Truth be told, I had no idea where the capital for my faction was, or how to get there from my current position. Al had pretty much kidnapped me when he took me to Null Space, and I hadn’t really had my bearings before then anyway.

I had a general idea of travel within the game - things I had overheard, or picked up while on shift. But I had never really paid close attention, since I knew I would never be able to afford to play S&S. And really, I had never had any interest. As I mentioned, I was more into shooters and Sci-Fi games.

But thankfully, I had full internet access now from when I had initially looked up my own death, so I did a quick search on the travel mechanics.

The gist of it seemed to be that there were only a few ways to travel across continents or across the oceans. The fastest way appeared to be by utilizing the portal systems that each faction created that tied their own major cities together. There were also flight paths, but they took time, whereas the portals were instant - though more expensive. Certain classes could create their own ad hoc portals, but the internet told me that those spell books were currently gated behind high-level content, and very few players had them. And no one currently had a complete set for their faction, let alone cross-continent portals. In addition, each cast required expensive materials that had to be farmed in, again, high-level content.

So the current best way to travel was to utilize the NPC-created portal system that linked the major cities. They were also expensive, but didn’t require any specific mats, and were available to anyone within that given faction.

The final way to travel was by foot. This game didn’t have mounts - at least, not yet - but there were a set of movement skills that significantly improved speed of travel. I realized that Al had been using a movement skill when he had carried me to Null Space. That skill was called [Fleet of Foot] and was essentially just super speed at the cost of high stamina usage. There was another skill that gave you limited flight, which sounded awesome, but apparently had numerous drawbacks to compensate for the element of verticality. That one was called [Hollow Bones] and it didn’t actually increase your movement speed, apparently. The stamina usage was also double that of [Fleet of Foot]. On top of that, it had a height ceiling, so you couldn’t just keep going up forever. And if you ran out of stamina while in midair, you were in for a painful - if not fatal - fall. Still, that one sounded pretty damn awesome. Who doesn’t want to fly?

The last one seemed the least interesting to me. It was called [Bounding Jump] and when activated, gave your jump a super boost. It seemed to launch you in the air at high speeds and temporarily removed any fall damage while bounding. But once you jumped, you didn’t have any control over your trajectory. According to the online forums, it was technically considered the best traveling choice because the speed was equal to [Fleet of Foot], but the stamina usage was greatly reduced in comparison. It also gave you the verticality of [Hollow Bones], though with less control. Still, it didn’t sound very appealing to me. I mean, who wanted to leap into the air, just praying that they had guessed the distance and direction correctly? Also, the thought of constantly free falling gave me a phantom sense of vertigo. Sure, you wouldn’t take fall damage, but you were literally launching yourself into the air, then plummeting to the ground…over and over and over again.

That sounded fucking terrifying.

I couldn’t pick one of them out in the wild, though. Apparently, you had to learn it from some vendor in your capital city. Still, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to choose. Every selection I made was permanent, and I wanted to mull it over a bit, maybe talk to Al and Jeremy before committing. [Freezing Wave] had been a do or die choice, and though it wouldn’t have been my first choice under other circumstances, I didn’t regret it. It had quite literally saved my life, I was sure. But choosing a movement skill would be a matter of convenience, not life or death, and so I didn’t need to jump on it right away.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I searched the internet some more, looking for the nearest city with a portal system. There was actually one within my current zone, though it only had a single portal I could use. Though, it led to my faction capitol, which was exactly what I needed. From a little more research, it appeared that the capitol itself had portals leading to a dozen cities, but you couldn’t actually take them without manually making your way to that city first. It seemed to be the game’s way of forcing players to discover places on their own, rather than relying upon magic to create shortcuts for them.

I opened my region map and moved it to one side of my vision, while my internet browser occupied the other half. The region map was still mostly covered in the fog of war. There was only a thin slice cleared leading from where the Null Space entrance was, to the small outpost I had fought the two rogues, and the area where I had…let off a little murderhobo steam. Most of the region was still undiscovered, and I was staggered by the sheer scale of it all. Without a movement skill, it would take me days to cover every inch of this region, and this was just one of hundreds.

Just how big was this world?

I pulled up a map of this region on my browser, and compared it to my own mostly obscured map. I was near the south-eastern edge of the region, and the main city with the portal system was closer to the region’s center. It wasn’t visible on my own map, but I was able to match the browser map to my own, and mentally clicked in the general area of the city. A small waypoint pin placed itself in my map, and a ghostly arrow appeared in my vision. It pointed in the general direction of the waypoint, along with a tiny indicator for distance. That would be incredibly useful, I could tell. It didn’t actually mark a path for me, but a general direction was better than nothing.

The waypoint marker read 5.5 km. If I had to guess from my earlier travel, my max running speed was somewhere in the 30 to 40 miles per hour range - at least in a straight line. I wasn’t entirely sure about the conversion to kilometers, but a quick search told me that it was roughly 50 to 65 kilometers per hour. Accounting for terrain, and detours, I imagined I could make the trip in about 15 minutes. Not bad at all.

That turned out to be stupidly optimistic.

I ran into the first obstacle within minutes. There was a gorge cutting across my path that spanned multiple kilometers length wise, and probably a kilometer across. I had seen it on the map, but the topography didn’t really translate on the map. I had assumed it was just a valley or something. As I stood on the edge of the sheer cliff, I felt like I was looking down into the Grand Canyon. With my enhanced strength, I had no doubt I could climb down the cliff, make the trek across the bottom of the gorge, then climb out. But I also had no doubt that was a multi-hour adventure. Hundreds of meters below, I could see a vast ecosystem thriving at the bottom of the gorge. There was a dense jungle canopy, but the suggestion of movement was everywhere. I even thought I saw the head of a giant dinosaur-type mob break through the canopy for a moment, before disappearing.

Yeahhhh….no.

The detour around the gorge only took me 20 minutes, and I stuck to the edge of the gorge where the jungle was thinned out, and the mobs were almost nonexistent.

But once I was on the other side of the gorge, the jungle seemed to grow thicker, the mob density higher. When I had went on my rampage earlier, the mobs had been dozens of meters apart from each other, and I had to actively search for them. But it seemed the closer I got to the city, the more mobs I encountered, until it was impossible to move through them without aggroing. I still made short work of these mobs - they were within the level 40 range thankfully - but it slowed me down considerably.

After I took down a particularly large group of mobs, I paused a beat to catch my breath. At this rate, I would be buried in mobs before I made it to the city. I took a look at the cleared map on my browser, and noticed the main road was a couple hundred meters to the east. It was a risk to travel the roads, as that would increase my likelihood of running into players. But that risk started to seem like the lesser of two evils. I actually wasn’t sure if I could break through the lines of mobs that seemed to be congealing around the outskirts of the city, so the road seemed like my best option.

My chest tightened at the thought of encountering enemy players. Osgoth and Ysillith had opened my eyes to the reality of my situation. Despite what Al said, being level 100 was not the deterrent we had hoped. Not only that, but it seemed that I wasn’t as overpowered as I had anticipated. The gear disparity between me and the max level players absolutely played a factor. Not to mention their full set of skills compared to my current repertoire of a single skill. A group of well-equipped enemy players would take me down - of that, I was certain.

But a high risk of being ganked compared to getting swamped in literally hundreds of mobs made my choice clear.

I’d have to risk the road.