Infinite Realm

[[System : 5 missed Audio calls

Details : Emperor Wolf (5) ]]

'Oh, he called.'

During the battle between Hideki and his gang, Sato had muted his System notification alert and status so as not to get distracted. It then became unavoidable that he would miss a lot of calls and messages but even so, it's better to be safe than sorry.

[[System : Incoming Audio call.

Caller ID : Emperor Wolf

Accept/Decline ]]

'Speak of the devil.'

[[System : Audio call accepted]]

"Hey. Where have you been? I've been standing here for a couple of minutes now."

"Oh? You're already at Grnyx? Give me a few minutes; give or take 5 minutes. I'll be there soon."

"What about Hideki? Are you guys already done?" Fudo asked, a little surprised at Sato's nonchalant behaviour.

"Oh him? Don't worry about it. Hideki won't be bothering us for awhile now."

"Haha. I knew you could handle it. But you should have delayed a bit. I wanted to get a piece of him."

"Enough. All you know how to do is to hang a bell around a cat's neck[1]. We talk when I get there. Later."

[[System : Audio call terminated]]

With that, Sato began hurrying back to Town.

Due to the fact that they wanted to find a spot that would be quite far from the guards, Hideki and Sato had gone about 300 metres away from the West gate, into the forest bordering it. As Sato was running back to town, he recollected his experience and earnings from the battle.

'It seems that using the Lotus sword art at this point of the game is quite difficult. My stamina can only last for 3 strikes. Lotus sword art is actually my weakest sword art. With that in mind, performing a single strike of the other sword arts might leave me finished. I guess I'd leave them for my last minute trump cards. *sigh* I really need to level up quickly that way I should be able to use the other techniques.'

The Lotus sword art was a sword art made by a sword sage who had secluded himself from civilization. Rumour had it that he created the technique after staring at blooming in a pond. The sword art consisted of 15 moves, reminiscent of the 15 petals of a lotus flower[2]. It had 4 defensive maneuvers, 9 direct attacking strikes and 2 counter-attacking moves.

It didn't take long for Sato arrive back inside town. Seeing Fudo's pudgy figure waving at him from a distance, Sato approached him.

"Why did you call me here?" Fudo asked while staring at the building with the title 'Grynx Merchandise'.

"Are you blind or what? We came here for shopping." Sato plainly stated.

"...shopping?" Fudo asked in bewilderment. "Are you taking me out?"

Sato's face twitched "...One more word and you might take a trip to your respawn point?"

"Hahaha." Fudo laughed awkwardly while scratching his head.

"In case you don't know we need supplies if we aim on exploring that tunnel plus I plan on getting used to my subclass for now so I need materials. It would be dumb to have a subclass and not familiarise yourself with it. It's best we do it now we have the money before we forget. Once we are done, we would head over to the city Town Centre and complete that mission." Sato clarified.

"That's true. I also need materials."

"By the way, what's up with everybody? On my way here, every player seemed to be talking about something. I didn't here them clearly but it seems to be related with the forums or so. I didn't check it cause I was in a hurry." Sato added.

"Oh? You didn't get the System notification?" Fudo faced Sato with confusion.

"Nope. I muted all my alerts. Lemme chec-"

"Don't stress yourself; just check the forums." Fudo interrupted.

"Okay."

In Infinite Realm, the official forum platform is divided into 2 slides; the editor's and the players' forums[3]. The editor's forum serves to inform players of any new additions, features and releases into the game. In other words, it works as a bulletin board for official announcements made by the game's producers. The players' forum serves a s a communication platform for Infinite Realm gamers. Here they can post their achievements, advertisements and info on any event be it a mission, quest or even a battle.

Moving his focus towards the System panel, Sato enlarged it[4] and clicked on the forums icon. What appeared in front of him was a site that was filled with various topics and discussions with the headline news in bold; "SHOCKING DISCOVERY AT A MANSION !". Below it were a bunch of other write-ups and posts all similar or related to it all with exhilarating and rousing headers like "IMPORTANT : MISSION GOES WRONG WITH MULTITUDES SLAUGHTERED !" or "RIVERDALE IN CRISIS : CLICK TO FIND OUT WHY". Clicking on the topmost post which was the initial one, Sato read it and as he went on, his eyebrows kept rising and rising.

"Hehehe. With that, we might not need to go to the tunnel again." Fudo looked at Sato.

Sato sighed "Better them than us. Who would have known that such a crisis was looming underneath that mansion."

The supposed shocking discovery was actually about the aftermath of the ghost mansion mission Sato and Fudo had encountered. Apparently, Sato and Fudo weren't the only one who accepted the mission. Even though they found out later with the arrival of Sinland, they were still shocked to find out that a total of 7 guilds and 12 adventurer guilds did the same, with even a top 2nd tier guild like East Crow doing the same.

From the information Sato gathered from the forums, he learnt that the various guilds and parties had arrived at the Ghost mansion in time to witness a startling change occur. A multitude of wild goblins had already occupied the place, turning it into a levelling map. The various powers not willing to go back empty handed began to start levelling, exterminating the masses of monsters close-by.

All seemed to be going quite well for them until they sensed a huge amount of dark mana sprout forth from the ground, eradicating most of the players. Even the goblins weren't spared as the dark mana was unable to differentiate between friend or foe but this was just the beginning. Later on, the surviving players who were just about to retreat, claimed that the dark mana coagulated and formed a humanoid creature who went on to lead the entire goblin horde. That was when the true bloodbath began, despite their numbers, the player army was outnumbered 1 to 15. They stood no chance against the army and even if they did, the creature of dark mana was on another league; slaughtering at least 5 players with each step he took. Bloodshed, carnage, decimation, genocide; none of these words were an understatement of what had occurred.

Such carnage and destruction was unanticipated for current players as the game had just begun. As a result, the Heaven system paid them no attention even though some of them were frustrated at their 'unfair' death,.

Sato speculated that the various guilds and parties had arrived at the Ghost Mansion around a few minutes after he and Fudo had left. As such, the player army had encountered a large mob of unearthed goblins.

However, that wasn't the only trending news. Another post had described the previous event but it also added an alert given to all resident players in towns under Black Rock city's jurisdiction .

[[ System Notification :

The Goblin's Invasive Retribution : Mission Package

A player has just discovered the goblin hideout, Gnorka. Hold down the fort and stop the goblin's from further conquering more lands.

The mission begins in X hour(s).

Rewards : Based on performance.

Failure Penalty : Destruction of the nearest Town

Loss of 2 levels with reduction of experience gained by 30% for 2 weeks

Relationship level with human forces at [Dislike] ]]

AN :

[1] Discussing something that's impossible.

[2] Lotus flowers may have more or less but this is my world. So we go with 15.

[3] Think of it like how the official webnovel app has different pages like the library, featured, e.t.c. But in this case, there are 2 such pages.

[4] The system panel is usually small; around 7 * 7 inches.. By the way, only Fudo can see his System panel unless he wills it.