Back at the Licinius Mansion, Ask sat back in the rocking chair, and Peggy continued to push it for him obediently from behind.
"How much do you like this rocking chair?" Eleanor complained, "Why don't we talk to Nora and take it back to Hearth Island?"
"I don't like rocking chairs," Ask said. "I just want to rest."
In fact, in the entire main storyline of "A Song of Iron and Fire", the most difficult one is generally recognized as the expansion pack on the expedition to the Holy See.
Therefore, since he came to this world last year, all the planning that Ask has done, including the subsequent search for team members, training, actual combat, and playing games, was all for the purpose of successfully passing the plot campaign of the expedition to the Holy See.
Now that the biggest crisis has been resolved and the team is close to the critical point of all members reaching Lv. 10, there is basically no need to worry too much about strength, so Ask can finally breathe a sigh of relief and have a good rest.
Over the past year, Ask has come to realize that there are considerable differences between this world and the game world of "A Song of Iron and Fire".
That is the presence or absence of players.
Players as a whole are a very utilitarian group. Most of them play games for two purposes: one is the sense of accomplishment from continuous upgrades, and the other is the pleasure of crushing the enemy after upgrading.
The former determines that players must always get the sense of accomplishment of "I am getting stronger" from the game, which determines that the player's upgrade speed must be fast enough.
The latter means that the NPC's upgrade speed must be slower than that of the player, so that "the NPC that I could not beat originally" can be "easily crushed after upgrading", and the player can get the pleasure of "I am very powerful".
Therefore, in the third expansion pack of "A Song of Iron and Fire", when the level cap was at Lv.15, the levels of mainstream players had generally exceeded those of the mainstream NPC transcendents of the 6th era.
After all, NPCs have to run around everywhere to collect recipes and materials, but players have guides for brushing the book, teleportation arrays, and immortal bodies that allow them to try and error infinitely, so they almost immediately leave the new low-level extraordinary people of the contemporary era behind.
However, they were no match for the demigod monsters that had survived from ancient times to the present day, so there was even a storm of negative reviews in the short term. In game forums, post bars, groups... people were everywhere complaining that there were no monsters to fight.
The game's third expansion pack, "Expedition to the Holy See," also appeared in such a market context - using a mechanical torrent army of synths and drones to consume the excess energy of the Law-level players.
After the expedition to the Holy See ended, the third demon tide pushed the level cap to Lv. 20. At this time, players began to frantically catch up with their training, trying to become demigods as soon as possible and then PvP with each other. Therefore, during this period of time, the game company did not launch any super-difficult campaigns to attract criticism.
In other words, the second half of the year 242 of the 6th Era was actually a peaceful six months. Players were busy playing dungeons, upgrading, and PKing, and no major plot events of note occurred.
However, there are no players in this world, so Ask does not have to worry about PK. He just needs to follow the rules, comprehend and upgrade, conduct daily combat training, and occasionally care about the psychological problems of team members.