Chapter 27: The Trigger Condition for the Hidden Quest

After a full day of frantic grinding, Liu Kongkong had already heard plenty of announcements for dungeon first-clears — though the Path of Reincarnation still wasn't among them. That was well within his expectations. The Ten-Eyed Spider inside the dungeon was the same level as the dungeon itself — level 7 — and aside from Lonely as a Song, none of the other players had any meaningful level advantage. Losing even one party member almost always meant starting over from scratch.

Today's earnings were also quite impressive. The equipment he recovered from players would automatically have its durability restored, so all he had to do was sell off a portion of it and use the rest as blind-box prizes to hand out to players. The whole operation ran without him spending a single coin of his own.

As for the S-rank reward, Liu Kongkong hadn't made any preparations yet — and he had no intention of letting anyone actually win it in the early stages. That's right: the so-called lottery was, at the end of the day, entirely up to his mood. When he felt like giving something out, he'd give it out. A lottery? A blind box? Those were just things the players believed in.

"Today I received a total of 4,190 pieces of equipment, sold 3,000 of them, and kept the rest in the prize pool." Selling those items netted him roughly 9 gold coins. Combined with what the two grudge-fueled players from the morning and other players had spent at his shop, total revenue came to nearly 15 gold.

"So today I made about 24 gold." Liu Kongkong was fairly satisfied with that number. He casually opened the trading exchange.

Unfortunately, today's exchange rate had slipped a bit — down to 1:1.2.

He'd had a feeling this would happen. When he'd browsed the forums in the early hours of the morning, he'd noticed that many players had already given up on leveling. After finishing the main story quests, they were spending all their time grinding mobs and gathering resources, selling everything to general merchants in exchange for in-game currency. Each player could produce 3–4 silver a day that way. With the gold-farming brigade working hard, it was only a matter of time before the rate broke below 1.

He listed everything on the trading exchange in batches.

A few minutes later, it had all sold. Seeing the numbers in his account, a wave of happiness washed over him.

"Time for the meeting." He glanced at the time — nearly 5 o'clock. Liu Kongkong tidied up his materials. He hadn't sold much of what he'd crafted himself today, but for the sake of the future, he still needed to keep leveling his crafting rank. After a busy day, his blacksmith level had reached level 7. He then allocated his skill points into [Life Needs a Miracle], bringing that skill to level 3. Humanoid monsters would start dropping equipment in the later stages, and only high-quality gear would be competitive.

After allocating his points, he opened his character panel — and froze when he saw how many points he had.

"71 attribute points?! Where did these come from?! Wait... could it be that the lifespan points are actually attribute points?" Just yesterday he'd been wondering what those so-called lifespan points even were.

Well, that works. Good health is more important than anything else~

Liu Kongkong cheerfully distributed the points evenly. As an NPC who didn't fight monsters and had no time to fight players, there was nothing he really needed to optimize for.

After allocating, he looked at his character panel.

Name: Liu Dameng

Class: Apprentice Blacksmith (Level 7)

HP: 231/231

Mana: 221/221

Strength: 23

Constitution: 24

Agility: 23

Intelligence: 23

Spirit: 23

Available Points: 0

"Heh, these stats are almost on par with a regular player now."

Ordinary players gained five fixed attribute points and ten free points each time they leveled up. Liu Kongkong had no fixed points, so his stats had always lagged behind theirs — but today's sudden windfall of 51 free points had let him catch up to the average player.

"Five, four, three, two, one — closing time, good riddance!" Liu Kongkong counted down and swiftly shut the shop door. At the same time, he pulled 50 silver coins from his bag and packed them into a small pouch. That was the portion he had to hand over every day.

He headed to the Village Chief's house for the usual meeting. Throughout the proceedings, Wang Xiuqin kept shooting him winks and making faces, which made him feel rather awkward. Even now, he still had no idea what the relationship between this widow and the Village Chief actually was.

As for yesterday's sparring match — wasn't that just doing Liu Dameng a favor? What did any of that have to do with him, Liu Kongkong?!

Since today was the first day the Secret Realm had opened, all seven Secret Realm creators had seen a significant boost in income. Even after handing over 50 silver coins, Liu Kongkong barely managed to hold onto his current seat.

He was a little puzzled about the seating arrangement.

Was the seating purely a matter of honor? Or did it carry some other meaning? He'd noticed that the other NPCs seemed to take it very seriously...

Maybe he'd ask Widow Wang about it later? She was the only NPC in this Starter Village he was acquainted with — though getting answers from her always seemed to come at a price.

One hour later.

"The seating? You mean the rankings?" Wang Xiuqin lay draped across Liu Kongkong, her face flushed, slender fingers tracing along his cheek. "How could you forget something so important? When we work for the Divine, naturally we receive blessings — it's all about who puts in the most effort~" She finished with a playful glance in his direction.

Ahem. Liu Kongkong quickly steadied his thoughts.

So there were rewards? The "Divine" Wang Xiuqin spoke of was naturally the System. What kind of rewards would NPCs receive?

"So you're..."

He'd always been puzzled by how Widow Wang managed to sit so far up front. From what he'd observed over this period of time, despite being the Village Chief, the other villagers didn't seem to hold him in particularly high regard — something that was obvious from the attitude people showed when handing over their in-game currency. If that was the case, even if the Village Chief wanted to play favorites, the most he could do was move Widow Wang up a few spots. Placing her directly in the second seat was simply too outrageous.

"Me? I'm in charge of reception here. Every newcomer who arrives has to get their clothing and tutorial from me. On top of that, the Divine gave me a special hidden quest — but so far, no one has met the conditions..." As she said this, a look of exhaustion crossed Widow Wang's face. "You have no idea how tiring these past few days have been. So many newcomers showing up, and some of them look at me with the strangest eyes..."

Well, can you blame them... Liu Kongkong glanced down and clicked his tongue. As for the hidden quest she mentioned, it was almost certainly a hidden quest in the game sense. Though it wasn't of any use to him.

"Want to know how to trigger it?" Noticing Liu Kongkong had suddenly gone quiet, Wang Xiuqin assumed he was interested in her quest.

"You can tell me?" Liu Kongkong blinked.

Widow Wang smiled slyly. "The Divine never said I couldn't."

Knowing probably couldn't hurt. Liu Kongkong nodded.

"But I can't just tell you for free." Widow Wang began to negotiate terms.

Uh... Liu Kongkong immediately understood what she meant.

Another hour later.

"After you~"

"You scoundrel!"

Phew, finally saw her off. Liu Kongkong wiped the sweat from his forehead, his heart quietly thundering with shock.

Because the trigger condition for this hidden quest turned out to be — kill the Village Chief of Starter Village No. 0113, and take his place.

What a terrifying woman.

Just thinking about how Widow Wang sat beside the Village Chief every day like nothing was wrong, while secretly holding a quest like that in her hands — and the Village Chief had absolutely no idea...

"To think that joke I casually made with Lonely as a Song that day... wait, if the quest had actually gone through back then, wouldn't Lonely as a Song have really..."

Liu Kongkong stood there in a daze. That guy was no simple character.