“Rrah!” I let out a scream as I pushed of of my right foot and rocketed forward far faster than any human could ever hope to in the real world. This time I’d get it for-

My body accelerated so fast that my feet couldn’t keep up, and as they started to drag I faceplanted unceremoniously in a patch of golden grass. “Urgh…”

That was, or at least, it was almost, the new 1h Sword Skill “Step Slash.” Of the three new skills I had gotten from leveling up it was by far the hardest to get my head around.

The motions were simple. Put your lead foot back and your weak foot forward and lower yourself into a crouch. Level your sword so that the flat of the blade is parallel with the ground and hover your left hand just about an inch above it.

Crouch down and feel the power build in your dominant foot, then, when the time is right, push off as hard as you can. If you do it right, you’ll rocket forward about five meters with a thrusting attack.

Still, having figured all of that out and spending the greater part of an hour eating grass and awkwardly thrusting my sword forward only to not move an inch, I could only use the skill about one in every ten times that I’d tried it.

The timing was just weird. There wasn’t some sort of bar that you had to watch and release at the right time. There wasn’t an indicator for it at all! That meant that finding the timing was just a matter of repetitions and practice… but that didn’t make this any easier…

I stood up and lowered myself back into the stance for Step Slash. I took a deep breath as I crouched down, putting all of my weight on my back foot and leveling my blade. My left hand hovered about an inch above the flat of the sword and I felt power building in my legs…

Not yet.

Not yet…

Now!

My sword flashed white as I thrust my arm forward and my body pulled me along behind it, My feet instead of lazily trying to run after me, leapt off the ground with explosive power and propelled me forward until they eventually landed again, stopping my momentum and driving my sword forwards.

The power of the strike sent a shockwave forward that shook the grass in front of me, and a smile crept on my face. Getting it to work just once felt so good I didn’t care that I’d be pulling grass out of my hair for the next week and a half.

I snapped out of my daze when I realized that a group of five players were clapping for me on the side of the road. Oh god, how long had they been watching for?!

I gave them an embarrassed smile and a wave as they turned and walked off towards Origin. Speaking of…

A quick look at my menu told me it was already 8:40, if I wanted to get to the meeting on time then practice would have to wait for later. I sheathed my sword and took off at a jog back towards the city gate.

I’d made pretty good time on the way back in. With the meeting being so well known most of the foot traffic was going towards the plaza instead of in random directions so it was easy to be caught in the flow and shuffled along in the right direction.

The plaza itself was a bit more empty than I had thought it would be. As the crowd thinned out and dispersed into the large space I’d have guessed that only about three thousand players, not even a fifth of the total people who were trapped in the game, had made an appearance.

The pessimist in me worried that the reason for the lack of attendance was that many players had probably given up on the game after what had happened the night before… honestly there was a large part of me that couldn’t blame them for thinking that way. In fact, I’d say it would be more abnormal to be carrying on and playing the game normally after learning that dying in this world could mean having your skull crushed on the other side.

But a more realistic explanation was that a large number of groups probably had their own agendas and their own plans for the first days of the game.

A majority of the people that had accepted the offer to beta test the game had been in large guilds or small elite teams in other games. In other words, they had friends here to rely on and play with. For that reason, I assumed that the majority of players simply wanted to find their own way and weren’t interested in hearing the number one guild preach for however long this was going to last.

Honestly I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of it either, but one thing was now more important than anything else. Information.

You’d think that strength or speed or proficiency at executing the game’s weapon skills and spells was what made a “good” player, but there was one stat that wasn’t in any game, that had a far larger impact on your ability to clear bosses and not die. Systems knowledge. Or in other words, information on how the game itself worked.

What monsters spawn where? What quests rewarded the best weapons and the most gold? What monsters were worth fighting? And which ones were way too dangerous to be worth their drops. If you knew all of these answers then your chances of getting into a bad situation went down drastically.

It was with that thought in mind, that my goal had changed from hunting monsters to get ahead of other players, to gathering any scraps of game knowledge I could about how this world worked, and what to do next in order to get ahead.

