Falas Port's Whirlpool

"Hello, Saintess Ellie! I never thought I'd run into you here! I'm your fan! I've been following your posts all along!" Theresa disguised herself as a fan and said excitedly.

Hearing this, Ellie smiled as well and asked, "Then, my cute little fan, did you pull me aside because you had something private to tell me?"

Theresa nodded. "I wanted to tell you some information."

She then showed Ellie the quest, Falas Port's Conspiracy.

Looking at the quest, Ellie said, "I see. So this quest is why you pulled me aside."

"That's right. I don't think the Carron royal family did this. The framing method was too crude—anyone with eyes could see through it."

"No." Ellie denied it, then lowered her voice. "If I hadn't accepted the quest to Rebuild Falas Port, and a noble elf had come instead, this war might really have broken out. Proud elves would not tolerate such provocation. But I'm not one of them. I don't have their innate noble honor..."

Ellie had originally been a human player. Only after accepting the Saintess Candidate quest and meeting the Elf race's Holy Tree had her race changed into an elf.

A race with pointed ears and flat chests.

From the time Ellie accepted the quest to when she became an elf, her chest had gone from a C-cup to its current B-cup.

Players on Twitter joked about it every day, but Ellie did not care. It was just a game, after all.

In the Meta World's setting, busty elves did not exist. The Elf race did not need to nurse offspring, so that function had already degenerated.

Theresa's quest did not conflict with Ellie's quest. In fact, it even reminded Ellie that the people who had destroyed Falas Port were among them, and that she needed to stay vigilant.

After talking things over, the two quickly formed an alliance.

While arranging the reconstruction work, Ellie urged the other elves to temporarily set aside their hatred. Rebuilding their home was more important.

Meanwhile, Theresa secretly kept an eye on the survivors who had followed Captain Ent, including Ent himself.

What the mastermind wanted most was a conflict between the Dawn Elf Empire and the Carron Empire. But what Ellie was doing ran counter to their wishes, so they would most likely resort to the same trick again.

Only this time, they might not destroy the port being rebuilt. Instead, they might kill all the elves who had come from the royal city, thereby provoking conflict between the two nations.

Of course, these were only Theresa's guesses.

Theresa and Ellie's meeting was livestreamed on Twitter as well, while it continued to be reposted domestically through screenshots and text.

Theresa was not particularly well known overseas. Foreign viewers merely praised her for being cute, while comments comparing her to this or that character were quickly drowned out.

On domestic gaming forums, however, things immediately became lively after Theresa appeared.

"Holy shit, Mihoyo got hit too? Isn't that Theresa's Oath Armor from Honkai Impact 3rd?"

"666, Shueisha and Fujimi Shobo just released statements condemning this, and now Meta World has gone and provoked Mihoyo too. Who else have you pissed off that I don't know about?"

"Who the hell is making Meta World? They're infringing copyrights so blatantly. If they get sued, won't they be ruined by the compensation?"

"To be fair, this game doesn't even seem to have a recharge button. These character designs probably aren't being used commercially, right? Does that still count as infringement?"

On the "Meta World" forum, countless posts sprang up like mushrooms after rain. It was not only because of the character design copyright issue, but also because everyone feared the game might ultimately be forced to shut down over these problems.

Quite a few people on the forum voiced their concerns.

Its exquisite visuals rivaled reality, its service had no lag whatsoever, and its mind-link technology was beyond comprehension. Together, they formed this nearly perfect virtual world. No one wanted it to disappear just like that.

Over the following days, Su Jiang remained in Falas Port. His main task was watching the behavior of the previous survivors.

And a great many things happened during those days.

First, a large number of players reached level 30. Su Jiang lost first place on the level rankings and was now ranked below five hundredth. It was not a major issue; he only needed to return to first place before next month's rankings were settled. Su Jiang had confidence in that.

Kurumi's Time Gun still ranked first on the equipment rankings, while Divine Spirit Garb - Third ranked second. Everyone was shocked that another epic piece of equipment had appeared—and that it was once again exclusive to Kurumi.

Second, many players from the Western European servers came to Falas Port. Rebuilding the place required a great deal of manpower and resources, and Ellie's recent surge in fame had brought in many helpers.

Third, Su Jiang's investigation quest made progress. Without Kurumi's clones, Su Jiang felt that he could not have completed the task of monitoring the unusual behavior of more than a hundred survivors.

Just as he had expected, the person hidden among the survivors who was spreading the claim that the Carron Empire had been responsible for destroying the city was Captain Ent.

More importantly, he was not the only elf doing this. Every elf in the city defense squad was doing the same.

Simply put, Falas Port had become ruins entirely because those city defense personnel had done it deliberately. The only question was whether someone had instructed them or whether Ent had acted on his own initiative.

By this point, the conclusion was already obvious. There was no way a mere squad captain could have pulled this off by himself.

Over the past few days, Captain Ent and his subordinates had helped clear the rubble while complaining to others that if the people of the Carron royal family had not arrogantly destroyed the city, Falas Port would never have ended up like this.

One sentence—"The Carron royal family destroyed our home."

It instantly ignited the rage of all the survivors.

If Ellie had not continuously suppressed the hateful rhetoric below and kept port reconstruction as the primary task, the elves would already have organized themselves and launched an attack on Forest City.

However, even though Su Jiang knew Captain Ent was the instigator and had successfully ruled out the Carron royal family as suspects, the legendary quest Falas Port's Conspiracy was still not complete. What he lacked most was conclusive evidence...

Su Jiang simply could not produce any. Not to mention that this was Ent's home turf; without evidence, it was impossible to make the elves believe the words of a human.

At present, Falas Port had become the center of a whirlpool, and everyone staying there had been dragged into it. But with the memories of his previous life serving as answers, Su Jiang was not worried.

Su Jiang stopped monitoring the survivors. As long as the enemy still wanted to provoke a war between the Carron Empire and the Dawn Elf Empire, they would inevitably reveal a flaw.

At the construction site where residential housing was being rebuilt, Su Jiang arrived and set up a small stall off to one side.

He placed the rare fruits he had picked up on the stall and priced them at one gold coin each.

At the current exchange rate, that was one hundred yuan apiece.

Gold coins were depreciating incredibly fast. A few days ago, one silver coin had been worth ten yuan; now, one silver coin was only worth one yuan. So one gold coin for a rare fruit was a perfectly reasonable price.

After all, these were rare fruits that could temporarily raise certain attributes. They were extremely useful in both combat and dungeon raids.

Sometimes, the difference between success and failure might be just that little bit of extra attribute.

So Su Jiang had no worries about finding buyers.

He might have been able to sell the fruits to NPCs for even more, but he had picked them up on the NPCs' territory in the first place. Selling them back to those same people could easily cause conflict, so it was safer to sell them to players.