Calandra trembled and sobbed, saying, "Lord, I... I'm actually just a thief. Apart from that pot, I have nothing else. Lord, please spare me. If you let me go this time, I will definitely..."
I interrupted him, "Alright, alright. As long as you swear not to harm me or my friends in the future, that's fine. I just scared you a little, and you ended up like this."
Calandra exhaled and wiped the cold sweat off his face, saying gratefully, "Lord, you are truly a righteous person. Alright, I swear. If I ever harm you or my friends again, I will never find a wife! Lord, please don't laugh. The gods are very reliable. The oath we made, they can hear it!"
I smiled and let go of Calandra's hand, "Let's end our contract."
Calandra hesitated for a moment, "Originally, I wanted to follow you forever. But thieves need to travel everywhere, and I'm afraid it would increase my evil value if I got you or my friends into trouble. So I'm leaving. If you need me in the future, this pigeon can find me."
I took the pigeon Calandra gave me and ended our contract.
Calandra left, and the "righteous person" medal on my chest fell to the ground with a thud. The system message said, "Due to your assistance in helping the fugitive escape, your righteousness value is deducted by 20."
I shook my head and put the medal in my bag. I also scolded myself fiercely. This Calandra, apart from the evil value caused by the Dream Soul Pot, only had 9 points of evil. He probably didn't steal anything good. However, killing him was still a hundred benefits and no harm. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
I remember I seemed to have recalled Aiman and Louison just now. It seems that every NPC has a story behind them. Could this Calandra have family members to support or someone who is ill? Good people wouldn't want to do such sneaky things, right?
This game is indeed completely different from other games. With such a super computer game design, there's basically no need to consider the workload. It can design countless stories. Unlike in previous games, an NPC can only give a few sentences or have a fixed task. The shop NPC doesn't have much conversation with you either.
Probably, this is one of the most attractive aspects of "Infinite World".
Back in the city, I went to the mercenary guild to have a look.
It's been eleven days since I joined the guild. Columbine is still at the C level, and now it's ranked second in the Sunset City.
From some of the messages and announcements posted on the guild's dedicated channel, our guild leader is not an incompetent person. The main reason is that the opponents are too strong.
Now the "Seal Team", which is the top-ranked mercenary group in the Sunset City, was established by an American player organization. This organization has tens of thousands of professional players. This group has over a thousand people from the Western Kingdom, and they gathered in the Sunset City to form a mercenary group. Compared to other temporary groups formed in the game, their cohesion and strength are much stronger.
The Seal Team just pooled the entire team's strength and completed the most difficult task at the B level. In one mission, over a thousand people died, but only two hundred returned alive. As a result, they immediately rose to the B-level mercenary group and ranked ninth across the entire continent.
I casually looked through the mercenary tasks. Since I'm the honorary leader of the C-level group, I can check the B-level tasks at most. And I can accept them on behalf of the group.
Among thousands of tasks, I quickly spotted Calandra's wanted task. It's at the C level. "Kill or capture the thief Calandra. Reward 100 mercenary experience and 10 gold coins. Return the Dream Soul Pot he has, and you'll be rewarded 10,000 mercenary experience and 1,000 gold coins." Oh my god, the Dream Soul Jar is truly a wonderful thing. The reward is as high as that of the Law God's Reward.
I wonder which king was so evil as to take such a good thing for burial. It's no wonder that Lanx wanted to learn the skills of tomb raiding. He really could get something good.
Look at these mercenary tasks. The easy ones have all been done by others. The remaining ones are all troublesome and time-consuming, and there are also those with obvious high difficulty and low rewards.
Not to delay, let's return to Friendship Town. Prepare all kinds of items in our own shop and leave a message for the brothers. Then, set off towards "Guifeng City", where "Yiu" is located.
"Guifeng City" was a satellite town under "Yiu" in ancient times. Maybe there are some clues about the tasks. I spent several hours shopping and learned some information from some old people.
Because there are more ghosts around the ruins of "Yiu", the king has now added walls and boundaries outside, leaving only one entrance guarded by soldiers.
Many people who received orders from the king and some adventurers were allowed to enter the boundary, but in the past few hundred years, no one has heard of anyone coming back alive.
I didn't expect this task to be so dangerous. I was nervous, with a nearly 100% death rate. What am I doing here? I don't know how to ask the king to give up the task.
But after thinking about it, the once-huge spirit of possession in my heart still encouraged me to try. The more difficult the task is, the more fulfilling it is to complete it!
Moreover, even if I can't complete the task, in this city, so many people have died, their equipment must be very valuable. Those who dared to venture in and those sent by the king themselves must all be the best of the best. Oh my god, artifacts, divine tools, celestial tools... I'm sure I'll get them all!
I couldn't hold back any longer. I'm going to raid for treasures!
From the bookstore, I found a map of Ancient Yiu City and the legend of Yiu City. Guifeng City has unique buildings that no other city has: "Temple". I bought several amulets that increase resistance to darkness by 1 from the temple. Unfortunately, I could only wear one of them, otherwise I would have covered my whole body.
There is no teleportation array beside the ruins of "Yiu". It took me an hour on horseback to reach there. There were no monsters or resources nearby, so there were no players around.
In front of me was a huge hemispherical protective shield. Under the sunlight, the shield was still shrouded in gray fog, and I couldn't see what was inside.
