Chapter 141 - 81: Conspiracy
“Townsend Town” is a mining town.
Most of the townsfolk rely on Burial Mountain Iron Mine for their livelihood, with a circle of walls more than ten meters high surrounding the township.
The houses are all made of stacked stones, with rooftops of reddish brown tiles.
After testing his hand grenade and confirming the spatial rules, Leonard
Churchill didn’t linger outside the town, but walked straight towards the gate.
An old man with a white beard and a few militiamen at the gate were welcoming the “bounty demon hunters” who had travelled from afar.
According to the information provided by the Black Wolf Hunting Team, this old man was Mayor Barn.
Upon entering the town, hunters were to sign their names on the employment contract.
Then, an “Accept Employment” mission prompt would appear from Enlightenment.
This was essentially the same as signing an employment certificate.
After hunting the werewolves, they could claim some extra rewards like gold and silver coins, or ores, from the old man.
There was a table set up at the town gate. The hunters rushed to sign their names and hurried into the town.
By the time Leonard arrived, most people had already rushed into town in their eagerness to find opportunities.
But as he looked at the dense names on the parchment, a thought suddenly occurred to him.
What would happen if he didn’t sign?
Theoretically, abstaining from signing would lead to loss of the mayor’s reward, possibly missing out on a prize worth several tens of thousands.
But Leonard was not here to make money.
He didn’t expect much valuable loot from a C-level disaster space.
Just as he thought, “Enlightenment didn’t mention that I wouldn’t be able to leave if I didn’t sign the contract, did it?”
He checked the Enlightenment display again.
The only requirement for leaving was to: hunt down one werewolf.
There were no other additional conditions.
Based on information he had previously read, C-level duplication werewolves do not go berserk, and around four or five top trainee card masters could easily kill them.
The danger posed to Leonard at present was not a big issue.
There is also no shortage of werewolves, so if he wanted to just pass the test, it would be fairly simple.
Since everyone else chose to sign the contract, why not try something different?
After all, C-level difficulty was there to get acquainted with the storyline.
This was the time to experiment, and it would be even more impossible at higher difficulty levels.
With that thought, Leonard walked up to the table, picked up the quill, and made a few random scribbles.
The non-player characters did not notice whether an extra name was added or one was missing from the densely packed list.
Without signing his name, Enlightenment didn’t appear either.
Like this, Leonard blended into the town.
The plot of this “Greedy Mining Well” alternate dimension seemed simple on the surface.
Werewolves attacked the town, and the residents pooled resources to hire demon hunters to kill them.
A plot with cause and effect.
But it is also filled with hidden bits of information.
For example, why did the werewolves come here? What exactly happened in the Burial Mountain Mine?
As Leonard walked, he was also considering these questions in his mind.
The breakthrough point for plot mode must be within the storyline.
Killing a werewolf is only the base requirement.
To get a high completion rating, uncovering the “True Mystery of the Mme Mutation” is the correct direction.
So exploration of the plot needs to focus on the inhabitants of Townsend Town.
But this alternate dimension has been explored many times before, which means that the common information held by the town’s population should have already been investigated.
Yet these pieces of information still haven’t helped the Black Wolf Group achieve a high completion rating.
So, to find a point of breakthrough, perhaps he needed to identify points that differed from the usual line of thinking.
The exploration time was three days in total,
Leonard was not in a hurry.
He strolled along the streets paved with crushed ore, watching the town’s inhabitants pass to and fro, deep in thought.
There were fruit and vegetable vendors on the streets…
Leonard walked over and tentatively asked a few questions.
Like: How much per pound for the apples? What’s the King’s name? Are there any magicians or witches in the town? What’s the problem with the mine…
The answers he got were: Five bronze coins, King Owen, a minstrel mentioned something about it, you could ask Mayor Barn about that issue.
The answers had a complete logical follow-through.
Mimicking a complete world.
This was what Leonard found most astonishing.
Curse card masters seemed to have gotten used to it.
But for Leonard, a space-time traveller, this was even more astonishing than the alternate dimension itself.
It was like he had time-travelled again, arriving in a European medieval fantasy town, with magic, werewolves, and witches.
These NPCs were nearly identical to living people, with flesh and bones, temperature, and emotional intelligence.
It seemed like a corner of a complete world.
But if there weren’t hunters coming in each time, the plot of Townsend Town would be played out the same way.
Leonard would absolutely believe it to be a real world.
Different people coming in each time, doing different things, would lead to variations in the plot of the space.
This is also why, while the main storyline remains the same, many variations turn out completely different.
“Different dimensions? Or parallel spaces? Or a mirror world created by some higher-latitudinal creatures?”
Leonard didn’t know how to interpret what he was seeing at all.
The mystery that goes beyond known knowledge further deepened his awe of the secrets of the cosmos.
This “alternate dimension” that transcends time and space was incomprehensible but immensely awe-inspiring at the same time.
After walking on the streets for a while, the astonishment in Leonard’s heart gradually dissipated.
He did not waste any more time.
At this point, he had already reached the center of Townsend Town.
There was a clock tower more than thirty meters high, appearing to be the tallest building in the town..