Data.67 – Old Bowman, To The West

After returning to the first town while still wearing my damaged armor, I started my search of the Foggy Mountains towards the west.

Charin has said that there would likely be someone there who could repair rare equipment.

Of course, this person was an NPC. I had no idea if there were crafter players who could do the same thing.

But even if there were, this game had such a strong focus on combat most of the time, so I wasn’t sure why anyone would want a job where you could make items in exchange for low combat ability.

Besides, monsters tended to drop good equipment quite often. Now that I think about it, maybe there weren’t any players with such a job..

Well, nevermind that.

What was important was the location of the Foggy Mountains.

Charin had just said that it was to the west, but the map was so vast that I needed more to go on in order to find it.

However, she did say that it was a tall mountain covered in fog. The kind of place you would expect a hermit to live.

In other words, I needed to search for a tall, foggy mountain in the west.

And so I used Warp Arrow to get on top of the clouds, much like I did when meeting the Windcloud Dragon.

If you want to find a tall mountain, then you should get up onto high ground.

After that, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.

It was to the west of the first town. A mountain range that was covered in white fog.

In fact, the fog was so thick that I couldn’t even see the mountain peak.

Also, the clouds and fog did not drift, and seemed to be stuck around the mountain.

There was no doubt in my mind that this was the Foggy Mountain.

So, how should I head over there?

I could just ride the cloud.. That would have been easy. But it wasn’t realistic.

First, clouds went wherever the wind took them. And they occasionally broke off into smaller pieces.

Eventually, they might become too small to ride, and I would fall off.

And so I wouldn’t try to cheat, and would go by land.

There were small villages that acted as road stations, and you could heal and buy recovery items or log out there.

Not only that, but monsters would rarely appear on the actual highway.

If you were wounded or it had become nighttime, then finding a main road was a good way to increase your chances of survival.

It was definitely best to use them if you were heading to an area that you’d never been to before.

After all, they would connect to somewhere. So you would always reach a town.

Going on a wandering journey without roads was also cool, but that was something I had been enjoying already during this event.

With a few exceptions, the Zodiac Labyrinths were not in towns, but on the field.

And so even if you tried following the closest roads, you could still end up in forests without paths, and would become lost.

Though, I had been able to find a hidden trial, thanks to that. But now I had to repair my equipment.

This time I would take the safe road and avoid fighting with enemies as much as I can.

After deciding this, I left the first town and started my journey down the highway.

◆　◆　◆

It seemed like NSO was becoming more popular recently, and there were more players seen on the field.

As they all ran down the roads hurriedly, I enjoyed the scenery and walked at a leisurely pace.

Every once in a while I would find a cloud that was the right size, and then warp so that I could see the direction I needed to go when the road branched out.

Like this, I eventually reached the town of Dapan, which was near the foot of the Foggy Mountain.

As it was so close to a fog-covered mountain, the air here was quite chilly.

The exact opposite of how I felt when arriving at the port town.

As for the look of the town..it seemed to be Chinese fantasy.

I didn’t see many other players.

If there was a good craftsman here, then there should be a decent amount of people too..

Unless..it wasn’t this town?

No, there was only one road that stretched out in the direction of the foggy mountain..

Or could there be a town that wasn’t connected to the road?

In any case, I would search the area.

Perhaps it was as Charin said, and there weren’t enough people with rare equipment and materials.

“Ah, that’s right. Maybe I should take Garbow out here.”

And so I summoned Garbow, as the cooldown for the combination attack had already ended.

The cooldown had actually ended while I was still traveling, but it would attract attention from other players if I summoned him then, and there was also the possibility that he would attack monsters outside of the road. And so I had waited.

“Gar! Gar!”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Garbow. Thanks for helping me back there.”

“Gar! Gar!”

As always, I had no idea if he actually understood me.

All Unisons understood words that were related to battle commands and skill activation, but it was unknown if they understood anything else.

However, I was relieved to see that there was no change after his body had come apart earlier.

Since I was able to use it again, I decided to check out the new skill.

◆Meteor Bow

They say that with card games, the cards with short, simple text tend to be the strong ones. And it seemed to apply here as well.

While it unleashed numerous arrows, each arrow was quite powerful, and so it would be effective even against enemies with high defense ability.

I wasn’t sure if the cooldown time was long or short.

I suppose it was the right amount of time considering its power, but it felt long when I considered the fact that I wouldn’t be able to use Garbow for a full hour.

In any case, it meant that I could basically only use it once during a battle.

After all, I doubted that I’d be fighting the same enemy for over an hour.

Even the Windcloud Dragon had not taken that long.

“I’ll continue to count on you, Garbow.”

“Gar! Gar!”

And so with Garbow in tow, I started to explore the town.

In conclusion, while we found a lot of pandas, but we did not find a skilled craftsman..

Still, there were pandas in all sorts of places here.

They leaned against the walls of buildings and ate bamboo leaves, or rolled around on the ground and nearly tripped me over.

Pandas were related to bears, so letting them roam freely seemed a little dangerous.. But this was a fantasy world.

But there were still no skilled craftsmen.

There were normal ones, but they weren’t able to handle the Windcloud set.

Tsk..so it wasn’t this town then..

As it was a full mountain range, the area was quite vast.

It wouldn’t be surprising if there was another town. Hell, there could be a town in the middle of the mountains.

“There aren’t many craftsmen who can fix your equipment. However, perhaps the person who lives in the Phantom Fog Peak, which is at the top of the mountain..may be able to do it.”

It was an ordinary craftsman who gave me the answer.

I felt a little bad about calling him ‘ordinary,’ but they had to be differentiated somehow.

“Can you tell me more..about this person!?”

“Sure thing. I normally would not want to introduce you to another craftsman. But this is someone I can’t compare to..”

Apparently, his name was Yu Shanyu.

And he lived near the top of the mountain, in an area where numerous, sharp, rocky hills stood.

And while he would occasionally come down to the town, he only accepted jobs from people who climbed up to meet him.

“As the name implies, the Phantom Fog Peak is thick with fog and gets very little light. And there are also vicious monsters that live in the area. And once you reach the top, you will be inside of the clouds. No one else would live there by choice, but he is eccentric. Well, I also live near the base of the same mountain, so I can’t talk about other people!”

According to him, there were no other towns in the area.

Furthermore, this Yu was the only person who lived at Phantom Fog Peak.

“Of course, it’s not like I’ve confirmed this with my own eyes, so I could be wrong. And the mountain is large, so perhaps someone else is living there in secret.”

“Well, thank you.”

So Charin had told me of a craftsman that would be easier for me to find.

It would have been rather sadistic of her, if I had to wander through the entire mountain range during my search, but if there was only one town, and I could find information in that town, then you could say that it was a simple, one way road to the craftsman.

“The only problem is, this one road seems rather dangerous..”

Even though I questioned other people in town, no one could tell me what it was like in the mountain that was covered by fog.

In other words, I would be going into the unknown.

If this was real life, climbing a mountain you weren’t familiar with and without a map would be like suicide.

However, this was a game. And such dangerous adventurers were part of the fun.

As I had recently been taking on trials with proper rules for the event, there was something quite exciting about going into uncharted territory like this..!