23.1 - Pan Long Underground Palace Entry Ticket 1

Chapter 23: Pan Long Underground Palace Entry Ticket 1 – Part One

After Xiao Ran entered the city, he made his way inconspicuously to the teleportation point, and spent ten coins to teleport to Beiyou Town, which was somewhat far from Feng Xue City. The climate there was mild, which was extremely different compared to Feng Xue City.

There was no wind or snow in Beiyou Town. There were only warm breezes and sunsets that faded behind the mountain edges.

The afterglow of the setting sun was like a hazy and ambiguous crimson veil shrouding the quiet town. 1

The time in the game was directly opposite that of the time in real life. In the game, when the sun is setting, in reality, a new day has just begun. Busy people switch from the game console’s sleep mode one after another, until there are suddenly many fewer people remaining in the game.

The game routes of Oracle of the Gods was divided into day route and night route, corresponding to day and night in reality. Players could select only one route to login to the game with during one day.

With the development of holographic technology, the game console had fully achieved a sleep function. People play games in their sleep without interrupting their daily life or delaying game upgrades. For that reason, there are always many more people online during the ‘day’ than the ‘night’, so the game time during the ‘day’ route is also six hours longer than the ‘night’ route. 2

But in order to balance the game, the experience gained from killing monsters at night was 20% greater than during the day. More adventure events would also occur at night, but Xiao Ran had no energy to go out and take risks.

Xiao Ran walked into the auction house in Beiyou Town and listed all of the extra equipment in his inventory. When it was almost time to go offline, everyone who was attempting instances came out of the instances. Many people chose to look for equipment to pass the time. Xiao Ran’s sales were naturally very good, and after a while, there were ten or twenty more gold coins in his hands.

That amount of gold coins was already a lot in the eyes of ordinary players, but Xiao Ran understood that after reaching max level, that amount of money would simply not be enough.

He had to make plans as soon as possible for his route upon reaching max level.

After replenishing his necessities like red potions, blue potions, and ink, Xiao Ran did not use his money to purchase extra supplies, but directly deposited it into his personal inventory to prepare for his trip to Haizhong City next month.

After finishing up, Xiao Ran walked into the town’s only well lit inn.

The innkeeper was a big-headed, wide-eared, middle aged, fat uncle with sharp, haughty eyes. As soon as Xiao Ran walked into the inn, those calculating eyes immediately stopped squinting as he rubbed his hands back and forth in trepidation: “Truly, it is truly glorious to have such a distinguished guest as you visit my establishment……”

NPC rules were strict. Even demigod-level NPCs had to be polite when faced with Xiao Ran, not to mention an inn manager who was just an ordinary NPC.

Xiao Ran spoke bluntly: “I want to stay in the inn, Prepare some side dishes for me.”

“Of course! Xiao-er, quickly send this esteemed guest to our best room! Then ask the kitchen to cook our three signature dishes!” The innkeeper NPC shouted.

At that time, two players arrived from the side, a man and a woman. The man was very surprised and questioned Xiao Ran: “Is this possible, bro? Why is this uncle so polite to you? We begged him for so long just to perform a cooking mission, and he insists the chef is on vacation today and to return in two days.”

Xiao Ran casually replied: “I stay in a lot of inns. If you’re a frequent guest of this inn chain, he will treat you like this.”

“All right……” The male player turned around and guided the female player away in disappointment.

The female player was complaining in a low voice: “That’s it? Keep coming? Return to the chain? This AI has to be fucked up, ba!”

“Not really.”

“But what was he doing in the inn?”

“Maybe there are items that can increase attributes through sleeping.”

“Ei? Don’t you think he looked familiar?”

“Did he?”

As Xiao Ran followed Xiao-er upstairs, he overheard the conversation between the two players.

With his activities becoming more frequent, more and more players would definitely recognize him.

To be honest, his didn’t have a good solution for that situation for the time being.

He was an NPC. When faced with pursuit by players, although he could issue quests to players to resolve his issues, his identity as an NPC would be exposed, which would without a doubt be a very stupid thing—

And the AI refinement? Once the incident became known to everyone, the only fate awaiting Xiao Ran was to be dealt with like a system bug.

So based on that, Xiao Ran principally believed that the more inconspicuous he was, the better.

If it weren’t for Shenyao harshly butting heads with him, he wouldn’t want to be stuck in such a stalemate with the most famous guild in Shenzhou.

But luckily, even when they were at their most arrogant, nothing happened to Xiao Ran. It seemed that the game company wouldn’t be able to discover his bug-like existence for a while……

For now, he would step up to upgrade and finish his breakthrough missions first.

Xiao Ran internally came to that conclusion.

TL Notes:

Almost done with part two, will update in a few mins!

Footnotes

ref. to crimson veil of bridalwear so there are 18 hours of game day (which occurs mostly at in real life night time) and 6 hours of game night (occurring during real life day time)