A meeting like this wasn’t going to get me experience or item drops but it would answer some of the questions that had been burning in my mind since this morning.

The hushed murmurs of the crowd were silenced by the bell at the top of the spire chiming nine times. The low tone of the bell washed over the crowd and as it faded a small group of people walked up the steps positioned on the back of the stage.

My eye twitched. At the front of the group was a lanky man with a tuft of flax blonde hair. His armor looked like it had already been upgraded from typical starter gear, and a spear rested on his back.

Fenix. Leader of the Levin guild. A large guild that had high end branches in every major Annex title. He just so happened to be the rank 1 player of Infinite Dungeon, Annex’s most popular title. A spot that he stole from me, funnily enough. Not that he really earned it.

Standing to his left was a tall woman with long, straight brown hair that went all the way down to her ankles. She carried a gnarled staff made of wood and she wore a loose fitting brown dress. Her avatar’s face had a motherly look to it that was still youthful but incredibly wise. She had quite the large fan base online. Her name was Nell, rank 13 Druid.

To Nell’s left was a player I’d never seen before. She was wearing what looked like some sort of plate armor and she had an axe slung on her back. Maybe some sort of tank class? She had a hawkish expression and a head of bright red hair pulled back into a ponytail that ended in yellow tips making it look as if it was on fire. Her lips were twisted into a smirk that sent shivers down my spine.

On the other side, one place to the right of Fenix, was a mountain of a man with olive skin and cropped blonde hair. Given that he was wearing armor that was even larger and bulkier than he was I assumed he was a tank as well, and that he had opted for at least the “super heavy” armor option, if not the colossal armor that I’d been curious about before. This was backed up by the large shield mounted to his back and the one handed mace hanging off of his hip. His face was square and looked a bit older than the majority of the characters I’d seen so far. Most people wanted to play conventionally attractive characters so it was odd seeing someone who didn’t make an avatar that looked like they were in their 20s.

Finally, to the right of him was a person who was in a black cloak. That… was about all I could see from here. They didn’t seem to be showing any weapons, so possibly a magician? Though the cloak definitely screamed “assassin!” Either way, even if I would have recognized them from a previous game there was no way to tell now.

As the five of them lined up along the edge of the stage and as they did the plaza filled with murmurs of excitement. Honestly it kind of made my eyes roll. At the end of the day they were all just players like everyone else here.

“Woaah! It’s really Fenix! The Fenix!”

“Yeah! And Nell’s here too! God I wish I was that good at designing characters!”

“The girl with the fire-red hair, that’s Ascilla, right? The crazy tank that they poached from Lestria?”

“And the big one has to be Rain! I used to love his guides!”

“Wait who’s that last one though..?”

“Mortimer, duh! Dude’s only like… the most famous PvP player to come out of DIVE games!”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Oh really? Kinda feel bad for the dude all things considered…”

Huh… well that cleared that up… Not that I particularly cared, mind you.

Fenix raised his hand and the crowd went silent.

“Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to join us here. I know that this is a troubling time for all of you, but I promise that we will make it through this, and all other challenges, together.”

I wasn’t one hundred percent sure but I think I’d leveled up my eye-roll stat for that one. Where was this nice guy when he was raiding? I felt bad for anyone who didn’t know the real side of him. They were in for one hell of a rude awakening.

Either way, the crowd roared to life once again but the shout turned into whispers when Nell stepped forward on the stage and looked out over the crowd. The waterfall reflecting the light behind her made it look like she herself was glowing brighter than the sun.

“Before we begin with our discussion about the game and our current situation, I feel we must discuss what has happened over the past night. About the players that have perished so far, and about the dream that so many of us have experienced.

“After talking to a great number of players, Levin was able to track down the white haired boy that I am sure you are all very familiar with. After some questioning we were able to confirm that he had in fact been out in the fields outside of town when a player he had partnered with was struck by an arrow and died.”

Nell paused, a deep silence had settled over the crowd and people were looking at each other with obvious concern in their eyes.

