I entered the quest hall closest to the guild. After having spent a few days lounging about and exploring the hub, I decided that it was high time I went and killed something. I still hadn’t decided what to pick as my seventh attribute, but that was fine. It was an important decision, after all. When I declared my intention of getting out there and try out questing as a traveler, River decided to tag along. There were some differences from what I’m used to, and it was basically tradition to be accompanied by a senior guild member on your first quest. Which meant the colorful butterfly was currently hitching a ride on one of my eye stalks, apparently immune to poison, and was calmly talking me through the process.
“You know, we might be monsters,” she said while looking at the masses of travelers fighting over the quest boards with disdain. “But these people are animals.”
“It does seem fairly competitive,” I admitted while watching an elf punch a human in the face, which quickly turned into a brawl. “I’m a bit worried about getting in there. Everybody who accidentally touches me will get poisoned, and I could accidentally kill somebody.”
“Don’t worry about it too much,” River laughed. “That’s actually going to work out to your benefit.”
“Oh? How so?” I asked curiously, stopping a safe distance from the closest quest board.
“Simply announce that you’re poisonous before joining the fray, and everybody dumb enough not to make way will be responsible for their own actions.”
“Can it really be that simple?” I turned my eye to give her a dubious look. “Wouldn’t everybody just shout that they are dangerous to make things easier for themselves, which would lead to the trick not working?”
“Oh yes, people try similar things all the time,” River smiled at me. “But everybody else figures out fairly quickly if your claim is true. I’m sure there will be plenty that won’t believe you when you do it, but once the first few idiots get poisoned, you’ll get a wide berth.”
“Okay…” I shrugged and looked back at the boards, quickly locating a set labelled for tier eight quests. “So, should I be looking out for anything in particular while choosing?”
“For your first quest? Not really,” River said casually. “Just grab whichever one grabs your attention. But generally, you’ll want to look out for quests with above-average rewards, consider how well-suited you are to completing the quest, and how long completing the quest will take. Actually, try to take a quest that won’t take longer than a day, please.”
“Alright, I’m going in. POISONOUS MONSTER COMING THROUGH! MAKE SURE TO NOT TOUCH ME!”
True to Rivers' word, a lot of heads snapped around to look at me. Since this was a counter for tier eights, most of them had the experience to tell whether I was possibly telling the truth just by looking at me, and wisely made some space by rotating to the next screen over. Others, whether it be through ignorance or wanting to take advantage of the temporary lull, decided to keep doing what they were doing. I still hesitated a bit before inserting myself into the decidedly smaller crowd, but after some encouragement from River, I carefully made my way to the screen.
I didn’t actively try to body check everyone in my way, but with the busy crowd, passing through untouched was basically impossible. Some guy stepped back without looking, accidentally touching me, while another wanted a better look at the screen, literally shoving me out of the way, right into someone else. Now, everyone present was on the same tier as me, but my poison was potent enough to make everyone at my level sweat unless they had resistances to it. They figured out fairly quickly that a dangerous element had been introduced to their scuffle and finally decided to give me a wide berth. I could hear some snickering from the travelers who caught on early, which almost caused another fight to break out.
Finally able to get a good look at the screen, I started reading through the available quests. There were a lot of them, and quests constantly disappeared to be replaced by another, so I had to be pretty speedy while reading them and deciding whether I wanted to do them or not. I’m sure most travelers eventually learned to evaluate the displayed information at a glance and decide in an instant whether it was worth doing or not. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite there yet.
I spent quite some time reading through the provided information, only for the quest to disappear from the board, accepted by someone else, possibly on another hub. For a few minutes, I looked at the quests with no intention to accept any of them, intending to figure out what kinds of quests there were. A good ninety percent of them boiled down to “please go and kill this thing/these things for us”, while the rest of them were a mixed bag of exploration, protection service, dungeon delving, war participation, research assistance, spy work, and other miscellaneous things.
Most of the rewards were a few T2 credits, although some only paid a few hundred T1 credits, or a mixed bag of the two. The rare quest here and there promised other things, such as items for their completion. It once again put into perspective how much I’d been offered as a salary for joining different guilds. My salary at Tier 0 would be fairly nice, but if I wanted to make real cash, I’d better quest my ass off. On the other hand, the salary Remnant offered me would ensure that I had no need for questing at all, constantly being available for them to use.
Not wanting to spend too much time fretting over my choice for my first quest, I eventually locked in a simple-looking quest before someone else snagged it.
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New Quest!
The residents of a remote village are struggling with a pack of cave hyenas raiding their village at night.
Planet: Kloga V
Planetary Tier: T7
Goals: Exterminate the pack of cave hyenas(T8).
Rewards: 800 T1 credits.
======================================================================
I stepped back from the quest board after accepting the quest, the empty space I left behind quickly filled with eager travelers once more.
“Find something good?” River asked from atop my eye stalk.
“I’m not sure…” I replied, reading the quest over again. “The reward is comparatively low, but it seems fairly easy. Should be good for a first quest.”
“I don’t think we’ll have any problems,” River commented after I shared the quest window with her.
“Okay, I got the quest, now what?”
“Now, we go to a teleport hub, which is, conveniently, right next door.”
“Alright,” I started moving in the direction of the teleport hub, as indicated by River. “While we’re moving there, do you mind answering a question?”
