Chapter 112: The Monastery of the Past
[Devotion to Light and Fire Lv1]
[Glor – Divine Ability]
[Requirements: 10 Mana, a lit candle of saint’s fat, a basic prayer]
[Targeted – Self]
[Burning is devotion to the light; we are all either firewood, fuel, or a flame that flickers before it extinguishes.]
[Ignite yourself with the candlelight of saint’s fat, greatly enhancing your physical abilities (2-3.5 times the original), and continuously losing life at a rate of 0.05% per second, until you voluntarily stop or your life falls below 1%, at which point it automatically stops. After stopping, the lost life will be returned as a percentage amount of [Ability Level * 5%], and it cannot be used again within one minute. Life below 10% also prevents its use.]
Although she didn’t know why Saint Floranne left such advice and this ability for someone, it was undoubtedly a very powerful ability, perfectly compensating for Li Wen’s physical weakness caused by her physique, race, and class.
After all, no matter what, with her current abilities and mana, she couldn’t completely escape close-quarter combat and defeat enemies solely with spells.
Li Wen opened her eyes and noticed that the rain had stopped. The sky in the distance was faintly lit, signaling that dawn would arrive soon.
“Has it been this long already?”
Li Wen frowned slightly. She had only closed her eyes for a moment, and now it was almost dawn.
No one responded to her. Li Wen looked around and realized that the Old Priest was nowhere to be seen.
Did he go back inside because he waited too long?
Li Wen didn’t think so. She looked at the altar. The originally clean and new altar was now covered in moss and mud, with only the inscription, as beautiful as the handwriting of an ancient scholar, standing out.
Not only the altar but also the surrounding weeds had become unusually lush. Their long leaves were dotted with drops of what could be morning dew or yesterday’s rain, and they grew as tall as half of Li Wen.
Li Wen pondered for a moment, then used the Raven Feather Dagger to cut a path and walked towards the monastery.
The expected more dilapidated or even abandoned monastery did not appear. Instead, it had become even taller than yesterday, with more floors and spires. Every wall was painted clean white, a stark contrast to the relatively rundown houses around it, rivaling other well-known churches.
If it weren’t in the same location, Li Wen would have thought she had arrived somewhere else.
Li Wen walked in the shadows, silently entering the monastery. The monastery was much more active than last night; she could see clergy members working or praying everywhere. The children raised by the Church had also risen early and begun their daily lessons.
“Hello,” Li Wen called out to a person dressed as a priest. “Is there a pastor named Lauren here?”
The other party looked at Li Wen in surprise, as if wondering when she had appeared there, but he didn’t seem surprised by Li Wen herself, likely thinking she was a believer coming for morning prayer.
“Let me think…” the priest frowned. “There doesn’t seem to be a pastor with that name in the monastery.”
“Is that so? Then I must have made a mistake.”
Li Wen said calmly.
Afterwards, she turned and left the monastery. As she walked out the main gate, she looked back. A wooden nameplate was clearly displayed on the arched portal, bearing the words: “Monastery of His Holiness, the Church of Grace and Divine Bestowal & Seminary.”
*
Even after logging off, Li Wen was still pondering why the original Moen Abbey had become the Monastery of His Holiness. Judging by its scale, style, and dilapidated state, the most reasonable assumption was that the original Moen Abbey had long disappeared from history, and the Monastery of His Holiness was built or rebuilt upon its foundations.
This also explained why Bailu, a “local,” would not know of Moen Abbey.
The reason Li Wen could see the long-vanished Moen Abbey was likely due to the uniqueness of the Path of Light Chasing, perhaps related to the arrangements made by Saint Floranne or Pastor Lauren.
However, the purpose behind this, the meaning of the advice and the ability, and why the monastery was not continued under its original name after reconstruction, were all mysteries to Li Wen for the time being.
Li Wen quickly gave up on such meaningless contemplation. Not all questions could be answered, and insisting on chasing them might lead to getting lost. It was better to go with the flow, perhaps the answers would be revealed one day.
Li Wen prepared her breakfast and, while eating, routinely began browsing the game’s official forum, something she always did after logging off.
Although the forum was mostly filled with spam posts, players boasting about the game’s realism, and some players engaging in epic flame wars complaining about the game being too difficult, inhuman, and having a bad user experience, there was still interesting and valuable content to be found by ignoring these.
For instance, a player from the Sea of Earth shared their experiences as a “slave” there in a diary format, vividly describing what they saw and heard.
The Sea of Earth was synonymous with chaos. It was both the closest place to the divine origins of various religions and separated from the underground world and the land of sin only by a sea of ignorance.
At the beginning, the poster briefly introduced the chaotic situation in the Sea of Earth, focusing on how they went from being a player to a slave, and how they managed to turn the tables on their slave master with wit and talent, sacrificing the master to promote themselves as a demon warlock.
“Never trust anything NPCs say! I worked my butt off to complete his task, and then this jerk gave me a piece of paper to write my name on. After I wrote it, I found out I had become his slave!”
These were the poster’s exact words. In the end, this game did not have a quest system. Players could participate in events, drive the world’s progress, and thus gain experience, all without the process of receiving a quest – accepting a quest – completing a quest.
Players might accept commissions and requests from native inhabitants, but whether the promised rewards would be delivered as stated ultimately depended on the moral character of the individual.
Li Wen habitually browsed similar posts to pass the time. The experiences of those players were unknown to her and not found in strategy guides, allowing her to gain some understanding of the current players and what was happening in other parts of the game world.
This greatly compensated for Li Wen’s disadvantage of not being an initial player in her previous life, giving her a more three-dimensional and detailed vision of the future.
Li Wen quickly scrolled through the mouse wheel, posts disappearing rapidly from bottom to top. Just as she thought it was time to continue playing, a popular post that had reached the homepage made her change her mind.
The title of that post was [On a Very Significant Quest I Discovered in Leicester City, Kingdom of Arthur, and the Guaranteed Divine Artifact Reward].
