“Silver-Haired? Did you hear me? Can you tell me more about the raid boss?”
“O-Oh, right. So, at first we were just searching Zone Ten for a yokai...”
I told Kokuten about how we had embarked on a mission to find a yokai, encountered a beast hybrid NPC who showed us to her village inside a cave, and then explored the area behind the village, where we found the raid boss.
Kokuten leaned forward excitedly and said, “There is a high chance that defeating that raid boss will unlock a new zone. I’m certain people will voluntarily join the fight, and you could even charge money for it. What are your thoughts on that?”
“Unlock a new zone? Charge money?”
“Huh? Now that you mention it...perhaps so.”
“I can understand how Silver-Haired was unaware, but I’m surprised you didn’t realize, Ruby Red,” said Kokuten.
As of now, the world of LJO had only been unlocked through Zone Ten. The entire player base was stuck from moving any further, as the route to progress to Zone Eleven remained undiscovered. There were various theories floating around for why this was, like that there were perhaps certain hints or key items people had missed, or even because the next zone simply hadn’t been implemented yet.
Nevertheless, as Kokuten explained, a good portion of the top players refused to give up and were working around the clock to find the way forward.
I typically had nothing to do with progressing into new zones, so this news was completely unexpected. Even Akari, who mainly played solo and explored the outskirts of areas and farmed dungeons, hadn’t been paying much attention to zone unlocking either.
“Wait, but then, how did I find it?”
I didn’t want to brag, but I hadn’t even traversed that much of Zone Ten yet, and I had never searched for any new routes. I hadn’t encountered any events or discovered information that seemed relevant to something like this. Weris had just appeared in front of me out of nowhere one day. In order to meet Weris, I must have done something to trigger that event before going to the Great Wilderness. But I had no idea what that action could have been.
“I’m not sure of the reason either, but there must have been something that only you have done, Silver-Haired,” Kokuten said. “But we can leave figuring out what that might be to the Verification Clan, and move on to discussing what to do about this boss.”
“I’ll be honest, I have no clue how to prepare for a raid boss fight. I can gather any items we’ll need, but I think I’ll have to rely on you two for assembling players. Of course, I’ll help reach out to any of my friends that you want to invite.”
“Is there anyone you can think of who you want to invite?”
“Hmm, I don’t think there’s anyone I absolutely need to invite at all costs.”
My friends who I felt relatively on closer terms with, like Tagosack, Sawyer, and Ashihana, were all crafters. I was already enough of a burden; I couldn’t possibly tell them that I wanted to invite even more crafters.
“Also, I don’t think we need to charge money... What do you think, Akari?”
“I agree, making people pay a participation fee would be asking too much. Also, I don’t have many close friends in the game, so I’m inclined to depend on Kokuten for forming the parties too...”
“You two are as selfless as ever. In that case, leave assembling the players to me.”
What a reliable guy! Kokuten got right to writing down players names, murmuring and nodding to himself as he did. He must have been picking out players among the people he knew who he thought would form a well-balanced advance, middle, and rear guard. I peeked at his notes and saw that I recognized all of the names he’d written down. Our circle of friends actually overlapped quite a lot.
After ten minutes, Kokuten had finally finished choosing his list of potential candidates. The next step was to call and invite them.
“First, one party will be you and your monsters, Silver-Haired.”
“We’ll do everything we can.”
“And as we agreed, my party will take up another slot.”
“That’d be a big help!” Akari said gratefully.
Including Akari, we had two parties and one player as our initial members. The remaining spots available were two parties and five people.
“I will take care of reaching out to people. I’ll contact them tomorrow morning,” Kokuten said.
Once that was settled, we temporarily went our separate ways. We’d ended up leaving everything to Kokuten, but it seemed like he enjoyed doing this type of work. He skipped away, eager to assemble the team of the strongest players that he had thought up.
“Well, looks like we have some free time again until tomorrow.”
“What are your plans, Yuto?”
“I think I’ll go back to that pond. I want to see if I can catch some fish there.”
“Do you mind if I tag along?”
“Not at all, but I won’t be doing any fighting.”
“That’s perfectly fine. I’m more interested in the prospect of catching new fish!”
Right, of course—filling out her encyclopedia and collecting items was something Akari genuinely enjoyed doing.
“All right, should we head back to the village?”
“Yes, let’s go!”
Back at the Beast Hybrid Village, we stopped first at the Adventurers’ Guild to take a look at the noticeboard and gather information.
“It makes the most sense to think that we’d be able to catch the fish for these delivery quests in the village’s pond,” I noted.
“That must be the case for the shellfish too, then,” Akari agreed. “There are some shellfish that live in freshwater too, right?”
“Yeah, we should be able to catch them by freediving. Reflet, Perca, can I count on you to do that?”
“Hum!”
“Honk honk!”
After we split up with Kokuten, I had briefly stopped by my house to change my party members. Right now, I had Reflet, Perca, Olto, Eine, and Drimo with me. I had selected my party members based on who was best suited for catching fish underwater and gathering items inside a cave. I also planned to summon the Kappa to join us at some point. I was interested in seeing what it was capable of.
After we selected a few quests that we could fulfill around the pond, we headed to the back of the village. Along the way, we ran into a beast hybrid carrying a fishing rod on his shoulder. I could tell by his ears that he was some sort of herbivore animal, but I otherwise couldn’t pinpoint what exactly he was based on. The clothes he wore were zebra-striped, but that couldn’t mean that he was a zebra himself...could it?
I appraised him to get an answer, and lo and behold, he was a zebra hybrid. Come on, devs... It wasn’t a bad thing to be able to tell what he was based on his appearance, but wasn’t this just a little too on the nose?