Prince lept over the Ice Giant's swing and rushed toward its underbelly. With a huge slash and a shout, "Inferno Slash!" The troublesome creature was gone and in its place a pile of loot.
"Everyone alright?" Prince asked, turning around to check on his teammates. "That was a particularly tough one." He was knocked to his butt by a purple rocket.
"My Prince! You are so amazing, how could we ever go without you? The most wonderful, magnificent, extrao-!"
System Notice: Prince killed his teammate Guileastos. -100 Reputation.
"Stupid Gui…" Prince started grumbling to himself. "Losing so much health during the fight that I can only get one good hit in…"
"Anyways," Lolidragon started, "we're all fine, barely, but why was that so hard? Ice Giants are supposed to be midlevel creatures but this one had the equivalence of a level 90 demon!" She kicked the mound of snow on her right and muttered, "I'll probably have to look into this, ugh I hate extra work."
"What's this?" Doll asked as she picked up a small silver box from the pile of loot.
"Doll, don't open that!" Lolidragon shouted.
Doll immediately dropped the box, shocked at the volume and emotion of Lolidragon's outburst. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at their thief.
"This explains why it was so powerful!" She strode over to the box and picked it up. "Guys! This is a hidden quest item! Let's go back to Infinite City and I'll tell you all I know about it."
After having Sunshine pick them up on the flying carpet, they flew to Infinite City and separated ways to clean up and bathe after their long week in the snowy mountain caves. They met up in the meeting hall an hour later, Lolidragon had Gui, Kenshin, Wicked, Wu Qing, and Sunshine in tow.
"Let's get down to business," Lolidragon ushered everyone to their seats.
"To defeat the huns." Wu Qing whispered to Prince, who elbowed him to shut up but couldn't help the grin that escaped.
Ignoring the obnoxious siblings, Lolidragon continued. "This here," She held up the mysterious box, "Is a hidden quest item. Hidden quest are discovered by a series of random events happening in the proper sequence to a player or team. I don't know very much about this particular one because the designers wanted to keep most of the hidden quests a secret. Anyway, all I know about this one is that it's very dangerous and can only involve 10 people. Whomever opens this box and picks up the object inside will be to leader of this ten-person team. And all of the members must be in the room when the box is opened. The quest changes if more than 10 are in the room, and the rewards are much smaller. Now," she stopped and looked around the room. "Does anyone want to leave before Prince opens this box?" No one moved. They were all too curious to object to being a part of this.
"Wait!" Prince jumped up. "What! Why do I have to open it?!"
"Because," Lolidragon said. "You struck the finishing blow to the Ice Giant and you're our fearless leader."
"Fine." Prince groaned and slumped back into his chair. He didn't want to argue anymore, he had been arguing with Lolidragon since his creation and she always won. It was no use.
"Alrighty then!" She slid the box across the table to Prince. "Open it."
Prince hesitated, maybe they should wait until tomorrow, when everybody was fresh. What if he somehow screwed up being the leader of this stupid hidden quest? Hadn't he already completed two other hidden quests on the Eastern Continent by finding Sunshine and Kenshin? What if there was a quota as to how many hidden quests one character could do? What is he screwed this up for his whole team? What if Lolidragon was wrong and this was just a stupid little box with some stupid accessory in it? Would his team be disappointed? Would they be relieved to not have to participate in this difficult quest?
"OPEN IT ALREADY!" Everybody in the room shouted. They were all prickling with tension and wondering what would happen, but Prince was just sitting there staring at the silver box.
Slowly, the lid lifted and Prince's eyes widened. Before anyone could ask what it was, the room darkened to almost pitch black and a radiant light shown from Prince's hands. Up floated a beautiful pendant, it lifted up to the center of the room, shedding soft light. A voice sounded from the glowing pendant.
"Three days." A soft, ghostlike face appeared around the pendant, the face of a beautiful elven woman. "Three days to reach the tallest tree in the largest forest. There, a young man will guide you to the Seeker. Three days."
The woman's face slowly faded away as she closed her eyes and the pendant's glow dimmed as it floated back down into it's box. The light in the room returned to normal and nobody spoke for a while.
"THREE DAYS!" Wu Qing burst out. "But we have finals this week!"
Prince and Gui shuddered as well but no one else seemed really bothered by this.
"Okay!" Yu Lian stood up. "I will have to notify the people who have been taking charge for us while we were on our week long Team Retreat that we will be leaving again. Everybody, prepare everything you think you will need for this mission, we leave first thing tomorrow. If you can log in early, that would be great." She turned and strode out of the room.
Prince and Wu Qing looked at each other in despair. They both had tons of schoolwork to do and tests to prep for. The next week was going to be terrible.
And Let The Games... Begin!