[Nitarja] - "I am a catkin. I am in a village on a small island, it is a part of a number of villages on this archipelago."

[Frei] - "OMG a catkin? You should have contacted me sooner. Where the heck are you? What climate is there?"

[Nitarja] - "Tropical, is it far from you?"

[Frei] - "No idea, I am in an elf city called Lartherion near a big forest. What is the archipelago called? The tutorial surely gave you some clues."

[Nitarja] - "They said many thing, I forgot most. Do not bother with it much, I will look for your city."

Frei placed a hand on his forehead.

[Frei] - "Fine, we will try to meet each other later. Good luck Nitarja."

[Nitarja] - "Be Safe, Frei."

He tried to contact Crow, but it was as she said, there was no reply.

"Strange, could it be that he did not make it?" Frei browsed the game interfaces available to him and found the quest log he had been looking for. It was especially important, because based on the description next to his level, he could gain higher level only by completing quests, which was unusual.

Quest Log

"Bah! Gathering helpers on casual difficulty? A waste of time!" Frei managed to open his inventory only to find out he was broke. With no money, there was no reason to even explore the city, he could not buy anything.

"Let's go near the forest and see if some monsters drop stuff I can sell." In the end, many games were only competitions in hoarding, he expected some kind of item drops from monsters, even the weak ones.

Well, maybe except of the scrawny wolves that he could defeat with one punch of his delicate, elf hand.

"Shouldn't we gather more people before we venture forth?" Aethon asked frightfully, Frei had completely forgotten about his existence.

What was he still doing here? It made no sense, he was a recluse from the forest! Had they forgotten to delete him or what?

"Aethon? We?" Frei turned at the elf, his energetic nodding half sending him into his early grave.

"Hm? Hm?"

"Scram." He said staring at him, his eyes that of a dead fish, trying to look spooky.

"W-What?!" Aethon began to panic. "I can use a sword well and I can . . "

"Scram! Away with you!" Frei was unyielding, he could not have this person next to him for a long time, unless he wanted to go bonkers.

"B-But we are friends!" Aethon started to almost tear up, but Frei was steadfast.

"Pest, be gone!" He frowned at him, trying to look even more uncompromising.

"The journey will be lon .. ." Aethon tried his last line, but Frei's attack was strong, more powerful than the pre-programmed content for eight year old kids named Aethon .

"Off with you! We are no longer friends! You smell! Shoo! Shoo!" Frei gestured with his hands and after his intense exorcism campaign, he had finally managed to get rid of his tutorial friend.

He breathed out slowly with relief.

"Excellent, now the monster hunting." Frei checked for the last time that he was truly alone and walked in the direction of the forest. Lartherion was surrounded by the Great Forest Ash'Al'Orcleion on its two sides, there was a lake on its third side and finally a coniferous forest to the north. When he passed the first trees, Frei realized that he had not tested his casting frequency and mana capacity properly and began casting spells to find out those two crucial parameters.

  After a while, it appeared that the cool down period was about one second after casting a spell and he had never quite ran out of anything, so he anticipated that time was his only resource when casting spells. He had not been disappointed when he started meeting the same type of scrawny wolves and occasionally even some fleet footed deer the moment he entered the forest. It felt almost crowded in the forest, but he had expected such a situation to happen as this had been clearly designed to be a starting location for hundreds of players and had little to do with a real forest. He started casting Wind Blade like a machine gun, spilling guts and blood everywhere.

  At first, he had been surprised that there were really no drops from the monsters, but noticed a while later that his inventory began to fill up. The reason was simple, auto-loot function.

"One would expect the game developers to pursue realism, but nope. Who needs realism? Make it convenient!" He massacred another wolf and smiled. "I won't complain."

  Given the density of the monsters, his inventory was soon overflowing with junk and he decided to turn around to sell it back in the city. According to his inventory, he had quite a number of items.

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Tattered Wolf Pelt x 214

Tattered Pelt x 124

  Naturally, he was able to sell it to the first lady he saw that seemed to work as a bartender. He had no idea what she was going to do with all that, but whatever. How convenient for a casual player like himself! He could warm his eyes with the sight of three silver resting inside of his inventory now, as she probably kept the copper change for herself.

  He bought three Healing Potions for the silver, as it was too little to buy anything useful. Armed with the new potions, he went deeper into the Ash'Al'Orcleion Forest. He had a map, but it worked only for the places he had already visited, meaning his only help was just a little arrow showing the direction of the quest.

"Pestering wolves." Some of them even noticed him and he had his inventory almost full of pelts in no time. Considering their loot was terrible and he had no benefit from killing monsters, they were just a big nuisance. He had temporarily solved the situation by casting Shroud on himself, reducing the number of wolves that attacked him to nearly zero.

"Best spell ever, the density of low level mobs around the starting are is really something." Luckily, he seemed to be leaving the area reserved only for the lowest of the noobs, he could tell by the forest around him that was slowly getting darker and the green vegetation was gradually gaining a shade of blue and black. That was a good sign, as he expected the territory of the dark elves to be dark, obviously.

Suddenly, Frei heard a distant sound of branches being stepped on and his body froze.

Wolves never produced this kind of sound.

