MMORPG: The Tales of Souls - 292 Regre

“I need to keep taking care of her fish … I need to keep taking care of her fish … I need to keep taking care of her fish …” The old man didn’t seem to hear Liu Yang’s words, he kept saying those same words while throwing the breadcrumbs on the lake.

Liu Yang stared at that scene for several minutes before thinking about anything.

(Should I get some breadcrumbs and throw it in the lake?) Liu Yang thought internally. He saw that the old man seemed focused on what he was doing and he didn’t care about anything else.

The moment Liu Yang was about to leave, the old man’s soul stopped repeating the same phrases and suddenly turned around. His appearance was like that of any other ordinary old man, the only difference being that he had a scar on his face.

“Were you talking to me?” The old man spoke in the language of souls, as it was the only way for them to communicate.

“Yes.” Liu Yang replied back.

“Are you here for my mansion deed?”

“Yes,” Liu Yang imagined that it would not be worth lying because the old man must have seen hundreds, if not thousands of players trying to explore his mansion in search of the deed.

“I see… Unlike the others who showed up, you are the first one who can see me and talk to me. This means that we are destined to meet. Young man, I don’t care about that deed or anything, I only care about one thing: The fishes”

“Sir, don’t you mind giving me the deed?” Liu Yang was shocked by those words.

“Not. My only concern is the fishes. They need to be fed every day with these bread crumbs”

“Sir, but aren’t they eating the fruits that fall from the trees?” Liu Yang found this a little strange, as he clearly saw that fish eat fruit.

Around the lake there were a total of twenty fruit trees, each tree had a different fruit.

“…” The old man did not comment on Liu Yang’s words, it was as if he was going back to the past.

Liu Yang did not disturb the old man.

“Young man, could you do me a favor?” The old man turned to the lake and looked at the fish.

“If it is within my reach, I will do my best to comply” Liu Yang understood that it was time for the quest.

“Could you put a new type of fish in the lake? A type of fish that does not exist in this lake”

“Yes. I can do this”

“I thank you for that” The old man went back to doing what he was doing before, throwing bread crumbs into the lake.

(No quest ??? Did I fail to activate the quest trigger? Or do I not have the requirements to activate the quest?) Liu Yang found it strange what happened. But he soon realized that he needed to do some things to gain the NPC’s trust before he could receive a quest.

Liu Yang returned to the mansion to be reunited with his group.

“Did you find anything?” Liu Yang was curious about what was found at the site.

“Yes”

“Roar”

The girls responded while the beasts made their sounds.

“What did you find?”

“Young master, we found all kinds of secret compartments in the mansion. Many of them hide jewelry, money and many other things, but no deeds have been found ”

“Did you find anything related to fish?” Liu Yang thought there would be something like that at the site, as the old man seemed obsessed with fish.

“Fish? I think Nina, Alexali, and Silali found something about it. Even Little White found it. It seems that the four found fish inside the same room.

“That’s true?” Liu Yang looked at the four. As the most powerful beings within the game, the four had very special abilities that allow them to fully analyze the area without having to walk around.

“Yes.”

“Auu”

The four confirmed before Nina spoke.

“Young Master, it seems that inside this mansion there is a large water reservoir with many types of fish kept. Everyone is alive and fed. For some reason, the former owner of this mansion did this. Silali seems to have found some information about the former owner of this mansion in his office. She can talk better about it ”

“Master, it seems that the former owner of this mansion was obsessed with fish. He spent a great fortune to create a lake behind the mansion to raise fish. I read in the books that he had a wife with two children, but the wife died while the children left, leaving the old man alone. ”

“Is there any information about the wife and children at the mansion?”

“Yes. According to these books…”

Silali started to narrate about the things that were written in the diaries of those who lived in the mansion.

The couple who lived in the mansion were of common background, before, they lived in a village in the countryside, they only managed to earn wealth after the husband found a mine of rare and precious ores. He hid the location of the place, but he took some to sell and earn wealth.

After selling the ores, he and his wife moved to a big city. The husband started a business in the city, this was his first step towards wealth. The first store was just the beginning, after a few years, he expanded his business and started to get much richer.

But the greed of money had a price, he forgot his wife and children. What he fought so hard to achieve, in the end, it is absolutely worthless.

Their children left their homes after turning sixteen, they became adventurers and explored the world, they visited their mother from time to time. While the wife was lonely inside a big mansion.

It seemed that the wife liked to raise fish to keep herself distracted, so she asked the employees to build a small pond behind the house. The current size of the lake is about twenty times larger than the original.

The wife died a few months after the lake was built, there was already much fish living in the lake. To prevent them from starving after she died, the wife asked them to plant some fruit trees around the lake.

The husband only discovered that his wife was dying a few hours before she died. Moments before her death, she asked him to take care of her fishes. The husband realized that the things most precious to him were lost because he focused on making money and paid no attention to his family.

On the day of the woman’s funeral, her children showed up, but they did not speak to their father, they just said goodbye to their mother before leaving. It seemed that they had a grudge against their father for forgetting about them and their mother.

Realizing his mistake, the old man began to regret bitterly the things that happened. He could have continued to have his wife and children by his side if he had paid more attention to them, but he didn’t do that.

The man stopped working and stayed inside the mansion every day feeding the fish with breadcrumbs, which was what his wife used to feed the fish. The mansion’s maids and butlers wrote in their diaries that the man started to go crazy.

He even had the lake enlarged up to twenty times and planted more trees around it. Even an artificial lake was created inside the mansion to raise fish, the water was changed every month because of a water exchange system that was installed inside the mansion.

The man began to age and without knowing it, several tens of years passed. He grew old while he stayed inside his own mansion feeding the fish in regret. But that could not bring the past back.

A few months after turning seventy, the old man died. But before he passes away, he hid the deeds and maps of possible locations with hidden treasures.

These words were written by butlers and maids who worked at the mansion for more than thirty years.