A Delayed Recruitment

"What do we do now..."

Night had already fallen, and Pierce and Mengzhu were sitting at a round table inside the Vica Inn, spending the final moments of their day.

The Vica Inn was a renowned establishment in Windflower Town, situated right on Flower Basket Street, the town's most bustling thoroughfare. This street essentially served as the commercial hub of Windflower Town, where one could find all sorts of local delicacies and a wide variety of shops. Because of its lively atmosphere, the street enjoyed immense popularity among the player community, and many players chose to set up stalls for trading here or use it as a gathering point.

It was rumored that a certain faction was secretly trying to acquire a shop around here, though the outcome remained uncertain...

In any case, thanks to the environment of this street, business at the Vica Inn was booming more and more. Aside from traditional travelers, the heavy patronage of players—acting as a community of adventurers—had become one of the main sources of economic revenue for the inn. Although the food here showed no great improvement compared to the fare at the Greenstone Village inn, the prices were correspondingly much more pleasant on the wallet.

However, the two individuals sitting here right now felt very little joy.

That inexplicable and undeserved disaster from the afternoon still filled Mengzhu with resentment whenever she recalled it. Even though that fat man looked exceptionally weak, his status as a legitimate guard captain was indisputable. Therefore, despite the reluctant expressions on their faces, the guards ultimately rounded up the people who had blocked the entrance.

Naturally, this group included both Pierce and Mengzhu, and it seemed... they were the only players among them.

They were escorted to the back of the courtyard outside the town hall, into a small building that resembled a storage room. The group was left standing around for a while before the fat man walked in, putting on airs as he interrogated them one by one, followed by launching into a grand, bombastic speech.

"Do you know why you were hauled in here?! Your actions constitute a disturbance of the peace! Furthermore, because of you, a suspect we had already captured was allowed to escape. Under normal circumstances, we would be justified in treating all of you as his accomplices..."

Spittle flew wildly from the fat man's mouth, though the content was essentially nothing more than intimidation. The few townspeople brought in with them trembled with fright, but Pierce and Mengzhu, being seasoned players who had seen the world, certainly weren't buying it.

"You're the one who carelessly let the person get away in the first place, yet you insist on pinning the blame on us... Besides, we don't even know what crime that person committed, so how could we possibly know he was a bad guy..."

The young girl's voice was not loud, but in that enclosed environment, the fat captain naturally heard every word clearly. His small eyes widened into perfect circles, the implication of his warning self-evident. Unfortunately, players who feared neither heaven nor earth were certainly not going to be intimidated by a mere guard captain.

"What are you staring at?! For all we know, you don't even have a clue what that person did, otherwise you would have arrested him long ago..."

"Bullshit!"

The fat man finally erupted like a volcano, pointing a finger at Mengzhu's delicate face and beginning to threaten her: "I now suspect you of theft, fraud, and... oh right, resisting law enforcement! You are accomplices! You aided and abetted... and ultimately allowed your cohort to escape!"

"Do you have any shame at all, big brother..." Pierce said nonchalantly, putting his hands behind his head. "We don't even know that guy, nor do we know what he was doing there. How could we possibly be his accomplices..."

"Hmph! You can spouting whatever nonsense you like anyway... After all, nobody is ever going to believe the words of criminals," the fat man said through gritted teeth. "Once I report this matter to Mayor Rama and obtain his authorization, no matter what you say, it won't change—"

"Wait!" Mengzhu suddenly leaped to her feet. "Who did you just say? Mayor Rama?"

"What's the matter? Do you... know the mayor?" A trace of panic flickered in the fat man's eyes.

"We're here to see him!" Discovering a turning point in the situation, the young girl puffed out her modest chest and declared triumphantly.

"You... just who are you two..." Realizing something was amiss, the fat man took two steps back, staring at these two players who were obviously outsiders.

"We are... adventurers from Greenstone Village," Pierce said lazily, standing behind Mengzhu who had her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised. "Entrusted by Gustav, we have come to... meet the mayor."

The fat captain knew very well what had actually caused this incident, so his guilt had already made him uneasy; upon hearing this, he lowered his head, his two small eyes darting around frantically.

"Hmph, you people not only fail to receive guests properly, but you also frame innocent citizens like us." By now, Mengzhu had assumed the heroic posture of someone in total control of the situation. She waved a hand dismissively toward the townspeople in the back, then pointed at the fat man and said, "Watch out, or I'll go straight to Mayor... Rama and lodge a formal complaint against you!"

"Ah... ahahaha, all of this is just... a misunderstanding, well..." The fat man looked up and forced a smiling expression while his hands, hidden behind his back, made subtle gestures. "Men, let those... let them all go. As for this... adventurer..."

