Now armed with a bag of blessed salt, and an almost empty wallet, Merlin made his way out of the temple and began walking towards the east gate. He still had plenty of time to enter Orchomenus before it got too dark, as long as he didn't run into any obstacles or take any detours.

A large red alert box suddenly appeared before him, causing him to jump back in surprise. It was too early for the servers to be shutting down, but all became clear when he read the message.

┌───────────────────

[Message from the devs!]

Sorry everyone, this session is going to end a little sooner than expected.

We've just received some last-minute news that a routine system maintenance that had been scheduled later in the day was pushed forward into our time slot, so it'll be interrupting the last hour of our session.

You've got half an hour left until the server is shut down for the day, you will receive another notification when it's time to log out. If you do not leave by that time you will be forcibly disconnected, please make sure you're in a safe location when you log out.

└───────────────────

Routine system maintenance was the excuse given, but Merlin knew it was another test firing of the reactor. Due to Gaia's framework being temporarily set up in the laboratory, it was vulnerable to the power surges caused by the reactor. This problem would be rectified when the official servers were set up, but at the moment the safest course of action was to kick everyone out of the game and disconnect Gaia from the mainframe before the surge had a chance to mess her up.

It would take him longer to get back since he didn't have a horse, so with only half an hour to spare, all Merlin could really do was make his way back to Orchomenus and cash in his quests.

When he arrived at the east gate, he pulled his cloak hood up and began his journey. There were a few NPCs travelling the road, unlike earlier in the morning when it was almost completely vacant. Merlin figured that news of the highway bandit's demise would probably have influenced this to some degree.

The familiar scenery scrolled past Merlin's view as he idly traversed the path, fortunately it didn't seem like anything was hiding within the treeline, but he still didn't lower his guard. The occasional merchant cart driving past him gave him a small feeling of security. Even with years of experience, getting ambushed alone was a terrifying situation.

As he neared the town of Orchomenus, the sun began setting. What little light remained within the shaded forests was now gone, leaving barely any visibility past the treeline. A cold wind whistled through the forest leaves, causing Merlin's hair to stand on end.

Not willing to test his luck, Merlin picked up the pace, eventually entering the radius of the lantern that was hanging above the gate. After briefly greeting the two guards, he walked into the town, only now did he feel safe enough to lower his guard. The mental exhaustion caused from him keeping his guard up for such a long period of time had taken its toll and he was ready to pass out on his bed the second he got home.

Merlin wandered around town, and as he approached closer to the market area he began noticing groups of players. It seemed like his annihilation of the bandits that acted as gatekeepers for the next town had caused more players to progress faster than the previous timeline.

Fortunately, it didn't seem as though anybody intended on bothering him for the time being, so Merlin slipped out of sight and made his way to the mercenary guild. As he pushed open the door, the overpowering scent of smoke flooded his senses. Eyes locked on him as he walked into the building, but he paid them no attention, instead choosing to walk directly towards the barkeeper.

"Welcome back, we received several reports earlier today that several bloodied corpses were found littered on the road to Macedonia. Not saying it's a requirement, but it wouldn't hurt to clean up after yourself next time." The bartender informed him that his quest was complete. "Here's your reward, as stated on the request, thirty silver pieces."

Another notification appeared before him as the bartender stopped talking.

「You have earned +10 reputation in Orchomenus.」

Reputation had a similar function to familiarity, but where familiarity would influence how a single NPC acted around you, often times providing special interactions if raised high enough, or very negative interactions if lowered enough.

Reputation instead influenced the general opinion of you, but this was overruled by almost every other kind of reputation, especially those that were more focused to an individual or party, such as familiarity or certain titles.

Regardless of how high you raised your reputation, if an NPC had a negative reaction to you, it wouldn't improve through reputation. Reputation only really affected the perception of you from those who had yet interacted with you. There were cases where your reputation did affect even those who had a pre-established opinion of you, but these were typically due to a special title or extreme act and weren't the norm.

Not bothering to sit around and chat, or in Merlin's case, sit around and be whispered about by everyone in the building, Merlin left the mercenary guild. Now on the street, he noticed he only had a few minutes left before the server was shut down. There wasn't enough time to start tracking down information about the noble the priestess called Sir Redmond, and definitely not enough time to get away with murder, so he picked a safe space and got ready to log out.

Before he did so, he noticed some loud players in the distance, loudly claiming that the clothes featured in the store they were harassing were nothing more than overpriced garbage. It seemed the general consensus amongst the nearby NPC was that the players were obnoxious troublemakers.

Merlin easily identified the players as LordKyle and his two goons, although it seemed they had some different equipment this time around. LordKyle himself had a crude leather breastplate with a tattered red cape, it looked to be a goblin drop, meaning he had been quite lucky with his farming.

Clearly being left alone to bully defenceless players had inflated his ego, and he was now giving a similar treatment to NPCs. He would be shut down eventually, but a few ideas sprung up in Merlin's mind of how he could use this to his advantage in the near future.

A red alert box appeared before him, telling Merlin to log off now.

┌───────────────────

[Message from the devs!]

The server will shut down in five minutes, please find a safe place and log out.

The server will forcibly disconnect those who do not log out in time.

Thank you.

└───────────────────

"System logout." Merlin chanted, causing a prompt to appear asking him if he would like to logout, to which he responded with yes.

He received the familiar sensation of his vision slowly fading away as his body was removed from the game and thrust into the endless black void used as the limbo between the virtual hub and the game. When he opened his eyes, the blindingly white room was all he could see, but this once again vanished into darkness as he slapped the power symbol on his arm and confirmed the prompt that followed.

A jolt ran through Arthur's body, waking him up from his trance. His pod slowly rotated to an upright position before opening, revealing the facility. He waited a few moments for the groggy sensation to wear off before leaving the capsule.

As he left his capsule, he noticed one of the developers pacing back and forth with a nervous expression plastered on his face, it seemed to be especially bad as there were several holes chewed into his pencil. He didn't seem to be paying attention to his surroundings, instead constantly checking his watch and then his phone.

Arthur could guess that he was waiting for a response from the developer who went back to the lab to disconnect Gaia from the mainframe, and his nervous erratic behaviour was because he feared the possibility of losing Gaia. Although backups were made constantly, the hardware Gaia was inhabiting was expensive and hard to replace.

A wave of nausea washed over Arthur, followed shortly after by a sharp stabbing pain in his head as a memory surfaced. As his attention was drawn back to the developer who was pacing around the room, Arthur's vision split, there was suddenly two developers, one following the actions of the other with about three seconds difference.

Arthur watched as the developer's projection bumped into a table, followed by his physical body three seconds later which sent a handful of pens and pencils onto the floor. And as the developer's projection began pacing back, not paying any attention to its surroundings, it suddenly tripped on one of the pens, falling forward and smashing his head against a capsule, causing a small pool of blood to form under the projection's unconscious body.