The Welcome Feast

The village chief stroked his beard and said with a smile, "It's getting late. Our village has prepared a welcome feast for everyone, using rare ingredients. Don't miss it."

With that, the village chief abandoned his kindly tone, his voice turning stern:

"After all, the welcome feast is also one of the activities tourists must participate in. As trial visitors, you can only suggest changes after taking part.

Also, it isn't peaceful outside the village. I hope all of you trial visitors will maintain your professional standards. Do. Not. Casually. Step. Outside. Sunny Village!"

By the end, the village chief was practically stressing every word. His words seemed to become heavy hammers, slamming into the players' hearts.

Everyone suddenly remembered the instance's main quest.

[Survive ten days and nine nights, and complete at least three tourist activities.]

This was a survival instance with added quest elements!!

It was a whole level harder than a pure survival instance!

[Oh man! I almost forgot this is a survival instance, not a mystery instance. The players just need to stay alive. They don't have to find out why the villagers are so weird.]

[Exactly! Then why am I racking my brains over all this? Who cares about air sacs? Why not just sit back and watch the players kill, kill, kill?]

[How boring. I thought the village chief was going to pull a living corpse out of thin air.]

[Solving the mystery is still necessary, based on my 3,000 hours of watching livestreams. Players who survive ten days and nine nights and complete three tourist activities can only get the most basic rating.

Even with all the hidden bonuses for a newly opened instance, they can only reach B+ or A- at most. They have to find one or two clues about the instance's hidden story to reach A or A+, and fully completing the hidden quest gets them to S!]

[All right, clever me has already guessed what the hidden quest is called: "Shocking! Blood-colored air sacs spread from human to human! From monkey to human! Is this a case of humanity's..."]

[Why do I feel like the hidden quest is to uncover why everyone in the village is a living corpse?]

[Did the person above just download Everbright Technology? All the human NPCs in instances are living corpses. They're dead players patched up and reused.]

[That's right, I only downloaded it this morning. This is the first stream I've watched.]

[Think bigger. The hidden quest is to kill every creature with blood-colored bubbles on its body!!]

Looking at the viewers' wildly varied guesses, Zuo Cheng'an sank into thought.

There was a limit to how many instances players could earn free attribute points from. Once they exceeded that number, they would no longer gain attribute points from running instances.

To maximize the benefits of an instance run, naturally, the higher the rating, the better.

As for how to obtain an instance's hidden quest, he actually had some experience.

In the Uncle Muchou's Farm instance, he had only triggered the quest after finding the key clue: a photograph featuring the farm's original owner.

By the same reasoning,

to obtain the hidden quest for Sunny Resort, he would also have to find a crucial clue.

The suspicious detail currently known was that the villagers and the mountain monkeys outside all had red spots on their bodies, or the spots' advanced form, blood-colored air sacs.

But this was the "result." He had yet to find the "cause" that made those red spots appear on their bodies.

Zuo Cheng'an reckoned that when he came into contact with the "cause," he would be able to trigger the hidden quest.

He currently had two lines of thought: either the clue was hidden in the cave the sightseeing bus had passed through, or it was hidden in the tourist activities.

Ideally, he would trigger it simply by entering the cave or while taking part in some tourist activity.

But reality could not possibly go that smoothly.

The village chief had warned them not to leave the village, probably either to stop players from wandering into a nearby cave or out of concern that players would tamper with the activity sites ahead of time.

Sneaking out of the village was too risky. Unless he had no other options, he could not try it for now.

So the best option at present was to wait patiently for the welcome feast and follow the instance's sequence for now.

Zuo Cheng'an rubbed Mo Dou's head. Level 2 instances really were a hassle.

A single run took nearly ten days, unlike level 1 instances, which could be finished in a day.

Even if he learned after returning to the safe zone that little time had passed, the time he experienced inside the instance was still very real.

What was more, he felt that the passage of time in Sunny Resort was infinitely close to a 1:1 ratio with the outside world.

Fortunately, the days on his rental did not count down while he was in an instance.

Otherwise, he would have to pay more rent as soon as he returned, for a place he had only rented a few days ago.

Zuo Cheng'an recalled that he had yet to formally enter a level 1 instance; Ladder Tower and the beginner instance did not count. That meant he still had plenty of level 1 instance slots from which he could earn attribute points.

If the Great Purge had not been approaching, he would not have risked entering a high-risk, high-reward level 2 instance.

Wouldn't it have been better to lie low and grow stronger in easy level 1 instances?

But with the ticking time bomb that was Red-Eyes around, he had to grow stronger as quickly as possible and improve his chances of survival.

There were eleven days left until the Great Purge. If the instance's time was synchronized with the safe zone's,

then once he left the instance, he would barely have any time to rest and recover before facing the Great Purge.

Eight or ten attribute points would not give his strength a qualitative leap.

His only hope was to complete the hidden quest, obtain an S rating, and double the attribute points he received.

If he remembered correctly, the maximum reward for a level 2 instance seemed to be ten attribute points. Doubled by an S rating, that would be twenty.

If he could complete some achievements during the instance, his gains might be even higher.

The requirements for some achievements that were not particularly difficult to earn were already semi-public knowledge.

Anyone willing to put in the effort to ask around could find them out.

For example, the Good Start achievement he had earned required killing one hostile monster in the beginner instance.

If someone missed their chance in the beginner instance, it would be useless no matter how many they killed afterward.

Pioneer was simple too: clear an unopened instance once. Every player on the First Heavenly Ladder had that achievement.

It also had advanced versions, Pioneer 2.0 and Pioneer 3.0, which required clearing unopened instances twice and three times respectively. Their rewards were also three attribute points.

There were also combat achievements such as Ten Thousand Kills, for killing ten thousand hostile humanoid creatures, and Insect Slayer, for killing a hundred thousand hostile insect creatures.

There were instance-exclusive achievements too, such as Visitor Unwelcome to Blue Hat Granny, Meat Canning Factory Outstanding Employee, and Honored Guest of the Old Castle.

However, guides for these instance-exclusive achievements had generally already circulated.

As a result, apart from the first person to discover one receiving three attribute points,

the rewards decreased successively from the second person onward, dropping from two attribute points to one, and then to a consolation prize of just one credit.

He reckoned the only value these achievements had left was as collectibles.