The remaining townspeople, still completely oblivious to what was happening, were guided out of the room by the guards, leaving only Pierce, Mengzhu, and the smirking fat captain behind. He rubbed his hands together, walked up to Mengzhu with a smile, and said, "You... you said you were entrusted by someone. I wonder... which esteemed personage..."

"Oh, no offense intended, but... you see, ensuring the security of this place is my duty, which is why I was so worked up earlier..."

"Oh, really worked up, huh..." The young girl gave a haughty huff, unclipped the rope ring from her wrist, and slapped it down in front of the fat man. "This is the token given to us by Master Gustav. It surely can't be fake..."

"Of course, of course..." the fat man said ingratiatingly, extending his chubby hands. "Let me take a look..."

The next moment, he snatched the ring away.

"Guards! Throw these two swindlers out!"

"Hey, what kind of person are you... Give me back my ring!"

"What kind of worthless piece of junk..." The guards who rushed in surrounded Pierce and Mengzhu. The fat man examined the red-and-black braided rope ring and spat on the ground. "It's just a goddamn piece of broken string. Who do you think you're trying to fool?"

"That was given to us by Master Gustav..."

"Who the hell is Gustav? Never heard of him." The fat man put on a righteous expression, shouting with high-minded dignity, "Considering that you greenhorn adventurers lack worldly experience and are easily duped by con artists, I'll let you off this time—"

"Hey, you fat bastard, you'd better think this through!" Pierce protested.

"Throw them both out! And don't ever let them come back here to cause trouble." With a wave of the fat man's hand, Pierce and Mengzhu were shoved out the door, followed by the sound of the fat man's deliberately amplified voice echoing behind them: "Lest they bring shame to our Windflower Town..."

"Hmph, who recognizes some random Gustav..." Once those two had been driven far away by his subordinates, the fat man sneered and casually shoved the ring into his tunic. "A bunch of low-class peasants from Greenstone Village trying to pull a fast one on me..."

The shrill, distinctive laughter of the fat man echoed through the room.

***

"Let's rest for a bit, and then we can go ask Richard about this," Pierce said back at the inn, planning their next steps while comforting the bruised ego of Mengzhu.

The girl was slumped over the table looking utterly dejected, having barely touched the food in front of her—it seemed the earlier incident had dealt a heavy blow to her spirits.

Having gone over there full of confidence to find backing, only for things to turn out like that, nobody would find it easy to accept... Moreover, the young girl had previously pinned great hopes on this gift from old Gustav, and now it had ended up like this...

"It's all..." Mengzhu suddenly slammed her hands on the table and stood up. "It's all that fat bastard's fault!"

The young girl's voice was loud enough to cause other patrons in the inn to turn and look over in surprise. Pierce quickly pressed the still-fuming Mengzhu back down into her seat. "Don't get worked up. Just make a mental note of this score..."

"We'll go find the mayor and lodge a complaint right in front of him..." A flushed Mengzhu remained furious. "Scum like that has to be—"

"It's probably best not to do that," Pierce said.

"Eh? Why?" Mengzhu asked, looking puzzled.

"Stupid and clumsy though that fat man may be, one fact remains right before our eyes," Pierce said. "That fat man is a guard captain."

"So what..." Mengzhu said angrily. "Are you afraid of him? Oh, I see. So you're that kind of uncle..."

"What do you mean 'that kind of uncle'?! Uh, wait, how could I possibly be afraid? Use that little brain of yours to think properly," Pierce said helplessly. "Why would a fool like that ever become a guard captain?"

"..." Seeming to realize something, the young girl stopped speaking.

"So..." Pierce said in a deep voice. "Behind him, there must be some kind of backing or connections..."

"Does a game really have things like that..." Mengzhu muttered, her voice gradually trailing off.

"Heh, if that were the only thing, it would be fine..." Pierce said. "The scariest part is... what if that Rama fellow isn't a good person either? Wouldn't we just be walking right into a trap?"

"---Could it be that Gustav isn't a good person either?" Mengzhu gasped in shock. "Have we been inside a trap the whole time?"

"I don't know about that, but if it were some sort of trap, they probably wouldn't make it so easy for us to figure out." Striving to recall the old mystery man's parting words, Pierce leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. "Still, I'm guessing that old man... definitely had some kind of purpose."

"What purpose?"

"Right." As if sorting out his own train of thought, Pierce continued, "Starting with saving us, then claiming he wanted to help us, giving us the ring, and finally leaving me that message. And then... standing by and watching coldly when we ran into bandits."

