the rise of otaku

Chapter 2 Doing Quests

In order to determine whether there were still some other things, that could not be seen under normal circumstances, existed in his house, Zhou Yu did not stick with his the computer after returning home. Instead, he searched the house inside out. As a result, he actually found some other strange things.

A machine that looked like a gashapon machine was placed next to the door of his bedroom. There were many capsules inside, and most of them were in different colors. However, it was not clear what was inside those capsules. When he had left the room earlier, he didn’t even notice it. It seemed like he was truly confused by the animated world.

There was also a vending machine next to the TV, but it didn’t sell drinks. Instead, it was selling some weird little building boxes. The last one was a warehouse that looked like a puppy house, which didn’t look like it could store many things.

Finding it very interesting, Zhou Yu took out one Chinese Yuan coin, attempting to play the machine. However, he didn’t expect that both machines didn’t accept Chinese money.

Having thought it again, it was actually quite understandable. After all, Zhou Yu had never heard that the Chinese government had ever established diplomatic relations with the ACG world before. Therefore, it was normal that the ACG world didn’t accept Chinese currency. However, even after he turned his house upside down, he still couldn’t find an ACG currency in his house. In the end, all he could do was to look at two machines while constantly sighing.

Anyway, maybe when he woke up again, everything would disappear. So Zhou Yu didn’t plan to study the strange phenomenon. What was more important to him was still playing games…

Hence, he carried on his routine life: playing games as usual, going to bed as usual…

In order to verify whether everything went back to normal, he got up very early the next day. Seeing the other side of the glasses was still the ACG world, Zhou Yu didn’t know whether he should be happy or upset. It seemed like this “disease” could not be cured just by itself. But there was one thing that surprised Zhou Yu a lot. It seemed like he was no longer short-sighted. When he lowered his head, he could even see the places far away clearly.

No matter what, this was a good thing.

Since there was no way to get back to the past, then he would try to adapt it. After washing his face and brushing his teeth, he walked out of the house very early for the first time.

It was a bit embarrassing to say that Zhou Yu had already lived in the village for a year, however, he had never seen the morning scenery of the village once. Every day when he got up, it was already noon, and he only got out of his house once in a few days. He was living completely like a fugitive, who was on a run. It was no wonder that when he met with other village people on the road, they were all surprised.

‘Is it going to snow today?'(1) everyone was thinking the same thing.

Everyone knew about the return of the Zhou Family’s kid, because there were more people leaving the village than coming back to the village in recent years, especially those young people. So Zhou Yu was somewhat famous in the village . But Zhou Yu was still the same old Zhou Yu, it was just something unexpected had happened to him, making him go out of the house.

It had been a year now, apart from buying some food, he had never shown up in any other places before. Having little contact with the outside world and hardly ever left the house, he was almost the same as those young ladies in old China. It was no wonder that Zhou Yu’s parents specially came back to greet all the neighbors. While giving them some gifts, they had told them about Zhou Yu’s introverted nature and asked them to take care of him as much as they could, when they were not in village.

It was really unheard of to have someone introverted to this extent. All the neighbors could not help but wonder whether all the kids in the city were like Zhou Yu.

It was really strange that such a person would suddenly leave his house. A few courageous children even began to follow him. All of them were looking at Zhou Yu curiously and a little fearfully as if Zhou Yu was an alien.

Zhou Yu himself also did not expect, that his simple decision of wanting to take a short walk in the village and see if there was something else, that should not exist in the real world, existed in the village, would make everyone in the village looked at him as if he was a giant panda that had just left the zoo.

“HA!”, While he suddenly turned back, he also made a funny face. It instantly scared away those kids.

‘Hmm… it is much better now,’ he thought.

There was an activity center for seniors in the village. It was the first place, where he discovered the first abnormal creature. A monster that seemed to have entered its old age, was wearing a black robe and holding a walking stick and wandering around the activity center. It seemed like it was enjoying its old age.

Although it was only about 20 centimeters tall, it did not prevent it from standing on the shoulders of an old man and seeing other people playing cards. The old man’s card skills seemed to be very bad, and the old dragon king kept swearing and knocking the old man with the walking stick, making the bamboo-hitting sounds. However, the old man did not have any reactions at all. It seemed that it would not cause harms if they were not in the dimension.

