Sacred Souls: Genesis-Chapter 178 - 177 Big Deceiver (2nd Update)
Chapter 178 -177 Big Deceiver (2nd Update)
The Cola Fanatic Guild was now completely surrounded by players at the initial stronghold.
Players who were playing landlord, mahjong, dancing, and playing Gwent games had all followed the sisters Weiser and Yomi to the Cola Fanatic’s stronghold.
The Cola Fanatic’s stronghold was a feng shui treasure land, not too far from the initial stronghold and also near the coast.
If the kinetic nucleus’s stronghold was a combination of a mining industry hub with a defense fortress, then the stronghold that Cola Fanatic planned to build was like a mixture of a ranch story with a resort island.
Bubble didn’t restrict outside players from entering his stronghold, including players sent by the other seven major guilds to gather intelligence; he didn’t restrict them from leaving either.
As a qualified seal, having finally drawn an SSR-level character, Bubble naturally wanted to show off.
So Bubble gestured for Weiser and Yomi to step onto a temporary stage built by the Cola Fanatic Guild, below which a crowd of onlookers had gathered, quite a few of whom were currently streaming and capturing screenshots of Weiser and Yomi.
Jiang Qiao was certainly among this crowd of onlookers as well. These were the first two SSR-level characters to appear in the game, each carrying the high-status titles of Dragon Tamer and Dragon Speaker.
When prefixes of Weiser and Yomi changed, Saint Spirit forums had already started buzzing about their abilities. Quite a few people in the crowd below were forum regulars who had come to verify what roles these two SSR-level characters would play.
This chapter is updat𝓮d by freēnovelkiss.com.
The other part was the news media, the real gaming news media, which could turn many events in Saint Spirit into big news stories.
“Isn’t this just like the treatment of celebrities?” Jiang Qiao, squeezed among a group of players crazily recording and taking screenshots, felt that it wouldn’t be a problem to even hold some sort of autograph signing event for Weiser and Yomi.
While popularity was high, Jiang Qiao needed to steer everything back to the main issues. Bubble on stage was already trying to communicate with the two sisters.
Bubble deliberately made his dialogue box public, allowing the surrounding onlookers to see the special options available when communicating with the two sisters and what their dialogue was like.
Although NPC preset dialogues in Saint Spirit were numerous, players still tended to think of NPC dialogues as being limited to just a few lines, figuring that by talking repeatedly, they could summarize everything.
This time players were dealing with Weiser and Yomi in the same manner, recording how many lines of dialogue Weiser and Yomi had, what their backstories were like, their preferences, whether there were any hidden quests, and what the best rewards in the hidden quests were.
“Did you record that? Can I skip this part now?”
Bubble… wasn’t listening at all, he hadn’t been paying attention to Weiser’s story at all; he was just waiting to start the mission!
“But which option should I choose next?” Bubble saw the five options Weiser again presented and was immediately perplexed. None of these five choices seemed likely to lead to a mission.
The meanings of these five options were…
1. I can’t understand what you are saying.
2. Are you suggesting that the rage induced by the crystalline disease can be suppressed?
3. Can the Magic Thieves perceive the life force of this island?
4. How about we play a round of Fight the Landlord?
5. Leave.
“Guild Leader, you’re wrecked! Isn’t it obvious you should pick 3?”
“Stop kidding, choose 2, if you want to continue the character plot, you should go with 2.”
Just as Bubble was about to make a choice, someone was suddenly pushed onto the stage by Xue Bi — that was the Stargazer Scholar Team.
“We need to trigger the mission that allows us to adopt dragon hatchlings, look at the options and suggest one to the Guild Leader,” Xue Bi said.
“Thanks for the introduction, senior. I should be able to trigger this hidden mission.”
This might just be the greatest value an NPC could offer to players.
“I am the Saint Spirit’s Bubble who hired you, and I’m curious about… your past on this island.”
Bubble chose one of the three preset options provided by the system, an option for basic self-assessment that didn’t need any additional charisma and was the most standard way to inquire about an NPC’s past in the game.
Weiser’s mouth opened when she heard Bubble’s reply, and her legs went weak… If it hadn’t been for her sister beside her, Weiser might have already collapsed onto the ground.
Before she could even process what was happening, Weiser found herself standing on a stage, below which, by her estimate, were over a hundred onlookers from Saint Spirit.
Some had even climbed onto the roofs of buildings just to see them.
This scene… Weiser had only seen it before in an execution ground!
“Sister?” Yomi sensed her sister’s fear and was about to shout at Bubble to “Stop bullying my sister!” when Weiser quickly placed a hand over Yomi’s lips.
Fortunately, those mysterious texts appeared once more in front of Yomi.
“In the past, I was just an ordinary seamstress who had been infected with the crystalline disease and ended up wandering to this island, then taken in by the Magic Thieves.”
Weiser echoed the answer given by the mysterious texts. Although she didn’t quite understand what ‘cold’ and ‘mysterious’ tones meant, Weiser’s voice, stunned to the point of being emotionless, did manage to sound rather ‘indifferently cold.’
