"With the exception of the one assassination attempt early on, no one has come knocking at our door to harm you or Dad, but then again, there still aren’t too many returners in the past yet; speaking of which, you need to jump straight into an instance using one of the Tokens I gave you as soon as possible."
"I spent a few weeks leveling up, and there is nothing much to note there apart from wiping out a few returners and going about business as usual, but you need to do the same."
"And the reason I can’t relax for a bit is…." Opening one eye to peek at me, Brenden allowed his words to hang in the air.
"The Event Quests. I know you haven’t gotten a chance to read through them yet, but they are pretty basic. For starters, it appears that the System drained a lot of energy by allowing 5000 people to return to the past, and while I have my theories about why, they don’t matter as I won’t be able to get conclusive evidence."
"The first quest is one I never counted on; we need to make alterations to the timeline, which will, in turn, bring forward the Descent of Arkadia on Earth. By bringing us back, the System offset its descent, pushing it to over 10000 years into the future, and only by making changes to the past can we expedite its descent."
"Arkadia also ranks us depending on how far we have pushed the progress bar, so that’s a thing, I guess."
"Basic Ranking Board or something different," opening his eyes fully, Brenden brought up his display panel and began exploring the contents of the event quest.
"Basic ass rankings depending on how many years we have accrued. Once we earn some, it asks for a name to be used in the ranking board. I chose Nexus…because why not."
"Really…Nexus…I really shouldn’t be surprised by that, considering your poor naming sense; anyway, what rank are you at right now? Knowing how you like to operate under the radar and play the role of an underachiever, you probably aren’t even in the top 50 on purpose."
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"Heh, I was getting to that. Don’t jump the gun, Brenden."
"Anyway, while there is no formula for generating Years, when I completed one of my little side quests, as you called it, I generated enough Years to secure the top spot stupidly…and not by a small margin either; there’s a good couple hundred years between me and 2nd place."
"How is it you always find a way to fuck up so gloriously? What did you do this time, massacre a bunch of Myriad Race people?"
"…" For a moment, I frowned and looked straight ahead with slightly widened eyes while being completely silent.
"Taylor…."
"…."
"Tell me you didn’t kill off a bunch of Elves again."
"…they weren’t elves….this time…"
SMACK
The sound of Brenden facepalming was jarring in the total silence before he inhaled deeply to calm himself down.
"What were they…" Turning to face me with a hardened expression, Brenden inquired, making me tuck my upper lip under my bottom lip and puff air into a strange pout.
"….it was the Fae…Ok, listen, in my defense, I was minding my own business, killing off a returner who picked a fight with me on that island they have for rituals out in Scotland, and I got ambushed by a bunch of younglings and elders; what was I supposed to do, let them kick my ass or something, NOPE, I slaughtered them like the winged pigs they are HMPH." Speaking extremely fast, I crossed my arms before finishing my statement with a loud harumph sound.
"….there is so much to unpack in that statement, but I don’t doubt you will get to it because that was CLEARLY an unnecessary sidequest."
"Totally necessary…."
"UNNECESSARY!"
"Nope,"
"Agree to disagree." Crossing his arms, Brenden raised an eyebrow before yielding and waving at me to continue where I left off.
"Sure, anyway, apart from the Descent Progression quest, there’s a bog standard level-up quest. I don’t know if yours will be different from mine since you didn’t come back as soon as I did, but basically, you will receive random rewards with each milestone you reach; however, each sub-quest has a timetable determined by how many returners have come back to the past."
"The sooner you power through to the peak of High-Alpha, the less you will have to worry about, at least with that quest. We still need to figure out a sustainable way for you to push the Descent clock, but we will get there when we get there."
"Got it; I will take the week off to recover and get used to the 90s before jumping into the ++ Instance you gave me access to; with that and the XP booster, it shouldn’t take me more than a week to finish up most of those quests."
"Anyway, let’s move on to the rest of the stuff you’ve been up to. I assume you nabbed the Henry Potter series like you wanted to since you mentioned going to Scotland." As we spoke, I noticed my brother swatting at the air and realized that while I filled him in on everything, he was spending the tickets and vouchers to get what items he wanted from the Arkadia Stores.
"Yeah, as I planned, I sent you up north with Amanda for a visit while Dad and I went to Edinburgh; once there, I ditched him so he could hook up with random women while going to deal with Jennifer Rowing. However, when I got to where she was, three returners were watching her every move, so I guess that’s the first side quest."
"You fought them, probably with hit-and-run tactics, until you ended up on the Fae island, where you killed him and pissed off those fairy fucks." Cutting me off, Brenden stated.
"Basically, and once I finished that large-scale battle, I changed my plans, and instead of killing Jennifer, mind-broke her, then brainwashed her, and turned her into a slave," I said in a straightforward and calm tone of voice as if there was nothing wrong with my statement.
"Tayyyylorrrr~" groaning his response, Brenden again facepalmed at how easily I admitted to executing immoral acts.