Seeing Zhou Yu, the old dragon king seemed to be very happy. It immediately flew toward Zhou Yu on a small white cloud.

‘Oh shit, it is the celestial being.’

“Hello, kid, you are here at the right time. My dragon-headed walking stick is badly damaged. Can you go to the carpenter and get a new one for me? You will be heavily rewarded or this.”

Giving out quests on the first sight? This creature was truly shameless. Maybe because the old dragon king looked harmless, Zhou Yu was not as surprised as yesterday. He just silently nodded to accept the request that looked like the quest that would normally be given out in the Newbie Village.

‘So it is a live action role-playing game? Very interesting…’

Although it looked like a game, he was still in the real world. The old dragon king had only said that the carpenter was in the village, but the quest system did not have an automatic path-finding function, so it was still very troublesome.

While he was wandering in the village, he would occasionally encounter some random creatures that were similar to the creature that he had encountered yesterday. But he did not think that those should not be considered NPCs.

Only until noon did Zhou Yu finally found the carpenter. It was when he wandered near a banyan tree on the edge of the small river that was near his house. Obviously it was just an old beaver, however, it was walking slowly with its hands clasped behind its back, and constantly sighing like a human being.

Seeing Zhou Yu came over, it even began to talk to itself, “sigh, it seems like only the old dragon king needs me. All my crafting skill is going to be wasted.”

As soon as it finished, it threw a walking stick to Zhou Yu, and then turned around and continued to mourn its career.

Zhou Yu didn’t want to learn any crafting skill from the carpenter, so he just picked up the new walking stick that was just around ten centimeters long and returned to the senior’s activity center.

The old dragon king was very happy after receiving the new walking stick. The reward was also given out immediately. Then it returned to watch the game with great interest and continued to hit the old man who had bad card skills, with his new walking stick.

The reward was: A map, and 20 Moe Coins.

Moe Coin was probably the currency that was circulating in the ACG world, but they were not real objects. Instead, the words 20 Moe Coins were displayed in the upper right corner of Zhou Yu’s view. And In the upper left corner of his view, a map also appeared.

Trying to reach out his hand out and touch it, Zhou Yu was surprised that he could actually use the map.

After zooming in, he saw the satellite image of Luhua village. It was even clearer than what he saw on the Internet, but the style of the image was still animated. He could see the icons of the old dragon king and the carpenter beaver were slowly moving. Apart from those two, there were not any other animated village people. It was a truly dilapidated village.

In addition to that, there were also some special locations that had special comments, such as ‘something, something respawning-point’. But most of them were showing ‘? ? ?.’ Perhaps that was because the function was not activated yet. It probably needed some conditions to activate it.

It looked more and more like a game.

With the Moe Coins, the first thing that came to Zhou Yu’s mind was the gashapon machine and vending machine at his home. The big boxes in the vending machine seemed to be quite expensive. The cheapest one was 150 Moe Coin. With the number of coins he had, he could not buy any one of them. The gashapon machine was a lot cheaper, 10 Moe Coins a try. With the coins he had, he could twist it twice.

Having played a lot of games, this kind of gambling or lottery-like games was the game that Zhou Yu liked the most and hated the most. Seeing other players used real money buy all kinds of rare equipment items or gods in online games, but he could only rely on the system rewards and save them for several days to make one draw, Zhou Yu was often envied of them a lot. If he was lucky, and if he got the good stuff, he would be happy for a very long time. But if he was not lucky, he would cuss the system developers for a very long time. However, to him, this type of poor bloke’s entertainment was really irresistible.

It was the same goes to the gashapon machine, however, Zhou Yu did not know which one was good and which one was bad.

‘Go, my maximum luck!’ he shouted in his mind as he twisted the switch in the first try. Then he got: Beethoven’s birch hoe.

‘Go, the hand of miracle,’ he shouted in his mind as he twisted the switch for the second time, then he got: The idol flower seed.

‘Hmm… is this good or bad?’ he did not know how to react at all…

….note….

Snowing in summer is a strange phenomenon, it is used to describe something very bizarre and shocking.

