Second Chapter a bit later than i said but i had to rewrite some of it midway
Hope you enjoy!
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When Zero logged back in it was still early, the sun was not up yet so practicing the sword was his next goal.
He still didn’t feel comfortable swinging it around, it was a new kind of feeling holding a weapon in your hand even if it was not sharp.
About to swing the sword a thought crossed his mind and he looked at the weapon he was holding.
Zero never actually examined it closer, which he now wanted to do even if it was a bit late.
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Wooden Sword
Damage 1~2
Durability 14/15
Once a stick, now a sword. A practice sword given to trainees or inexperienced students.
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Zero noticed that the sword had durability with it but the clothes from Margery that he was wearing right now didn’t. He could only guess that because it was the standard newbie gear it couldn’t be destroyed but gave little protection.
After closing the window about the sword he got into a fighting stance again, both feet apart, holding the sword with his right hand while facing the front with his left side, it gave little attack options except his left arm or side.
He imagined someone attacking him, twisting his body as fast as he could the right hand holding the sword appeared out of nowhere and pierced the imagination before it got even close enough to swing at Zero. He had thought this technique up last night, it wouldn’t work against animals or non-humanoid creatures because of the height difference and possibly different weak points but it was a start.
He continued to train while the sun was slowly climbing, twisting his body, slashing and thrusting forward.
After the sun was fairly high up he went back into the house and found Tara inside the kitchen.
“Ah. Good morning Zero, I see you got up early to train. My Husband was like that too in the past.”
She chuckled and continued her work in making breakfast.
“I am not that well versed with the sword yet so I thought it might be a good idea to change that fact. Do you need any help?”
Zero asked and grabbed a potato as well as a knife. Tara seemed surprised but nodded and told him she would make mashed potatoes with ham so he should peel about 30 of them.
Right away a message appeared before him.
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Prepare Breakfast!
Some people say Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, it gives you strength and is what drives you, giving you energy in hard times.
If the potatoes you prepare are flawed the Quest will fail and the food will taste horrible.
Potatoes peeled: 0/30
Reward: 10 Prutah and Tara’s respect for you will grow.
Quest failure: Tara’s respect for you will shrink and she might think of you as either a child or a good for nothing.
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A little surprised about the downside when he failed the Quest he accepted.
He always cooked for himself so he was unusually well versed with preparing food.
After only a short time he got a window telling him he finished the Quest. Tara looked over to him and smiled.
“I see that handling the sword is not the only thing you are good at Zero, thank you for your help I appreciate it. I know it’s not much but here, take this.”
She put 10 small copper coins in his hand
“10 Prutah, our lowest form of currency but that should be enough as compensation. You really remind me of my son...”
She stopped talking and her eyes got dark, Zero had already seen this happen a few times, not only with her but also Khanas.
“Can I ask what exactly happened? I know it’s not my business but every time you or your husband start talking about your son a darkness falls into your eyes and I can’t help but wonder what happened.”
He was indeed curious but his real intent was to find out what made these lovely people so sad that all happiness disappeared from their eyes. Those eyes reminded him a lot of himself a few years back.
Tara looked down for a moment to collect her thoughts and then started talking.
“You have to understand our son was very much like you. He was talented with the sword, always polite and friendly to everyone. A sense of justice had always been in him and he wanted to help a lot of people. It happened when he was only 15 years old, a war came. They banged on our door asking for my husband and saying he had to join the military to protect his country but how could he go leaving us and his newly born daughter alone? So Our son Eran went instead of him. First he wrote us every week, then he didn’t reply for 3 months and the only answer we got from the military was a ripped piece of cloth from his favourite shirt and the sword you saw in the living room. Eran got it to his 13 birthday, the moment we saw it we knew...we knew he wouldn’t come back to us again.”
Slowly while she talked tears had appeared in the corners of her eyes and her voice got shaky but she continued and wiped her eyes with a little tissue after she finished.
