Chan Si's first destination was back to the Pulsing Valley. She first made another stop at the secret merchant, clearing up some inventory space. His eyes briefly flashed red as her party left his ‘shop'.

She did not go back outside from the cave system, but instead traveled deeper into it, quickly killing the elementals in her way.

A few minutes later the cave system opened up into a humongous cavern. There was a shoddy arena set up in the middle, though the cheap looking wooden posts making up its barrier were covered in glowing runes of every color.

The stalactites on the ceiling occasionally dripped.

Surrounding the arena were npc [Gamblers], watching the arena below with rapt interest, cheering and booing.

And in the arena itself, two elementals fighting to death.

A huge Earth elemental in the shape of a bear swiped at a grinning Dark elemental, tearing through it.

Literally through it, as the Dark elemental dissipated and reappeared behind the Earth elemental, blasting it with a beam of Dark energy. The Earth elemental slammed against the arena wall, being simultaneously assaulted with every element as a result.

It couldn't withstand the attack and was vanquished, becoming no more than a pile of rocks.

“Victory to the Dark elemental!" a booming voice announced, echoing throughout the cavern.

Several of the gambling npcs stood up in joy, while others looked as though they had swallowed a bug.

Sunshine walked past the area with the gamblers, through a beaded curtain, and into the backroom.

In this back room, several tough looking npcs with names like [Dark Elemental Owner] and [Fire Elemental Owner] milled about, their noted elemental in a cage beside them. The cages were inscribed with the same runes as the the arena, and the elementals inside were either sleeping or thrashing around furiously.

Many players took pity on the elementals here, but there was no known method to free them. Attacking the NPCs in the area would just have the elementals sent after the players, and new NPCs would always replace the ones players killed.

Chan Si simply did not care, it was a game and she was here to meet the conditions of unlocking a subclass for Sunshine.

[Elemental Tamer]!

The subclass would provide precisely three [Skills], with no stat bonuses or additional statistic multipliers to the class itself. While it was by no means the strongest subclass for Dual Elemental Masters, it was the one that would benefit Chan Si's overall farming the most this early on.

The first [Skill] was [Basic Elements], it provided a statistic multiplier to the owner's elementals. Common elementals got a 2x statistical multiplier, Uncommon got 1.75x, Rare 1.5x, and Legendary 1.25x. Elementals had only middling statistics compared to other pets, as most of their strength was in their [Skills], but it was still a great boon and would greatly ease how much Sunshine had to heal them.

The second [Skill] was [Backup Elements], it allowed to Dual Elemental Master to tame two additional Elementals, one of each of their elements. However, they would be held in a stasis on the Dual Elemental Master's person. Then, if they wanted, they could swap out one of their Elementals with the second one of the same type. They could even summon the back up if the other one died!

For Chan Si who valued such flexibility in her quest to break the game, it was a great [Skill].

The third and final [Skill] provided by the subclass was [Rescind Element], it allowed the Dual Elemental Master to teleport one of their elementals next back to them.

It was shame pets couldn't be used to loot.

The popularity of the subclass among Dual Elemental Masters was fairly high, as it wasn't very complex, but provided solid benefits for almost any strategy.

To unlock it, Sunshine would need to defeat a series of three fights in this elemental dogfighting arena, commanding Fuel and Brighty to defeat enemy teams.

Like most Uncommon subclass unlock quests, although it scaled in difficulty to the character's level, it was not particularly difficult.

Gearme's Rare subclass quest would be much, much worse.

“I want to enter the fights,” Sunshine said the quest activation keywords to a smoking dwarf npc named [Dally, Elemental Arena Master]. “Two versus two.”

Dally's sharp eyes scanned Sunshine with a glance. “Fifty gold upfront, double or nothing each fight.”

Sunshine handed over the gold.

Meanwhile, Chan Si's other characters bet their money on Sunshine to win her fights.

If they went to farm while Sunshine did the quest, the distance would be too great and she wouldn't receive any experience, so Chan Si decided to have them spend their time betting instead. There was a maximum bet amount which she met with all four characters, but Chan Si could always use as much money as possible.

Sunshine commanded Fuel and Brighty into the arena.

“We've got a two versus two, just for you fighting fans! On the challenger's team, a Light elemental and Fire elemental!” Dally's loud voice rung throughout the cavern. “On the home team, a Metal elemental and Toxic elemental!”

The teams one faced for the quest weren't random, but instead determined based on which elementals were on one's own team.

The Metal elemental was rusty, shaped into a panther with broken wings constructed from junk; [Junkcat]. Meanwhile, the Toxic elemental was a large cross between a frog and bat with an oversized mouth in proportion to the rest of its body, drool dripping from it only to sizzle against the floor; [Acidmouth Fiend]

“Fight!”