Chapter 2 Doing Quests

In order to determine whether there were still some other things, that could not be seen under normal circumstances, existed in his house, Zhou Yu did not stick with his the computer after returning home. Instead, he searched the house inside out. As a result, he actually found some other strange things.

A machine that looked like a gashapon machine was placed next to the door of his bedroom. There were many capsules inside, and most of them were in different colors. However, it was not clear what was inside those capsules. When he had left the room earlier, he didn’t even notice it. It seemed like he was truly confused by the animated world.

There was also a vending machine next to the TV, but it didn’t sell drinks. Instead, it was selling some weird little building boxes. The last one was a warehouse that looked like a puppy house, which didn’t look like it could store many things.

Finding it very interesting, Zhou Yu took out one Chinese Yuan coin, attempting to play the machine. However, he didn’t expect that both machines didn’t accept Chinese money.

Having thought it again, it was actually quite understandable. After all, Zhou Yu had never heard that the Chinese government had ever established diplomatic relations with the ACG world before. Therefore, it was normal that the ACG world didn’t accept Chinese currency. However, even after he turned his house upside down, he still couldn’t find an ACG currency in his house. In the end, all he could do was to look at two machines while constantly sighing.

Anyway, maybe when he woke up again, everything would disappear. So Zhou Yu didn’t plan to study the strange phenomenon. What was more important to him was still playing games…

Hence, he carried on his routine life: playing games as usual, going to bed as usual…

In order to verify whether everything went back to normal, he got up very early the next day. Seeing the other side of the glasses was still the ACG world, Zhou Yu didn’t know whether he should be happy or upset. It seemed like this “disease” could not be cured just by itself. But there was one thing that surprised Zhou Yu a lot. It seemed like he was no longer short-sighted. When he lowered his head, he could even see the places far away clearly.

No matter what, this was a good thing.

Since there was no way to get back to the past, then he would try to adapt it. After washing his face and brushing his teeth, he walked out of the house very early for the first time.

It was a bit embarrassing to say that Zhou Yu had already lived in the village for a year, however, he had never seen the morning scenery of the village once. Every day when he got up, it was already noon, and he only got out of his house once in a few days. He was living completely like a fugitive, who was on a run. It was no wonder that when he met with other village people on the road, they were all surprised.

‘Is it going to snow today?'(1) everyone was thinking the same thing.

Everyone knew about the return of the Zhou Family’s kid, because there were more people leaving the village than coming back to the village in recent years, especially those young people. So Zhou Yu was somewhat famous in the village . But Zhou Yu was still the same old Zhou Yu, it was just something unexpected had happened to him, making him go out of the house.

It had been a year now, apart from buying some food, he had never shown up in any other places before. Having little contact with the outside world and hardly ever left the house, he was almost the same as those young ladies in old China. It was no wonder that Zhou Yu’s parents specially came back to greet all the neighbors. While giving them some gifts, they had told them about Zhou Yu’s introverted nature and asked them to take care of him as much as they could, when they were not in village.

It was really unheard of to have someone introverted to this extent. All the neighbors could not help but wonder whether all the kids in the city were like Zhou Yu.

It was really strange that such a person would suddenly leave his house. A few courageous children even began to follow him. All of them were looking at Zhou Yu curiously and a little fearfully as if Zhou Yu was an alien.

Zhou Yu himself also did not expect, that his simple decision of wanting to take a short walk in the village and see if there was something else, that should not exist in the real world, existed in the village, would make everyone in the village looked at him as if he was a giant panda that had just left the zoo.

“HA!”, While he suddenly turned back, he also made a funny face. It instantly scared away those kids.

‘Hmm… it is much better now,’ he thought.

There was an activity center for seniors in the village. It was the first place, where he discovered the first abnormal creature. A monster that seemed to have entered its old age, was wearing a black robe and holding a walking stick and wandering around the activity center. It seemed like it was enjoying its old age.

Although it was only about 20 centimeters tall, it did not prevent it from standing on the shoulders of an old man and seeing other people playing cards. The old man’s card skills seemed to be very bad, and the old dragon king kept swearing and knocking the old man with the walking stick, making the bamboo-hitting sounds. However, the old man did not have any reactions at all. It seemed that it would not cause harms if they were not in the dimension.

