Part 2

The children lined up in a row in front of the altar. They were a few years older now. Their surroundings had also changed dramatically.

After being “rescued” from the ghostly town infested with undead, they had been taken in officially by the church and received training to further their individual abilities.

They stood now, in front of the key members of the church. Ready to accept the finality the fruits of their labours.

One by one they walked on to a platform in front of the altar, embedded with the powers of a divine gem, to be receive the blessing of revelation from the high priest.

One by one, they got off the altar, showing expressions of relief and joy. These expressions of course, could only be seen amongst themselves. After all the horrific experiences they had suffered the children had gained the appearance of an emotionless shell.

This of course was not true. They still had emotions. They just learn how to hide them from others. Only those who were close to them were able to read their subtle expressions. Getting close to them was no easy feat either.

However, to those who were close to them, their loyalty ran thicker than blood.

One by one, they got on the alter and received the “truth” of their existence. The blessing of revelation had the ability to reveal the hidden potential of people. It had a high chance of failure and would only activate on those worthy of knowing their “truth”. However, those that had passed it were blessed with high positions.

One by one, the children accepted and passed the test.

One by one, they gained classes of high prestige, among them were Saints, Saint Knight and elite White Knights.

The audience stirred. It was the first time in 80 years that they had seen so many people past the test consecutively.

One by one, they progressed until there was only one left.

It was a young boy. Dark hair hung messily over his eyes as he strolled in front of the high priest.

The other children watched with curiosity. The boy was one of them. He had survived the same hardships they had and just like the rest of them obtained powers they normally wouldn’t be able to possess.

Outwardly, their stares appeared blank and emotionless. However, on the inside they were filled with anticipation. The very notion that the boy would not pass the test was something they hadn’t even considered. They were expecting great things from him. Of course he would not betray their expectations.

The boy stood in front of the high priest. The high priest uttered the incantation for the blessing and…

Nothing happened for a moment.

And then a flash of white light erupted from the platform. The source of it: the boy.

A powerful holy aura surged from him, flooding the room with soothing waves of power. It rapidly condensed and gathered around him becoming more and more blindly bright.

Then it exploded brilliantly forming the outline of an owl, the symbol of the church, and vanished.

The high priest trembled with excitement. The other key members of the church had similar expressions of shock.

Then, in a solemn voice, the high priest answered the question running through the minds of everyone present.

“So… You have finally appeared… Our Divine Saint…”

***

“Hi! Please accept this gift!”

“…”

Ferrex was bored. When he was bored he had a bad habit of doing strange things to entertain himself.

It had been about a day and a half since Godou had disappeared to do whatever foreigners do when then disappear. Unlike the natives to Versailles, foreigners like Godou were freedmen sent by Gaea, the Holy Seer.

“Are you part of the church? Where did you come from?”

“…”

It had been 8 or 9 years since the first foreigners started appearing on Versailles. According to Lexus, foreigners, or users and players as they called themselves, had first started appearing in the central continents and went around exploring and adventuring multiplying in numbers at an alarming pace.

“Are you waiting here for someone?”

“…”

Due to the power of the Holy Seer, players were able to resurrect a few days after being killed. However, their ability to manifest in this world seemed imperfect as they often disappeared every few days to recharge their souls or so Ferrex believed.

“Do you need something to be delivered?”

“…”

Ferrex understood and accepted the fact that Godou couldn’t always be around, but he was bored… It seemed rather cruel of Godou to just leave him by himself in an unfamiliar town for so long.

Although Ferrex could survive and adapt to new environments well due to the training he had since childhood, he really didn’t know how to get close to people easily. He didn’t have a habit of talking to strangers either unless they were introduced by someone he trusted.

“Here’s some money! Bless me!”

“…”

As such, he was completely clueless as to how to reaction in his current situation. Ferrex was currently surrounded by a group of low level players in the town square, all of whom seemed dead set on trying to wring every last bit of information he had about the monster army he had reported with Godou.

It had started the morning after Godou had disappeared. People were curious as to why the monster army wasn’t spotted sooner and had heard that the ones who alerted the mayor were wearing clothes from a church. Naturally, that description led to them finding Ferrex.

Initially, he had told them all they need to know but as soon as he finished telling them someone else would come up and ask for the same thing causing him to repeat himself. Some of them even came back and started giving cheap gifts and showering him with flattery.

(Now really, these guys obviously have some ulterior motive for doing this, but why are they trying to talk to me and not some high ranking official? )

Little did he know that from the eyes of the newbie players Ferrex appeared to a some sort of special event quest giver because he had been waiting in the same area in the town square for almost 2 days.

