Chapter 211 This is a Choice (Part 1)

Ye Ci was not sure if Dong Yin was intentionally avoiding her, or she herself no longer cared about that girl, but from that day onwards, she no longer received any news about Dong Yin. She heard nothing from Liu Chang, nor did she receive any news from Green Hill’s Moon. It was as if Dong Yin had disappeared without a trace from Ye Ci’s life.

Ye Ci was not affected by this. After all, she was a very busy person.

Other than her daily quests at the Doran Thieves Guild, Ye Ci had to complete side quests in Red Lake City as well. She was also tasked with helping out with farming equipment so that the guild could make preparations to begin exploring the next dungeon.

Perhaps due to their First Clear, the members were not bored by the daily dungeon clearing. They were excited. After all, who would not want new pieces of equipment?

Tan Polang had also joined Upwards Ho! after transferring to the Eastern Continent. Names began filling up his empty friend list, but there were times when he still missed his comrades in the Western Continent. However, he was able to hide his emotions well and never mentioned it to anyone.

Ye Ci had never asked Tan Polang about his character, Axia Mist, and why he did not join ‘Upwards Ho!’ when he started the game. She did not even do a background check on his player ID. Ye Ci was not a gossipy person, and knew that every person had a secret of their own.

Ye Ci respected everybody else’s secrets, just like how she liked to keep her own secrets.

One of her secrets was the Brooch of Deception. The BUG-like presence of the item was able to aid her in completing her quest. This was not something that she was willing to share with anybody else.

The quests from the Doran Thieves Guild was way harder compared to the Red Lake City side quests. After all, she might not succeed in baiting the players to their death. After some successes, the players began avoiding Ye Ci who was disguised as a Bandit Captain. Even when she appeared in the midst of a huge crowd of players, not many were willing to launch their attacks on Ye Ci. They knew that the appearance of the Bandit Captain would always result in the death of players. Even the Life Players who were mining the ores or gathering herbs would run for their lives when they spotted Ye Ci from afar.

There were only a few who would occasionally take the bait, but humans are smart animals who would learn from their mistake…

Not many players would feel great after being bullied by monsters. The vast majority of them were low in terms of level. The amount of experience points the lost along with the equipment the dropped were heart-wrenching. After a few attempts, Ye Ci’s strategy no longer worked on the players. She was forced to look for an alternative.

Since killing players was no longer an option, Ye Ci was left with two other options. She had to either rob NPCs from Red Lake City or kill a specific NPC within Red Lake City.

Robbing the NPCs was an easier option. She was not required to fight or kill any NPCs, and would only need to pun in less effort. Ye Ci was smart. She would never rob any NPCs within the Red Lake City itself. The villagers at the surrounding areas under Red Lake City’s domain would be her target.

Those villagers were weak and unarmed. They reside in places far away from the city, which made them easy pickings for Ye Ci. She would be able to easily obtain the 10 quest items that were required to complete the quest.

However, after a short while, the NPCs in the farms and villages around Red Lake City began putting up their guards against Ye Ci. The young men began setting up armed patrols around the villages, and there were some who even hired soldiers from the city to protect their homes. This made Ye Ci’s job very tough.

It seems that even the NPCs could not be bullied easily by Ye Ci.

Ye Ci could only revert back to her old ways of tricking the other players. When she was busy bullying the villagers, a new wave of players has arrived in the Silvery Tin Ore Vein. Despite the attention it received in the forums, most of the players eventually forgot about the lone Bandit Captain as time passed.

Players are creatures who would forget about their pain after their wounds have been healed.

There would always be players who took the bait, and those players became the catalyst for Ye Ci to complete her quest.

Another gruesome slaughter had just been completed. However, Ye Ci did not remove her disguise this time. She sat in a secluded area in the bandit hideout, casually eating an apple. She was starting to get bored with the repetitive quest. Repeating the same quest day after day was too dull for her. She would have long given up on the quest if not for the bountiful rewards offered by the Epic-tier quest.

An overpowered quest reward could only be obtained through the blood and sweat of a player. Ye Ci bit down on her apple. Although everything in the game was not real, the apple in Ye Ci’s hand tasted just like a real one. Fate was indeed the pinnacle of mankind’s greatest technology. Ye Ci’s apple was the perfect example. In the previous virtual reality games, everything tasted the same to players. Even apples were the same. Every single apple in those games shared only one flavor.

However, Fate was different. It was impossible to find the same piece of leaf in the game. Of course, the chances of finding apples that tasted the same would be next to zero. Everything in Fate was just like the real world. Players would often forget that they were merely playing a highly advanced game, and would often lose themselves in the world of Fate.

Another wave of players rushed into the bandit hideout. Ye Ci was already used to the blood-curdling screams of the dying players and the sound effects of different skills as the players struggled desperately against the bandits. When she did it for the first time, Ye Ci would still feel slightly guilty, and might even have a look at the action. However, at this point, it was merely something Ye Ci did on a daily basis.