It hurt Zero seeing her like this, again he had to tell himself it was all scripted and fake.
They where nothing more than NPC’s but the emotion he saw and could feel going through Tara made him forget that fact.
Without even knowing why Zero got close and put his arms around her. Silently her tears dropped on his shoulder while he was holding her in his arms, giving her a bit of comfort.
This hug was the only way he could help her, the wounds would never heal but knowing someone was there can be a big difference.
Shortly after she stepped away.
“I have to make Breakfast, thank you Zero.” He nodded and went to wait in the living room.
At this moment it might be good to give a bit more information about the house and the surroundings.
There were 6 rooms, the guest room he was in, Khanas and Tara’s bedroom, Margery’s bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and a bathroom.The guest room, Margery’s room and the bath were upstairs, the rest downstairs.
Behind the house was a little back garden surrounded by a high fence. There also was a stack of firewood placed on the backside with a little roof protecting it from rain.
In the front was a glasshouse for Vegetables and just like the back it all was surrounded by a big fence.
Everywhere around the House big trees loomed over them, they literally where in the middle of a gigantic forest.
Somewhere in the distance a mountain range was visible but it was a good bit away.
Zero spent the entire day helping the family in a lot of different ways.
He helped again to prepare lunch, mended a bit of the fence, watered the vegetables and cut more firewood.
In the middle of a swing with the axe he suddenly got a message that made him miss the bit of wood he was about to cut in half.
With a loud *THUMP* the axe dug deep into the ground right beside the cutting block.
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Through consistent physical labour your muscles have developed a bit more and you feel a new strength surge through your body.
+ 1 Strength
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Apparently you could earn stats through long physical activities but considering he worked all day doing all kinds of odd jobs and he only got one strength meant it wasn’t worth only grinding your stats.
It was worth knowing though, he decided to check the actual website about the game when he logged out to get some more information.
His motto has always been ‘Information is Power’.
Wiping away the sweat that had accumulated on his forehead after finishing with the firewood he looked at his status to see what changed.
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Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Name: Zero
Level: 1
Lifepoints: 100/100
Mana: 100/100
[/pc][/col][col colspan=2 valign=middle width=50% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#000000]Class: Unknown
Job: Unknown
Title:
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Attributes:
Attack: 5
Defence: 5 + 6
Intelligence: 5 - 4
Agility: 7 + 1
Strength: 6
Luck: 5
Intellegince lowered for 10 more hours.
Further Attributes can be earned through Class change, Jobs, Quest’s as well as special actions.
[/pc][/col][col colspan=2 valign=middle width=50% bordercolor=#202020 bgcolor=#000000]Skills:
Swordsmanship: Level 1(68%)
Skills can be earned through class change, Jobs, Quest’s as well as special actions.
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Interestingly enough the bonuses he got from the swordsmanship Skill were added to the base stats while the extra stats from clothing or the debuff that reduced his intelligence got displayed with a plus or minus.
Last time he checked the actual duration for the debuff was also not shown in his Character window but now it was, more things he hopefully could find out online.
Zero went back to the house but they told him there was no more work to do until dinner so he went outside again to train, shortly after Khanas joined him and they sparred again.
Loud *CLONK* sounds could be heard every time their wooden swords crossed.
Zero had definitely grown since last time, Khanas had real trouble to keep up and the moment he started using his newfound technique his health started to dwindle away until the man lay on the grass breathing heavily.
His healthbar indicating he had less than 15% remaining.
Zero was still standing in his fighting stance but loosened up a bit when he noticed the other man wouldn’t recover for a while.
“I can’t believe you got stronger by this much in such a short time”
Khanas gasped beside Zero.
“Neither can I, maybe some fighting memory was still in my body even after this strong blow to the head”
He tried to justify himself. In reality he knew why he got this much stronger.
It wasn’t thanks to the swordsmanship skill nor the 1 strength he got from working hard. Sure they helped a bit with his damage but it wasn’t that.