After wasting half a day’s worth of energy responding to these advances, Ferrex had just decided to ignore them all. Gradually, some of the players left looking disappointed. However new people appeared out of nowhere joined crowd as well so there was no real difference.

“Have you ever…”

(Sigh… This is annoying. Godou hurry up and come back!)

In the corner of his eye, Ferrex could see some players wearing high level equipment watching the crowd around him with amusement.

Speaking of which more high level players seemed to have arrived in town, as well as some Kallamore Knights. Ferrex had heard rumours about why they were there but he didn’t know if they were true or not.

(Wait… were those town guards he was seeing hiding grins as they glanced over in his direction? Don’t just leave me here! Help!)

Although such trivial thoughts appeared in his mind, Ferrex kept his facial expressions as loose and blank as possible. Hiding his true thoughts was a useful skill he had picked up quite a while back.

“…”

Silently, he endured the pestering of the crowd as he waited for Godou to reappear.

***

Godou logged on to find himself in the same place he was when he logged off. Namely, in front of the church of Freya. It seemed to be noon.

Ding!

Defend Naidiriv

A monster army has been spotted close by and appears to be making its way towards Naidiriv. Due to mysterious disappearances of the scouts in Naidiriv, the presence of this army was not detected until a few days previously. Scouts have been sent out to track the progress of the army. The church of Freya has offered to lead this defence army. All those who are interested are to gather in the town square by nightfall today.

Difficulty: Unknown

Restrictions:

Must be at the town square before the main party leaves.

Rewards:

To be determined by your contribution in defending Naidiriv

A quest notification popped up as soon as he logged on.

(Good looks like I made it in time to help out. Now all that’s left is to look for Ferrex…)

After reading the quest information, Godou closed the pop up box¬ and looked around. The streets of Naidiriv were positively packed. Where did all these people come from?

Godou had arrived at Naidiriv at night so he had expected there to be more people around when he logged back in. However, he hadn’t expected there to be so much. Looking at it, wasn’t there at least 20 times more people on the streets?

Godou made his way to the town square following the philosophy that Ferrex would be somewhere around there. However he immediately disregarded this as he saw the state of the town square.

Finding Ferrex in a crowd like this was going to be hard. Everywhere Godou looked he there were merchants and other shop keepers selling wares and crowds of people around them. Then again, considering Ferrex’s personality it didn’t seem like he would be the type of person who would stay in a crowded area like this.

Coming to that conclusion, Godou decided to look in the less crowded areas like the back streets and alley ways. After knowing him for so long, Godou understood that Ferrex was someone who didn’t mingle too well with strangers.

That being said, Naidiriv sure seemed to have a lot of back streets. Godou had been looking in several of these backstreets for over an hour now to no avail. He tried whispering to him as well but there was no response so Godou didn’t think Ferrex had heard him.

On a side note, Naidiriv seemed to be a really environmentally friendly town. At about every 10 metres a tree had been planted. But, it’s not like this world faces the RL problems of global warming right? Ozone depletion shouldn’t be a problem because there’s no modern technology to populate the atmosphere so was there any real purpose in having these trees here? Considering the fact that this was a town that was constantly under attack from monsters was it really okay to have so much flammable material distributed around the town?

Godou pondered on such trivial thoughts, as he started walking around the block to find the next back street. As he was just about to turn the corner when he saw a blur as something charged around the corner just before he did at an incredible speed before– CRASH!

“Woah!”

“Waa!”

The force of the collision knocked him off his feet. He looked up to see what he had crashed into. It was a girl. She had shoulder length dark purple hair, the kind that could only have been obtained through character customisation and a reasonably cute face (though Godou couldn’t be sure if this was her original appearance or not). Godou noted that she was wearing light armour and a grey scarf. She also seemed to be panting slightly.

“Oww Sorry…”

“Nah I’m fine…”

“More importantly, hide me!”

“Eh?”

The girl got up and looked around, seemingly frantic. Godou could hear the rumbling of footsteps the sounds of excited chattering. He was about to ask the girl a question but stoped when he saw what she was doing. The girl was staring at the branch of a tree directly above them, a look of concentration on her face.

Then she did something which would have been impossible for a “normal” human to do in reality. The girl jumped 10 metres in the air in a single leap and grabbed onto the branch, swinging herself on top of it.