Seeing Zhou Yu, the old dragon king seemed to be very happy. It immediately flew toward Zhou Yu on a small white cloud.

‘Oh shit, it is the celestial being.’

“Hello, kid, you are here at the right time. My dragon-headed walking stick is badly damaged. Can you go to the carpenter and get a new one for me? You will be heavily rewarded or this.”

Giving out quests on the first sight? This creature was truly shameless. Maybe because the old dragon king looked harmless, Zhou Yu was not as surprised as yesterday. He just silently nodded to accept the request that looked like the quest that would normally be given out in the Newbie Village.

‘So it is a live action role-playing game? Very interesting…’

Although it looked like a game, he was still in the real world. The old dragon king had only said that the carpenter was in the village, but the quest system did not have an automatic path-finding function, so it was still very troublesome.

While he was wandering in the village, he would occasionally encounter some random creatures that were similar to the creature that he had encountered yesterday. But he did not think that those should not be considered NPCs.

Only until noon did Zhou Yu finally found the carpenter. It was when he wandered near a banyan tree on the edge of the small river that was near his house. Obviously it was just an old beaver, however, it was walking slowly with its hands clasped behind its back, and constantly sighing like a human being.

Seeing Zhou Yu came over, it even began to talk to itself, “sigh, it seems like only the old dragon king needs me. All my crafting skill is going to be wasted.”

As soon as it finished, it threw a walking stick to Zhou Yu, and then turned around and continued to mourn its career.

Zhou Yu didn’t want to learn any crafting skill from the carpenter, so he just picked up the new walking stick that was just around ten centimeters long and returned to the senior’s activity center.

The old dragon king was very happy after receiving the new walking stick. The reward was also given out immediately. Then it returned to watch the game with great interest and continued to hit the old man who had bad card skills, with his new walking stick.

The reward was: A map, and 20 Moe Coins.

Moe Coin was probably the currency that was circulating in the ACG world, but they were not real objects. Instead, the words 20 Moe Coins were displayed in the upper right corner of Zhou Yu’s view. And In the upper left corner of his view, a map also appeared.

Trying to reach out his hand out and touch it, Zhou Yu was surprised that he could actually use the map.

After zooming in, he saw the satellite image of Luhua village. It was even clearer than what he saw on the Internet, but the style of the image was still animated. He could see the icons of the old dragon king and the carpenter beaver were slowly moving. Apart from those two, there were not any other animated village people. It was a truly dilapidated village.

In addition to that, there were also some special locations that had special comments, such as ‘something, something respawning-point’. But most of them were showing ‘? ? ?.’ Perhaps that was because the function was not activated yet. It probably needed some conditions to activate it.

It looked more and more like a game.

With the Moe Coins, the first thing that came to Zhou Yu’s mind was the gashapon machine and vending machine at his home. The big boxes in the vending machine seemed to be quite expensive. The cheapest one was 150 Moe Coin. With the number of coins he had, he could not buy any one of them. The gashapon machine was a lot cheaper, 10 Moe Coins a try. With the coins he had, he could twist it twice.

Having played a lot of games, this kind of gambling or lottery-like games was the game that Zhou Yu liked the most and hated the most. Seeing other players used real money buy all kinds of rare equipment items or gods in online games, but he could only rely on the system rewards and save them for several days to make one draw, Zhou Yu was often envied of them a lot. If he was lucky, and if he got the good stuff, he would be happy for a very long time. But if he was not lucky, he would cuss the system developers for a very long time. However, to him, this type of poor bloke’s entertainment was really irresistible.

It was the same goes to the gashapon machine, however, Zhou Yu did not know which one was good and which one was bad.

‘Go, my maximum luck!’ he shouted in his mind as he twisted the switch in the first try. Then he got: Beethoven’s birch hoe.

‘Go, the hand of miracle,’ he shouted in his mind as he twisted the switch for the second time, then he got: The idol flower seed.

‘Hmm… is this good or bad?’ he did not know how to react at all…

….note….

Snowing in summer is a strange phenomenon, it is used to describe something very bizarre and shocking.