The two enemies charged towards Fuel, instantly recognizing him as the easier kill. Sunshine wouldn't allow this, ordering Brighty to his blinding taunt. With the enemies disoriented, Sunshine directed her team to concentrate on the Acidmouth Fiend, as it was the damage dealer between the two. It was a straightforward strategy, but effective.

This was Chan Si's advantage from doing the quest at such a low level, she could accomplish it with Common elementals.

Soon the Acidmouth Fiend fell, at which point finishing off the Junkcat was simply a matter of patience to get past its high defense.

As Sunshine prepared for the second fight, two male orc players approached the rest of Chan Si's group at the betting stand. They were the only other players in the place.

“Is that your friend?" asked the first orc, pointing towards the arena. He had on fancy looking green robes, and wore tiny glasses that gave him the air of a scholar.

“Introduce yourself first, Kovt,” the other orc said, his black eye mask and cape offering a roguish look. “I'm Justice."

Naturally, Chan Si ignored them.

“She's doing the quest for the Dual Elemental Master pretty quickly,” noted Kovt.

Sunshine was already half through the second fight against two Earth elementals.

Justice waved a hand in front of Gearme's face. “Hello?”

Gearme flicked his eyes towards Justice, then back to ignoring.

“What the fuck,” Justice said, looking more confused than angry.

“We should leave them alone,” Kovt said.

“Where else are we going to find someone to help us with the secret quest?" Justice asked. “At this rate the timer is going to run out.”

Chan Si did not respond to this either.

After all, she had already researched all the common scams in the game.

The scam was simple. When a sketchy player had a quest they had trouble accomplishing, but did not want to share the rewards for, they would rope some gullible players into helping. However, the only role of those players would be as bait, existing to draw enemy aggro while the scammer completed the quest.

The methods to rope such players in were many, and pretending like the quest was a secret quest was one of them. Of course the player could request a copy of the quest information, but if a player was smart enough to do so, then they were not a good scam target, and the scammer would go find another target.

The number of players who fell for this scam, even though the game had been out for years, was sad.

“I didn't want to lose out on that legendary Dual Elemental Master subclass," said Kovt, tears welling up, “but we have no choice. If they don't want to help, we can't force them.”

The two orcs stood there awkwardly.

In the arena, Sunshine finished the second fight, and started the third. It was of course the hardest, as it was against a Water elemental and Dark elemental.

After a few more seconds of silence, Justice sighed. “Lets go, Kovt.”

The two orcs left very slowly, occasionally stopping to look back at Chan Si's group.

Sunshine, meanwhile, executed her strategy for winning the final fight. She tricked the grinning Dark elemental into doing its beam attack, targeting Fuel, only for Fuel to fly away at the last moment, the beam blasting the Water elemental into the arena wall, ending its life.

Something like this was considered an intended solution for overcoming the difficulty of the fight, but that didn't mean it was easy to pull off in properly aligning and timing one's commands.

At least, it wasn't easy for most.

For Chan Si, it was easier than ignoring the two orcs.

Kovt and Justice only creeped fully out of the cavern as Sunshine finished her final fight, her two elementals ganging up on the Dark elemental.

Dally announced Sunshine's victory, then approached her with a pouch of money and an angry expression. “Alright, no more fights for you. Take your money and leave, ‘champion’."

She did so.

As Chan Si's party left the cavern, they passed by Kovt and Justice. “You changed your mind?!” Kovt asked.

They walked past.

===

Now alone in the caves, Kovt and Justice looked at one another and sighed.

“Fucking shitty bitchass shit fucks. Do you think they realized before we even hooked the bait?” asked Kovt.

Justice shrugged. “Does it matter? I told you it wasn't a good idea to try out here. Not enough people. It's all a numbers game.”

“I fucking hate when your dumbass is right. Where to, then?”

“Gallford!” Justice exclaimed. “It's not too far, but plenty of suckers.”

===

Once Sunshine was level 50, she would be able to select the subclass and receive its benefits.

The subclass Chan Si wanted for Pickapart was actually a Common subclass, meaning it had no associated quest.

Pickapart was currently the party's greatest limiting factor to farm speed, due to mana. Even with food and other consumables, Chan Si had yet to reach perfect sustainability with her farming rate. Chan Si wanted the Common subclass of [Dark Speaker], as it was the only non-rare Dark Weaver subclass that increased mana multiplier.

It still wouldn't bring perfect sustainability, but would massively increase Chan Si's farm rate.

As for why she did not desire a Rare subclass to increase mana, simply speaking Chan Si did not have the time to dedicate the group to fulfilling the conditions of multiple Rare subclasses before level 50, especially with how spread out over the map they could be.

She would take the fast and easy boost now, and later she would have more time to acquire something better without slowing the party's farming speed with too much travel time.

All the difficulty at this stage would be in accomplishing Gearme's Rare subclass quest.

[Plague of Undeath]!