(What the–)

Godou was startled at this but not overly shocked. After all the ridiculous things he witnessed, simply jumping high wasn’t really that impressive, indeed, it was almost nothing on the level of absurdity of being able to drop a lump of fire from the sky at will or recovering from fatal wounds in the matter of hours.

After all, this is a game where having superpowers and being able to use magic is common place. So perhaps this was the effect of having an extremely high Agility stat?

Noticing Godou’s stare, the girl placed her one finger in front of her lips returning his glaze pleadingly in the universal gesture for silence. Godou barely had any time to nod in return as a ragtag crowd of people came across the corner. They seemed to be carrying a flag that said “Grey Phantom Fan Club”.

“Come back! Add me as your friend!”

“Grey Phantom I have been ordered to drag you into my guild no matter what!”

“Come back! Let me shake your hand!”

(Seriously, whether it’s the virtual or the real world, you find weirdos everywhere. )

Such a thought ran through Godou’s mind as he stared at the group. Every single person in the mob seemed to have agility based class and wore the fanatic expressions of otakus at an anime convention. Now I see why that girl seemed do desperate to hide. Being chased by this kind of mob would scare anyone.

“Damn where did is he?”

“His tracks have vanished again. As expected of the Grey Phantom.”

“Hey you in the white cloak, did you see someone wearing grey run past here?”

“Oh… ah they went that way.”

Godou pointed in the direction of the town square. The crowd quickly charged in that direction, roaring at the top of their lungs. After making sure that they had left the girl dropped down from the tree, landing on all fours like a cat before straightening up again. Godou noticed that she had changed from her light armour to more ragged looking clothes.

“Thanks, this should keep them off by tracks until the defence quest starts.”

“Oh, right… your welcome uhm… Grey Phantom-san”

“Ah! Don’t call me that! My name’s Reta. Sheesh, I bought this scarf because I thought looked cute and before I knew it I got labelled such a weird name.”

“I am Godou… nice to meet you Reta?”

At some point Godou had noted that he had stopped using honorifics on people’s names. It was probably due to the fact that none of the NPC’s used them and the fact that the words of people who spoke languages that didn’t use honorifics were translated without honorifics.

“Yeah… Now this should take them off my trail until a leave town”

Whilst saying this Reta removed her grey scarf and placed in inside her inventory.

“But man that was exhausting! They’ve been chasing me since morning.”

“What a scary fan club. But why are you running away from that group in the first place? Wouldn’t be better for you to just stay and listen to their requests?”

“I started out with that mentality and from that experience I have learnt my lesson. Once you’ve don’t something for someone everyone else wants the same thing as well! And the crowd just keeps growing and growing! I just happened to get swarmed by those people when I walked into town because they recognised my battle gear. Normally I change out before entering town so that no one would recognise me but I forgot this time!”

“Ah right! My bad…”

Godou backed off slightly as Reta started rattling on like a machinegun to vent out her stress.

“So are you some sort of celebrity or something? Speaking of which why are people calling you such a video game like name?”

“Kinda… Well, unlike all the other Kingdoms which are full of guild wars, scammers and con artists, Kallamore is a place where people have to cooperate to survive. After a few battles, you pretty much will have met all of the strong players defending your area even if you don’t know their names. In fact the actual names of these players aren’t really that well know so players tend to give each other nicknames or call-signs for easier reference.”

“So your call-sign is Grey Phantom huh…”

“Yeah, but don’t call me that! Anyway enough about me, I’m assuming you’re also planning to participate in the defence army quest like everyone else here.”

“Yeah, speaking of which where did all these people come from? Was Naidiriv always this packed?”

“When was the last time you logged online?”

“Uhm… About 8 hours in reality.”

“So you missed the news huh. Apparently this town, Naidiriv caught news of a monster army heading their way about a day or so ago and sent scouts to investigate. The truth is, this monster army is probably made up of the remnants of at least two other monster armies that another defence army was fighting. And to cut a long story short, the scouts sent to investigate met up with the other defence army along the way and we came to help.”

“So basically, people from the other defence army are coming into town to join the new defence army.”

“Yep that sums it up. I’ll warn you now, those monsters are not to be underestimated. They joined up with weaker monsters and used them as scouts to make up think that they’re composed of weaklings and them ambushed us when we were off guard. If we didn’t have that squad of Kallamore Knight’s with us then we would have been annihilated.”

Godou recalled what he knew about the Kallamore knights. It was said that a single Kallamore Knight had the power to solo high level boss monsters that normally took an entire part of players to handle. If one had enough public Kallamore contribution points, they would be able to hire Kallamore Knights to fight for them.

