by Nikita Thorn
Ippei laughed. “That’s a universal truth anywhere with Honor Warriors.”
With some struggle, they managed to slowly squeeze their way past the crowd toward the front of the counters. In front of them was a Festival Coordinator [Level Unknown], who looked completely overworked. “This is only for volunteers from clans. If you’re not here on behalf of a clan who has answered the call for assistance from the Lord Shogun, this is not the place for you.”
Seiki had a feeling that since the information was included in their quest title, the information should already be available to any NPC, and this formal conversation was just for added realism.
“We’re here from the Shinshioka Scientific Society,” said Seiki.
At the counter next to them, a man looked up. Kouta of the Shinshioka Nobles [Level 26] was a well-built middle-aged man in a full Shinshioka advanced samurai war set. Upon noticing no clan affiliation, however, he simply muttered, “Subbers” and paid them no more attention.
The official behind the counter spent a full twenty seconds ruffling through his papers, causing someone behind Seiki to let out a long annoyed breath at the unnecessary display of inefficiency.
“All right.” The official nodded. “Yes… the clan is on our list. How many of you?”
“Three,” said Ippei.
“Very well.” The official sucked on his teeth as he marked something on the document. “Your weapons, please.”
Ippei blinked. “We’ve earned our rights to carry arms on Palace Grounds.”
The man looked up with a glare. From his expression it was clear this was not the first time someone had said that to him. “Yes, we are aware, Unit Chief, but because of the Festival, this has been declared a civilian area. With this many outsiders coming from the clans, we need extra precautions. If you have a problem, you can try arguing with Commander Tamura over there.”
Commander Tamura turned out to be in charge of the Elite Shinshioka Guards, and had on an even sterner frown than any of the Festival Coordinators, and so they quietly unequipped their weapons and handed them over. Seiki also gave up his woodcutting axe before he had to be asked.
“Good. They’ll be safely stored,” said the man as he turned around and dumped all the weapons unceremoniously into a wooden barrel, on top of other assorted weapons from previous registrants who had come through.
Seiki had a feeling that someone was having a good laugh watching all the players wince as they saw their precious weapons treated with such carelessness.
“And now one of your charms,” continued the official.
“Excuse me?” said Ippei.
The man frowned. “One of your charms. Since I’m issuing you these identity badges which you will need to have on your persons at all times on Palace Grounds.”
He placed three plain and slightly battered wooden tags on the counter. On the front of them were carved characters that said, ‘Palace Festival Volunteer’.
“Anyone without one of these will be accompanied out,” said the man. “So keep it on you at all times.”
Seiki took it to mean that they would have to have it equipped in one of their Charm Slots. Shogun’s Court and various other places asked people to remove their shoes. Removing a charm from a Charm Slot, however, was unheard of.
“Oh… salt into the wound.” With a sigh, Ippei removed one of his charms and placed it longingly on the counter. He had chosen to give up 6% overall defense and 2% energy regeneration for 8% maximum health and a flat +36 speed on his other piece.
“You won’t regret it.” The official smiled. “This Volunteer Badges have been worked on by the Palace’s best enchanters to ward off many kinds of evil.”
As Ippei picked up the badge to inspect what the man meant, Seiki looked at the equipment in his Charm Slots.
The first one was a small flat rock with a hole drilled through and laced with a ceremonial hemp rope. It had dropped from a Military Mission box not too long ago, which he had been very excited about:
Fukaido Stone. +3% energy regeneration. +78 health. +122 maximum energy. Charm.
The second one was something he had held onto forever for almost as long as he could remember, which had gone into his Charm Slot and had never come out. It was a simple identification badge used by army officers. On one side was the old Morishige Army symbol. On the other side was Master Tsujihara’s name.
The Master’s Army Plate. +3% energy regeneration. Charm.
Lately, Seiki had not looked at it much, but he somehow had gotten used to feeling it tucked under his armor. Technically, he now had several more Charms that were arguably better than the Master’s Army Plate, like one that offered more speed, or one with an effect that randomly refunded the energy used for his abilities, but he had somehow managed to convince himself that energy regeneration was vital to his play style.
Right now, the choice between the two Charms was obvious. Letting out a long breath, Seiki slowly removed the Master’s Army Plate and placed it on the counter. He had thought it would be an important decision when he finally removed it from his Slot, but he guessed now was as good a moment as any. Both his friends glanced at the item, perhaps slightly surprised he had hung on to it, but neither of them said anything.
Still, he let out a grunt in protest as the Festival Coordinator grabbed all their charms and threw them into the barrel, where the Master’s Army Plate clacked noisily against the side. Mairin’s piece, which was in the form of a folded enchanted paper, missed the wooden chest and glided onto the ground, and the kitsune girl cried ‘Hey!’
The Festival Coordinator ignored them. “Come back once you’re done and you can get all your equipment. With so many extra people in the vicinity, we have tightened our patrols. Stay within designated areas and report to your commanding Festival Officers.” Then he waved them away and yelled, “Next!”
They extracted themselves from the crowd and headed toward the entrance. “Okay, this isn’t so bad,” said Mairin as she studied their new equipment. “I mean, at least it’s got stats.”
