Chapter 14: Claiming the Reward

Old Li walked forward and, without hesitation, bent down and grabbed the ring on the door.
With a firm pull, the door swung open.

The collapsed basilisk beside him seemed to sense something and twitched, but it still failed to wake up completely.

Not daring to delay any longer, he quickly swam in through the entrance.

[Congratulations to players Hua Nord, Old Li, and Number Two for successfully clearing the dungeon—The Lord’s Mysterious Cave.]

The moment Old Li entered, the system’s broadcast rang out.
Every player in Sea Realm lowered their head to look at their notification bar, their reactions varying.

Some felt envious—”Is this the world of the big shots! I spent two days just barely learning to swim and chop trees, while the big shots have already gotten the first clear.”

Some felt regretful—”Damn it, someone beat me to it.”

And some felt gratified—the black-tailed merman lowered his eyes: “The plan succeeded, as expected.”

And some were smugly satisfied—”As expected, the first clear still depends on me, Hua, hahahahaha!”

What was different from what he had imagined was that the reward floor was not the usual blindingly flashy, nouveau riche style of the officials, but a simple and plain room.

There were no extra decorations in the room.
As far as the eye could see, there was only a desk, a chair, and a huge bookshelf that stood tall in this space.

The desk was made of raw wood, coated with clear lacquer, and the original grain of the wood could still be faintly seen.
A book was open on it, its page corners slightly curled, as if someone had just been reading it here.

“If the system hadn’t already announced it, it would be hard to imagine that this is the reward stage,” Old Li sighed and took a few steps forward to the front of the desk.

He first pulled open the drawer under the desk, but the drawer was empty, with nothing inside.
Then he turned and went to the bookshelf.

The bookshelf, which was as tall as two Old Lis stacked together, looked so huge.
A rough estimate put the number of books on it at several thousand.
He tried to place his hand on a book with a purple cover and pulled it outwards with force, but the book didn’t budge.

“Not a quest item?” Old Li was a bit puzzled.
Since there was nothing and he couldn’t take anything, what kind of reward floor was this?

His gaze locked onto the book that was spread open on the desk, which he had ignored just now.

[Ding, congratulations player for obtaining the Lord’s childhood notebook—”First Look at Magic.” Submitting it to the Lord will result in a generous reward!]

The moment Old Li touched the book, the system’s prompt rang out.

His previously puzzled expression was swept away, and he looked extremely excited—this was much better than any other reward!
Rewards like this, which the system didn’t explicitly state, were generally divided into two types: one was extremely filled with traps, and the other was extremely generous.

Normally, Old Li might have suspected he had encountered a garbage quest, but this was a series quest obtained from the first clear of a dungeon!
No matter how you thought about it, it had to be the latter, right?

He picked up the book and flipped through a couple of pages.
Since the system had thoughtfully converted the language for the players, Old Li could easily understand the content written in the notebook.

This casual look was no small matter.
He didn’t move his gaze away for more than twenty minutes.

‘My goodness, that merman is really something.’
Old Li didn’t consider himself a rule-abiding student who loved to learn when he was in school.
He had always selectively absorbed knowledge based on his own interests.

Now, as he flipped through this notebook on the elementary knowledge of magic, he didn’t feel bored at all.
Instead, he could easily understand what the notebook’s owner wanted to express, and followed their train of thought, soaring through the wonderful world of magic.

Old Li even had a strange illusion that he was accompanying a much smaller version of the merman lord, watching his younger self frown in deep thought over magic.

[The dungeon opening time is up. Player will be teleported to their personal hut in—5, 4, 3…]

The system’s countdown brought Old Li’s consciousness back from the book.
He hurriedly put the notebook into his backpack, marveling at his state just now.

While waiting to be teleported, he idly counted the scales on his tail and inadvertently saw a white corner peeking out from the corner of the desk.

Without much thought, Old Li squatted down and grabbed that thing, pinching its corner in his hand.

[3, 2, 1, teleportation begins.]

Old Li held the thing in his hand tightly.
When he looked up again, he was face to face with his two companions who had died and returned earlier.

“What’s that?” Huahua was the first to pounce over.
“Is this the first-clear reward? A letter?”

It turned out that what Old Li had pulled out from under the desk in the last few seconds was a perfectly sealed, snow-white letter.

On the cover of the letter, written in the language of the merfolk, were the words—”To Sykes.”

“No,” Old Li’s expression was also a bit dazed.
Things like this, which seemed to contain a huge amount of information, often symbolized many things in games—a quest chain of extremely high quality, a plot related to the main storyline, and massive rewards.

‘Could it be that this African¹ has finally had a change of luck?’

‘Could this kind of double-barreled good luck actually be real?!’

“This is the clear reward that the system prompted,” he said, taking out the lord’s notebook from his backpack and placing it in front of his partners.

“And this,” Old Li pointed at the letter, “is what I found under the desk in the last few seconds before I was teleported out.”

“Holy cr*p!” As a game streamer, Huahua certainly understood the significance of these two items.
The hand he used to touch the envelope was already trembling.
“Are we about to strike it rich!”

Only the true gaming noob, Yan Shuangwen, was still standing there, completely unable to understand what the two were being so mysterious about.

[!!! What am I seeing! A quest to have a direct audience with the lord! And a letter!]

[An epic quest! Huahua, your death was worth it!]

[By the way, do quest items for chain quests appear in the closed beta? That shouldn’t be right, should it?]

[I think so too. It’s a bit early to call it epic now…]

[How is it not epic? Could the reward from the first clear of a dungeon be an ordinary quest?]

[It’s a pity Old Li didn’t stream, and Huahua didn’t live to the end. I really want to know what the last stage was like, ahhhhhh.]

[Go to the cloud site and search for Old Li’s Gaming Diary. If nothing unexpected happens, he’ll definitely upload the video.]

[Person in front, you guys stop arguing. Isn’t anyone curious who Sykes is?]

[That’s right. The quality of this quest depends on what’s written in the letter. Has anyone seen the name Sykes?]

[Wait, Huahua!! Huahua, look at me! Stop flipping randomly, look at the first page of the notebook. Is the name written there…]

Hua Yibing’s sharp eyes caught the last comment.
His hand, which was flipping through the notebook, paused slightly, and he flipped directly to the first page with a ‘swish’.

The three words “Sykes” were written there by its owner.
The handwriting was restrained and steady, but carried a hint of youthful arrogance.

“This is a letter for the lord!” Hua Yibing shouted without a care.
“Old Li, your tail shouldn’t be green! A koi fish would suit you better!”

“Let’s go!” Old Li said decisively after seeing it.
“We’re going to see the Lord!”

Footnotes:

1. 非洲 (Fēizhōu), literally “Africa,” is slang for someone with extremely bad luck, the opposite of 欧皇 (Ōuhuáng), “European Emperor.”