Lu Xiu's vision went black.
Along with a faint sensation of weightlessness, the howling sea wind by her ears and the players' clamor in the plaza instantly faded away.
When she opened her eyes again, there was no familiar rocking of a sea vessel, nor was there any opening cutscene setting out from the Old World.
At that moment,
she stood on a solid wooden walkway. The air was filled with the aroma of roasting meat, the crisp clang of ironwork, and the clear cries of seabirds.
Lu Xiu looked up. Before her was a vast base built along the mountainside, its structures arranged in orderly layers. Abandoned ships blended perfectly with rough-hewn buildings, creating a wild, primitive industrial beauty.
This was—Astera.
"As expected."
Lu Xiu looked around at the all-too-familiar scenery and thought to herself, Just like with the Witch instance, offline instances don't follow the step-by-step routine of online instances at all.
If this had been an online instance, every player would have had to obediently play a rookie from the Fifth Fleet, starting from scratch with the story and cutscenes.
But in an offline instance,
at least for an Architect like her, there seemed to be no need for any beginner guidance. She had been dropped directly into the Hunters' main base in the New World.
"."
Lu Xiu withdrew her gaze, stretched her limbs a little, and prepared to see how the Monster Hunter NPCs had changed before heading out into the wild to hunt and check what had changed about the monsters.
But before she could move,
an Astera researcher carrying a thick stack of documents happened to pass by nearby.
He turned his head absentmindedly, and his eyes swept over Lu Xiu standing on the walkway.
The NPC suddenly froze.
Then he stopped in