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ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 378 Part 1

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 378: Side Story 2 – A Summon…… er? – Part 1

To put it simply, video games are nothing more but a form of escapism from reality, a form of a breather you give yourself from your everyday responsibilities.

That is why not every player out there uses their time inside of the game to fight monsters and do quests like every good Pioneer out there should be doing. As the saying goes, to each their own in terms of breathers. Take the former Ashura-kai for example. Those guys were using their time in the game to do the things they liked, which is PKing other players without a single care in the world. Being pure villains in this game was their favorite form of pastime.

So if the above statement rings true, it is also true to state that there are also people who enjoy roleplaying the underworld, or the dark side of society above everything else. And Arthur Pencilgton was most certainly one of such players, and it was extremely convenient for her that there were others out there who were sharing her interests.

「Well hello there, my dear ZeniGeba-kun!」

「Geh!? A-Arthur Pencilgton, is that really you……!? I thought that you were sniffing the flowers from down below for a while now……!」

「I mean, that activity sounds kind of interesting, but can you actually do that? Sniffing the flowers from down below, I mean? Well, might as well tell me that next time we meet.」

「…… Agh!」

Before Zenith Guevara was even able to comprehend what was going on, his HP dropped to zero, his whole body shone brightly and then shattered into hundreds of bright pieces.

Seeing another player drop dead on the spot instantly brought back a bright smile onto Pencilgton’s lips. And with that kind of creepy smile plastered onto her face the whole time, Pencilgton took a step inside of Guevara’s store, her body almost radiating waves of an overwhelmingly dark and evil energy.

「I knew you were hiding something from me…… I can practically smell it…… I mean come on man, that’s what you get for running a business front to cover up your information broker activities! You should have told me what I needed to know and none of this would have happened!」

「Kuh! S-Stop right there, you bitch! Don’t come any closer! Don’t you dare to pollute my precious innocence! I want my first time to be with a sweet and innocent girl, just like a flower!」

「Whoa there, all of a sudden you try to play straight? Or rather, if you like sweet and innocent girls so much it’s fine with me, but do try not to get featured in the latest edition of Police Chronicle, why don’t you? Grooming children is a serious crime, don’t you know?」

「Noooo! I don’t wanna hear it! Especially not from someone like you! Don’t you dare to trample all over my hopes and dreams like that!」

「You know that people who spend forever trying to find the ideal partner amongst the members of the opposite sex usually end up not finding them at all? …… Oh well, as if it was any of my concerns. So? I know that the store that you are running in here has one or two good items, but their price tags are simply atrocious! Way to go with making a front for an information brokering business! And the one that sells information about other players and NPCs! Okay, so listen here now, because there is something I would like you to do for me in that regard.」

「Say what now? Don’t tell me you want us to help you find someone who disappeared all of a sudden? Or go after those so called People of the Forest? If that is the case, then I have bad news for you: we don’t have any information. Lately, the Crusaders are completely obsessed with the idea of getting rid of Dracarus DinoCerberus, so the exploration operation of the Great Forest has been put on hold indefinitely. But there is good news as well. Thanks to the map that this chump Tottori the Simane has brought back, there is already an established path leading towards the Elven Village where you can get rid of your level cap.」

Now, that news was actually something that could put a smile on Pencilgton’s lips. A genuine kind of a smile.

When it comes to ShangriLa Frontier, this virtual space is a dream playground for everyone wishing to roleplay the heck out of the dream characters they were able to create. And amongst all of those players, the store run by Zenith Guevara and his associates was one of Pencilgton’s most reliable information sources.

Sure, it was not THE BEST information store that Pencilgton has ever seen in her long career as a gamer, but at the very least it was the best that the world of ShangriLa Frontier was able to offer.

「We offer information from other players currently playing the game.」

「We offer information from players outside of the game’s world.」

「We offer information from various NPCs from inside of the game’s world.」

When it comes to information gathering you must know what you are looking for and how to approach your search. So basically what you do is to find information in those three categories and see if their contents match. Such a simple operation allows you to weed out the garbage information and focus on what’s really valuable.

In order for the first condition to be achieved, one must establish a base of operations near places where something is going on, so that they could easily obtain the latest information without much of a problem.

Taking that into consideration, you cannot possibly trust the information that you obtained from the broker who only stays in one place and rarely even moves. And that makes it possible for information to become outdated, inaccurate or mixed with all sorts of hear-say.

The second condition may seem simple, but it is actually pretty difficult to achieve. After all, every player can just log out and go onto the Internet forums and message boards, saying whatever they feel like saying at the moment. So it may be that some people are intentionally spreading lies and misinformation. So one always needs to watch out for that as well.

And in the case of the third condition, being able to move around and communicate well is way more important than in the other two cases. More than having a good relationship with the players, one needs to roleplay properly with various NPCs, and getting half-hearted responses and answers that might be untrue or misleading is something you would wish to avoid at all costs.

That is exactly why Pencilgton has always been using the Zenith Guevara’s establishment, because they easily satisfy all three conditions with little to no worry. And truth to be told, it is thanks to the information that she bought here that Pencilgton was able to eradicate Ashura-kai as effectively as she did.

「You see, the thing I want to know about is…… the rumors and stories shared amongst the members of the “Black Dragon Subjugation Corps”.」