No, he got better because Zero realised something.
Fighting experience in this game was a lot more important than actual stats.
What good was the damage to one-shot someone when you cannot hit them because they are a master in martial arts and you a beginner without much experience in real combat?
No, Zero had realised early on that actual fighting experience and tactics meant a lot in this game.
Two players who are on the same level are only going to battle on equal footing as long as their fighting experience is also the same.
That was the reason why Zero had memorized every move Khanas used against him, after their first fight he had always replayed those moves during his training and slowly his body got used to evading and attacking when he saw an opening.
He was still at a beginner stage but his good memory had helped him a lot during his training which made it like he had battled Khanas dozens of times not only once in reality.
He had gotten used to Khanas’s fighting style and used it against him.
20 minutes later they could hear Tara shouting for them and telling them dinner was ready.
Khanas slowly got up and went to eat his wife’s wonderful cooking, that he was hunched over and nearly limping on one foot he tried to hide but Zero still noticed.
After dinner he decided to log out and see what time it was in real life. His Alarm clock told him it was a little after 12 so he had about 8 hours before he had to get ready for work.
Thankfully the time spent in Everworld somehow counted as sleep for the body, the mind was still working but even when you are dreaming your mind always works, creating your dream or nightmare.
He decided to look up some general information for Everworld.
The first things he looked for was information about not sleeping for a long time while playing the game.
Apparently players had tried out not sleeping in real life for a long time and only playing and got burnout syndrome at work and some even had mental issues after about a month of no sleep and constant mental activity.
It wasn’t recommended not sleeping at all so someone discovered sleeping Ingame helped solve that problem, because it was five times faster than in real life if you slept for about 8 hours Ingame in actuality you only slept for about 2 hours real time but the brain still counted it as 8 hours rest so actual issues like that hadn’t shown up yet and some players have been doing this for about 6 months without any sideffects.
After that he looked on the actual website but to his surprise only found some general information about the world of Everworld and a so called Legends Lobby where high level players uploaded gameplay from their helmets.
Other than that the actual website of Everworld had little to no information about stats, jobs, classes or even skills.
He decided to use a search engine again and after about half an hour found what he was looking for.
“In Everworld are a lot of hidden stats, things and factors that are hidden from the naked eye or the Character window. The actual amount of experience needed to level up for example for Skills or Character level, both numeric values are hidden and only shown in percentage. This makes calculating how much experience you need to level up very difficult but I as someone who is above level 150 can say that every level is at least twice as hard to get if not more. Don’t spend your stat points after a level up thoughtlessly because it might take a long time until you get some more.”
He also researched about stat grinding but only very little information was online for that, most players said it took longer to grind one single stat point like agility by running a lot than actually levelling up and getting 10 stat points to spend.
Still Zero got a bit curious, even if it took long wouldn’t you be ahead of other players that way? On the other hand if you trained sword fighting or in actual combat you might still win because you knew better how to handle a weapon and your own body.
If you could combine both... Zero had a general idea how he would be able to raise stats as well as his level and fighting experience but it was dangerous and he decided to not try it until he got a higher level and more equipment, for his plan to properly work he needed more money anyways.
Debuffs got displayed only if they lasted less than 24 hours Ingame and if longer would be displayed when they reached 24 hours, which would explain why he didnt see it except in his lowered stat before.
Finished with his research for now he went back to his bed and put on the helmet that felt like home. Closing his eyes and waiting for his heartbeat to slow he wondered, did he actually feel Ingame more at home than in real life?
His thoughts got interrupted by a sudden heat around him and he woke up in Everworld coughing from smoke.
The room upstairs was burning, flames licked on the walls, the table in the room was already burnt black and there was so much smoke.
Confused as to what was going on he got out of his bed coughing and on all fours crawled to the door.
Zero's throat was burning together with his eyes, he couldn’t see properly and breathing hurt a lot.
Screams from Downstairs made his blood run cold.
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