Before going to the adventurer's guild, Sunshine stopped at the market and sold all her spare items, obtaining the twenty silver from the Crystal Flowers and one gold, fifty three silver from the items she had just gained, which when combined with the fifty silver she already had, put her at two gold and twenty three silver.

While she technically did not need to sell the shoes yet as either way she was unable to purchase anything useful, she was confident that 1 additional Reflexes would make no difference in the speed or success of any of her tasks, just the acts of putting them on now and taking them off later would be a waste of time.

Reflexes was a statistic that, while technically gave gains every point, same as any other statistic, these gains were so small that they could only be really felt every ten points. It wasn't a less useful stat by any means, the bonuses were great, but at level 1, Chan Si would rather have 1 point in any other statistic except maybe Force, as Force had a similar problem of being too marginal on a point-by-point basis.

It was still great to wear gear with those statistics, but it would simply need to be a higher amount to be worth more than selling. That, or the gear would need to have some other reason to be worn. If the shoes had any armor rating at all she would have worn them in an instant, but out of the items she had received, only the pants had armor rating, in this case the lowest possible value while having any armor rating at all, 1.

Unlike the physical and magical defense provided by Hardiness and Stability, which would provide a % reduction to the damage taken, armor rating would reduce the damage by a flat amount, after physical defense. Armor rating only applied to physical attacks, but there was also barrier rating for magical damage, and resistance rating for specific elements.

In any case, armor rating was considered a very good things, and most people wanted as much as possible. The issue was that the more armor rating a piece of gear applied for its level, the more likely it was to require a certain amount of physique to be worn, so although it wouldn't be class restricted, it wasn't like just anyone could wear it. Not only that, but the highest armor ratings tended to provided penalties to movement, attack, and casting speed, just like the tower shield.

In the end, it was typically better for players to focus on gaining useful statistics and [Skills] from their items, and focusing on armor rating second, only going with the armor that provided penalties if they had the proper build to take advantage of it. A shield had armor rating but the armor rating would only activate when the shield was struck, it wasn't like the armor rating of other pieces of gear.

The ratio of Reflexes to attack speed improved at a steady rate for the first 1000 points of reflexes. Regardless of how fast or slow a weapon attacked, it could be expressed as having 100% attack speed delay.

Each point of Reflexes reduced the attack speed delay by 0.05%, meaning that at 20 Reflexes, one would have an attack speed delay of 99%, being faster by just that much. Every 20 reflexes this would improve further, to 98%, 97%, and so on, until one reached 50%, being able to attack twice as fast as they originally could at 1000 Reflexes.

Once they reached 1000 Reflexes however, the rate of improvement would slow down dramatically, they would need to hit 10,000 Reflexes to halve their attack speed again, to attack four times as fast. There were only a few players who had managed to hit that mark at the topmost levels, playing Reflex heavy classes and wearing a lot of Reflex enhancing gear.

After that it slowed down even further, and it was estimated to take 100,000 Reflexes to halve again!

That was a tremendous number, even the class with the best Reflex gain in the game with both Physical Focus into Reflexes and putting every spare point into Reflexes, along with currently known subclasses that would grant additional points in Reflexes, could maybe hit 30,000 Reflexes before gear at a hypothetical level 999.

Even if the gear doubled the effective Reflexes, they would not be able to hit it, they would likely need a great number of buffs on top of that.

There was attack speed increasing gear, which acted as phantom points in Reflexes but only for the purpose of attack speed, and not any other factor, and was more efficient than Reflex gear if the main thing one cared about was DPS, especially KPS as in the case of Gearme and other Ballistas.

The other two factors of Reflexes, dodge chance and critical damage, would not be greatly important to most DPS. However, most who cared about attack speed would stack both Reflexes and attack speed boosts in combination, to get the maximal possible effect.

Of course if one had hit some kind of threshold, like recently reaching 1,000 points, then because the requirements went up one might temporarily focus on other statistics with their gear until they would get a significant boost again.

Weapon [Skills], which is to say [Skills] which base their damage off one's weapon, would use Attack Speed rather than Acuity to determine how fast the skill to be used. Gearme's Quick Shot would improve with his attack speed, for example, as its damage was expressed as 100% of weapon damage rather than a calculation without weapon damage.

The [Skill] cooldown was also based on Reflexes, so a Reflexes based class could spam an exceeding number of [Skills] as long as they used weapons, though the bonus Reflexes provided to [Skill Cooldown] also applied to non-weapon skills, like magic. It was a good statistic, the problem with focusing too much on it is it would leave one very fragile and without the resources to properly take advantage.

Dodging was all or nothing, either an attack hit you or didn't, and it was impossible to obtain a 100% dodge chance against an enemy of equal level, as their bonuses to hit would be great as well, meaning that while dodging could increase effective health, it wouldn't be reliable enough to allow for a true dodge tank build.