  Frei switched his mind out of his leisure mod and began earnestly pay attention to his surroundings. It was certainly a new enemy and he did not plan to be ambushed by whoever it was. Standing on his spot motionless, the one producing the sounds soon came into view. It was another elf!

"Who would have thought, I had an impression that all the NPCs here are brainless." Frei grumbled and decided to shout at the elf.

"Good evening, what are you doing here?" Frei's shout made the elf flinch, the stranger's reaction was off.

"Another player? Die bitch." The elf quickly extended his hands in Frei's direction and wind began to gather around his fingertips.

"Fuck! What?!" It took roughly one second before a sharp Wind Blade flew in the direction of Frei's chest. Expecting the attack due to being familiar with the spell, he cursed in his mind the fact that the attack was horizontal and slid along the ground on his knees in the direction of the elf, his back bending back sharply to pass under the blade. The Wind Blade passed above him, in front of his eyes and almost bisected a tree that was standing behind him.

Now he was only a few steps away from the enemy and this time, cold droplets of water began to gather near his hands.

"No, you don't!" Frei hurled himself forward and slapped the elf's hands, making him shoot a Frost Bolt up into the air and kicked him in his crotch at the same time. Fortunately, he hit and could enjoy his own second of cast time while the enemy was in turn enjoying the pain. He burned the elf black with Flame Fist before he had time to do anything else.

Breathing heavily, he stared at the smouldering spot next to him.

"Ugh, what was that?! Was he a player? How? HOW?!" Frei could not understand what was happening, but a system notice verified his suspicion a second later.

"Was it Crow? Impossible, he would have replied to our messages." Frei racked his brain how was it possible for there to be more players than the three of them. Had one of the older universes already invaded? No, he had not seen elves in either the Divine Universe, or the Arcane Universe. The elf definitely belonged to the Fabled Universe, he would not have received the system notice if he was not. He pondered about the player for a while, but was unable to reach any conclusion and had to forget the incident until he had more information.

  Walking forward, he very soon met another type of monster, all he could see in the description above the monsters' heads was their level, race and a name if the monster or NPC had one.

Level 3 Young Wolf

  Frei prepared for a tough battle and launched a Wind Blade at the beast. The spell flew too low and cut off all the wolf¨s legs, making him land flat on its belly, blood squirting out of his detached paws.

"Disgusting." Frei finished the monster off with another spell and received another Tattered Wolf Pelt. He thought about finding a way to censure the gore again, but decided to not search for it and leave it as a reminder of the seriousness of the situation. Although everything looked game-like, he had no idea if the resurrection system that the game surely possessed actually worked. If there had been some glitch during the Big Bang process, he could become some strange goo and the probability of that was high given the way this whole crazy Fabled Universe had been brought into existence. Until he knew for sure what would happen, it would be wise not to die.

"Fine, let's move on in the direction of the dark elves." Frei walked on deeper into the Ash'Al'Orcleion Forest and met more and more monsters native to the forest.

Level 3 Young Wolf

Level 4 Wolf

Level 5 Young Wolf

Level 2 Spiderling

Level 5 Giant Spider

Luckily, his basic spells were enough to seriously cripple them with one hit, something he had been thankful for to his casual difficulty. Still, the spider monster was quite resistant to slashing and he had been nearly bitten by it. Right when he started to get nervous due to the increasing levels of the monsters, he saw an elf in the distance, but its skin was much darker than normal.

"A dark elf!" He was clearly at the location of his quest.

  The dark elf was a male with red hair and eyes, his skin having a very dark blue color. He was holding a bow in his hand and looked like a scout. Based on the floating description above his had, he might be an NPC, as he had a name.

Iralion Orsa, level 6 dark elf scout

He had no idea why his name was light green, but he had noticed that the wolf from earlier with a colored name was a little faster than the standard version. It had to do with the level of rarity of the monster or something similar.

"Why the heck is he level six? I have to try to go around him." Frei crouched and with his trusty Shroud active, tried to go around the scout, stepping carefully to avoid dried branches.

"Halt! Who goes there?!" Frei heard a shout and his blood froze. The dark elf appeared near him in a second, his bow drawn and pointed at Frei.

"Hi?" Frei said, realizing that the arrow would definitely not provide him with the one second needed to cast a spell.

Man, spells suck! And he had been so hyped to become a magic caster!

"What are you?" The dark elf looked confused, as if he was looking at a wolf with seven legs.

"Eh? An elf?" Frei was confused as well, as he had no idea what the dark elf was confused about. Still, he was grateful that whatever it was, it prevented him from turning him into a skewered corpse.

"Do not joke with me, I would have killed you without questioning if you were an elf, I can smell stinking elves from a mile away!" He inched closer while not letting his guard down.

"Alright, I am not an elf." Frei put his hands up in a gesture of giving up.

"Then what are you?" Iralion Orsa continued his questioning.

"I-I, I am .. a forest creature." Frei had no idea what he was supposed to say. He was clearly an elf, but he was smarter than trying to persuade Iralion that he was mistaken, he clearly remembered that dark elves hated elves.

"Haha, I have never seen a human in this forest, based on your deceitful nature, you have to be one. You go with me, I will make you my pet." He said something ridiculous out of the blue.

"Pet?!" Frei nearly shrieked out. He had a feeling something went very wrong somewhere.