“Sure,” River fluttered her wings happily. “Don’t hesitate to ask about anything.”
“The quest mentions a planetary tier. What’s that all about?”
“This didn’t come up during your tutorial?” River asked incredulously before immediately backpedaling. “I’m sorry, you already told us that your starting planet was special. Every planet is assigned a planetary tier by the system, giving us a rough idea of what the general power level is there.”
“Is that sort of like, the average across the board?” I asked curiously. “What does it take for a planet to get a higher evaluation?”
“Hmmm… let’s take your home planet as an example,” River happily explained. “You said your planet is in the early stages of integration. With what you now know, how strong would you say a regular human on your planet is?”
“That’s… a good question…” I mulled over my memories of Earth, eventually coming to a conclusion. “It really depends, but I’d say a well-armed person should be able to take out a tier two monster. The stronger stuff, restricted to the military, should probably be able to take out a tier four. There’s tanks and planes, where they could combine forces, and in an ambush, maybe even take out a tier five. But I feel like the heavy weaponry could be taken out easily by a motivated monster that got the drop on them instead. Then there’s some crazy weapons, like nuclear bombs, that I have no idea how well they’d fare.”
“Okay, a somewhat advanced civilisation then,” River nodded, thinking things over. “Now, when the integration is complete, most, if not all, animals on the planet will start turning into monsters over time. Depending on what they are, they usually shouldn’t exceed tier three. By what you’ve said, your people should be mostly fine, but what about remote locations or less well-defended ones? People will fight and die, figure out they can get stronger by defeating monsters, level and tier up. They’ll start rushing down the monsters, hunting them to near extinction, before realizing they’ve hit a ceiling.
“Sure, they’ll reach tier three and maybe four relatively easily, but then what? Most of the monsters will be gone, and what is left is too low-tier to help them grow. The power-hungry people in charge will implement a ban on unauthorized hunting, or something similar. This will allow the monsters to recover slowly. From there, it’s a balancing act of letting the monster grow stronger and keeping the people safe. It almost always starts the same, but how it continues from there can be very different.
“Some planets exterminate their monsters, consciously cutting off their path to power unless they start killing each other or leave their planet. Most places actively try to get their monsters to tier up, be that by helping them along or leaving them to their own devices, so they can hunt them in the future and grow stronger themselves. And some others still, have a tyrant rise from the chaos, monopolizing the leveling resources while cementing themselves as the de facto ruler of their planet.”
“So what determines the planetary tier, in the end?” I ask, wondering how all of this would eventually play out on Earth. If it hadn’t already. I had no clue how long it took to integrate a planet.
“The system evaluates the planet as a whole. If it determines that on a global scale, the local society can reliably take out a certain tier of monster, they get categorized as such.”
“So the planet we’re going to, Kloga V, should be able to handle tier sevens fairly easily,” I noted, once again looking at my quest. “But since the remote village is being harassed by tier eights, the local force might not have the resources to spare on them, since warriors above the planetary tier are somewhat rare?”
“Exactly,” River nodded her head. “You can usually expect there to be existences up to three tiers above the planetary tier, although the higher above, the rarer they become. As we already discussed, the people of Kloga V should be able to take care of these hyenas if there is an appropriately strong force around, be that a strong party of tier sevens, or a single tier eight. But that’s not always possible. Which is where we come in. Whenever it becomes clear that the local forces can’t deal with a problem on their own in an appropriate timeframe, the locals can call upon us to deal with their issues… for a price.”
“And who ends up paying that price?” I ask, fairly certain I knew the answer.
“Whoever posts the quest, of course,” River said with a slightly bitter tone. “On a lot of planets, the struggling party can petition their leadership to help them pay the needed reward. But in some cases, they’re told to either wait until they receive help or swallow the cost themselves. Due to how low the reward for this quest is, I’m fairly certain this is the latter situation.”
“So the poor villagers had to scrounge up what little funds they had while hoping some traveler would take the quest even though the reward is sub-par?” I was suddenly glad I’d taken that quest. Sure, with how many travelers there were, it was almost guaranteed someone would take pity on them and do it to help out, but the sooner the better.
“That's the sad truth,” River said with a hint of disgust. “We, the travelers as a whole, help out trillions across the expanse every day, but that doesn't mean we're perfect. Quests slip through the cracks all the time, simply because the reward is 'not worth it'.”
“...I'll try and take some of those every now and again,” I said after a few seconds to think about it. I wasn't a saint or anything, but knowing there were people dying out there because they couldn't afford to be rescued sat wrong with me. These quests were easy, barely an inconvenience, so clearing one or two off the board occasionally wouldn't hurt. “Well… we're here. Now what?”
“Get in line behind any teleporter,” River commented, clearly happy about my offer to help. “The quest has been registered to your ID. If you scan it, you'll get sent where you need to go.”
“Convenient,” I said, getting in line behind a random teleporter.
With how fast the process was and some travelers traveling in groups, it barely took a minute until it was my turn. Just as instructed, I presented my ID at the console. Kloga V was quickly displayed on the small screen before the door opened and I stepped through. I found myself on an identical teleporter platform as I'd arrived in the hub, making me feel nostalgic even though it had only been a few days. The doors closed, whisking River and me away.