Apparently it didn’t take long to find the player that had appeared in the dreams at all. He had returned to the city shortly after his partner was killed by Goblins, which happened about an hour outside of town. According to him he’d just met the guy that day and they had decided to form a hunting party. Once his partner had died he figured he’d come back to the city and grab him when he respawned only to not be able to find him anywhere.

It wasn’t until he got the same message all of us had about death in the game carrying over to the real world that he started to get worried and asked around. He’d informed some other players and they’d helped him search but by the end of the day they hadn’t turned anything up and decided to call it quits. Sure enough, when he went to bed that night, figuring that there may be some sort of restriction like you only respawn at the end of the day or something, he had the same dream as everyone else who was asleep at the time.

“Furthermore… A pair of players came forward and said that they had met the person the night before, while we were still on the other side. The two of them confirmed that they knew him from a previous game, and that his avatar matched what they remembered. And… that the body was the same of the boy they had met.”

Nell closed her eyes and shook her head.

“It is because of these testimonies that we wholeheartedly believe, as ridiculous as it sounds, that dying in this game really does lead to death in the real world. Of this, we are nearly certain.”

As she finished speaking the murmurs began again. Frantic whispers and concerned glances passed between people in the crowd. I swallowed hard. I knew it was more than likely the case but to have so much evidence to back it up… I guess it got rid of the one small part of me that was still able to think about all of this like some sort of big prank… like if we died we’d just wake up and nothing bad would have happened…

A snap brought me back to attention. Fenix now stood at the front of the stage, is arm extended out in front of himself.

“Right. Now with that out of the way, let’s get to the real heart of this meeting. What we’re all going to do from here.”

He extended his left arm out to his side and took another step forward. I’d give him credit for one and only one thing, the dude really did know how to put on a show.

“This spire behind us is not just the beacon that signals the start of our journey, but also the final resting place of those that have sacrificed themselves to this cruel experiment of a world. It was noticed just after midnight. Twelve names are now carved into the base of the pillar. Each one is a player that was confirmed to have died some time before midnight, in other words, they are the twelve players that died on the first day.”

“None of these twelve ever came back to town. None of them ever respawned or revived. They’re gone, and if I had to guess, they will be far from the last to meet that fate before this nightmare is over.”

The worried murmurs of the crowd picked up again. The atmosphere that had fallen across the plaza was deeply uncomfortable. Was that really true? Were there names carved onto that spire? Was that where people would wind up when they died? Just a name in some rock? I guess that wasn’t much different from what happened in the real world, but that wasn’t really a comfort.

Fenix continued. “Each and every one of them died out there, fighting in this world to find a new life for themselves. Each and every one of them had a dream that they chased into this world, just like all of us. We all had a reason to come here, to hope that we’d find something that we couldn’t find in the real world. We all came here to escape reality in one way or another”

“But that cruel reality cannot be discarded so easily. And so, if we want to survive here we can’t think of this as just another game. As just another escape. This is our reality. This is our world. The world we’ve all dreamed of our whole lives. We owe it to those who have lost the will to fight, to those who have already fallen, and to those who will never see the end of this place, to win! So let’s win!”

Fenix punctuated his statement by thrusting his fist up into the air. This time the crowd was silent. The air of uncertainty was only deepened by Fenix’s speech, but after a while the crowd began to cheer.

“Yeah, fuck this game!”

“There’s no way I’m letting something like this beat me!”

“We’ve beaten way harder things than this!”

“I’m not going to waste the next two years sitting in an inn room somewhere!”

“Now. As you all know, the most important resource in this game is information, and lucky for you, the 863 members of Levin that made the jump have been working around the clock to get you just that!”

Fenix shouted over the crowd. To be honest it was a miracle that anyone could hear him, but as soon as he said it, a large group of players on the left side of the crowd close to the stage let out a deafening war cry. Thank you, Levin.

The shout and cheer from the Levin members in attendance died down as the third speaker for the day stepped forward. The olive skinned tank whose name was apparently Rain stepped up to the edge of the stage. Each step was so heavy that I was worried that he would fall right through the flimsy wooden platform… not that it wouldn’t be really funny…

Rain began talking, his rich baritone voice cutting through any chatter that still bubbled out from the crowd.

