When they finally received their first quest outside the city, the majority of the group looked like they wanted to cry in relief. The knights had tried to keep themselves composed, but even they had cracked under the never ending, monotonous quests that had plagued the group for the past several days. However, while they were happy for a change of pace, they were also wary, especially Luke, Grace, and Theodore.
None of the other groups had returned to the capital. With no way to get in contact with them, they couldn't be sure how things looked outside the capital or if they were still even alive. They had to rely purely on any news travelers brought with them. It made it difficult to plan their trip for their quest, which was to protect a caravan in the nearby town.
[Quest]
[Protect the Caravan]
Theodore could feel everyone's eyes on him as they traveled down the path towards Sahgar. He could guess what they were thinking because they made it very obvious. They hadn't even tried to pretend that they weren't keeping an eye on him ever since they received the quest. It would have been insulting if he had cared about what they thought. Right now, the only thing he cared about was getting this quest done.Even though Theodore seemed to be behaving himself so far, Luke kept checking on him just in case. He still hadn't forgotten the last few times where Theodore thought he could run off on his own. It didn't leave a good impression on him or give him confidence to let Theodore out of his sight for even a second. For all he could know, the moment he looked away, Theodore might somehow encounter a demon.Daring to look away for a moment, he checked on the rest of the group and the cara
"Guys," said Bobby, which stopped the group dead in their tracks after they had bid farewell to the caravan. "Is it just me, or is the system not saying the quest is complete?"At his words, everyone in the party noticed that they hadn't received a notification that told them that they had completed the quest and what rewards they would receive. The caravan was already in the town, which was why they had gone their separate ways. Otherwise, they would have stuck with the caravan. The quest should have been over, and they should have already been given their rewards."Maybe the rewards are being delayed," suggested Chris.No one else had a better answer for it, but Luke knew better. The system would never delay in informing them of changes to a quest. It was better at keeping them informed compared to the natives and angels. If it said a quest was not co
The group should have known better to jinx themselves. Even though they had parted ways not that long ago, there wasn't a single trace of the caravan. It was mind boggling that such a large group could vanish into thin air. This only stressed the fact that something fishy was really going on with the group, except for Luke, who was more concerned about finding the caravan in time.They were obviously under an illusion to keep them from finding the caravan. The question was why the prophets were going through so much trouble to keep them separate. They had no idea what was in the caravan except that it was supplies sent by the princess. Luke hadn't been able to get any answers out of the princess since she hadn't been calling on him to visit her.It was slightly concerning, as there was a high chance this meant she no longer wanted to involve herself with him. It would ruin a good majorit
[Quest][Protect the Caravan][You have failed to protect the caravan from demons until it reached its destination.]Luke didn't think he would see the party fail a quest with him leading it in this life. In the previous life, failure in the earlier quests wasn't surprising. They were still getting used to things, and failure didn't always automatically mean death or horrific scarring. That didn't mean they didn't receive a penalty or punishment for failing them, but the consequences weren't as severe. As they had matured, failure hadn't been an option.Now the party was facing their first failure, and Luke wasn't sure what the party would expect. He didn't have time to worry about the caravan, as it was already too late if they were receiving the notice now. Everyone in the caravan was undoubtedly dead, and trying to find them would be pointless. At best, they would find their corpses and what remained of the supplies."Damn it," said Bobby as he kicked a nearby wall.Chris clenched
Today was just not their day. No one had time to prepare themselves before their punishment was assigned to them. The knights watched helplessly from the sidelines, as there was nothing they could do for them. They hadn't even known the system was enacting the penalty until the party had frozen in place before falling to the ground like their strings were cut.The knights hesitated before approaching the fallen heroes to see if they were still alive. They confirmed that they were still breathing and were only unconscious. It was similar to what happened to a previous party, except they hadn't collapsed from pain. With no idea on how to handle the situation, the knights did the only thing they could do, which was to gather the heroes up and try to find a safe place.['Luke Hellwalker' will relive a dark memory and have his stats temporarily reduced.]
[You're a fool to think the system will let you do something like that.]"Weren't you the one who said you would help me get my revenge?" asked Luke as he manage to break through and cut down several people.[That's right. I suppose there's no helping it.]"What can you tell me about this punishment?" Luke asked as he made his way past his fallen enemies to find another place to rest.[Other than what you already know, not much, as I'm not completely sure how similar the two systems work. You already know the way for the punishment to end.]Yes, he knew. The most obvious way for the punishment to end was for him to go through the same exact events and let things play out like they had last time. However, he wasn't going to go through with it. He had already experienced the pain of dyi
Luke waited for the system to bring him back to everyone else. His real body should still be back where he left it, along with everyone else, since it was only his mind that the system had grabbed. That was unless the system thought to assign the others a different punishment that would physically send them away. If that were the case, then they would have a serious issue.That would mean they would be short on people when they were attacked by the demons and prophets, because he didn't doubt for a second that they would be attacked. However, that wouldn't be the only problem. Sometimes the system wouldn't return them back to where it originally grabbed them from. It was part of the punishment to find their way back. Hopefully, this wasn't the case for them this time if the system did decide to remove one or more members from the group.When the system finally returned him to his group, he saw several things that told him that things had gone wrong. One was that he was the first perso
Unfortunately, Luke wasn't sure how to accomplish this task under these circumstances. He didn't exactly have a skill that would allow him to break illusions. Warriors didn't normally have any skills or abilities that would allow them to deal with anything that involved magic. There were some exceptions, but they were just those rare exceptions.In this case, they would need a mage or an assassin to handle this, which were the classes they didn't have in their group. He shouldn't have allowed Grace to convince him to let Theodore into the group. However, there was nothing he could do about it now. All he could do was try to come up with a solution so they could get out of the mess they were in.A grunt drew his attention, and he was relieved to see Theodore sitting up. At least there was one less person to worry about protecting. If it was only Bobby and Chris that were unconscious, they