Baron Trafalgar presented his conditions and seriously awaited my answer.
"I have no right to refuse."
"So that means..."
"But please allow me to sincerely apologize—I cannot answer Baron Trafalgar's question."
"...Is there some reason you can't speak?"
I shook my head: "I don't know the reason."
Trafalgar was immediately speechless, and Carol Cat beside me also had a confused "???" expression.
"Meow... is this Anna's style of joke?"
"Unfortunately, it's the truth."
I couldn't explain this problem because I was just a maid.
Trafalgar found it as hard to believe as Carol Cat.
"Don't know... then why are you helping Amaryllis? There's no benefit, is there?"
"Baron Trafalgar, I know very little about the adventurer quest system. May I ask you—do all published quests offer rewards?"
Rather than answering directly, I countered with another question for Trafalgar.
"No, there are quests where the investment and returns are disproportionate, and some with completely negative returns."
"That's right meow! Some NPCs specifically trick adventurers—you can't mindlessly accept quests like in other games..."
Carol Cat chimed in from the side. Looking at her indignant expression, she might have been deceived by some NPC before.
"If you chose to investigate the inside story of Duke Borgia's pursuit of Lily rather than capture Lily to complete the quest, would the rewards from both options be equivalent?"
"Not necessarily, there might be no reward at all..."
Trafalgar paused.
Even so, Trafalgar still chose to abandon the massive quest rewards, preferring to investigate the truth behind Duke Borgia, even though the quest rewards were almost within his grasp.
They say that during the era when PC games flourished, a video once circulated online. The background was a game with theft skills, where a player broke into a not-very-wealthy NPC family's home to steal. Although the NPC family of three was eating dinner in the living room, the player's skills were high, and he quickly pocketed valuable items without the family knowing.
When the player was about to leave, he heard a conversation between the NPCs. The child complained about having to eat only potatoes every day, while the mother comforted the child, saying everyone was working hard for the family's happiness and they would surely live better days. Then the father asked the child if he had stolen apples from the neighbor's house. The child timidly admitted it, and the mother sighed, saying she would take potatoes tomorrow to apologize. The father solemnly taught the child: "We are very poor, but that absolutely doesn't mean we should do wrong things."
Players reacted differently after hearing this storyline.
Some scoffed and left through the window.
Some felt bad for a while, but nothing changed after some time.
However, some players thought about it, returned all the items, and left a small bag of gold coins on the desk.
Although they were all playing the same game, players reacted differently to the same situation. Even when something was purely negative for players—like choosing to pay out of their own pocket to leave a small bag of gold coins—some players were still willing to do it.
Baron Trafalgar cared about the reasons behind Duke Borgia's time-limited quest rather than the surface rewards, as if he were worried about a real friend rather than a bundle of data that provided rewards.
Having no reward couldn't be a reason for me not to act. I saw Lily seriously injured and unconscious, and chose to treat her. It had nothing to do with whether I could gain rewards—I simply felt I should do it.
Trafalgar smiled bitterly and rubbed his forehead. The scene fell into awkward silence for a moment.
The Eternal Pacificus was an online game that emphasized immersion, so it wasn't strange that it would attract players like Trafalgar.
"...Looks like I made a wasted trip."
Trafalgar stood up and dusted off his clothes.
"Let's leave it at that. I won't reveal where you are. But I advise you to be more proactive about moving."
"Thank you for your advice. May I be permitted to know the reason?"
"Meow? I didn't betray Anna meow!"
Carol Cat raised both hands to show her innocence, but Trafalgar ignored her.
"The rewards are too generous. Players with the rare [Astrology] skill are coming to visit the ducal territory."
"There's such a skill meow?"
"Lady Carol Cat, [Astrology] is an extremely rare skill that can only be learned through chance encounters and cannot be taught to others."
Astrology—a divination method that uses understanding of celestial movements to learn about others' fates. Even among my possessed skills, I don't have astrology.
"Really meow?"
Carol Cat still didn't quite believe it. To put it in perspective, astrology would be equivalent to a hidden class in other online games, though the difficulty of learning it was only higher, not lower.
"Use your brain. Of course astrology is a rare skill. Otherwise, why wouldn't the duke just find someone with astrology to divine Amaryllis's location instead of needing to set up a barrier?"
"Grr!"
Trafalgar's mockery of Carol Cat's intelligence seemed to step on her tail, and Carol Cat immediately struck her super fierce pose again.
"The guy coming to visit the ducal territory only has astrology at the Expert level, but even so, he's respectfully called a master of astrology. Expert level... would that be respectable for other skills? Only because people who know astrology are so ridiculously few that adventurers who learn it to Expert level dare to show off. They're probably planning to use astrology to pinpoint exactly where you are."