Chapter 2: New Century (Epilogue)
Scheming Frog finally learned what he wanted to know from Ear-Torn.
This Goblin King was extremely cunning.
It seemed to know about special lie detection mechanisms.
Therefore, it never lied.
However, it only revealed information piece by piece, like squeezing toothpaste.
It spoke only of what was asked and remained silent about anything else.
This led Scheming Frog to have no choice but to cut Ear-Torn more than a hundred times. In the end, Ear-Torn was not killed by him. When it revealed the final location of the Orcs, a chilling gaze descended. Immediately, in front of Scheming Frog, Ear-Torn’s body rapidly rotted away, and with a howl, it turned into a pool of foul-smelling water.
Scheming Frog silently gazed at the stinking water before him.
It was yellowish-green, like excrement.
Where it flowed, vegetation withered, emitting creaking sounds and a sour stench. At the same time, Scheming Frog had a feeling that if he touched this foul water, something very bad would happen.
When in doubt, use Appraisal technique.
[Curse of Talaranto]
[Contact will result in infestation]
“Infestation again…”
Scheming Frog frowned.
Whenever infestation was mentioned, it was inevitably related to demons or the Old Ones. And anything related to demons or the Old Ones meant danger!
But even if it was dangerous, Scheming Frog intended to go and see.
After all, if he couldn’t handle it, he could just revive.
The Orc tribe mentioned by Ear-Torn was hidden in an underground cave with an underground river, not far from the Goblin Tribe. Combining the detailed descriptions with the map, Scheming Frog quickly located the Orc tribe’s position.
However, when he arrived at the cave with his knights, it was already deserted. Only some traces remained to prove that Orcs had lived there.
The beast hides used for sleeping and warmth on the ground were cold and stiff, with mold growing in the center. It was estimated that these Orcs had left about a week ago.
Cooking utensils were scattered around the dead campfire, indicating that these Orcs still had their own consciousness and knew about eating. It was estimated that the infestation by demons or the Old Ones was not deep enough and was only on the surface.
Deep in the cave was an altar.
Strange runes were carved around it.
Scheming Frog crouched down and smelled a bloody scent. The runes were carved with dried blood. The Appraisal technique quickly revealed the source of the blood: it came from humans and ghouls.
A large pile of skeletons was stacked in the center of the altar.
Among them were human, beast, and Orc skeletons. The bones were purplish-black, as if poisoned during life. They were covered in scars, clearly having been abused before death.
It was impossible to track the Orcs further. One thing was certain: these Orcs had nefarious intentions towards the Wintery Empire.
Finally, Scheming Frog could only send a secret letter to the King of Winter, hoping that the King of Winter would pay attention to this matter.
…
The first day of the open beta had just ended.
A large number of disgruntled players flooded the official website of Cain Continent.
Unable to find any official contact methods, these players could only vent their anger on the game forums.
[Sima Official! What do you mean? Five draws, five slugs!? Huh? If you don’t want me to play as a human, just say so!]
[Trash game, trash game. I’ve never seen such a trash game. Characters can only be drawn and not chosen freely. It’s completely unfair from the start, relying solely on luck!]
[Cain Continent’s pioneering character free draw system, is this sweet candy or shit fed to players?]
Posts with similar titles immediately occupied the game forums of Cain Continent.
Due to the large influx of players during the open beta, the volume of forum posts and replies increased thousands of times. As soon as a post was made, it could have hundreds of comments within a minute.
Many players cursed Cain Continent.
However, there were also many who argued back.
[Pitiful person blames the road, not themselves. Are you ashamed to whine on the official forum because your luck is bad? My first draw was a jackal, my second a goblin, my third a troll, and my fourth was a random sub-dragon! I feel the probability of drawing humanoid races is quite high.]
[Exactly!! Someone did a statistic. The area of humanoid races on the entire draw wheel accounts for 50%. If you can’t even get a 50% chance, you’re crying here, are you perhaps a hacker from another game?]
[The one who got slugs five times in a row, should you check if any of your ancestors for the last ten generations have done something wrong?]
[One person’s blood plea asking the official to open the top-up channel!]
[Request to open top-up channel +1]
…
[Request to open top-up channel +52471963]
The issue of the top-up channel was what players cared about the most.
Soon, those players who had been fiercely criticizing the officials also joined the blood letter brigade, pleading for the opening of a top-up channel.
They mainly hoped that the officials would open a paid function for drawing racial characters, allowing them to spend money to purchase draw attempts, even if each draw cost more.
Or they could directly add some purchasable racial characters.
If that wasn’t possible, opening the account trading system would also suffice.
Many players who had drawn high-tier races were now receiving countless negotiation emails every day.
The price of a sub-dragon account had already been driven up to over 50 million.
However, despite the high price, Cain Continent’s game was tightly bound to the players’ real identity information.
This made account trading almost impossible. Login was done by facial recognition, and there was no possibility of account hacking. There wasn’t even a password. The officials also seemed to have no intention of allowing account trading, which greatly frustrated many players who wanted to sell or buy accounts.
The feeling of having money but nowhere to spend it.
That was truly torture.
Naturally, there were those who praised alongside those who cursed.
Very few players actually had a bad game experience.
With five random character selections, one could always draw a decent racial character. Only a few unlucky players had truly bad luck, and based on big data, Scheming Frog’s increase in difficulty for “bad luck” affected casual players and studios.
He needed players for war.
Not for players to earn money by farming in the game. Although the operation of a world requires basic labor and logistics, the Wintery Empire had so many residents, and they didn’t have enough job positions. If players came and competed for their basic logistical jobs, wouldn’t it mean taking away their livelihood?
Under the deliberate control of the system.
The number of players who descended upon Winter City was not large, less than fifty thousand.
The rest of the players were all scattered throughout other cities of the Wintery Empire, as well as in the wilderness and mountains.
