The Almighty Ring

Jiang Fei and the girls were very skeptical of Z0-11’s meeting with Jiang Fei. They believed that there was more to the meeting than meets the eye. But without any evidence, there was nothing for them to work with. As for 0543, Jiang Fei did not believe that it was possible for it to betray him, and what Ariel had was only a hunch. After all, Z0-11 came well prepared. Its device had countered Ariel’s ability to detect electromagnetic waves, and also left without leaving any evidence behind.

But regardless of how puzzled they were about the meeting, they eventually brush the matter aside after considering the fact that 0543 was just created not too long ago. If 0543 had already double-crossed them, then Jiang Fei would really be at his wit’s end. Even if he could just use his administrative authority to seal up the assistant, but wouldn’t 0544 and 0545 also turncoat just as easily?

So before uncovering the root of the problem, replacing the assistant was not going to resolve it.

Also, because the whole idea of 0543’s betrayal was merely a hunch on Ariel’s part, as much as Jiang Fei trusted her, even Ariel herself was not sure if her hunch was true. At the end of it all, Jiang Fei decided to put the matter to the back of his head.

With their heads full of unanswered questions, the day passed and soon it was night. Jiang Fei returned to the game once more.

“Boss, one of our scouts found something interesting.”

It was late afternoon in the game when Seven Stars Warrior finally brought Jiang Fei valuable information.

“Where?” Jiang Fei’s eyes lit up and quickly walked over.

“Not far from here, just right up ahead!”

With Seven Stars Warrior leading the way, the two made a beeline towards the site.

“What did you find?” Jiang Fei asked as soon as they arrived.

“You! Come here and tell the boss what did you find.”

Seven Stars Warrior pointed to the player responsible for the discovery and called him over.

“Boss!” the player saluted and started detailing his encounter.

It turned out that while the players were scouting the area, they stumbled upon a witch’s hut. Witch’s huts are rare encounters that were common knowledge among the players, and they are limited to only one per map.

Inside the hut, players would find an old witch who would offer the player a mini-game when interacted with. Be it a dice or card game, when the player won against the witch, the witch would then uncover the entire map they were on to the player, saving the player the effort of exploring through the whole map by themselves. But if the player lost the bet, the witch would take one hundred gold coins from the player. Only one player was allowed in the hut at any given time.

The player that was reporting to Jiang Fei was lucky enough to win the mini-game and had the entire map revealed to him.

“Then, did you find anything unusual on the map?” Seven Stars Warrior asked the lucky player.

“That’s not important right now. Take us to the hut!” Jiang Fei interjected. He figured that instead of listening to the player explain in detail about his discovery, it would be easier and faster to just see it for himself.

“Yes boss! It’s just right over there. Follow me.”

The player led them onto a winding trek and soon, a familiar-looking small grass hut came into view.

“The witch is right there! Boss you’ll have to go in alone.” The player said while pointing at the hut.

Since only one person was allowed into the hut at any point, if there was another player in it, Jiang Fei would not be able to enter.

But after getting word that their boss was coming, the guild members have already secured the perimeter and barred anyone else from entering the area. Though what they did was unnecessary at that point because they were the only people that are in the area. The other non-guild players were all busy hunting monsters for drops near the safe zones and there was no one outside the guild that was remotely close to where they were..

“Mhm. I’m going in!” Jiang Fei nodded and strode towards the entrance.

“CREAK~~~”

Jiang Fei pushed the door open, light poured through it, revealing nothing but darkness inside. After entering the hut, he shut the door behind him.

As soon as the door closed, the light from the outside world was cut off, allowing the inside of the hut to fall back into darkness once more. The only thing visible to Jiang Fei was a dimly lit candlelight set upon a small desk close to the entrance where he came from that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. A tiny flame the size of a pea lit the candle. It was only bright enough to cover half the table and was the only source of light inside the hut.

Jiang Fei took only two steps through the darkness to make his way towards the dimly lit table and sat down on a chair he found nearby in the darkness. This was not his first visit to a witch’s hut, and he was familiar with the rules of the game.

The owner of the hut sat across the table from where Jiang Fei was, the old witch was clad in an oversized, dark-colored cloak that covered her facial features. But her hands she placed on the table were boney and full of wrinkles, revealing an obvious hint of the NPC’s old age.

Although he was dealing with a female NPC, she was not at all affected by the effects of the Romeo title’s buffs. Jiang Fei’s Romeo title may be effective towards female NPCs, but has little to no effect on minors or elderly women.

Without saying a word, the witch dropped a deck of cards hard onto the table and spread them out in a fan right in front of Jiang Fei.

“Pick a card…”

The witch’s voice sounded old and ancient. It was also shaking, either from her old age or maybe from something else.

Despite having been to many other witch’s huts before this one, but this was a mini-game that Jiang Fei had never played before. But since the witch asked him to pick one card, he could only oblige.

Jiang Fei randomly picked a card from the deck and flipped it up to reveal it. However, to his surprise, it was not a normal playing card that he was expecting, but a tarot card!

The artwork on the card he held in his hand had a big wheel in the middle with a sphinx on the top and a demon at the bottom. They were surrounded by various other smaller drawings of a goddess, a swan, a snake, and so on.

The Wheel of Fortune!

That was the card that Jiang Fei revealed.

“CRACK CRACK CRACK…”

After looking at the card he revealed, the card started tearing into many tiny pieces and disintegrated into a trail of dust and disappeared into thin air.

“Fate is now in your hands. Upwards or down, only you know the answer.” The witch said to him, her voice still croaking like an old toad.

“What does that even mean? Did I win or lose the bet?” Jiang Fei asked confusedly.

The witch’s hut had always only been as a means to help players to reveal the map. He had been to many other witch’s huts over the course of his career and never had he encountered any witch that was as mysterious or as spooky as this one.

“You should leave now!” The witch waved away at him. She did not answer his questions but only shooed him out of the hut.

“What the hell?”

Jiang Fei was befuddled. He could not make heads or tails of what just happened.

After exiting the hut, he checked and found that his game map was not updated nor did he lose any gold. He has absolutely no idea if he won or lost the game he played just now.

“Boss, how did it go?” Seven Stars Warrior came over and asked.

“I have no…”

Before Jiang Fei could finish his sentence, the small grass hut behind him suddenly burst into flames! Tall red flames licked the sky as the fire quickly burned the hut down. Within the fire where the hut once stood, a silhouette of a person can be seen.

“What the f*ck! What’s going on?”

Everyone in the vicinity was shocked to see that. Witch’s huts were not supposed to be a single-use facility and were a place all players could benefit from. There had never been any cases of them self-destructing before.