But as soon as Weiser had finished speaking, she regretted it, openly admitting to having the crystalline disease in front of so many effectively sounded her own death knell, even in Saint Spirit.
Sure enough, after hearing Weiser’s reply, Bubble furrowed his brow and his face displayed great turmoil. Weiser watched him anxiously for a second or two before Bubble awkwardly asked a question…
“What’s crystalline disease?”
“?” Weiser’s head tilted slightly, looking at Bubble with a similarly puzzled expression.
“Man, can we skip this dialogue? I just want to ask if you have any hidden quests,” Bubble said, clicking on the dialogue window. Unfortunately, he didn’t see any option to skip on the dialogue box.
Bubble and the Starlit Scribes are two radically different types of players, with Bubble being the type who plays games and never pays attention to the story. He just needs to know where to go, how many to kill, and what the rewards are.
Perhaps the only thing that could make Bubble sit still and listen to dialogue is Miss Fureya. Right now, all Bubble could think about was what hidden quests these two SSR-level characters had, considering their prefixes as Dragon Tamers, he wondered if they might lead him to a dragon egg or something.
“Dude, guild leader! Just go through all the dialogues, there are quite a few brothers in the guild who want to see it!”
“It’s not just the guild brothers, even the bystanders around are here to see the dialogue storyline.”
“Bubble Guild Leader, could you take some time to go through this character plot for me? I can also explain the crystallization to you!”
Amid the crowd, a member of the Stargazer Scholars Team anxiously shouted at Bubble. He was recently researching Miss Kitty and some plots on Biland Island, and the entanglement between Magic Thief and Miss Kitty was clearly the main storyline on the island.
However, this plot hadn’t made any progress until Add Milk No Extra Charge discovered the Magic Thief’s main city, reigniting the Stargazer Scholars Team’s passion for digging into the plot.
These two sisters were clearly a pivotal turning point in the Magic Thief plot.
“Okay, okay! I’ll go through the plots,” Bubble wasn’t foolish. All the major guilds competed for one thing: to boost their guild’s reputation and prestige and to recruit potential players.
Bubble bought these two SSR characters also to attract those players to join the guild. Their requests were not excessive, and Bubble naturally had to fulfill them all.
“So, what was the sound you heard earlier?” Bubble chose a very crucial option, which came with a (chance to trigger a character mission) tip.
Here it comes.
Meanwhile, Jiang Qiao surreptitiously opened the map of Biland Island. The crystal disease situation in Spiritual Vein Forest had been purified by players, and logically, the next areas players would tackle are the Poison Mist Swamp and Snow Plain.
The terrain of Biland Island is very interesting; its topography is more like a roulette wheel, meaning it’s not that the depths of Spiritual Vein Forest lead directly to Snow Plain or Poison Swamp but rather that the terrain on either side of Spiritual Vein Forest is respectively Snow Plain and Poison Swamp.
At this stage, players’ desire to explore the neighboring two areas was not very high, with only the Knights of Night and players from Abyss Temple crazily settling in new maps, while other guilds and solo players had entered a more laid-back phase.
One reason was that the eight major guilds had entered the summer competition phase, and an elite group of strategists left temporarily, plus they needed to consolidate their strongholds, reducing their desire to pioneer new areas.
After all, the monsters on Biland Island didn’t drop orange gear.
Secondly, the mother crystals dropped by the monsters were tradable, which led guilds like Cola Fanatic, who were quite wealthy, to start buying mother crystals rather than hunting for them themselves… Yep, they bought the low-quality ones.
Ultimately, Jiang Qiao still needed to design a complete questline to guide players in exploring Biland Island, which he indeed did. The rewards for the quests included various pieces of furniture for Fureya and Otherworld food, motivating players to make Fureya’s living conditions better…
But Jiang Qiao surely wouldn’t let players battle the ultimate boss of the island just for a piece of Fureya’s furniture, even though many players would anyway be willing to do so.
“This island is wailing,” Weiser slowly stated, looking at the text that appeared before her eyes dictating what she should say, even though she herself didn’t understand what it meant. Yet, she still had to comply, “I can feel many creatures on this island crying and wailing as they gradually become frenzied due to crystallization. I cannot save their adult forms, but for those not yet born or the young, perhaps I can soothe their pain.”
What am I even saying!
Weiser felt confused as she spoke these words, carefully observing Bubble’s reaction. That mysterious line of text reminded Weiser that these holy spirits could understand her odd statements… but…
It seemed Stargazer mistook Xue Bi for the head of Cola Fanatic Guild, which was indeed the case. Bubble couldn’t refute Xue Bi, so he just watched as this member of the Scholar Team sat down next to him with a pile of forum documents.
“Choose option 2, but the divine beings have a communication system, do you know that, Guild Leader Bubble? It means you can say other dialogues to the NPCs, and they can offer responses not listed in the options, but to be safe, we should still go by the options provided by the system,” Stargazer immediately started pitching the right answer to Bubble.
