An Englishman in Castle Aincrad

Floor 7 - Boss - Thor the Annoying Troll

About twenty five minutes later

''We thought you'd gotten lost...'' - Agil joked, as the trio returned from their quest...

''Nah, just had to run some errands.'' - Jet retorted.

''And have an epiphany.'' - Rain added.

''Oh! We got this too!'' - Koharu gingerly handed Agil the Seeker's Proof, relieved to be rid of it.

''What is it?'' - Liten asked, as she took a look at the item in Agil's hands.

''That's the Seeker's Proof that Lueur mentioned. He also forgot to mention exactly what it is...'' - Jet skirted telling Agil exactly what the item was...

''It's clearly not a stone of any kind... enlighten me then...'' - Agil asked, as he prodded it.

''Monster dung.'' - Koharu smiled innocently. Jet fought back a laugh at Agil's reaction to having been handed literal crap, whilst Rain rolled her eyes. Admittedly, it was quite funny to see such a large man react as if he'd actually been handed dung, but there were bigger issues here. ''I'll go hand it into the NPC, quickly...''

''I guess we've done all we can... let's hope it's enough.''

''I meant to say earlier, but... add this to it, I know it's not much, but...'' - Rain sent a trade request to Liten, with all of her Col.

''Thank you Rain, I'll be sure to repay you later... all of you! Seriously, thank you!''

''Heh, thank us after you win, Liten.''

''I'll give it my all!''

''Okay, I've sold it for all it's worth, and it was a good price... but it doesn't look as if the winds of fortune are in our favour...''

''Let me guess, ALS and DKB have shown up with the not so metaphorical chequebooks?''

''Pretty much, not only that, but they've put their honour on the line too...''

''They'll put in a fortune, because they know they'll come back with at least half of it...''

''They've gone even more large scale than we thought. It's not just ganging up and monopolising the hunting grounds, but they're using human wave tactics to spam the Proof quests from the sage... If that is the case, I'm not sure if we can fight it out with our funds.''

''Lueur did say that players who've progressed further in the Elf Quest would get a better reward...''

''Could he have meant that crystal we got, the one that stopped the boss being invincible... umm, what was it?'' - That certainly got Agil and Liten's attention, both of them looking as pale as sheets...

''Extinguishing Crystal.'' - Jet answered.

''Wait, that was the reward? That's far more significant than the Proof, or hell, the ingot!''

''It's hard to imagine that only campaign quests with all their varied progress rates could have items with that much influence over boss battles...'' - Liten commented. Jet shrugged, remembering the fiasco that had been Virtual Aces' campaign. ''Eh, seen worse. Played a game once where, to beat a boss, you needed a stealth fighter... only problem, the only stealth fighter that was available on the first playthrough couldn't be unlocked until five missions after that boss.''

''Seriously...'' - Agil wondered how that one had slipped through testing, it wasn't exactly a minor glitch!

''The excuse they gave was that it tested the anti cheating system.'' - Jet remembered that, and all the forum posts that came with it. Needless to say, the phrase 'There's no bad publicity' certainly didn't apply there.