Ooh, I hear an argument near me!

1: “Don’t go. Stay here with us!”

2: “I’m not leaving forever! It’ll only take me one hour, maybe three max.”

1: “No, it’s too dangerous!”

Well, what do you know, this is a pretty nice-looking village. The road does start to become a bit rougher here probably because of all the daily work the villagers do, but I think it just adds to the charm of this village. There are a bunch of tools and other props laying around. All these cute houses are roughly the same size. Not too big, not too small. Many of the houses have a clean white exterior, is it made out of stone or clay? I can tell roofs are made out of simply wood and the nicer houses have clean tiles on top. I also see plenty of normal animals like chickens walking around. Ah, but of course, right now in front of me I see a classic dispute between two villagers. Most importantly…it smells like this is the beginning of a quest scene!

I’m not going to bother determining whether those two are Lumenians or Himenians, but they’re basically human looking NPCs who are currently having a dramatic episode right now as well.

2: “How’s it any more dangerous than letting those marauders remain in control of our village!”

1: “I’m sure they’re going to take the supplies and leave… Maybe a nearby Lord or a party of mercenaries will see that we’re in trouble! Just please don’t leave…!”

2: “That’s not going to happen Allee, you know it…”

It looks like that man is trying to leave this place, but this lady is really trying to stop him by pulling him back while he’s push her away.

I’m already inside the village, behind the shrub walls, so I could just ignore them and continue searching for an activity to do? I’ve already experienced myself getting carelessly involved in a quest, I mean it was a good thing to help that Dwarf even if I lost 5-10 simple minutes. But what if I mess up after getting involved with this possible quest? Then the villagers will dislike me! I’ll just quietly walk past them…

2: “You! You’re not from around here? Come here traveler I need to speak to you.”

Ahh…

Looks like I’ve changed my mind.

The lady stopped aggressively tugging the man back into the village, now she is also looking at me.

She also begins to try whispering quietly into this man’s ear.

1: “Are you sure you can trust him? He’s a Dwelf you know…”

And he tries to whisper back to her…

2: “Just because you haven’t seen many Dwelfs before doesn’t mean they’re not any more or less trustworthy than other people.”

2: “Greeting’s traveler, are you perhaps arriving here from the east? Perhaps north, from the Free Counties?”

Here we go again! Show me my options:

[Yup, I sure am!] - (Dwelf Option)

[Indeed, why do you ask?]

[Does it matter if I came from the Free Counties?]

[Why do you care]

[Ignore and leave]

Out of all these options, I’ll definitely ask one of the first three responses. Not the fourth one because at least…for now…I don’t think me, or Amulet Pond, is pessimistic about this world. Also, I’ve decided to at least hear them out first, so I don’t want to leave this conversation right away.

It’s also my first time seeing something like a “Dwelf Option”, I assume that’s because I’m a dwelf so I get a special response option here. Or I could just rely with what seems to be the most default answer available, [Indeed, why do you ask?], but I’m curious about the third choice. Yeah, why does it matter if I came from the Free Counties or not?!

2: “Well as long as you came from either the north or east directions, perhaps you can please help us. But, if you did come from the Free Counties, are you perhaps a freelancer for hire? As you probably know the Free Counties are the most renowned region that contains the best worker aides, you know…mercenaries, freelancers, and other types of specialized professionals!”

Huh… yeah, that does sound about right. I remember reading an article online mentioning that the Free Counties are a pretty autonomous zone, someone said they are like the middle-class citizens of this Overworld. It makes sense because they are after all called the “Free Counties”.

So, my new choices:

[I’m actually a Divine Spirit]

[No, I’m not from the Free Counties, but perhaps I can help?]

[No, I’m just a simple traveler]

[Sorry, I’m nothing like that. I’ll take my leave]

[I don’t like hearing this crap you’re spouting!]

Alert, Alert, Alert! I see two bad options! Yes, that’s them officer…the first and fifth option!

I get a bad feeling if I choose to just blurt out to them that [I’m actually a Divine Spirit], it’ll sounds like I would be flaunting that information out. But the fifth option is way worse. It’ll sound like I’m requesting for a fight! I don’t know if hand-to-hand combat is good in this game or whether my training axe would be any effective. Either way, I don’t have any reason to tell him [I don’t like hearing this crap you’re spouting], do I? Perhaps if I hated the Free Counties for some reason.

I’m picking [No, I’m just a simple traveler] because it sounds like the most neutral choice!

2: “Ah, you’re just a simple traveler? No matter! Please at least hear out my request-no, our request. This village is in trouble, but all the villagers here are too cowardly to do anything about it! I need you to simply go to any town nearby with a monastery and request for aid from the monks! Or, if possible, the best option would be if you could ask for help from a trustworthy Lord, nobleman, or some type of commander with power. Maybe it’ll take you a while to find anyone like that nearest to us. But please for the sake of this village contact someone righteous to aid us!”

Woah, woah, woah. What’s going on here? Everything looks so peaceful and nice around here…what’s the dire situation?

