needed to watch out for, letting her figure out how to adjust her aim. However, the intermediate level, Sniper’s Focus, actually showed her where her shot would land with the current conditions.

For that reason, Bella was eager to receive this skill and train it, as the Sniper’s Focus skill would let her improve her accuracy on stationary targets to near one hundred percent. Though this wouldn’t be as helpful for moving targets, that was already a great benefit.

She spent two hours just focusing on obtaining the Marksman’s Eye skill, at which point she moved on to live practice. Shooting living targets was bound to give her more skill experience than shooting a single tree repeatedly, so she wanted to put that to use and target the nearby golems.

The monsters near where she was training were wooden golems, which tended to move slowly and monotonously. In fact, you could even consider them to be a type of puppet, depending on how you looked at it. It was possible that the monsters in this area were still related to the puppet dungeon, or there were similar golem-themed dungeons nearby.

Either way, I watched as Bella took her first shot at one of the golems, narrowly missing its head. The bullet impacted off to the side of it, causing it to stop and turn in that direction. While it was stopped, Bella readjusted her aim and fired again, this time hitting it squarely in the head.

Although the black bullet directly struck the golem’s head, and left blackened scorch marks, it was not enough to kill the monster. Most likely, the head wasn’t the vital point of the golem to begin with. It turned towards Bella and began advancing in a straight line.

This gave Bella time to fire off three more shots, this time aiming at its chest. Each shot was powerful, forcing it to recoil back a step before continuing, until finally she revealed a black core in the golem’s chest and shot it. Only then did the golem die.

After that, Bella began targeting more and more golems, most of which died as they were approaching. Unfortunately, the cores were in different locations on each golem, so she couldn’t just target the chest each time. For some of them, she kept firing until they were close enough for Diane and I to intervene before locating the core.

Like this, we spent a full six hours training, returning to the city only after the sun had set. It was almost time for our dungeon run, so we needed to make sure that we were back in time.

As we returned, Diane’s brand lit up, her Player having logged back on. She looked around, her gaze soon landing on me. “Did you find anything?” I asked, and she nodded before starting to type.

There are a lot of rumors about the Questing King, since he’s a pretty public figure. Some of the rumors were bad, so I spent the last few hours sifting through them to determine whether they were just haters badmouthing him or if the bad rumors had actual substance to them.

From what I’ve seen, the Questing King has two main sides to him. Towards other Players, he is not afraid to offend them, even going out of his way to complete conflicting quests first, since those give more experience. However, when it comes to Fallen, he adopts an incredibly respectful attitude. Only Fallen can give quests, and quests are his only means of leveling up.

Thus, unless absolutely necessary, he tries to avoid offending Fallen whenever possible. Instead, he’ll due his best to get on their good side, settle any possible quests for them that they have, and then add them to his friends list for them to contact him if they need anything in the future.

He even brings around a Fallen companion when he travels to act as his ‘advisor’. This advisor doesn’t participate in battles, but assesses the situation for him and issues quests as appropriate. For instance, if they find a new dungeon, his advisor will scout the local monsters and then issue a quest for him to clear it.

I couldn’t help but marvel at that. This advisor tactic essentially bypassed his inability to level normally. However, as a Fallen myself, I knew that there were restrictions to it. The reason that this advisor had to scout out the situation himself was because the quest reward would be greatly lessened if the issuer was not fully aware of the contents of the quest.

In addition, they couldn’t just issue the same quest multiple times, having him repeatedly clear the dungeon multiple times a day to get the experience reward. The only time quests like that were acceptable was when a dungeon was uncontrolled and nobody else was willing to clear it. Even then, they could only issue the quest once a day at most.

Another thing, Diane continued. The Questing King didn’t join the game at release like I did. He didn’t join until the Demon Invasion patch two months ago. In that time, he has risen to level two hundred and sixty, and has fully evolved multiple skills.

My eyes widened in surprise. I had assumed that the Questing King had spent as much time leveling up as Diane had. To learn that he only joined four months after her was a shock. In other words, he must have secured his advisor early on as a source of constant experience.