The Palace Festival Volunteer’s Badge came with a flat +75 defense, which was extremely high for a charm. However, since the number did not scale, it benefited low-level players more and severely punished very high-level players.
“Maybe they’re going to hit us with something really big and this will allow lowbies not to get one-shot,” Ippei guessed as they joined the line of people moving toward the Servants’ Quarters.
Seiki supposed that made sense, although he could not see how they were supposed to fight anything without their weapons. “Maybe it’s just going to be puzzle-solving?”
“For once, I’m hoping for an easy, painless fetch quest,” said Ippei.
The designated quest area was fenced off from the public with a line of chest-height bamboo barriers. The narrow opening was guarded by elite Shinshioka soldiers, who only allowed those with a Volunteer’s Badge to enter.
Seiki glanced back at the crowd at the registration counter the moment they stepped through. Just as he had suspected, the labels over the players disappeared and were replaced with generic ‘Festival Volunteer’.
“We’re now instanced,” he told his friends.
“Thank God,” said Ippei.
They found themselves in the somewhat familiar front part of the Servants’ Quarters. This was where some of the weekly Crafting Missions were handed out, and, having done a few of them, Seiki had a vague understanding of the layout of the area. Unlike the mostly symmetrical structures within the main Palace, the Servants’ Quarters were complexes of single-storied black-roofed buildings that served as kitchens, storages and living quarters for the workers. The place seemed to have grown eastward out of necessity, with older buildings closer to the Palace side and several new constructions perpetually being built along the east wall. On most days, or at least whenever Seiki had visited in the past, the place was almost empty, as the servants were occupied at their stations.
No
w, however, the whole front yard was full of delivery carts and workers unloading banquet goods from them. Seiki was surprised to find them all meticulously labeled: crates of fish marked East Sea Maguro, barrels of Nakutani Red Miso, packs of Seasoned Wakame, as well as different types of pickled delicacies.
“They’re all Level 30 ingredients.” Seiki finally realized the significance of the detailed labels. “This is… to illustrate some kind of a point, isn’t it?”
“What’s the point exactly?” asked Mairin.
“The Rogami have reached Level 30 and you haven’t,” said Ippei with a laugh.
The Rogami Clan allegedly had their own special quests for the event, and it struck Seiki that only people who were not invited to the Ceremony got to see what work went into it behind the scene.
Just then someone shouted, “Shinshioka Scientific Society!”
They were phased into their own instance so that could not have been meant for anyone else. The group turned to see a man in a court official robe waving to them.
“I’m starting to get what you mean by the foot in the door strategy,” said Seiki to Ippei.
Third-Rank Official Chiba was a man in his late forties, who, very much like all the other Festival Coordinators, looked absolutely exhausted by the extra workload. “You’re help from the Shinshioka Scientific Society?”
He barely waited for them to confirm before gesturing toward the busy courtyard. “There’s a shipment that’s supposed to be here already, carrying sake from Kichigawa. A pigeon said it left the brewing house several days ago.”
The man flipped through his documents some more, before looking up a few seconds later, frowning, as if wondering why the volunteers assigned to him were still there. “Well? Go find it!”
“So you want us to find a missing shipment of sake?” said Mairin. “Uh, what does it look like?”
Third-Rank Official Chiba grunted. “How would I know?”
“How big of a shipment is it?” asked Seiki. There was a big difference between five jars and five hundred.
The official glared. “It doesn’t say here, so that’s your job to find out.”
“I don’t suppose we could just go kill eight boars instead?” said Ippei.
“With your bare hands?” The official’s face split into a nasty grin, which instantly disappeared, turning into the most unamused expression Seiki had ever seen. “No. Find out where that shipment is and report back to me. Understood?”
The quest information updated for them.
Patriotic Spirits III [Shinshioka Scientific Society – Pacchi Festival]. Find out what happened to the shipment from Kichigawa. Fulfill 3 of the following objectives or more to complete the quest:
Of flowers, the cherry blossom
The stake that sticks out
A clever hawk
What has happened twice
The bamboo that bends
Doing is a mistake
When in a hurry
Three years for peach and chestnut
Clouds over the moon
Lapis and quartz
Catching sea-bream
Fall seven times
After accepting, you may not leave the Servants’ Quarters until the quest is complete. Leaving the area before that will result in an automatic failure. You may, however, retake the quest from your clan official to attempt it again. Do you wish to accept?
The format was a little surprising, and Seiki glanced at his friends to see them equally confused.
“So we need to do three…” Seiki concentrated on the individual objectives that had appeared in his quest log, expecting some more information about each one of them. Nothing else popped up beyond the obscure phrases.
Ippei appeared to be trying the same thing. “Nothing?” he said in surprise.
The official waved them away. “This will need to be in time for the Feast after the Ceremony. So get to work!”
“You’re telling me we’re doing all this work so Precious Lord Something Rogami can get drunk with the Shogun?” said Mairin.
Third-Rank Official Chiba’s eyes bulged. “Insolence! That’s Lord Shogun to you!”
