The Righteous Player(s)

Chapter 289: Elven Ruins

“Although I yearn for adventure, I miss grilled fish and steamed chicken at this time…” The Wandering Child sighed at sunset, “If only I could come out with food.”

He had embodied the essence of the “Wandering” Child.

Half a month after the end of the prologue, the Gallery Nightmare had finally expired.

The next stage of the storyline would trigger 3 months later.

Wandering Child knew from the beginning that they wouldn’t be doing the same dungeon over and over again. Of course, it was great to increase the level steadily while enjoying the free leisure and free food, but he always felt that something was missing.

It was until Annan summoned him to the viscount house the day before yesterday that he finally realized what he was missing.

“…Elven ruins?” Wandering Child repeated.

Only then did he learn that there were elves in this world?

“Yes, a relic from the Yaselan Empire’s era. At that time, elves and centaurs are the rulers of this land.”

Annan briefly introduced the history and explained, “This is the information I have gotten from the senior… It’s a ruin that the Swamp’s Black Tower has explored with a moderate danger level. Since your profession comes from the elves, getting the next promotion requires exploring the elven ruins.

“I’m going to distribute this mission to four people. You shall lead the team with Dove, Suuankou, and Citalopram, backing you up with their respective profession of [Hunter], [Lurker], and [Half-dead Enchantress]. This ruin is located in the jungle. Even if you know the approximate direction and walk toward there in a straight line, it will take 4 days to reach there. Therefore, you need a [Hunter] to survive in that place. In addition, there are the possibilities of traps lurking, so you have an [Lurker] in your lineup. Suuankou is a trap master, you should trust his skill. Last but not least, [Half-dead Enchantress] doesn’t need much healing and sleep, so she saves the consumption of supplies and offers great help in guarding the camp through the night. Moreover, she can phase through a wall and thus a valuable asset in exploring the ruin.

“I’ll give you the path and password into the ruin. If you’re lucky, Dove and Suuankou may be able to get clues to the rare advancement method in it.” So Annan instructed the Wandering Child at the time.

Exploring the jungle’s depths wasn’t a simple adventure that could be carried out with weapons, bedding, and reagents.

Without the relevant knowledge and skills, there were the risks of getting lost, sick, hungry, thirsty, and poisoned.

Luckily, Annan was merciful and allocated Dove to the team.

“You don’t have to worry about food.”

A calm female voice sounded, “You’re lucky. We have ample food in this place. With my help, you won’t starve to death. With you, we can also get enough freshwater. Is the fire ready?”

Dove dropped a young deer that she carried over.

There was only one wound on the deer — at the spine.

The young deer wasn’t completely dead yet, and it still struggled from time to time. But under this kind of injury, it couldn’t jump up and escape even if it was good at pretending to be dead.

“Sure, the fire is almost up and ready.” The Wandering Child immediately replied, “Don’t worry too much. Suuankou and Citalopram aren’t online yet.”

As the Wandering Child spoke, he raised his head and glanced at the majestic huntress, who wasn’t quite tall.

Dove’s brown hair wasn’t long at all, and it looked neat after being tied into a ponytail. A serval silently followed behind her. The pet seemed a little short.

Before his departure, the Wandering Child got the military longbow behind him from Annan. As for Dove’s original short bow, it was deposited in the inventory readied to be swapped into after entering the ruins.

While Dov’s voice was mature and reliable, her face looked a little too youthful. She was also short in height, about the same size as Jiu Er.

…of course, so does her figure too.

But according to Dove, those were adjustments she made in character customization, which was in the opposite approach to Lin Yiyi.

She shrunk her breasts a lot to avoid them getting in the way when shooting arrows. But, she didn’t quite understand why altering the breast size consumed the limits in beautification effect.

For the remaining beautification limits, she also didn’t use the function to increase her size and height because she knew that this might lead to her inaccuracy in the spatial distance.

However, Dove wasn’t putting those functions to waste either.