“The most important piece of information is this: The Adventurer’s Guild in this game hands out most of the quests that don’t involve NPCs. This is things like exploring areas, killing certain numbers of monsters, procuring materials, and stuff of that nature.”

“In order to use the guild facilities and accept the guild’s quests, you have to register, which is a quest that anyone can do. We’d strongly encourage everyone, whether they are focussing on combat or life and trade skills, to do so at their earliest convenience.”

“Furthermore, the Guild is the only building in the city that is capable of purchasing monster parts. Monster parts in this game seem to only be used for one thing… Crafting. And crafted gear seems to be far and away superior to store bought or found items, or at least that’s how it seems so far.”

Rain paused to let the information sink in. Suddenly, the idea of running off to the guild to offload all of my monster bits seemed like an awful idea… but then again… finding a player that had already been able to raise their crafting skill enough to work with the parts I had may be a whole other issue. Maybe I should hoard them? But then I’d outlevel them by the time that I was able to use them…

“To facilitate the safety of all players, and to insure that everyone has equal access to the highest level weapons and armor, Levin’s crafters will be stationed outside of the guild every day for the first month of the game. They will offer free of charge item crafting for anyone who can bring them the items required to complete the craft. You can consider the skill points gained in the crafting professions themselves to be your payment.”

Well that was certainly nice of them…

“Furthermore, Levin will be working with the Adventurer’s Guild in order to ensure that only prepared parties are accepting difficult quests.”

Well that was certainly fucking annoying of them… I knew Fenix had an ego, and that Levin had a real fascination with being the “best” guild in any game that they graced with their presence, but I couldn’t help but feel like this would just be a huge headache. Still, given the circumstances there were worse things that could happen than one of the historically best groups of players in the game making sure things were safe for the rest of the players. Gamers just generally had an issue with being told what to do… I mean sure, we’d follow a guide any day of the week, but tell us that we can’t do something? We’ll fight tooth and nail to find our way around it.

Rain cleared his throat. The barrage of announcements had once again left the crowd murmuring and chatting amongst themselves. His last announcement, though, was a bombshell.

“Lastly, we will pay a bounty of 500 Gold to any player who provides new information on a quest, system, item, monster, or anything unknown about the game. This information will be compiled into a guide book that will be accessible for free to any player that would like a copy. The first volume will be released one week from today.”

This really got the crowd talking. It also got my head spinning. Just how was Levin going to be able to pay out that many players? Hell, part of me wanted to run up there right now and fill them in on the wolves and goblins out in the field, not to mention everything that I’d learned about weapon enhancement from Sonnson the night before… Before I knew it I could be swimming in cash…

Fenix cleared his throat. “Alright, now that the big stuff’s out of the way we wanted to open the stage to anyone who had any information that they wanted to share. If you’ve got something to say, line up and we’ll give you the stage.”

Well that was surprising… but not unwelcome.

Thus the next few hours flew by with dozens of players taking the stage and giving insights on quests, NPCs, systems, different items available from shops, monsters, just about anything you could think of. The number of players in the plaza slowly petered out as time went on but I figured I’d stick it out to the end.

To my dismay, my weapon upgrading information, the information about Timber Wolves, and Goblins, in fact, most of the Golden Fields area, was offered up by various players. I hung my head and sighed. So much for striking it rich.

Still, this was an invaluable amount of info… even if most of it was completely useless. Building up an understanding on how quests worked in the game. How the monsters were designed. What was expected of you as a player. All of these things would make future quests that may be more complex a lot more solvable. Or at least, that’s what I hoped.

By the time the last person had stepped up and given their account of what they’d learned, the bell at the center of town had struck one. Having loaded up on more information than my brain could realistically process I was about to call it a day, and apparently our gracious hosts agreed.

With one last wave from Fenix, the crowd was dismissed. At this point there was only one place I wanted to go. I moved towards the southern exit to the plaza and headed towards the Guild Hall.