Mairin smiled sweetly. “Pardon me. I mean Precious Lord Shogun.”
“Whose precious personal safety is of more precious importance to his precious self over all his precious subjects,” added Ippei earnestly.
The official blinked, his brows furrowing, and they all retreated out of range in case the man could parse what had just been said.
Laughing, Mairin turned her attention to the quest. “So, no instructions, only weird clues. Well, good thing they tell you we can’t leave the area, so that means it’s somewhere in here. Maybe someone stole it and hid it? Or… maybe the delivery guy broke all the sake bottles and ran away.”
Glancing at the chaotic scene in front of them, Seiki wondered how they would go about locating a shipment of unknown quantity. “How do we start?”
“By asking people, of course,” said the kitsune. “Okay, be right back.”
She seemed enthusiastic about the task, and Seiki watched her run around the courtyard to talk to every single NPC in sight, startling quite a few of the unfortunate servants as she popped into human form right in front of them.
Despite seeming to take the presence of a kitsune pretty well, none of the workers seemed to know anything about the sake shipment. “They all say they only know about their shipment of fine pickles or something and will only talk about that, or say they’re too busy, or they don’t work here,” the kitsune reported. “Maybe if we coax some more info out of—okay, never mind.”
Even Third-Rank Official Chiba had disappeared from his spot after starting the quest for them.
“Well, Kazuki said he wanted to see how we complete the quest, so maybe it’s a puzzle,” said Seiki. “Maybe it’s like… all these phrases make up a story about the shipment?”
“It will be an interesting story, full of… plants and birds,” said Mairin, glancing inward to check her quest log. “And mistakes. Since, here, ‘doing is a mistake’.”
Ippei chuckled. “Doing this quest is a mistake, you mean.”
Even so, the samurai now started to seem intrigued by the mystery, and they moved toward the side to discuss their plan under the shade of a large conifer, away from the noises of the deliveries being handled.
Ippei retrieved a piece of paper from his inventory and copied down the twelve phrases from the quest log. “Might be useful to physically see the clues while we’re trying to figure it out.”
“Good job with the handwriting, samurai-san. You’re improving,” said Mairin as she took the paper and blew on it to dry the ink. “Oh, and here, this one: ‘catching sea-bream’. Hope your fishing skills are good enough for that.”
Seiki did not even know if that was one of the possible fish to obtain from Fishing, but he had a feeling it was unlikely going to be that straightforward. “Now what?”
“We’ll check around this main courtyard, and then down to the kitchen courtyard. Maybe we’ll see some fish, or a hawk, or get a déjà vu from ‘something that has happened twice’.”
“That just seems like no plan to me,” said Ippei.
Without a better idea, however, they followed Mairin deeper in the Servants’ Quarters, which featured narrow courtyards and small plain wooden buildings. Here, hidden from the eyes of high-ranking court officials, the atmosphere was much more relaxed, and the servants gathered in corners and gossiped.
Despite the plainer-looking architecture, Seiki decided he liked it much better than the rest of the Palace. There were large shade-giving trees throughout, and a lot of bustle and life. Perhaps because the area was not meant to be seen by the public, Festival decorations were much sparser than in the rest of the City. A few flags hung from a window or a roof, and Seiki noted, with some satisfaction, that they were all red and black Shinshioka colo
rs, with none of the Rogami yellow to be seen.
“Of course, the servants are not going to be happy with all the extra work the Rogami is giving them, so they’re not going to be celebrating the Rogami Clan,” said Mairin when he commented on it.
The kitsune was glancing back and forth between the list of clues in her hand and the surroundings. “Okay, there!” She pointed to a large sakura tree in the middle of a tiny garden between two houses that seemed to be lodgings for supervisors. “Of flowers, the cherry blossom!”
She pronounced the phrase as if it was a magic spell. Nothing happened, however, which was not particularly surprising. To make sure, they thoroughly investigated the tree, but it yielded nothing except a bit of shade and some very lovely pale pink flowers.
“I’m not sure this is the right strategy,” said Ippei.
Without a clue as to what they were supposed to be doing, they continued to walk around. Ten more minutes passed without any progress, and Seiki was starting to get to know the layout of the Servants’ Quarters very well. A long gray wall separated it from the Main Palace, but there were several doorways for special access. The large kitchen building was directly connected to the back of the Banquet Hall, where the Shogun was planning to host the Rogami Clan and bestow upon their leader a mysterious special gift, which was the object of much speculation.
“To be honest, if I were a Rogami member, I would be so mad that this Precious Lord guy is the only one getting a special drop,” said Mairin as they walked past the building.
“I think it’s for reaching Level 30, and he just happens to be the clan leader,” said Seiki.
“Oh, right. But doesn’t being clan leader make it easier to reach Level 30 in the first place?”
“I think they’ll all get a special box of random moderately good loot at the banquet,” said Ippei. “The Crafters’ Guild got something like that.”
“Good. I hope they all attend the feast then,” said Seiki. “We’re not looking for a fight.”
Ippei stopped walking and turned toward him. “Yeah, about that,” he began.