Her habit was to make the best use of everything.

She first used the remaining beautification quota to optimize her muscles that she couldn’t train up to normally and enhanced her flexibility at the same time. Then, she smoothened her skin which had been exposed to the sun all year-round and made them less rough. She didn’t proceed with the character customization until the beautification effect’s limit was filled up.

Although this didn’t directly increase her Constitution and Strength, it made her feel that her stamina had increased.

Dove also found a certain rule from it — if she tried to use the beautification effect to increase her attribute, then the consumption of the functionality would be rapid. Otherwise, the beautification effect wouldn’t reach the limit so fast.

With the existing ratio, if she used up her beautification limits to increase her muscle or optimize her eyesight, she should be able to increase one of the attributes close to 1 point.

“I’ll finish roasting the meat in a while, and I’ll go offline early after I eat it. I have to urge those two kids to exercise… I’ll be back online in eight hours, about 3 a.m. It would be best if you waited for the two of them to come online first and then travel forward for a while in the direction I planned for you. When I come back, I will take you to the next station.”

Dove said casually, “Before that, I’ll leave my body to you, Cade.”

“It’s okay. You’re pretty light anyway.” The Child smiled.

It wasn’t nighttime yet when Dove went offline. The Child carried a sleeping bag with Dove on his back.

After all, he advanced from the swordsman profession and was the party member with the highest Strength attribute among the group. Moreover, he wasn’t stuck with the only option to fight in melee now. So, carrying another person wouldn’t affect his battle.

There was also the advantage of having a small size, such as being convenient to be carried around.

The bodies Annan made for the players were ordinary human bodies rather than digitally simulated puppets — that was to say, not sleeping for a long time would ruin the body. Taking daily necessities into account, Annan instilled an anti-addiction system for the players to be offline for at least 8 hours a day so that players must log off in their sleep. After that, the players reached a higher level and better attributes, Annan would gradually relax this rule under the pretext of giving more authority to the players.

It was possible to go offline in the tent, but the tent wasn’t a safe area. If a wild beast or a malicious person were attacking them, causing their physical death, their level would drop by one level after coming back online again.

So before arriving at the ruins, they had to go offline in batches to guard others’ bodies.

Half-dead Enchantress didn’t need sleep, but Wen Xue had to go offline to eat and work. Suuankou’s “leave because of sister’s marriage” was also insufficient. He had already gone back to school.

Coupled with [Half-dead Enchantress] and [Lurker], the party’s fighting power at night would soar.

Considering the routines of Citalopram and Suuankou, several of them turned the game time upside down.

They would advance through the night and sleep in a safe place during the day.

When Citalopram and Suuankou went to work and school, and when the Wandering Child stream during the day, Dove would be responsible for guarding their bodies. After all, she was self-employed and had no work pressure. Currently, she lived in Jiu Er’s house as a martial art coach, and she had no jet lag.

Also, she had the time to watch the streams while playing with her cat.

Anyway, she had adapted to life in the jungle, which was a much more comfortable environment for her.

She wouldn’t die, become stronger, and see animals she had not met before. Most importantly, she had reliable teammates.

In addition to conjuring freshwater, Dove had little chance to see the Wandering Child’s other abilities. After all, what attacked them were ordinary animals. After having her serval detect the hostile animals, she would take them down with one arrow at a time… and some animals were eliminated directly in Suuankou’s traps.

This helped her save some effort, and this stream was quite good.

For example, Longjing Tea would stream “I’m a wizard apprentice in Black Tower” for 16 hours every day. The stream title of Delicious Wind Goose’s trip to the capital with a carriage would be later converted to “Infiltration”. At the same time, Yiyi would give her updates on time every day in the stream “Little Annan’s Daily”.

Since Lin Yiyi was the only player specializing in defense who didn’t need to hold a shield, she was also the only player who stayed by Annan’s side, continued to serve as a bodyguard, and enjoyed her time leisurely while completing her weekly missions.