It was December 25th, Christmas morning, when Jacob heard a knock on what appeared to be his door. This was, of course, very strange, since he was new in town and didn't know anyone yet, and on top of that, it was six in the morning. Still in his robe, Jacob went to the door and was startled to see what appeared to be a man standing there, holding a large box. The reason for the uncertainty of the individual being a man or not was because despite being someone almost 200 cm tall, they wore loose clothes and a hat hiding their face.
"Are you Jacob Smith?" the person asked.
"Yes," he answered out of reflex, then was taken aback by the stranger's voice.
Without knowing why, Jacob felt a familiarity when he heard the voice. It was male, but he had the feeling it wasn't the individual's real voice, like they were changing their voice on purpose.
"This is for you," the person at the door said, handing over a big box without giving Jacob time to refuse or anything of that nature.
"What is it?"
"Yes." The person said this as if it was an acceptable answer as Jacob finished picking up the box.
Jacob didn't give up and asked another question. "Whose is it?"
There was nothing written on the package; no name or return address was on the outside of the box. There was just shiny gold wrapping paper and a big white bow.
"No idea," was the reply, and having said that, the individual turned to leave.
"Where did you come by this box?" Jacob asked. All this seemed rather strange. The mystery person in front of him wore baggy green winter clothes with a pulled down hat hiding any facial distribution.
The enigmatic individual stopped and replied without turning around, "It was given to me to handed over to you," the reply being useless.
"Err..."
Without giving Jacob a chance to ask any more questions, the person left hurriedly without turning around.
Jacob stood in the doorway watching them pace quickly along the sidewalk, wondering if they might get into a van with a company logo he could distinguish. But the person didn't even get in a car; they just turned right at the corner, then just suddenly disappeared.
Jacob felt like rubbing his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. Was it a ghost?! It was disturbing to think of things like that. A person simply disappeared while walking down the sidewalk.
Without knowing it, Jacob's heart skipped a beat. To be honest, he even thought that the package he was given might be a bomb, since this situation was all too weird, and when he nearly dropped the box on the floor, his heart skipped a beat. However, after he stopped to think and felt the weight of the box as he walked back into the house, he determined that this idea was unlikely. He even wondered if there wasn't a simple light pillow inside.
Just to be sure, he tried to listen for any sounds inside, but he heard nothing. With the big box on the table in the kitchen, now thoroughly curious, he opened it after much hesitation.
The moment he opened the box, the large box dissolved into particles of light and the fragmented particles began to dazzle his eyes. As he strained to try to see what was going to happen, Jacob could feel that the particles of light seemed to enter his body. When he closed his eyes completely, as he couldn't keep them open anymore due to the pain of which his eyes were subjected, something even more surprising happened.
"Is that it?..."
Minutes later, he simply muttered these words before starting to laugh out loud. It was also at this moment that something else happened.
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[Choose a name: << __>>]
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Jacob typed on the holographic keyboard that appeared just above the holographic screen: Achilles.
At the same time he finished choosing the name, something happened throughout the whole world: a holographic screen appeared before every intelligent being on earth, even newborn babies.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
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[Congratulations to the player Achilles for being the first player of the Law of Return Game. This achievement is engraved on the records board for all eternity!]
[Congratulations to the player Achilles for being the first to earn a unique Title!]
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It was as if for a second the world had stopped. Many believed they were hallucinating, but those who noticed other people's strange reactions around themselves deduced that they weren't the only ones seeing this holographic screen.
Soon after, the holographic page changed.
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[Choose a name: <<__>>]
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Unlike Jacob's turn, for the rest of the whole world, only the option to choose a name appeared without giving any explanation.
A strange situation happened for those who had newborn babies: only biological parents could see their children's page. Of course, this was later realized after people learned that it wasn't just the mothers who could see the child's prompt but the fathers could as well...
Jacob already knew this, since he had experienced all of this himself before! This wasn't the first time that Jacob had seen the Law of Return Game appear. Somehow, the moment he opened the big gift box he gained memories of another life he had lived. Be it a life from a parallel world or anything like that, in that life he also became a player of the Law of Return, however, he hadn't been the first player, nor had he even happened to receive such a gift. Just like almost every other person in the rest of the world, he only had the option to choose his name. However, he made the mistake of choosing his legal name for his registration, as many had seemed to have done. He initially had no problems with this, however, things got more complicated as he got more achievements.
