The SP Hunt

After a full day of excavation, I was ready to do something different.

So Coworker and I headed to the Adventurers' Guild. Specifically as our second characters this time: Nika-chan and Miitei-chan.

"One way or another, I wanna earn some SP, yo."

"Leveling up's the only way right now, isn't it?"

"That, or funneling your second character's SP to your first… But I thought of something, yo. A procedure that could potentially be a way to increase SP."

"Say… what?"

That was more than a little intriguing. Tell me, tell me.

"First, the prerequisite is having your second character unlocked, yo. Clear the scenario, rejoin your first character, and transfer the SP over, yo."

"Uh-huh?"

"Then you let your second character be lost and create a new one, yo. Rinse and repeat until you hit your target SP."

"… Alto, that's a bit much, even for you. You're in 'devoid of human empathy' territory, you know?"

"Obviously, yo. I have zero intention of letting Nika-chan be lost, okay? I'm just saying it's possible based on how the system works, yo."

Well, fair enough. Theoretically possible, sure.

Setting aside whether you could actually bring yourself to lose second characters this adorable, that is.

"Plus, we don't even know if you can pick a new second character after losing one, yo. The death penalty for second characters is still unknown, and I have zero intention of testing it, so I'll just wait for someone to post about it on the Wiki."

"Takurou-shi would be the top candidate for that."

"One way or another, yo. My deepest condolences to him, yo."

When I last checked the Wiki, he'd become a gravedigger and all…

"Think we could earn SP from quests or something, yo?"

"Ha ha ha, as if there'd be quests that conveniently…"

"There are, you know? Quests where SP is the reward."

Say… what?

The elf receptionist chimed in.

"So they do exist. Quests with SP rewards."

"Well, it is a game, so I guess stuff like that can happen, yo… What kind of quests?"

"These ones, for instance."

Oho. Delivering medicine for someone's sick daughter.

… Huh? Could this maybe be the time for Intermediate magic potions to shine!?

The time for that heel-smoothing potion to… nah, probably not!? Yeah, no…

"This one's probably a failure unless you can make Advanced magic potions."

"'These ones' means there are more, yo?"

"There are several. Would you like to take a look?"

"Of course, yo!"

"Finding ones we can actually handle and taking those on, that's what Adventurers' Guild quests are for."

So we looked through the limited selection and found quests like these that we might be able to handle.

Purification of Defiled Land. Reward: 10 SP

Urgent. Complete Removal of Well Poison. Reward: 3 SP

Defiled land… I didn't know what exactly that entailed, but if it was Defilement, Nika-chan could handle it. If it turned out to be something else, though, I wasn't sure.

The well poison was only worth one level's worth of SP, but there was no doubt Miitei-chan could easily remove it with Poison Absorption. You could even say getting 3 SP from such a simple quest was a steal.

"… Whoa…! We can finally get SP from something other than leveling up…!"

"For real? Hey, Ms. Receptionist, have these always been here?"

"… No, how should I put this, um… these request forms just sort of turned up mixed in with the other quests recently without anyone noticing. But the format is completely proper, and the rewards 'exist', so there are no issues whatsoever."

So in meta terms, these were quests that started appearing once you cleared a second character scenario.

Wait, what did she mean by the SP "existing"? Were SP rewards some kind of visible, physical thing?

"Hmm, this defiled land thing… we won't really know until we actually see it, yo. We might be able to do something about it, but…"

"There's no penalty for failure on this quest, so accepting it on a trial basis would be perfectly fine."

"That so, yo? Then let's give it a try. Worst case, we just report back on the situation, yo."

"Understood. I'll mark it as provisionally accepted, so please report back regardless of success or failure."

If we cleared it, the quest would retroactively count as properly accepted and completed. Apparently.

"By the way, this other quest says 'urgent', but when's the deadline?"

"Um, who knows?"

"… There's no deadline? Even though it's urgent?"

"… Well, there are no issues procedurally, and there's no expiration period… I'm holding the reward, so there's no problem, but please do try to hurry."

That was awfully vague.

Oh, but then again, games were full of "urgent" quests that stayed urgent forever until a player actually accepted them.

You could ignore the quest, sleep at an inn for days on end, and when you finally accepted it and headed out, you'd have a far-too-convenient encounter with a girl in peril at just the right moment, then leisurely wrap up the supposedly urgent quest. That kind of thing.

Like how you could ignore the Demon Lord, sleep at an inn for 1,000 nights, and the invasion progress wouldn't budge an inch.

"All right, I'll take the well poison cleanup then."

"I'll go check out the defiled land, yo!"

We tentatively decided to split up and tackle the quests separately.

If I finish mine first, I'm crashing yours!