There are a lot more options available now than there were before to choose from. I could decline his request or simply accept. I could first ask for his name or ask him what’s the problem is exactly. And I could even call him out for putting this burden on me instead of him going there himself! He was planning to do that anyways. Yeah, what’s up with that? I’ll pick that option…go there yourself!

2: “I would if I could sir, but as you can see my friend Allee here isn’t letting me. None of the elders want me to go either. They have good intentions and reasons to, but those reasons aren’t as important as for asking for help when it’s possible. Help from anyone capable and virtuous enough, professional mercenaries or even those Divine Spirits that descended down to this world from the heavens. It doesn’t matter because there are marauders currently preparing to harm this village!”

Allee: “You are so correct Rense, of course we have good intentions and reasoning to stop you from going! But you aren’t correct in risking your life in trying to ask, “Divine Spirits” for help, or from those unreliable monks, or wasting your time trying to run all the way to the free counties and arriving when the time has already passed!”

Allee: “Traveler, to at least convince Rense from leaving, please go instead of Rense. I’m deeply sorry for making you go and report the issues of this village instead of having one of us villagers do it...”

You better be sorry! You know how long it takes to walk back and forth everywhere? Oh no…is this quest asking me to go all the way back to the starter town!? You want me to spend a whole hour simply travelling in this game!!?

Allee: “But we’ll need Rense. I doubt anyone will arrive in time before the Marauders sack this village, but if you’re free then this could indeed be a lucky chance for us. We need Rense because he is one of the few capable men remaining in this village, we need people like him because we’ll need the manpower to recover right away after the marauders leave. If need be, to also protect the children and elderly in case of a worst-case scenario. Everyone else who was capable died a year ago after being sent into that awful war! The “High Temple”, now they simply call themselves “monks” and “caretakers of the Holy Land”, have allowed this all to happen! If they didn’t go to war we wouldn’t need to deal with these bandits- “

Rense: “Traveler what she says is true, less so concerning the monks and the temple…but politics aside! I know that there is only a small chance of help arriving to secure this village. However, I’d rather take a small chance of securing our resources rather than not taking any action at all and agreeing to give all our food and supplies to these Marauders!”

Looks like I received the general backstory of this quest anyways.

Hold on, you’ll only have to give all your food and supplies to those Marauders? It doesn’t sound like anyone is going to necessarily be dying or directly harmed…but I guess it’s completely fair to freak out and try to stop a thief from robbing you of everything you have. Buuut… on the bright side, all your houses and fields probably aren’t going to go anywhere. And it’s also still summer…so I think you have enough time to grow more crops. However, there doesn’t seem to be any response option which allows me ask anything about that, “it’ll be fine!”.

Also, Allee mentioned that he would be risking his life trying to contact the Divine Spirits? I don’t get it. Does she not like the players? There is an option for me to ask about that, so I will.

Allee: “Why of course I wouldn’t want him getting near any “Divine Spirit”, how can you trust these unknown beings that have been called down into our world from the heavens! Everyone knows that some Lesser Gods are mischievous, so how could we trust everything that comes from the heavens? There must be a reason to why the Great God decided to cast them down to our world. Maybe Great God didn’t want them in the heavens anymore for some reason, so he kicked them all out. So, they could be no better than demons!”

Rense: “Allee, the keyword here is “could” …we just don’t know enough about them. Anyways, It’s unlikely that they’re as evil as demons! Traveler, our village here isn’t as unsophisticated as it may seem, but many of the villagers have lost their trust in whatever government that rules this land. We’ve become very autonomous in the past year, and not in a good way. Almost all of our men were forced into the war by the previous regime of the High Temple. But I, out of anyone here, hated the High Temple the most. Thankfully that regime has now collapsed and only the monks remain. In honesty, I’m a coward who deserted the army… I didn’t even manage to help any of my fellow villagers escape like I have. Yet, I’m not craven enough to abandon my village in this dire situation. But enough talk! Traveler…if you may, please head out as soon as possible to ask for aid from any helping party!”

Sigh…oh jeez. What option should I pick. I really don’t want to go back to the starting town, but I might have to since it seems like this is all I’m capable of and it’s the best way to solve this quest. I can’t directly deal with these Marauders myself; I don’t even know how strong they are, but I certainly know that I’m not strong at all. I haven’t even leveled up yet.

Let see…I pick [How much time do you have until the Marauders come?]

Rense: “They arrived here a couple hours ago and promised to come back in a few hours expecting us to bring out all of our supplies and hand it over to them.”

Oh my god. Why are the facial expressions in this game so good? The facial expressions for player characters are already neatly expressive, but the animations for the AI models in this game are beyond fantastic. Just look at those almost puppy-like eyes that these two desperate villagers are making! It’s just a game, I could just ignore this quest…it’s not my responsibility nor would I think they would fault me if I did. But…morally, it’ll feel wrong to avoid this. Usually in games like this you still decide to help them out, even if your character is a bad guy who exhorts them for a lot of money at the end. But in Divine Mortality, the world is dynamic, the effects of abandoning them to the marauders won’t just be a simple one-time event and afterwards everything returns to normal. The effect will persist in this game’s world. Other players will pass through this village in the future, but the next time it’ll be a lot poorer and more worse off than it is right now…it might be my fault!