John woke up from the game excitedly. He had already accomplished more than he thought possible. He checked the website for the daily level charts which showed breakdowns by world, continent, and kingdom for the top 100 levellers. In the past, the highest level on day 1 was level 3. Corwin was the leading character in the world, but surprisingly Edward’s level four was only 3rd. Someone else was level five. That character, Beowulf, was in the Denova Kingdom. Just who was Beowulf? Was it possible someone else had reincarnated just like him? Or was this some strange unpredictable butterfly effect? For the moment, John was content to avoid Beowulf as they rated to be far away for quite some time, but he decided to keep an eye on the journey of this potential rival.

John also reviewed the patch notes which included the opening of the auction houses for trading items within an entire kingdom, as well as the real money exchange system. In Eternity’s Wake, the company did not sell money instead only allowing players to sell money they had earned to each other while taking a 10% cut. Interestingly, the AI had also patched divine trials to prevent teleportation out of the trial by any skill, technique or item. John was grateful the loophole hadn’t been closed before, as he would have failed his trial without that cheat.

John analyzed his recent play, disappointed with himself for some basic mistakes. Not buying health potions earlier could have really hurt him. Similarly, he had forgotten to upgrade the ring of space before using it, and this cost him time as it might have had longer duration and/or shorter cooldown. The presence of this Beowulf lowered his margin for error, after all if there was one, maybe there were others like him.

Since items could only be sold in a kingdom and no-one in Orleans was level 5 yet, John knew he could hold off on selling gear. He also knew he wanted to not sell currency until he made his gold make more gold through crafting.

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John talked to Edward about the Verdure Kingdom, which had multiple level 3 characters, something John wasn’t sure had happened before. Despite having only one of those level 3 characters, the guild of sorrows was a bullying presence, threatening characters and using PvP to take items extensively. Edward avoided trouble by avoiding attention: using a cloak and not selling anything that would be worth taking. Edward wanted to change that, but John urged him to be patient. While Edward’s levelling speed was impressive, John didn’t expect that Kyo could take on large numbers of enemies, even with a bit of level suppression. At level 5, that might change with the huge uptick in gear that awaited him.

Instead, John expected Edward to try and get the kingdom and continent bonuses for the first Chieftain and first hell mode dungeon raid, hopefully getting him a good portion of the way to level 6 as well as some handy spending money. There was an alert in Verdure about someone clearing a divine trial, unfortunately none of the divine trials in Verdure had ended up on the forums so John couldn’t help Edward find them in the early game. Regardless, right now success in the game was about levelling and gear and John wanted Edward to stay focused on those two things.

John thought about his plans and decided his time was quite limited. He wanted to be able to sell good gear to two kingdoms, Orleans to pay for his massive teleport and Verdure to pay off his gaming capsules. This meant he needed to be quick about getting the remaining growth items if he waited too long guilds wouldn’t pay top coin for items they were already getting in hell mode. John wondered if Beowulf managed to clear hell mode, with the kingdom bonus taken he’d have a hard time of it since he’d get fewer extra passes but it was still possible. Would someone have high level gear selling before he wanted to? John sighed, he only hoped Beowulf didn’t plan on teleporting.

John did some quick exercises and waited for the moment to log back on. It arrived fairly quickly.

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