As would later be noticed, if someone earned some significant achievement, it would be announced for everyone to see. The fact of that alone brought disaster if you didn't have the power to defend yourself. Even those who had a certain degree of strength were hunted down and killed.
Jacob had never been killed, at least not in his memories, however, he was banned from society for having managed to find a dungeon that had not yet been discovered and managed to conquer the dungeon alone since he was low level. However, the fact was that he had been the first to have done so, he gained a special reward.
Although the bounty he received was not announced, his defeat of the dungeon alone saw him being hunted for two long years and living like a mouse in hiding.
'The other me, did I possibly die?' In the memories, the last few moments he had were of him still running away. He remembered that the Onis guild had found his location and he was on the run. Not wanting to think about it now, Jacob opened his status.
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Name: Achilles
Title: First Player
Class: N/A
Level 1 – Exp (0/10)
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Strength: 12
Intelligence: 13
Endurance: 14
Attack: 48
Agility: 12
Magic: 52
Magic Resistance: 13
Health: 280
Defense: 14
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"Wow!"
Jacob caught his breath, his face turning red with excitement.
'That's 10 more attribute points than I had the last time!'
In the memories, he saw that the first time he saw his stats, he only had 2 strength, 3 intelligence, and 4 endurance. A 10-point increase in each attribute was a lot. To understand it better, it went like so:
[Each point of strength adds 4 points of attack and 1 point of defense].
[Each point of intelligence adds 4 points of magic and 1 point of resistance].
[Each point of endurance adds 20 points of health and 1 point of agility].
'I no longer need to beg to join a group in order to complete an initial quest...'
Speaking of starting missions, Jason remembered that everyone has received one. People couldn't finish the quests they had received right away. The difficulty was pretty much the same for everyone, and not everyone believed or understood everything that was happening at first. There were even people saying that this was a government conspiracy. Besides, it took a while for people to even discover that they had missions to do.
"Mission tracking."
Muttering these words, Jacob saw a new holographic page replace the old one. A brown page highlighted the only quest available in the main quests: [Eliminate some snails].
Jacob clicked on the mission.
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Mission objective: Eliminate snails (0/20)
The snails are attacking passengers passing by [sea riverside street]. You need to eliminate these monsters.
Note: Snails are extremely venomous.
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Rewards:
Experience: 100
Gold: 10
1 Labyrinth Key
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The quest was the same as in his memories. Of course, this wasn't something that made him upset or anything. Even if he had been given the same, it wouldn't have the same result this time since if he got the labyrinth key first, he would take advantage of it immediately!
"This is..."
To his surprise, the instant he closed the quest page, a green laser-like line appeared in front of him. Jacob had a bold hunch about it.
'Will this take me to the mission coordinate?' It was still just a guess, but he remembered that he would have some passive skills for being the first player. 'Could this be one of them?'
It may not have seemed like much, but it actually changed everything! Although this was a time when there was GPS, etc, for missions, people only knew what region the mission was in or who they would have to speak with. Other than that, they would have to track their objectives themselves and that took time.
Jacob almost immediately headed out, however, remembering that he was still in his robe, he went to his room very quickly, changed his clothes, and then ran out.
Just as he had deduced, the line he saw was tracing the path to the mission's coordinates! He ran towards the mission location, ignoring the people he passed on the way, noticing that most were looking around themselves confusedly. Undeterred, he kept running.
When he arrived at the place where he needed to go, which was on the same street as his memories, his heart was not beating faster just because he had run here but because he saw the snails, although small, with their names and levels listed just above their heads.
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Snail – Level 1
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Even though they were all level one, their poison was dangerous even for a level 5 individual. Not only did it slowly eat away at one's life for 10 seconds each time they were poisoned, but it also had a paralysis effect, giving the other snails time to attack as well and they had almost caused his premature death the first time.
"If I'm not mistaken, every time someone is poisoned, they keep taking life-per-second poison damage," Jacob muttered.
Of course, with the amount of life he had, this concern was insignificant. If he also leveled up, his health points would be restored. This meant that he would need to kill 10 snails to get to level 2.
Although the snails were weak, since they were still at level 1, the quest only counted them as eliminated if he used his bare hands or items dropped from monsters or spells. At the current moment, he could only use his own hands, which was also why it was so difficult for most people to complete this type of mission early on…