While leaving Baldahurh forest the whole group felt merry, Wyatt was dead, Christopher was free and they all got great rewards. Everyone was happy, but it wasn"t until they left the forest completely and walked into an open meadow that Xinya saw Christopher"s face really light up with a sense of wonder. Xinya was moved by the expression on Christopher"s face. He had saved him, Christopher was finally free. It truly hit him just now that like Christopher he was also free, and like Christopher, he got a chance to start over. As he watched Christopher lift his head to the sun, tears swam in his eyes.
"Are you alright Xinya?" Wei whispered.
Xinya didn"t know when she got so close to him, but as he looked in her eyes he saw that she understood what he was feeling at this moment. Smiling he lightly touched his hand to hers before pulling away, "Not really, but I"m doing better."
He continued to watch Christopher take in his surroundings, not noticing Wei looking at him with shocked teary eyes, not seeing Wandering Sound coming up to the two of them looking worried, not paying attention to Wei rea.s.suring Wandering Sound that they were fine. He just kept watching, Christopher basks in his newfound freedom.
It was a half-day walk to Errinisworth, so the four of them continued on their journey, chatting happily together. As they walked, Xinya became more friendly with Christopher, telling him about all of his adventures thus far. It got to the point where their friends.h.i.+p value was extremely high.
When a player and an NPC friends.h.i.+p is high enough, besides getting special quests, they could also add the NPC to their friend"s list to keep in touch with each other and the NPC can volunteer to help the player on quests if they felt like it. Xinya wasn"t befriending Christopher for that, he just felt that they experience similar things and wanted to be his friend.
They were about thirty minutes away from ErrinisWorth when Christopher stopped walking. Xinya was the first to notice this and looked at him questioningly, while Wandering Sound and Wei continued walking, talking together in their own little world.
"What"s the matter?" Xinya asked, wondering why Christopher had stopped.
Christopher smiled sadly at him before gesturing to a path that was a little ways away from the road they were walking on. Holding his chalkboard he began to write something down.
[This is where I leave you. That path is the way to my town.]
~
Wei finally noticed that Xinya wasn"t walking with them anymore and turned around to see what was going on. Seeing that Xinya and Christopher had stopped in the middle of the road she was about to head over towards them when Wandering Sound halted her in her tracks.
Wandering Sound had a feeling that Christopher wouldn"t follow them all the way to Errinisworth, he wasn"t as emotionally attached to Christopher like others so he didn"t really care if he left or not. Christopher was an NPC not a real person, Wandering Sound felt that as soon as the quest was over the NPC wasn"t important anymore. Although he knew others felt differently from him, and he didn"t mind that.
He had a feeling that Roaming Wind was one of those people, and that just made her more lovable in his eyes, but he stopped her from going over because he knew that Drifting Cloud got way more attached to that NPC than Roaming Wind did and he didn"t want her to intrude as they said their goodbyes.
"Let them talk alone." Wandering Sound said quietly, not wanting the Drifting Cloud and Christopher to hear.
Glancing over at Xinya once more, Wei agreed with Wandering Sound. She had a feeling that they were saying goodbye to each other, so she let them be and waited.
~
Xinya looked at the path once more it looked so old, it was barely visible. There was overgrown gra.s.s covering most of it, it looked like it hadn"t been used in a very long time. Thinking back to how long Christopher had been trapped, it might not have been.
"Do you want us to come with you?" Xinya begin. "It could be dangerous walking there alone."
Shaking his head, Christopher wrote: [It will be fine, I"m not as weak as I look.] After he wrote that he summoned his staff in a great show of power.
"That"s true your not," Xinya said while smiling at him.
[Once again, I would like to say thank you for all that you have done for me and if you ever need me I will be willing to help you in any way I can.]
A notification popped up suddenly:
[You and Christopher are now friends!!]
[Christopher is now registered on your friend list!]
"Don"t thank me, I only did what any person would do when someone is being held captive." Xinya modestly replies.
Christopher just smiled gently at him and wrote: [ I must be going now.]
"Goodbye, my friend," Xinya said sadly.
Shaking his head Christopher wrote: [ This is not a goodbye, just a see you next time.]
Xinya watched as Christopher walked down the hidden pathway, waving goodbye to him until he was out of view. He really hopes that Christopher finds what he is looking for in that town of his. He hopes that his new start would be as good as his.
"Drifting Cloud!" Turning around Xinya saw that Wei was calling him, waving him over. "Did Christopher already leave?"
Walking over to them he replied, "Yes he did. Why didn"t you two come over and say goodbye?"
"You were closer to him than we were, we didn"t want to intrude on your farewell." Wandering Sound said.
Rolling his eyes at the two he said, "Come on, let"s head to Errinisworth before nightfall."
"Yeah, let"s hurry. I can"t wait to get there and see what types of shops they have." Wei said.
Xinya just remembered that they got 20 gold coins for finis.h.i.+ng Christopher"s quest, he would have to turn it into real money later and remind Wei to do the same. She could probably pay off her mother with what she made today.
After two more hours of walking, they finally made it to Errinishworth, Wei was ecstatic, Xinya was happy too, there were so many things he needed to do while he was here. While Wandering Sound wondered where to start looking for his quest of finding evidence of the Forgotten valley of Ensworth.
As they walked inside the gate the three of them couldn"t help but stop and stare, the town was huge, to say the least, and also very active. Everywhere they looked they saw players and NPCs bustling about, doing all sorts of things.
The town itself was very different from Bellport, instead of looking like a 16th-century European town it was styled as an 18th-century American colonial town. As Xinya looked around at the building and shops, he could quite clearly say he never has seen the like of them before in his life.
The houses were simple in design and very homely, typically featuring two stories, made of wood and had a chimney that was placed in the center of the roof. There were a couple of different shops and taverns here and there and as they walked farther in town they saw a huge marketplace.
"What should we do first?" Wei asked while looking at shops with interest.
Wandering Sound looked around while thinking, "I think the three of us might have different things we want to do while we are in town, maybe we should split up."
"We don"t need to split up, we can just do one thing at a time," Wei said.
"No, Wandering Sound is right we don"t know how long it will take us to do what we need to do on our own. Splitting up is the right idea." Xinya said.
Seeing that what Xinya said made sense, Wei agreed with them, "Alright, let"s do it your way."
"Before we split up, I think we should set up a meeting place in town, that way once we are finished with our individual tasks, we could meet there," Xinya told them.
"That"s a good idea." Wandering Sound said while looking around, there was a huge lake nearby them with tons of boats. "How about we rent a houseboat for a couple of days?"
"A houseboat?" Wei asked confused about what that was.
"A houseboat is like a campsite but better, it comes with a lot of amenities, such as different crafting stations with a 1x experience bonus. Also, there is work out equipment that would help you improve your stats without using stat points, but they are expensive." Xinya explained.
"Don"t worry about it, I will pay for it. Take it as an advance payment of all the potions I"m going to be asking you for." Wandering Sound said.
Xinya couldn"t fight that logic, so he agreed, it would be a great place to work on his potions and stats, which reminds him he needed to decide where to put new points
he got from leveling up and also see what his new t.i.tle gave him.
As they were walking his interface started beeping, opening it up he saw that it was Melting Snow calling him, with a smile he opened his Video chat.