Chapter 22: The Invisible Letter

While the players were enthusiastically lining up for the magic test and exploring the newly appeared skills, the merman wasn’t idle either.

An hour ago, Sykes, disguised as a player for the first time, appeared in the square, only to be mistaken for an NPC, leading to that oolong incident.
It was a big blow to the fish’s confidence.
This made the fish return to the mage tower and temporarily become a shut-in.

Self-pity.jpg

Sykes returned to his study and habitually took out Roba’s letter, unfolding it to read it again—this was the thirteenth time he had unconsciously done this.

Roba, the merfolk clan, the rules…

[Has Master checked the letter paper?]
Ella’s voice, rarely heard, interrupted the merman’s thoughts.

“The letter paper?”

[While collecting data in the player world, Ella discovered that similar plots have appeared in human reading materials. In more than seventy percent of the follow-ups, encrypted messages were found in the letter.]

“Encrypted… messages?”

The merman’s fingers gently fiddled with the envelope in his hand, as if recalling something.
Then his golden eyes suddenly lit up.

“Ella, you reminded me. What the humans say is right.”

The merman pushed open the window, intending to swim out nearby regardless of his image.

Only to come face to face with the tower-climbing player named Diamond.

The merman: “…”

Diamond: “…”

“You didn’t go for the test?” the merman asked first.

“Test?” The other person was confused, obviously so obsessed with climbing the tower that he had no time to pay attention to the game announcements or the hot posts on the forum.

“Forget it, that’s not important. Do you have any coral tree fruits in your backpack?” The merman’s tone held a rare sense of urgency.

Coral tree fruits? Of course, Diamond had them.

He had been constantly challenging this stone tower since he discovered it, and the number of deaths during this period had reached a very considerable number.

In order to buy resurrection chances, Diamond had already accepted countless daily quests for digging stones and chopping trees.

And as an item that had a chance to drop during the felling process, he had naturally saved up quite a few coral tree fruits.

The juice of that thing tasted cool and refreshing, and had always been used by Diamond as a refreshing drink.
He had even thoughtfully written about it in that post “[Tower Climbing Project 101]” for reference.

Whenever he got tired of climbing the tower, he would take one out, pry it open, and drink a couple of sips, instantly refreshing his mind and hundredfolding his spirit.

A new quest popped up on the system notification bar—

[Special Quest · The Lord’s Request: The noble Lord needs your help and hopes you can provide him with a coral tree fruit. Player’s current progress: Coral Tree Fruit 0/1]

[Quest Reward: Unknown]

It was actually a special quest!

Diamond’s eyes were sharp and his hands were fast.
He accepted the quest, then poured out a pile of fruits from his backpack with a ‘swish, swish’, and offered them to the lord with both hands.

“Noble Lord! Take as many as you want, don’t be polite!” he said with great magnanimity.

Of course, Sykes wasn’t polite with him.
He took three fruits from the pile as spares, and with a wave of his hand, he settled the quest for him.

[Congratulations player for completing the special quest · The Lord’s Request! Current progress: Coral Tree Fruit 3/1]

Diamond’s heart leaped with joy when he saw the quest completion prompt.
In his carelessness, he actually forgot that both his hands had left the tower surface due to turning in the quest.
He did a somersault and fell directly from the tower wall.

No!!—

He hadn’t received his reward yet!

Diamond was full of regret, just about to face his fate of returning to the resurrection point, when the feeling of weightlessness suddenly stopped.
His collar was firmly held by someone.

He looked up blankly and met Sykes’s gilded eyes.

‘This merman… is really good-looking.’

Sykes saved the stubborn player on a whim and very generously gave him twenty free resurrection chances, then returned to his study with the coral tree fruits.

He first used a silver knife to cut off the thorns at the top of the fruit, sliced open the reddish surface, and revealed the green pulp inside.

The pulp looked extremely fresh and tender, seeming to contain abundant juice.

He cut it into strips, row by row, gently squeezed its juice with the back of the knife, and collected it in a crystal cup.

While performing these repetitive and tedious steps, the merman’s thoughts drifted far away, recalling things from a long, long time ago.

Back then, because he sought peace and quiet, he had beaten up Roba and his little followers, but instead brought himself more unrest.
Those fish, whether in class or out, all scrambled to get close to him.

“I’ll teach you a secret,” his younger self sighed, picking up a few materials provided in the experiment class and saying to those colorful fish.

“The root of the coral tree, plus the leaves of the squeak grass, the juice squeezed out and mixed together as ink, the words written will become invisible within five minutes. And the way to undo the invisibility also comes from the coral tree, which is its juice.”

“Understand?”

…

“I understand!”
[I’ve noted it down.]

Roba’s excited voice in his memory overlapped with Ella’s inorganic voice.

Only then did Sykes come back to his senses, realizing that he had unconsciously spoken out loud.
He looked at the red-haired sprite waving her wings in mid-air, and unexpectedly felt a dizzying sense of being in a different world.

The merman shook his head, clearing his thoughts again, and poured the bottle of light green juice in his hand onto the envelope and letter paper.

As expected, new handwriting appeared on the inside of the envelope—

[More and more things are being “ignored” by the rules. I don’t know if you can see this line of words. You will definitely see it. This is our common secret, isn’t it?]

[The elders seem to have left you some clues. My letter will serve as a pathfinder.]

[Then I am number 1.]

[They are also trying to avoid the eyes of the rules. If you feel lost, you might as well go look for their messages.]

[After all, those old men have lived for so many years, they should know more than me, although they refuse to tell me anything!]

At the end of this message, Roba drew an angry little fish.
Behind the fish, he wrote the symbol 1 and bolded it several times with the tip of his pen, as if to emphasize something.

Sykes’s fingertips caressed that symbol, and he finally confirmed it—

In this sea territory that he was so familiar with, there was indeed more information that he didn’t know.

After testing his skills, Old Li said goodbye to his partners and, carrying his golden machete, came to the vicinity of the coral forest.

Because of the disconnection that day, his character had died directly.
As soon as the server opened, he was saddled with a “-500” ‘life-buying debt’.

As compensation, the officials gave the players two reward choices—one was to offset this death and additionally receive 500 reputation points, which was one resurrection chance;

The second was a random gift pack ×1.
The things that could be opened were completely random, and it was noted that there was a chance to get a magic skill.

If it were you, which one would you choose?

Anyway, Old Li didn’t even think about it and directly chose the second one.

Now that gift pack was lying quietly in his backpack.
Old Li planned to wait until this peak of opening packs passed before taking it out.

His eyes casually swept over the system column, and he saw a familiar shout—

[Area Shout: Is anyone nearby? Can you help me?]

‘Hmm?’