Fiona Smith smiled and said, "I will convey your intentions to my superiors. Before new orders arrive, I don't have anything else that needs your help."

　　Once the task was over, she became much less talkative, and formally taught Jack Carter some skills—mostly generic ones like auras, disease removal, cleansing, blessings, and healing. The signature paladin group attack spell "Zealous Devotion" only unlocks at level 20, and the group melee skill Command Judgment at level 25.

　　Triggering a class reputation quest at just over level ten? Such a stroke of luck made Jack Carter want to test a long-held theory he’d never had the chance to try.

Chapter 9: The Unfinishable Hidden Quest

　　Before crossing over, Jack Carter only started playing "Divinity and Demons" a year after the game launched, and was a casual player. Back then, he didn’t know how to level up, and what impressed him most was the sheer number of NPCs in every town. You could just chat with any NPC for a bit and get a quest. The quest experience was low, the rewards were small, and doing too many got boring.

　　At that time, the world chat was filled with people recruiting for dungeon grinding parties, and repeatedly running dungeons was way faster for leveling than doing quests. Jack Carter didn’t get it—was the game company just wasting effort? Since dungeon grinding was so efficient, who would bother with quests? Why design so many quests for every NPC, and even have the system randomly generate more after you finish them? Was it just to make it easier for players to earn money? In reality, quests weren’t even the best way to make money.

　　Later, players discovered the reputation system: doing quests could increase reputation. But you could also gain reputation by killing monsters in dungeons or the wild, and it was still much faster than running errands for quests. Even more, players found that at some big city quartermasters, you could skyrocket your reputation just by handing in certain materials. For example, the famous cloth quartermaster—give him 1,000 bolts of wool and you’d be "admired," then 1,000 bolts of silk and you’d be "respected." For players with a bit of money, reaching "exalted" was too easy.

　　In short, in that era, the main value of quests was to trigger chain quests and hidden quests. As players understood it, the reason the game company designed so many quests was to hide the real ones in plain sight, so players couldn’t easily find the hidden quests. This view was still widely accepted right up until the eve of Jack Carter's crossing.

　　But Jack Carter had always doubted this view. In his mind, a great game company must have deeper intentions, and lately, while running errands, he’d clearly felt things were different from his previous life.

　　In his previous life, after Jack Carter finished grinding dungeons and returned to town for supplies, NPCs would only praise him from afar: "Did you see that? That’s the legendary hero of our town, the one who slew so many monsters..."

　　But now, NPCs would smile and greet Jack Carter face-to-face, ask how he was, if he’d eaten, or make small talk about the weather.

　　The former was awe, but the latter was warmth—an NPC’s attitude toward you determines what quests you can trigger! This is the iron rule of questing.

　　So this must be why Jack Carter triggered today’s storyline. No matter how many monsters you kill, will that earn the trainer’s favor? Definitely not. They’ve been around longer than any player, and your achievements mean little to them. Thinking back on what the trainer said, the answer must be: good relationships are what really matter!

　　In other words, the reputation gained from quests is actually popularity, or public favor. This is fundamentally different from the reputation gained by killing monsters.

　　The reason he could get the paladin reputation quest at such a low level was probably because his popularity was high.

　　To test this, Jack Carter decided to keep doing quests to the end. Of course, with his leveling strategy stalled, he didn’t have much choice.

　　Now, Jack Carter had already completed all the fixed quests from the hundreds of NPCs in town, but that was fine—the system had a daily random quest generator, and every NPC would generate a new quest each day. In his previous life, Jack Carter never had the chance to try this. Back then, he was just a casual player going with the flow, and after losing his job and becoming a professional power-leveler, he could only follow guides.

　　After reaching "respected," the daily random quests started giving more experience and reputation, but also got harder—the errands now went beyond the town and into the countryside. Jack Carter started to struggle, since he wasn’t familiar with the rural NPCs. He began to wonder if, at this rate, the errands would eventually extend to other towns, or even the city.

　　For the next few days, every time he logged in, Jack Carter would go greet Fiona Smith, but unfortunately, there were still no new quests. Based on his years of power-leveling experience, there was no way she didn’t have follow-up quests, especially ones related to reputation. Maybe when his popularity reached "revered," a new quest would appear?

　　The good news was that the pace of material acquisition suddenly exploded—his mailbox was full every day with all kinds of ores and gems sent from the auction house. Jack Carter was both delighted and surprised: delighted that he wouldn’t have to wait two or three months, and surprised that, with the highest-level players only at level 35, where was the market getting so many mid-tier materials? He was even considering lowering his purchase prices.

　　That day, after processing the materials from the mail, Jack Carter continued doing daily random quests.