Did that mean that he was destined to be able to rocket past every other player, and become the undisputed strongest? Personally, I didn’t think so. The strength of his advisor would remain locked, so after a certain point, they would no longer be able to issue suitable quests. When that happened, he would need to cultivate a new advisor of a much higher level.

Most likely, the Questing King himself was already aware of that, and that was why he was establishing this network of cities. Each city represented a connection with a king or queen of a different nation, each with their own connections for him to use for his advantage. His potential for growth was still limited by finding Fallen capable of supporting him with quests, but it would likely be on the level of a top-tier player regardless.

All in all, do you think that we can trust him with that contract his steward suggested? I questioned, and Diane immediately nodded her head.

Since you are a potential quest source, and one with your own high level of growth potential, I expect he will treat you well. He seems to look at long-term goals, so he shouldn’t be swayed by quests asking him to attack you. I wouldn’t be as confident if you were a Player, but as things are I don’t think you have to worry.Also, about those puppet factories, I don’t think you have to worry.

Seeing my confusion, Diane explained. Someone with a trait to enhance appraisals analyzed the Questing King’s trait. It’s not just experience gains that are magnified, but also losses. Since appraisal skills cost experience to train, he can’t train them without risking his hard-earned levels. Appraising one item might cost him two or three levels. Likewise, since his advisor isn’t a combatant, it’s likely that their appraisal skill isn’t high level.

With that in mind, he’s never been able to train up skills to counter appraisals, either. He has the basic Disguise skill, which he might have leveled up to Many Faces like you did, but as for building a disguised status into items, that shouldn’t be possible for him. And if all it took for his reputation to shatter is one appraiser pointing out how his gifts are rigged, I can’t see anyone intelligent taking that risk.

I nodded my head in relief. I would still appraise the puppets and the factory blueprint myself once I had them, but knowing all of this about the other party was extremely helpful. In that case, is there anything else that I need to be wary of, such as guilds or factions that he has made enemies of?

Diane hesitated at that, glancing from side to side. Fallen factions, you don’t really have to worry. But there are a lot of Player guilds that have had their quests stolen by him. There are about twenty different guilds that have bounties to kill him on the forums. And, since the experience penalty of death is magnified, he sneaks around to avoid those people. From what I can tell, he worked out a deal with the developers for his sponsorship, which shows his real face instead of any disguise he’s wearing during clips.

Because of that, nobody knows at the time what his current disguise looks like, and he is able to flaunt how he interacts with the very guilds that are trying to hunt him down.

My brow twitched as I continued to read Diane’s messages. So, when it came to the Fallen, he was a complete ally willing to go to any lengths to help them, so long as it did not conflict with the long-term goal of his growth. Towards Players he had to compete with, he was… a troll. That was the only way that I could describe it.

Still, as long as it was not a problem, there was no harm in accepting the agreement. Besides, it seemed like we would be able to get multiple different blueprints in exchange for some skills, so I was quite happy with the exchange myself.

As the two of us shared private messages, we continued our journey towards the nearby dungeon. Outside were two guard puppets, who watched us as we approached. “Sir Advent and company, your allotted time begins in fifteen minutes,” one of the two said, so we moved to stand off to the side. 

While we were waiting, I looked over at Bella. “So, what are your plans for the dungeon? You won’t exactly be able to put your long-range training to work, right?”

Bella simply smiled, pulling out her twin pistols. “There was a manual on fighting up close with these, so I want to try that out while we’re in this dungeon. Given that the enemies are a bit higher level than us, I might end up dying, but I’m not worried. It’ll be worth a few deaths if I can master a close-range martial art for guns.”

As we were talking, the flap of the tent parted to reveal a group of three Players emerging with disgruntled expressions. Clearly, they didn’t get whatever skill or loot they were looking for in the dungeon. However, we didn’t follow in after they left, using up the remaining time until our entry to allow for things to begin respawning.