Haven Online

Chapter 8: Beginner Town

Looking around at the town, Xinya's breath got caught, it was exactly as he remembered it. It looked like something out of a medieval fantasy but a person wouldn't be able to figure out which one since there was a hodgepodge of different cultures represented in this world. The reason the creator did this was that he wanted this game to be fully inclusive, without leaving anyone out.

Taking a look at his surroundings, he could see that there weren't a lot of players here. Most of the people who littered the street were NPCs. This wasn't surprising since, in the beginner town, the experience rate was doubled. Getting to level 10 here would take at most an hour, maybe two if a person was lazy, but once you reach level 10 you will be automatically transported away from the beginner town and can never come back.

What people didn't learn until later was that there are many secrets in the beginner town, you just have to find them. It took three years until someone decided to look around the place and see what wonders it held. Xinya was just surprised that it took that long before someone got curious enough to investigate every nook and cranny of the place. He always thought that under different circumstances he would've explored every inch of this virtual world.

That person did discover some very interesting things about the beginner town, some useful and some seemingly useless information. It was the seemingly useless information that Xinya was going to go for.

One thing people didn't know was that the beginner town was there to help you gain the skills you might need before heading out into the main world. Although you could get them out there too, you would have to travel to different places, which would take hours, even days in the game depending on the distance. Although time was on a faster spectrum, 1 hour in the game equals 30 minutes in reality.

Xinya thought that non-information about the beginner town was set up by the creators of the game, it was as if they wanted to make the game more lifelike and nobody holds your hand in reality. Although there are some quests to get you started, they are mostly: go kill this and that. Some NPCs give hints such as one of them might say, XXXX needs help with gathering flowers or XXXX needs help doing her laundry. Players tend to disregard these things once they see that they would get a lot more experience for just going out there killing monsters. Also, since the money the NPC'S give isn't better than what they get from selling what monsters drop, they don't pay the NPCs with quests any mind.

Shaking his head, Xinya cleared away the thoughts of how careless people could be and headed to his first destination. He walked until he saw an out of the way restaurant. On the step, he saw a little boy looking into a basket with a worried expression on his face. This was the start of a chain quest that would get him the cooking skill. This chain quest will get him 9 skills that will make his cooking above everyone else's. Although you could get these skills out there in the main world there is a skill that one could only get in the beginner town, well there were a few but only one for cooking.

Walking up to the boy in question, Xinya said, "Hello there, is something the matter?"

A notification box appeared in front of Xinya face:

A quest has been triggered, would you like to proceed?

Xinya answered yes with his mind and the box went away. The young boy looked at him with tearful eyes and said, "Today is my mother's birthday, I made her a cake but dropped it and it got ruined. I would like to make her another but we are out of eggs and milk. I want to go and get more but the farm is far away and my mother would get upset with me if I go by myself." After saying that, the boy looked down despondently.

"I can go with you if you want," Xinya said, comforting the youth.

"You would do that mister? Thank you so much." The boy said, brimming with enthusiasm.

A quest has been created: Help the restaurant owner's son collect 5 eggs and 5 bottles of milk.

Reward: 5 exp 5 bronze coins

Learn: Egg Gathering and Milking

Now, egg gathering and milking might seem like useless skills, since you can do it without getting the skills but, with the skills, the animals will be calmer, the time needed to collect will be reduced and the items will be of better quality. Also, there is a 1 in a million chance that you can gather a golden egg from chickens and if you sell it to an NPC you can get 1 million gold.

Xinya followed the boy to the farm and, after slipping in the mud and running after crazy chickens, was finally able to collect the items the boy needed to make the cake.

"Thank you so much for helping me, mister."

Smiling, Xinya rubbed the boy's head and replied, "You're welcome."

Quest completed. You've gained 5 exp and 5 bronze coins. You have two new skills, please check your skill bar for more details.

Opening his passive skill bar, Xinya checked out his new skills:

Egg gathering: Improves the quality of eggs and the ability to gather eggs from chickens. Who knows? You just might just find a golden egg!

Milking: Improves the speed at which you milk cows and goats and the quality of the milk. Nothing like a fresh glass of milk just squeezed out of the teat of an animal!

"Would you mind helping me with something else mister?" The boy shyly asked.

"Sure, what do you need?" Xinya asked expectedly.

Quest triggered!