Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 027 - Part 1

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To Dance

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TheirWorld

As the sun woke her up from her rest, Dassah cursed it, but went about performing her usual Sunday morning routine. She flipped on her coffee maker, and made herself a decent breakfast. Allowing herself a good hour of calmly waking up and catching up on the news made herself feel a little less guilty about diving into the game for the rest of the day.

Once she logged in, she looked over her quests and stats and decided to forget about the quest her mother had given her about the chores - at least for now. With all that her combat experience gave her, such a benign quest didn’t seem to have a benefit for her, though it would probably be easily accomplished in an hour or so.

Assuming that it was going to take some time for Dawl to find the pelt, she decided to use her time today to finish up her [Receiving an Education] quests, then work on information mining from the Hunters’ Guild and Pastor Jormund. It would not be hard for her to forget about the conversation that she had witnessed the night before, but at the same time, there was the feeling that every event in this game had a purpose.

Sitting on the floor in her house, Guin pulled up her in-game browser and looked up Pastor Jormund by name. Her jaw nearly dropped when she saw the information the posts brought up. He wasn’t just some nice innocent Pastor of a backwater village. He was Jormund the Pale, one of the four generals of the undead armies of the Void Lord - and a major raid boss when attacking the Dark Citadel.

It seemed that she was not the only one who was surprised by the warm, gentle pastor having turned into the infamous monster that he was known as in the main game - but a post from someone who started in another city brought something to her attention: a true meaning behind Crossroads Quests.

Guin looked a the Crossroads quest that had been given to her by Jormund. It seemed harmless enough - but the poster suggested that that was part of the trick the developers played.

The poster wrote:

I don’t think it’s quite so simple as ‘he turns evil’ - this is TheirWorld, after all. I had a crossroads quest when I was in the jade starting town of Roane when a girl asked me to do a series of stupid tasks, but they ended up leading me to a pretty serious fate quest and class quest later on. While doing the crossroads quest, it actually changed a few times, and involved another couple of characters that I got pretty close to who also offered me class quests. The girl ended the crossroads quest and attained a class called ‘Emerald Huntress’, while the other two were just an Alchemist and a Ranger.

When I got into the main game, though, I found out that that girl grew up to be Idiad, Heart Eater, mistress of the vampire Lord Hetharas. Meanwhile, the Alchemist and Ranger were just a trader and a farmer.

I asked a beta friend about it, and he said that he had seen raid bosses change before, and she was one of them. Originally Hetharas’ mistress was a woman named Reitha, the Pestilence - who is now High Priestess Reitha, the Ever Burning, of the Imperial City - the ‘Ever Burning’ class being an outcome of her tutorial city’s crossroad quest. She had a third outcome too: ‘Grey Lady’.

My guess is that the world bosses and monsters are based on the popular choice that players make during these crossroads quests - and that goes for main game ones too. I’ve heard of some people meeting ‘Jormund the Celestial Paladin’ in the Imperial Citadel if they hit the timing just right after The Pale dies in a raid. Sure makes it hard to get those special classes, though - they should be the only trainers for them, by my understanding.

Guin bit her lip and flicked the screen away. So that’s how it is… she thought to herself. She couldn’t imagine that there would be many people who would follow those quests. Could it be an an average-pass-fail system? Wouldn’t that affect the games cannon?

She made her way to the school house, where the first to greet her was the Gatekeeper, who gave her a holey grin. Remembering the bottle of wine, she took it out and handed it him, much to his delight. In exchange, he gave her a fistful of Tutorial Tokens before she entered the grounds.

As they clinked in to her back, she realized that she had dozens upon dozens of such tokens - all of which needed to be used before she left the tutorial. All of the delicious character customization…

Looking back up, her eyes fell upon Qii and his students, who were fighting in the training ring again. A pang of guilt shot through her heart.

Now she understood.

With images of dead animals and the pile of corpses running through her head, she carefully walked over to the shirtless valkyrian that she had so offended earlier.

“E-Excuse me? Mr Qii?” she asked, rather timidly. Though he appeared to ignore her presence, Guin went on, “I wanted to apologize to you. You were right to send me away. I was… ignorant.” His eyes shifted to her, but he said nothing. “I-I don’t really want to be a killer,” she told him, hoping that her honesty was getting across and that it was worth something. “What I want is the power to protect. Protect my friends. Protect the forest. Can you teach me how to do that?”

Qii glared at her. “And just why the change of heart?”

“I… went into the forest. I killed as I needed. But, I also saw the work of someone who killed not as they needed, but as they wished,” she half-lied, hoping he wouldn’t catch her with Liorax’s presence buff supporting her charisma. “The forest… something is happening to the forest, and as I am I am too weak to help my friends. Please,” she begged. “If there is anything you can do to help me help them…”

The valkyrian man glared at her. “You should not have gone into the forest at all,” he told her. “You were lucky you weren’t killed.” Guin fought the urge to argue with him as he said those words. “Nevertheless,” he went on. “It is good that you seem to have learned valuable lessons - not only about combat, but about the value of like; the consequences of death. You ask for a lesson - very well, I will give you a lesson.”

Guin nearly jumped for joy, but contained herself and bowed instead. “Thank you, Master Qii!”

He gave an amused snort. “It seems as if you have already gained the ability that I would have taught you, but if you still want to learn, let’s see what you can do. Will you do anything I say?”

Though the glimmer in his eye suddenly made her nervous, she nodded. She probably deserved any flak he might give her, anyway. So she told him, “I will do what is asked of me. I want to be stronger.”

“Connor!” he shouted and waved over one of the boys that had been in ring. Qii nodded his attention over to Guin and said with a sly grin, “Teach this girl how to dance...”