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Apparently the nearby mining sites had fallen into monster territory, and they were currently home to all sorts of beasts. That was why iron was so valuable right now. In all likelihood, the early towns were fixed in ways like this so that they couldn’t produce higher-quality goods. The NPCs all had sophisticated AIs installed, so regardless of the game administration’s mandates, if they had the right materials available, they would make and sell better items on their own. There was no doubt that was why the ore supply was hit.

A mine recovery quest would probably go up sometime soon. If it turned out to be a large-scale quest, then it probably would even be announced on the official site as some kind of special event. He’d have to remember to look out for it.

Until now, Wayne hadn’t seen any other players in this town, but it was possible there were some around, just that each of their playtimes never overlapped. Since Hiers was a kingdom that was attractive for new players, maybe they had added a lot more starting towns for the open beta. Back in the closed beta, a given city would have around ten players. If the number of starting spawn points had multiplied, perhaps it was feasible for a town to only have a single player. Plus, the city Wayne was in right now was quite a bit smaller than the ones he had seen in the closed beta. Given the scope of this city, he could believe that the starting spawn table had changed.

If a large-scale quest did get posted, it would be pretty hard to complete. A single player couldn’t do much on their own.

Normally he’d have invited friends to play together, but, while it could have worked out during this vacation, on most days it was hard to find time to play with his VR friends, who all had work as well.

He still hadn’t had a proper chat with any of the NPC sellswords, but thinking about it now, cooperating with NPCs didn’t sound bad. Since NPC lives were rooted in this world, the sellswords who lived in this town shouldn’t foolishly try to do anything criminal or fraudulent. That made them much more trustworthy than random players he had never met before.

Back in the closed beta, Wayne had a horrible experience with a PKer.

At first, this PKer pretended to be a NPC. When Wayne was having trouble, this NPC reached out to him and offered to lend an ear. They said that it would be best to speak elsewhere, led him by the hand to an alley, then, after ensuring no one was around, assaulted him and stole his stuff. No one could take what was in his inventory, but that conversely meant that anything not in his inventory could be stolen. Wayne found that he was too shocked to accept the system’s offer of <<Would you like to respawn?>> Perhaps having anticipated that, the PKer stripped off Wayne’s expensive equipment first, starting with his weapon. When he finally respawned, he only had his undergarments and some cheap gear left. The PKer had only stolen his equipment, but what he lost included his ability to trust other players, as well as XP.

Ever since that day, Wayne made every effort to determine if anyone he met was a player or an NPC. He never found another player dressed as an NPC, but he discovered a way to detect whether someone was a player through conversation.

The key was the inventory.

Players would always carefreely access their inventories. It was one of the game systems available from the very start, so of course they would. However, NPCs would absolutely never use it. They couldn’t, after all.

So Wayne used the inventory as a test to distinguish players from NPCs. However, since he never found another player posing as an NPC, knowing this difference never proved to be of any use.

In any case, his vacation was nearly over. On weekdays, he’d only be able to log in at night. The next time he had time off would be when the game officially launched, meaning the number of players would go up, which should mean more players would be appearing in this town. If any large-scale quests were to be released, it would probably be after the launch.

One weekday night, after logging in, he went to the sellsword guild. Since time in the game passed 1.5 times faster than it did in the real world, it was morning here.

The official launch of the game was scheduled for two days from now in the real world, so it was announced that tomorrow the game would be down for maintenance for a full day.

That meant this was the last day of the open beta, or the early access period. Somehow, he managed to acquire some magic skills the day before. What he had learned were [Fire Magic]’s [Magical Affinity: Fire] and [Flare Arrow]. The early game had a lot of monsters that were particularly weak to fire, and it also had comparatively higher attack power than other elements did. In PvP, the speed of [Lightning Magic] was superior, but if you could survive the first attack, being able to counterattack with [Fire Magic] would result in a higher damage output. Assuming both players had similar stats, at least.

He had learned some magic, and his gear was also in order. With that, he should fit in well with the local sellswords.

Due to his real life obligations, it was always difficult to find opportunities to team up with those sellswords. But if a large-scale quest were to go up now, it would be easier to cooperate with people he knew in passing over people he had never met before. It wasn’t bad, slowly getting acquainted from regular contact.

However, for some reason, someone called out to him today.

Since it was still early today, there were only a few sellswords lingering around the guild. The old receptionist guy had been worriedly looking around at no one in particular when he noticed Wayne.

“Hey, it’s you. As soon as I saw ya, I remembered something I wanted to tell ya.”

“Huh? Me? What did you need me for?”

Before now, the receptionist had never needed to talk to Wayne about anything. Even if there weren’t a lot of sellswords around, that didn’t mean that he had nothing to do. There was probably a special reason the receptionist needed to talk to him now.

“Yer a safeholder, right. I ’member thinkin’ it was rare, but yesterday, another safeholder showed up. I thought you might know each other. I dunno why, but safeholders have always hung around with other safeholders.”

—It must be another player.

Wayne had thought he was the only player in this town, but apparently not. Well wait, based on what the receptionist said, they only showed up yesterday. That meant they were a new player who started the game either yesterday or earlier today in the real world.

Seeing that they came to the sellsword guild, it was probably a proper player. If it were a PKer, they wouldn’t come here. Whether a criminal was a player or an NPC, townsfolk didn’t care; it was robbery or murder either way. Not to mention PKers were unlikely to brazenly make use of the town’s accommodations. And most of all, you couldn’t tell a player from an NPC at first glance. In most cases, since PKers were focusing on PKing, they only saw NPCs as sources of XP. They wouldn’t even think of coming to the sellsword guild to find work.

“Oh, speak o’ the devil. That girl there, she’s the safeholder.”

Wayne turned around and looked at the person in the entrance. It was a female cat beastkin. She had swept back bright, reddish-brown hair. While overall she seemed kind of unattractive, she didn’t feel unpleasant, even strangely cute. Maybe it was because he was a cat person.

The catkin girl went straight up to the receptionist, pulled out a Rabbit corpse out of nowhere, and placed it on the counter. It was exactly the same thing that Wayne had done before. She appeared to have mostly starting equipment. The sword at her waist was different, but she had probably invested the money she had earned into a new weapon. A very gamer-like decision. Something an NPC would never consider, since they had to worry about permanent death.

There was no question that she was a player.

The old receptionist guy eyed him as though to ask “So, you know her?” The catkin girl noticed the man looking away and followed his gaze, laying eyes on Wayne for the first time.

“Are you… a player? Ah, sorry. I’m Wayne, I’m a player too.”

The girl looked slightly surprised for a second, then gave a wide smile in response.

“Ah, just like you thought, I’m a player, same as you. Call me Rare. Charmed.”