“Kokun told me a bit. He stopped at the part where only a small part of exiled remained.”
“Great. Then I’ll continue. Survivors were wandering the land of monsters in search for a place to settle. Their first choice was a huge cave, but not everyone liked the idea of living in a constant darkness. Gradually more and more people were coming outside, and eventually they decided to found a village.”
“Incredible, they had the courage to start a settlement in the Plains of Despair!”
Weed wanted to show his admiration for their courage. Even in such dangerous environment the pioneering spirit of humans won!
“Nah, that wasn’t that remarkable. To tell the truth, at that moment there were still a lot of survivors. But they had a disagreement. They’ve split in 2 camps: ones, who didn’t want to change anything and anes who wanted to leave the cave. The latter were the ones who founded our village and later built the wall around it. Unfortunately 99 of every hundred died in the process.”
“...”
That was a story for a horror movie. Unknown lands, full of dangers and a group of defenceless people...
“Yeah, that’s how it all happened. Through trial and error, each of them costed human lives, the survivors acquired new knowledge. They learned which places to avoid, discovered habits of monsters and predators of this land. They started to better understand the world around them. Around that time life in the village started to become safe. Ahem, I guess I talked to much. I still have a lot of work to do. Here, this is my present for you.”
You acquired the map of the plains.
This is the map of the Plains of Despair.
It displays the location of castles, villages, monster dens and cursed places.
Lucille suddenly gave Weed a very valuable item. The map of Plains of Despair and everything in them! With a roughly marked landscape and main habitats of some monster kinds.
Though it was drawn really bad, like it was done by a child who was learning to write.
“Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome. Try to visit the village more often. The people who don’t hunt are more welcome towards strangers. It would be nice if more new people were coming here.”
Weed headed back to Kokun to deliver the shield. The hunter was waiting for him at the same place while sharpening his sword.
“Oh, you came back? You’re late. Did you bring it?”
Weed gave him the shield.
“Thanks. You did a favour to me, but I don’t have anything to give you. Though wait a second, here, take it.”
“You received 20 steel arows.”
Ding!
The quest “Shield for Kokun” is complete.
The hunter Kokun have already lost his shield a few times in a battle. He was always coming back from the hunt injured, but never yet he brought back anything worthy. Villagers consider him a failure.
No one know where he fights.
Reward: 20 steel arrows for the long bow. A little experience.
Weed opened the character window. The experience bar only grew by 0.001%.
You can’t expect much from a E rank difficulty quest, even with double experience bonus. If only it was one of the quests where experience depended on the completed goals...
Satisfied Kokun examined his new shield and said:
“Oh, yeah, I started telling about our village, right? Remind me where did we stop?”
“The small part of survivors founded the village. Lucille told me up to this part.”
“Hah! He sure loves to talk. Ill continue. To survive we had to become stronger. All the villagers mastered weapons, especially bows: some of us are even better at it than dark elves. What else... Our village is eastmost in the Plains of Despair. The Yuroki mountain range can be clearly seen from here, it’s inhabited by numerous orcs.”
“You founded your village in a dangerous place.”
“Yeah. Most of the villages are like that. We’re even relatively lucky. There’s an iron mine nearby, so we can forge weapons. we have plenty of food too. Though from time to time we’re getting raided by orcs.”
“Orcs?”
“Every year at harvest time they come to plunder our barns. To be honest orcs are the only reason we don’t live in abundance. But sadly they are also the reason we don’t have to deal with other, more dangerous monsters. So we live in poverty, but relatively safe.”
The exile settlement was holding despite annual orc raids.
“However a few years ago orcs started taking not just food, but villagers. After all they can’t make anything themselves!”
“I heard that orcs are the worst race with regard to crafting.”
“That’s right. That’s why they take people away, so that they make weapons and do other work for them. In the last few years they took more than a hundred people! Damn orcs!”
“Have you tried to stop them?”
Kokun burst into laughing.