Second Life: Welcome to Gaia

Chapter 81: Palace ruins

After riding a bicycle for one hour after leaving the mausoleum, Ye Ya arrived in front of the ruins of an ancient palace.

Looking from outside, there was almost nothing there. The walls surround the palace were dilapidated and missing many parts where people could see the interior of the palace. Where once was a beautiful and majestic garden, now became some kind of ghostly forest, with the vegetation growing uncontrollably. And the palace was in ruins, with a few structures still standing.

Ye Yan only hopes that the astrology room is intact or he doesn't know how to find the items, but if it was easily found, the NPCs would have looted the place already.

But, no matter what, he needs to find the place for him to complete his quest. Only when he is done with it, he can try to get properties in the city. He needs at last two pieces of land, one for the guild residence and another to rent. 

Until now, they only are spending money on the guild, but there is no other way because if they want it to be successful soon, they need this initial investment. It is not like they can cheat their way to success.

They have some extra pieces of equipment that they got from dungeons, but it is not worth selling them for money because they would earn very little from it. And even if the apprentice forgers they contracted could produce high-quality items, they wouldn't earn much because very few people would be crazy enough to spend a fortune on items around level 5.

As Ye Yan is the only one that got inside the palace among the guild members, he is the one responsible for getting the properties. However, it is better this way because if another player got it first, he or she wouldn't hand it over to the guild. The person would sell the property to them for a very high price or to someone else, which wouldn't be a good thing for them, either way.

Ye Yan entered the palace ruins for an opening on the wall and reached inside where there was a garden a long time ago. In front of him are bushes that grew to a height taller than him and he will have to pass through it to get to the ruins of the palace courtyards.

He knew the direction he has to go because, from outside, he could look over the bushes to see the other side.

Ye Yan changed his fan for a knife with a long blade for him to open the way out between the bushes and tree branches. 

He walked carefully through the bushes while keep his awareness to the max, listening to every sound around him.

He could hear the birds singing from many trees around him, the sound of the wind blowing the leaves and bushes, and the sound of running water not far from him where should have a water stream.

As even using his memory, he is having a hard time finding his way out, he decided to follow the water sound. With luck, the water is clean and he can refresh himself.

At this time, half of the daytime has passed and the sun is in the zenith [1]. it is very hot and he can feel his head temperature increasing so fast that soon he can fry an egg on his head. 

His armor is not light and heats up his body a lot, making him sweat. In other words, he needs a bath. 

In the way he is now, it wouldn't take seven days for him to start stinking again.

The heat is not the only problem, the leaves of the bushes are like blades, cutting the areas with exposed skin, dealing -1 damage on him from time to time, and the branches often scratch his skin. But this is a problem he will have until his flee stat is high enough for him to evade even the leaves. 

The flee works like a protective layer that deflect the attacks if the dexterity of the enemy isn't high enough. It can be bypassed by players' ability in case they have high accuracy and always hit on the weak spot, but if a player has high agility and flee, they hardly would be hit.

If a player standstill, his flee will become 0, so he will surely be hit and even a level 1 monster would be able to kill a high-level player. It just would take a long time because every time an attack hits, even with high defense, it deals -1 damage. 

While Ye Yan was walking through the bushes, he was attacked by some rats and poisonous snakes. However, they were just normal monsters and he didn't take long to kill them, even having a hard time dodging their attacks because of the many branches around him.

When Ye Yan finally reached the water stream, he had already take -30 damage from the leaves and branches.

The water stream looks to surround a good part of the palace and in some parts has very small waterfalls to enchant its beauty.

Ye Yan looked at the water carefully to see if there is some monster inside. When he saw it was clean of any animal he decided to enter in the water, even knowing that if it is like in real life, the danger is in the creatures that cannot be seen with the naked eye, like the brain-eating amoeba that enters in the head through the nose and starts to eat the person's brain.

Even knowing the risks, he couldn't stand the heat for long. Right now, he is feeling hotter than a woman in menopause.

After entered the water, he felt refreshed all over. He didn't take long and soon got out of the white. 

This time, he didn't receive a buff for been clean because it will only happy when a player bath using water and soap. His body is clean now, but not fragrant.

After he cooled down in the water, he rested a little and took the time to eat bread and drink some water.

Players need to eat one time a day and drink two bottles of water or he would become weak but it this simple food doesn't give any extra stats as happens when they ate delicacies from famous restaurants in the game. 

Ye Yan, like most adventures in the game, passes his days on just bread and water. For now, he doesn't have the time, nor the money, to spend in luxurious restaurants.

After resting and eating, Ye Yan finally entered the palace ruins, looking for the place indicated in the Book of Knowledge.

While he was bathing and resting, he kept his awareness to the max because since he entered through the walls, he is feeling like someone is observing him but he has no idea who or what it is.

He doesn't think it is a player, because it would be very hard for someone to follow him through the bushes. The only logical option is that it is a monster or an NPC. He hopes it is only a monster, NPCs should be smarter and harder to kill.

Ye Yan looked at all the rubble in front of him and only thought about how hard it will be for him to find what he is looking for. It is like looking for a needle in the haystack.

He decided to look at anything that resembled an astronomical instrument or drawings and painting of anything associated with the sky because there is no other way for him to find something otherwise.

Ye Yan walks through the ruins, looking carefully at anything that could show clues of what it once was, and while doing so, he kept throwing surreptitiously glances around, trying to discover who or what is following him.

After four long hours of looking around, he finally found something. It was a painting of some men looking at the sky. And if didn't represent that he must have found the location or at least be near it, nothing else would.

Soon, he found other clues and there was a small passage to the inside of the ruins that he can only pass after crouching. 

He is sure that it will take him to the astronomy room but it is very dangerous because of the stones and pieces of rotten wood around that look like they would fall at any time.

Ye Yan doesn't want to enter before he solves his stalker because the chances that this person or monster would but him in this place is very higher.

That's why he decided to sit on the ground and pretend to meditate with his eyes close to see if his stalker would show himself.

After closing his eyes, Ye Yan concentrated to listen every sound around himself. Suddenly, he not only heard someone approaching but also could feel a a sensation like daggers on his neck.

He opened his eyes to see who was attacking him and found out it was not an NPC or an animal but something else.

...

[1]  Zenith is, simply speaking, the highest point in the sky from an observer's perspective.