Arkhen first looked at the daily quest.
[Daily Quest: Essence From Desire]
Task:
—> Complete a random urge every day. Once the system recognizes that urge, you will be notified to complete it.
Reward:
—> 100 reality essence.
'What about body strengthening and pond refining? Will I have to do that myself?'
[Yes, my lord. You will have to gather energy essences of primal, chi, and mana energy to refine your ponds and strengthen your body. You will likely find ways to get Essence stones in the kingdom. As for your body, it can be strengthened in several ways as well, not just limited to using your energy to strengthen your body].
[When you awaken your soul, you will also need soul crystals to refine your soul and make it stronger. Gathering resources by adventuring and fighting will improve you overall. That's why there's no easy improving daily quest this time].
[Moreover, reality essence is very important].
Arkhen nodded and inwardly smiled and said, 'I like this as well. Adventuring sounds exciting, especially in this unique world of 1st realm. I want to see all of it.'
[Yes. But be careful. With the first 24 hours long over, the curse put on you by that being has started taking full effect. Anything unfortunate can happen to you anytime. It can be once a day or once a week. All in all, something unfortunate will definitely happen every several days in any form, large or small, depending on the situation]
'Oh yeah, I almost forgot about it,' Arkhen was startled before he wryly smiled. 'Do you have any way to remove this curse?'
[There might be some very rare cleansing treasures that can remove the curse. Be sure to look out for them. Otherwise, you need 1,895,390 reality motes to remove the curse or remove it by killing the one who cursed you]
'…'
Arkhen opened the side-quest tab and looked at it.
[Side-Quest: Unspecified]
Task:
—>System has detected some nigh events. The new side-quest will generate soon.
'What's this?'
[Hmm? The side-quest changed. Let me check what happened]
Meanwhile, Arkhen looked at the main quest.
[Main-Quest: Soul Awakening]
Task:
—>Awaken your soul by making a connection with a Star of Endowment.
Reward:
—> 1000 reality essence, Doom Key, Awakening of a random affinity.
'Let's go! This is good,' Arkhen's eyes shined as he looked at the rewards. Especially, Doom Key and a random affinity.
From the information he got when he spent some reality motes to create a scroll with details, he knew how to awaken his soul by making a connection with a Star of Endowment. It was not an instant process but could take several days of meditation with a few steps.
[My lord. I found the anomaly. It is actually related to the curse. Something is going to happen soon, and it will be amplified because of the curse. As such, the system will generate side-quest based on the incoming event]
Arkhen sat up from his laying position on Ruan's back and became cautious as he glanced around.
The royal carriage was moving alongside Ruan as both of them were moving at fast speed. They were on a wide path with nothing but almost empty plains around them. The snow was everywhere, and a small number of trees and plants here and there. There was no thick forest nearby.
'What will happen?' Arkhen wondered.
Gereld was observing Arkhen and Meya, so he also noticed Arkhen looking around cautiously and asked, "What happened?"
Arkhen heard Gereld's voice and looked down at the carriage's open windows from where Gereld was looking at him and said, "My intuition is telling me that something is going to happen."
"Huh? Something bad?" Gereld asked with a frown.
"Yeah," Arkhen said with a nod before he turned his head to look around again.
Meya turned around and looked at Arkhen curiously, "Are you really feeling such intuition? I heard people can sense danger sometimes, but never experienced someone doing that."
Meya's blue eyes looked curiously at Arkhen as she bit her lips behind the faint light blue veil with tiny tiny holes that covered her face except for her eyes.
Arkhen could see her face, albeit not clearly because of the faint veil. However, her eyes were open wide and sparkling water blue irises. Nodding his head, Arkhen said with a grin, "I can indeed sense something bad is going to happen."
*BOOOM!!*
Right after Arkhen finished speaking, the ground fifty meters in front of them was blasted open as a giant troll came out with a big club in his hand.
The troll was 40 meters tall! Entirely dark brown with bright green patterns over its body and a big club weapon in his hand.
That was not all! Five people came out of the ground from each side of the wide path as well and surrounded them!
[Side-Quest generated…]
[Side-Quest: Save Royalty]
-Task:
—>Save Meya and Gereld and successfully deliver them to the kingdom's capital.
-Reward:
—> 5000 reality motes, 1000 x essence stones of all energy systems.
Arkhen looked at the quest because its panel appeared in front of him. Afterward, he looked at the current grave situation.
In front of them was a 4th-class giant troll. He had over 400k EP. No chance to defeat it.
To their left side were five 3rd-class humans and the right side also had five 3rd-class humans.
The carriages and Ruan stopped moving as they were surrounded. A second later, everyone heard a voice from behind.
"Prince Gereld and Princess Meya, I won't make things difficult for you. Obediently follow us without informing the royal capital of this situation," a man with light brown hair reaching his should walk towards the royal carriage from behind.
The man wore a stylist fantasy leather armor with two swords hanging at his waist and had black eyes. He was also a human.
After arriving at the carriage, he looked inside from the window panel and smiled as he said, "Prince Gereld. My name is Dirroth. Now, Put away that comm crystal. If I detect anyone activating the comm crystal, I will kill all of you and escape. It will foil the main plan but whatever."
Gereld looked at the man and asked while narrowing his eyes, "What do you want?"
"For now, I want all of you to follow me without making any ruckus," Dirroth said with a smile.
On the other hand, Niel got closer to Arkhen and muttered, "It seems that we got caught up in some deep shit. We can't escape from this lineup."
The people standing on the cargo carriages started speaking.
"Please let us go. We have nothing to do with this, right?"
"I swear I will not return to the kingdom or tell any soul about this. Please let me go."
The people started pleading as they were scared.
Dirroth looked at those 13 people on both cargo carriages with an indifferent expression and said, "Shut up and follow us. If you stay obedient until we finish our task, we'll let you go."
"Hahaha, boss! Why keep such trash with us? Let's just kill the rest and take Prince Gereld and Princess Meya with us. We only need those two," one of the middle-aged men said.
Hearing him, all people on the cargo were scared.
"No, no! Please, we will follow you obediently. Don't kill us please!"
"We will follow you and do whatever you say, just please spare us!"
Neil wryly smiled and whispered, "Kinda like carrot and stick, eh."
Arkhen nodded. He thought about the current situation and decided not to make any rash moves right now.
…
After five minutes, everyone was hand-cuffed by them, including Arkhen. Naturally, these handcuffs were not normal metal handcuffs.
Dirroth controlled the carriage with Prince Gereld inside, who was hand-cuffed and power sealed with some kind of sealing talisman.
The troll was moving in the front while five 3rd class men were floating around Arkhen and Meya who were mounted on the wolf while the other five men were floating around the cargo carriages.
Neil also had to stand in the cargo carriage handcuffed.
Everyone was moving in the east direction, while the kingdom was in the north direction.
'Velshi, is it possible to summon my symbiotic items? Forget the rest, I only want to summon the Deck of Mystic Cards.'
[It is possible]
'Good,' Arkhen thought. These men didn't plan to kill them and were taking them somewhere. Since Dirroth wanted Gereld and Meya alive, he still had time to make a plan and save them before escaping.