As Ye Ci took another bite from the apple, she heard a familiar voice, “You’re always discovering or exploiting a BUG whenever we meet.”

There was nobody around, but someone was definitely speaking to Ye Ci, and he could hear him clearly. Was the game haunted? Even Ye Ci was momentarily stunned. As a reincarnator, she had a lot of experience in Fate, and was able to recover from the shock.

She was able to tell from the sound of the voice and the language used that the person who spoke was a GM who had set his character to be invisible, and was standing right in front of her.

Since Ye Ci was able to confirm the person’s identity, there was no need for her to be anxious. She took a bite from the apple and spoke up calmly, “Come out, you did not scare me at all.”

The person remained silent for a moment before breaking into laughter. A lvl 1 Human character appeared in front of Ye Ci. The character looked just like it was randomized by the system. If he did not appear in a high level spawn area, people might even have thought that he was a newly spawned NPC.

Ye Ci narrowed her eyes at the Human smurf account, “Wang Jiangnan?”

“Ei? How do you know it’s me?”

“Because I’m not able to think of another developer who is so lame and…” Ye Ci’s eyes narrowed further, and annoyance was clear in her tone, “Irritating.”

“Aiya, don’t say that! We’re old friends now. I’m hurt by your words.” Wang Jiangnan sat on a wooden crate, took an apple from Ye Ci’s fruit basket, and began chewing on the apple.

“Why do I not think that we’re close?” Ye Ci snorted. Even if she knew about this person’s glorious future, she was still irritated by the presence of a GM as a player. They were always getting in her way.

“You’re making me sad.” Wang Jiangnan chuckled, “If I’m sad, I might not be able to control my mouth. I might accidentally tell my superiors that you are gaining Prestige points by exploiting a BUG.”

That was why Ye Ci looked down on GMs.

Ye Ci was unfazed, she snorted coldly, “Oh, really? If that’s the case, I will also file a report on Customer Service No.094 for tracking my gaming record without permission and harrassing me in-game.” Ye Ci said with a smile, “I have to ask though, can your contribution of discovering a BUG outweigh your misconduct of secretly tracking a player’s gaming progress?”

“Hey hey hey, has anybody told you that you’re a very despicable person?” Wang Jiangnan raised his eyebrows.

“You just did.”

“I was just joking! You don’t have to be like that, you know?” Wang Jiangnan rubbed the bridge of his nose, and twisted his head to a side to listen to the ongoing carnage, “Ai, just listen to that. Those poor guys. Don’t you feel guilty about this?”

“This is the loophole of the game you designed. I just happened to discover it and put it to good use. Why should I feel bad about it?” stated Ye Ci matter of factly, “Besides, players are meant to kill monsters or be killed by them. This is how your game is meant to be anyways.”

“Ai, you’re such a cold blooded person.” Wang Jiangnan jumped down from the crate and walked up to Ye Ci, staring at her silently. Without warning, his hand shot forward at her.

His movement was fast. Even Ye Ci was unable to react before he grabbed hold of the Brooch of Deceit. Although Ye Ci was still disguised as a Bandit Captain, she was still shocked by Wang Jiangnan’s action.

She immediately jumped backwards and said in a shrill voice, “What are you doing?”

Wang Jiangnan then realised that his action was inappropriate. He scratched at his head, sat on the wooden crate again, and smiled at Ye Ci apologetically, “I’m sorry. I was acting rude. It’s just that I suddenly remembered that the Brooch of Deceit was a BUG itself.”

Ye Ci calmed down when Wang Jiangnan backed off away from her. She exhaled, and sat back down, “What? Are you going to remove it from the game?”

“I have half a mind to do it.”

“Whatever you say.” Ye Ci appeared calm, but Wang Jiangnan knew that this girl will never allow someone to threaten her advantages. That was why he chose to remain silent and continued staring at Ye Ci. After a short pause, Ye Ci tugged at the Brooch of Deceit and said, “To be honest with you, I have the same thought as well. This thing is indeed an overpowered equipment. It’s literally a BUG.”

Wang Jiangnan was shocked. It was very rare for Ye Ci to agree to his opinion. It seemed that he had underestimate this girl. She was not only going against the system and the developers. Her thoughts could be quite pertinent as well.

“As a developer, it was right for you to think of removing this item. If I’m one of the developers, I’m definitely going to want to remove this game-breaking thing.” Ye Ci’s appeared to be a gentle person with her smile. If her body was slightly plumper she might have looked like Buddha.

Hiya minna-san! Welcome to another awesome chapter of Reign of the Hunters translated by an awesomtacular translator (which is me btw!) hope you guys enjoy!

How's everybody doing? Hope the week is going well, it's now Wednesday, 2 more days until Friday, TGIF! As I said... There will be no chapter on Friday as I'll be going on a 3-days vacation to Genting Highlands for those who are really curious! Don't miss me too much eh? *wink wink*

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