Schuck did make some sense, but Roland did not entirely agree with him. He felt that he was only making progress faster than other people because of the special hidden talent that he got by luck.
If the special talent was randomly distributed when the character was created, Mage players certainly wouldn’t abandon the opportunity. Chances were that many Mages would delete their characters and create them again and again tonight.
After he returned from the cold drink bar, Roland opened the forum again, only to discover that “special talent” had already become a trending topic.
Many players stated that they would create and recreate characters tonight to get a hidden talent.
Of course, someone asked if their hard work in the past two months would be for nothing if they deleted their characters.
The players who intended to delete their characters declared that, since the game was still in alpha test phase, they would rather try different possibilities.
Roland couldn’t help but frown. He felt that things might be more complicated than that.
Firstly, it was barely possible to create billions of AIs, but the game had achieved it. The AIs were already out there in the game.
Secondly, Roland felt that it was rather “generous” that half a million players were invited for the alpha test.
Any multiplayer game with half a million people online simultaneously would be considered a popular game.
World of Falan, on the other hand, could be played at night during sleep and did not contradict work schedules, so most people were highly active.
Even though not all the players were online, more than eighty percent of them played it every day.
An alpha test that involved forty thousand people seemed too huge.
Therefore, Roland estimated that it was just a promotion tactic. For example, the company might be short of funding, so it decided to collect more funding with the so-called alpha test.
Fifty hundred thousand virtual cabins, fifty thousand bucks for each. If they were sold out, the company could gather twenty-five billion.
The money would be enough to support research for a while.
Roland felt that the so-called alpha test was the actual beta test.
He was of a mind to remind those who intended to delete their characters, but he thought for a while and decided to drop it.
Those people might not listen to him at all. Many players would love to spend lots of money on their game character, like Li Lin.
Besides, what they were hoping to get was a hidden talent.
Roland rested for a while and practiced in the boxing club for two hours. Then, he had supper and read the news, waiting for the game to restart.
He was not in a hurry to find Betta after he entered the game. Instead, he stayed in the magic tower and familiarized himself with mental power.
Soon, a knock came from the door.
“Come in,” said Roland.
The wooden door opened. It was Vivian, who was still rather shy. She glanced at Roland and said, “Deputy chairman, a Golden Son wants to meet you. He said he made an appointment.”
He’s rather fast!
Slightly surprised, Roland said to Vivian. “All right, got it. Thank you.”
“You’re most welcome,” replied Vivian with a weak voice.
Roland was not bothered. He walked down the magic tower and found a bearded, mature-looking “young man” in ragged clothes at the gate of the magic tower.
This guy looks so old... Roland asked him, “Hawk?”
“That’s me!”
The young man was obviously fatter than Roland. Excited to see Roland, he shook Roland’s hand and announced, “I’ve finally found a player other than Lance. This game is too huge. It’s barely possible to hang around with friends from reality.”
That was true!
Over the past two months, Roland had been with Betta. They had never seen another player.
Roland looked around and asked, “Should we find a place to drink and talk?”
“I’m okay with that!” Hawk scratched his head. “But we can’t talk to other citizens.”
Roland cast Language Proficiency on himself and Hawk. Then he said, “We can now, with Language Proficiency.”
“Shoot! Awesome!” Hawk raised his thumbs. “You are truly the First Mage. Nobody except Warlocks could cast Language Proficiency before I met you.”
Roland smiled politely.
Hawk asked again, “Can I bring my friend?”
“By all means.” Roland nodded. He also wanted to talk to more players and exchange information with them.
Hawk then led Roland into the city. Eventually, they found another player, Lance, in a house that was about to fall. Lance was also in ragged clothes.
A strange stink of feces could be detected.
Roland was stunned to see the filthy, collapsing cottage. “Have you been living in this place?”
“We don’t have a choice.” Hawk looked at the sky, tears in his eyes. “We don’t speak the local language, and we have no friends. We starved to death a lot when we entered this game! Even this house was our trophy only after we fought a gang several times.”
Lance, who appeared to be an archer, did not say anything, but his eyes were red.
“You starved?” Roland gasped hard. “What do you eat now?”
“We hunt in the woods. At first, we couldn’t catch anything due to the lack of experience, and we starved a few times more,” said Hawk as if he would rather forget the miserable memories. “Later, we were finally more skilled, but there are few animals around the city. We’ve been too busy looking for food to increase our level.”
Well, they were truly unlucky!
Roland felt that he was fortunate to have been born in Red Mountain Town, a warmer place.
“Let’s go!” Roland patted Hawk’s shoulder and said, “Let’s have something good. It’s on me.”
Hearing that, the two men leaned close to Roland and stared at him passionately.
Half an hour later, Roland brought them to a decent tavern.
Inside the tavern, there were a lot of mercenaries who seemed rather brutal.
Hawk and Lance devoured the meat in their hands like hungry wolves. Compared to them, Roland was much more graceful.
Roland was not focused on food at this moment. He noticed something strange when he came in.