The several soldiers guarding the entrance looked at me with sympathetic eyes and let me in. These soldiers were wearing level 100 equipment, which was only available at level 100.
Just before entering the gate, my heart started pounding wildly. My subconscious mind desperately tried to tell me: "Don't go in! Don't do it!" I hesitated for a moment, but still gathered my courage and stepped in. After all, it's just a death, and I'll lose one level. What's there to be afraid of? After dying, I can give an account to the king.
The scene before me was gray and blurry. I lit a torch and cast the Wind Blast spell, but the gray fog still wrapped me tightly.
Soon, I came up with an idea. I added various priestly spells to myself, including healing spells and light spells. The dark spells were indeed effective against the light spells. The gray fog was blocked several meters away, and I could clearly see what was under my feet.
The ground was completely covered with black sand, with nothing else. No grass, no stones, not even the piles of bones and equipment I imagined.
My feet were stuck in the sand, but I didn't feel it at all. Just for a moment when I stopped to cast a spell, my body slowly sank downward.
I quickly pulled my legs out and walked forward. Strange enough, as long as I was walking, it was not easy to sink.
I started running, but the scene was the same. The black sand under my feet didn't change at all. It gave me the illusion that I was just running in the same place.
Am I in a huge treadmill? I bent down and felt the sand with my hands. It didn't flow backward, indicating that the sand sea was still stationary. Afraid that Fyron would sink because of its heavy weight, I didn't dare to summon it out. So I ran in the sand for about an hour, feeling extremely suffocated and wanting to shout out.
I forced myself to calm down and thought to myself, "Could this be a magic formation?" If so, it would definitely be a very advanced one in the SSS-level mission. With my current abilities, I couldn't possibly use brute force to break it.
Having read so many books in the library, I still hadn't read about magic formations. What should I do?
Running in the sand all the time wasn't an option. Soon, I would deplete my energy. The top priority was to solve the problem of sinking.
I took out a wooden board from the bag and placed it on the sand. Fortunately, it could float on it. I started making it while walking, using various high-quality materials. It took me a lot of time, and I finally made my first small boat. I made a sail and a pirate flag using the sewing technique, and carved a prow image based on the image of the "illusion god" in the book, which is the guardian of "Yiu".
The system message said: "Since the boat you made has reached the gold level, please name it."
I smiled: "Noah's Ark!" The system actually approved it. Looking at the boat's attributes: "Full load displacement 5 tons, carrying capacity 3 tons..."
Sitting on my small boat, one hand holding the oar, the other hand casting the wind magic towards the sail, it was faster than walking. The most important thing was that I didn't have to worry about sinking anymore, and my heart felt much more at ease. I began to sense the direction by intuition.
The coordinates in the game had failed here. It's a pity that I had thought of everything else, but not this one. If I had known, I would have bought a compass.
Time passed slowly. I had been floating in the sand sea for six hours!
I had thrown countless wooden blocks on the sand surface to make "floaters", and the direction I was walking now should be a place I had never visited before. But I still couldn't get out.
According to my understanding, the range of the Yiu ruins is only a hundred square miles. Considering my current situation, I should have already explored this area thoroughly. It seems that this is indeed a magic formation.
I stopped playfully and threw the fishing rod into the sand sea. I started cooking and making a fire on the boat.
While eating the delicious roasted wolf king meat, I looked at the fishing rod. I couldn't help laughing. Was I the first person to fish in the desert? I couldn't blame myself, but it was just that the black sand was too similar to water. I couldn't help trying it.
Moreover, since I learned to fish, I have developed a psychological effect. As soon as I put down the fishing rod, my mood would become much calmer. Once, while fishing by the well, my brothers called me an idiot, but I didn't feel anything at all. Fishing is indeed an activity that cultivates one's temperament.
Sure enough, my heart quickly calmed down. These past few days were too tense. Taking a rest in this sand sea might not be a bad thing. Well, I'm full now, and I'm going to have a nice sleep. Maybe when I wake up, everything will be better.
I took out the steel bed and was about to fall asleep when I suddenly saw the fishing rod shake!
I stared at the fishing rod blankly. I was dizzy for only 0.01 seconds, then I hurriedly pulled the rod.
Oh my god, there were actually fish down there in the sand? No, it's probably some kind of monster like scorpions. Who cares? As long as it's something different from this endless sand sea, it can excite me.
Even a 200-level boss monster would be fine. Better if it came up and killed me, allowing me to return to Friendship Town without doing this damned mission!
My fishing line was a 3-meter super fishing line. It had the advantage of being long, allowing me to catch things in deep water. However, only expert fishermen like us could use it.
I used the fishing techniques, constantly pulling and releasing, and constantly moving it. This fish or some kind of monster was obviously very, very heavy! And the animal training technique seemed to have no effect on it. I had only dragged it one meter before I was already out of breath.
It was so powerful. The boss fish last time wasn't so difficult to catch!
It was getting closer and closer. The monster was less than half a meter away from the sandy surface. I shouted loudly and exerted all my strength: "Start!"
A shadow was pulled out of the water and fell into my boat.
Finally, it was here. I hurriedly put down the fishing rod, quickly took out the shield and the golden knife from my pocket, and rushed towards it!
The dark shadow sat up, and two eyes with anger stared fiercely at me. I rubbed my eyes and stared blankly at the monster. This... This... This... Isn't this a person!!!
And, surprisingly, it was actually a woman! A beautiful woman!