“Hey! Did you get that sword from completing the basic training? Also you’re equipment seems low level but most of them exclusive to religious orders. They probably give bonuses as well.”

Reta’s energetic voice broke Godou from his thoughts.

“Huh? Really? I never checked. I started this game recently and a lot of stuff happened.”

“What you mean you never checked?”

Reta seemed to be looking at him with an expression that said “Is this guy for real?”

“Have you ever played any online games before?”

“Not really.”

“Okay I guess I’ll teach you as thanks for helping me. The first thing you should do when you get an item is use the identification skill on it or find someone with the skill to do it for you.”

“Is that really necessary though? If you just equip the item and look at your status window you can find out what is does.”

“Nope don’t do that.”

An instant refusal came in response to Godou’s makeshift method of checking items.

“So items have properties that don’t show up in the status window and others have severe debuffs and are cursed so that they can’t be removed. If you have the identification skill, I suggest you use it on all you equipment now”

So there was such a terrifying possibility. Godou thanked his luck for not having run into any such items before. Immediately he followed Reta’s advice and identified his current equipment. He failed a few times but in the end he was able to successfully identify all of them.

Enchanted Travelling Cloak of Freya

The standard issue hooded cloak for travelling members of the order of Freya. Made with practicality and effectiveness in mind.

Durability:

83/90

Restrictions:

Member of the church of Freya OR

Recognised by the church of Freya

Bonuses:

+ 5% Magic resistance

+ Increased resistance against Heat and Cold

Conceals the identity of the wearer when the hood is worn

Due to the special properties of the material from which this cloak was made, it cannot be stained.Hard Iron Sword

Awarded to those who completed the Basic Training Program. This widely used long sword is better than basic type weapons that are available in a blacksmith’s workshop.

Durability: 50/54

Damage: 10-14

Restrictions:

Strength 40+

Stamina 35+

Bonuses:

+ 10 StrengthHardened Leather Bracer

Bracers made from Hardened Leather which offer better defences than similar bracers sold in shops.

Durability:

20/30

Restrictions:

Level 15

Bonuses:

+ 10 Defence

+ 3 StrengthHardened Leather Boots

Boots made from Hardened Leather which offer better defences than similar bracers sold in shops.

Durability:

24/30

Restrictions:

Level 15

Bonuses:

+ 10 Defence

+ 3 AgilityEnchanted Cloth Tunic

An enchanted tunic given to the trainees of the Church of Freya. It has a minor enchantment embedded in it.

Durability:

20/25

Restrictions:

Member of the church of Freya OR

Unofficial trainee of the church of Freya

Bonuses:

+ 5 Defence

+ 3% Magic resistanceEnchanted Cloth Leggings

Enchanted leggings given to the trainees of the Church of Freya. It has a minor enchantment embedded in it.

Durability:

23/25

Restrictions:

Member of the church of Freya OR

Unofficial trainee of the church of Freya

Bonuses:

+ 5 Defence

+ 2% Magic resistance

“Thanks for your advice”

“No problem, it’s actually pretty uncommon to find some else who had finished the basic training though. A lot of the higher level players haven’t even heard of it.”

“Does that mean you’ve completed it as well?”

“Yup, I didn’t go hardcore with it so it took me quite a while to finish it. Oh yeah! In some towns the training halls also offer a Beginner training course as well. If you manage to complete that then the instructor basically gives you a blank cheque for the reward. It’s a lot harder than the basic training though, it took me three tries to pass it. Apparently there’s a training centre after that as well but I don’t think anyone’s found one yet.”

“Hitting scarecrows isn’t the end of it huh…”

Godou shuttered as he remembered the mental fatigue he had suffered because of the relentless “Church of Freya style” basic training.

“So anyway where are we going? Are you looking for something?”

During the course of the conversation Godou had been continuing to walk around to look for Ferrex. Reta had followed him for some unknown reason.

“Yeah I’m looking for my friend.”

“Need help? What do they look like?”

“Nevermind. It’s almost nightfall so he should appear in the town square sooner or later.”

After saying that, Godou and Reta made their way to the town square. As they arrived Reta was suddenly called over by a group of high level players. Seeing them, Reta parted ways with Godou after adding him on her friends list saying:

“See ya! Until we meet again!”

-----------

As per request a female character has been introduced. Reta was originally going to appear later on but I guess it makes more sense to introduce her now.

I had a writer’s block on how to introduce Reta so I used the most clichéd method I could think of…

Warning: A lot of info dumping in the next two parts.

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