When Sunshine returned with the treasure box, she shoved it across the desk to Koko, who awkwardly caught it before it fell.

Koko was halfway through a terse ‘congratulations’ when Sunshine interrupted her.

“Next quest," she said, already having gained the 2000 experience from this quest as well.

“Your-”

“I accept.”

Sunshine's behavior towards Koko was nothing extraordinary. Countless players spoke over NPCs, and Koko had been dealing with that behavior again and again, day after day.

It wasn't all bad, at first, but it had worn on her, and she was sick of it. To put it into programming terms, there was a variable in the code which ticked up by 1 every time someone interrupted her. It could be said to represent her ‘annoyance’, and with Sunshine's most recent interrupted, Koko's ‘annoyance’ had hit a predefined value.

“I quit!” Koko slammed her palm against the counter.

Chan Si was excited. Had she triggered a secret quest?

Even other players stopped what they were doing, observing the scene.

“Please tell me you're recording this,” whispered a ghoul player in bulky iron armor which menaced with spikes.

“Oh hell yeah,” replied the Lizardfolk player at his side. He had a more fashion focused appearance, looking like a combat butler.

Koko did not offer Sunshine any secret quest, nor do anything special. She simply left her spot at the counter, quickly walked across the room, and left out the entrance.

Some players tried to stop her along the way, including the ghoul, but they were ignored.

Half the players followed her, and the other half approached Sunshine, a clamoring of players asking for information on how she did that, did she get a secret quest, could she share the quest, did she already complete the secret quest, what was the a reward, and so on.

Chan Si ignored them as she wondered if she should follow Koko as well, or perform the final quest for being accepted into the adventurer's guild, which was a mock fight against an NPC who was also part of the guild. She wouldn't be allowed to use magic during the mock fight, so she didn't care that her mana had yet to refill. It was truly a mock fight, it replied almost entirely on a player's skills rather than [Skills].

In the end, she decided that not only was the chance of something special happening worth it, but that if she delayed the final quest by just a bit it would be time to log in with her True Totem Demon, which would grant her a wide array of combat knowledge to make the mock fight faster.

Thus, Sunshine left the guild, spotted the crowd surrounding Koko, and ran after them.

Koko's pace was a power walk, so Sunshine caught up quickly. Rather than join in the random shouting of various words that the other players were engaging in - random attempts to trigger a secret quest - she observed the situation.

Koko was ignoring every single player, and even the various NPCs that dotted the walkways and bridges. She was looking straight ahead, only shifting her eyes when she had a turn to make.

Several players brought out various high leveled consumable food and alcohol and tried offering them, but she ignored those players too. Sunshine theorized that the change in behavior had nothing to do with her specifically, and tried to test it by entering Koko's field of vision.

Sure enough, Koko's eyes didn't so much as move a millimeter. She felt like that was enough data when combined with the lack of secret quest assigned to her; if there was a secret quest here, then it wouldn't be for her necessarily. Thus, if she wanted to trigger it, she would need to be a step ahead of the other players. Of course, she wasn't willing to spend too much time to figure it out, as she had other important matters.

She decided that if she made no progress by the time she logged into her True Totem Demon, she would give up on the potential secret quest and go finish the questline for entering the Adventurer's Guild.

Koko eventually reached her home. Almost all NPCs had a home, as they did not actually perform their regular NPC functions for 24 hours a day. Instead, they would function for 12 hours, and typically another NPC would be on hand to take their place during the following 12 hours.

Koko was the ‘day receptionist’, she functioned as the local adventurer guild's first floor NPC between the hours of 7 AM and 7 PM. It was not the end of her shift, and yet she was returning home. Chan Si briefly wondered if she would be replaced by a new NPC, or if the other NPC would show up for the day shift.

After making it home, Koko opened the door, walked inside, and slammed it behind her. Players had been attempting to squeeze inside in the brief moments the door was opened, but an invisible force had stopped them.

Players shifted tactics from yelling random words to pounding on the door like a horde of zombies.

Other players began singing and dancing.

A few high leveled players circled the building, looking for other entrances, but were unable to enter through the windows as well.

Chan Si considered what the trigger to the secret quest could be, if there was one. All the other players were trying the obvious methods, if the answer was something obvious like that then she could only give up in comparison, she did not have the money or levels to compete.

The more she considered the situation, the more convinced she became that either there was no secret quest here, or that it was a preparation step to a later secret quest which would trigger elsewhere. There were simply no clues to pick up on at the moment. It was almost time to log into her True Totem Demon besides, so Chan Si decided to give up and focus on her plans.

That she was potentially giving up on fabulous rewards did not bother her, because she had confidence in her abilities and planning.

She would not throw away her advantages for such a small chance of reward!

As Sunshine made her way to the final Adventurer Guild quest for joining, it was finally time to log in with her final humanoid character, the orc True Totem Demon, Ulna.