365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Hidden Quest - Start

1/23/19

The two men blinked at the quest they'd just received while going through a high-level ancient forest dungeon, winning duels and stocking up on duel points, the virtual world's currency, to buy the new boxes that would be released the next day. Seeing as the game was still relatively new, there were lots of archetypes and cards that weren't implemented yet, so being able to branch out with the new set would be nice and bring in some variety.

"A hidden quest?" Judai questioned, looking at the pop-up in confusion, "I didn't realize there were these types of quests..."

"It says it requires a max friendship level to unlock, and to have at least two-hundred tag duels logged with the same friend," Yusei said, glancing over at the other duelist, "Well, we have been playing this game together the entire time, and always with tag duels... now that I think about it, I think we both have only a handful of regular duels logged."

"Huh, I never really thought about that," Judai replied, reading the rest of the quest description quickly. "The Story of the Legends of the Forest is a pretty vague title, and everything else is just question marks, including the rewards... well, I suppose we'll just have to see what happens! Let's do this!"

Yusei hummed in agreement, nodding and pressing the accept button at the same time as Judai. Suddenly a glowing particle trail appeared in front of them, forming a new path through the forest that went completely off the original trail. It took a bit longer than they expected to reach the end of it, but when they did they were greeted with a cave entrance and a quest update.

"Looks like it's a new dungeon, the quest says we need to complete it to move on to the next part of the quest," Yusei said, taking in the entrance of the cave. A few sparkling stones were embedded in the rock, the light of the sun bouncing off of them brightly and hitting the inner walls.

"Well, let's go already! The dungeon description says it should only take an hour or so to complete, so we should be good to just go now and take a break a later," Judai exclaimed, grinning and dragging Yusei along with him after the raven-haired man nodded. The cave was littered with little glowing carvings, and bit by bit they slowly pieced together the story of two friends becoming, well, friends. Eventually they ran across their first opponents - duel monsters, as usual - and began a string of duels that brought them to the end of the cave.

"I think that was the last of them," Judai stated, watching the pair of Gravekeeper's Heretics disappear into pixels. They'd been extremely annoying to deal with since their skills were the same and put an extra 'Necrovalley' spell card in their starting hands, so even though they'd destroyed one, another would just get placed on the field and allow all their Gravekeeper's monsters to reap the benefits.

Well, if there was one thing Judai prided himself on, it would be his ability to come back from behind. It was a trait he and Yusei shared, and it helped them immensely when they started synergizing their decks.

Walking up to the wall at the very end, Judai studied the huge image that was carved into it. Yusei joined him a few moments later, causing the quest window to pop up once again.

"Well, it looks like we should take our break now. The quest says to only start the next section once we're ready as we can't quit once we start or else we'll automatically fail the quest," Yusei said, reading over the window again before closing it and looking at the wall himself, "For now we should probably figure out how to even get to the next part, since it also said that this wall held the secret to accessing it."

"A riddle?" Judai pouted, glaring slightly at the glowing wall in front of them before slumping onto Yusei.

"J-Judai-"

"Help, I can't deal with this! I have to think?! I don't wanna do riddles, I've had enough riddles for a lifetime already!"

He saw Yusei roll his eyes but also smile in amusement at his antics, causing him to laugh in success at bringing Yusei out of what Judai's come to call his 'brooding, stoic thinking mode'. He tended to slip into it after having to focus on things for a while, like working on his projects or, in this case, having to duel multiple duels in succession.

"Come on you drama queen, let's log out. Weren't you going to teach me how to properly roll out dough or something?"

"Oh yeah! When I was in Italy this one family I stayed with for a couple days taught me how to bake a whole bunch of things from scratch. Aw man, I know you can't actually feel hungry here, but just thinking about that stuff is making me want it... and hey wait, I am not a drama queen! Jack's the drama queen!"

Yusei snorted at that, logging out quickly before Judai could protest any more than he already had.

The flour fight about ten minutes later in the kitchen was fantastic revenge.