He lowered his arms and looked at the puzzled young girl across the table. "Every single one of these events points to something abnormal, so he definitely wanted to achieve a specific... desired effect."

"Why are there so many complicated things just from playing a game!" Mengzhu clutched her head plaintively and slumped back down onto the table. "The whole business in the Emerald Forest was like this..."

"This is a fantasy world, after all," Pierce said. "So once you factor in deceit and political maneuvering, things are bound to get much more complicated..."

"Fortunately, we still have strength." Pierce looked at his own hand and slowly clenched it into a fist. "As long as we grow stronger, these problems won't be problems anymore."

***

After going around in a huge circle, they ended up right back at the Adventurers' Guild. Neither Pierce nor Mengzhu felt particularly great about it. However, facing the warm hospitality of that slovenly uncle Richard, it was difficult for the two of them to maintain miserable expressions.

Regardless of everything, the two of them could finally find work to sustain themselves, as long as... they could manage to gather enough party members.

"Personally, I very much hope you two join the Adventurers' Guild," Richard said, scratching his stubbly chin and squinting sideways. "We can just head down to the Ring Mountain Plaza for a casual test, and then hand you a random probationary quest. The whole process will be done in a flash, guaranteed to be efficient and fast..."

"However, you need to have five people first." He looked at the two of them and held up a single palm.

"Friendly tip... you just need five people total. It doesn't matter if they can fight or not, it doesn't matter if they do any work, even if they're just registered in name..." Then, Richard covered his mouth with that same hand and whispered to them conspiratorially.

There are only three of us here, who exactly are you putting on a sneak act for...

"Here is a certificate. If someone happens to be genuinely indisposed, they just need to sign their name on this..."

"Fine, fine, fine, we get it!" Unable to endure the salesman-like demeanor of this uncle any longer, Pierce and Mengzhu quickly accepted Richard's proposal, and then... headed out to start recruiting members.

Establishing an adventurer group naturally required adventurers. In other words, members of an adventurer party could only consist of players; NPCs were simply unable to join adventurer teams—this rule had been confirmed through empirical experience. At least for now, no player had ever been reported to possess the capability to pull a native resident of the Free Continent into an adventurer party.

Looked at through the lens of a game, however, this was extremely straightforward—you simply could not form a party with NPCs.

When it came down to it, this was a matter of recruiting teammates, except this time the recruitment might be for long-term cooperative partners, so the two of them naturally needed to vet candidates carefully. After spending some time observing the area, the most suitable place to find people to form a party around here was undoubtedly Windflower Town's liveliest street—Flower Basket Street.

Flower Basket Street in the morning was not nearly as bustling as it was during the afternoon and evening. Because players wishing to venture out on adventures in the surrounding area generally adhered to the standard routine of "setting out at sunrise and returning at sunset," the crowds gradually swelled by afternoon and evening. These were usually players returning with the fruits of their labor, coming here to hawk their spoils of war or browse other stalls in search of suitable equipment to trade. Precisely for this reason, if one wanted to recruit teammates to venture out on adventures together, arriving here in the morning was also an excellent choice, because... there were plenty of other people harboring the exact same intention of forming a party as Pierce and Mengzhu.

Even so, party-formation intentions here were still predominantly centered around pick-up groups.

"Little Anquidar Mountain Trail, Windflower Prairie, Red Flower Village... Oh, look, someone actually wants to go to Falling Star Mountain. That's not close at all; you wouldn't be back for days..."

Walking down Flower Basket Street, Pierce and Mengzhu were already dizzy from the overwhelming influx of party recruitment notices.

"So many people... Hey uncle, look over there, it looks like someone is recruiting too." Mengzhu pointed in a certain direction where a vendor's stall had been set up, with a wooden sign in front displaying information about guild recruitment.

Beside him, many other recruiters sat in a neat row. Among them were prominent guilds like Jianghu and Wings of Freedom, though the players doing the recruiting from those camps looked noticeably more confident. Sitting there with an air of "I am the boss," they could occasionally be seen glancing at each other, sparks of competitive passion seemingly flying in the empty space between them.

"If we didn't have other business to attend to, I'd really want to sit here and watch the show for a while..." Although Mengzhu's own harrowing experience had passed a while ago, reinforced later by Xue Linghuanbing's comfort, the young girl still held zero goodwill toward these large guilds—otherwise, she wouldn't have wanted to establish her own adventurer group.

"Still, if things are like this, should we also make a sign and go sit over there... Uncle?"

"It seems we've run into an acquaintance," Pierce said, looking in another direction and rubbing his chin.