In the piglet plains north of the city of Incarnum Gii was currently in a desperate fight with a fairly strong looking group of piglets. There were actually 2 knights in this group riding large boars in addition to 2 crossbow users. He dodged out of the way of one of the charging boars and lashed out with his blood whip to yank the rider off of the saddle. The piglet fell heavily on to the ground and seemed to be stunned for a moment before it began struggling to stand up.

However, Gii would not give it the chance and quickly pounced on top of the Piglet. Even though it was wearing makeshift plate armor there were still large portions of its body that were exposed and he took advantage of that to slide his dagger between the cracks and stab heavily into the side of the creature's torso and directly towards its heart.

[-566]

A large damage number appeared and the piglet quickly stopped its struggle and died. While he was in the process of dispatching this combatant, one of the piglets with a crossbow took aim and fired at his back.

*Thunk*

Critical hit!

[-132]

A large damage number appeared above his head and Gii looked at the one who fired the bolt with irritation. He quickly dodged another charge from a boar and slashed along its side as he ran towards the crossbow user.

[-532]

The boar, which had already been wounded earlier in the fight, screeched in pain before it fell down on the ground dead. Knowing it would stand no chance if it got into close combat, the piglet tried to maintain it's distance and continuously traveled backwards while reloading and shooting. Unfortunately with Gii having boosted agility and being able to see the attacks coming, he was easily able to dodge all of the incoming attacks. Ultimately he closed the distance enough to where he could reach the piglet with his blood whip and ruthlessly pulled the creature into his dagger.

[-506]

[Level up!]

With the last of the piglets killed, Gii was able to quickly finish off the last boar which could only do simple charge attacks now that it was not being controlled by one of the piglet knights. There was a smile on his face as he picked up the remaining loot and sat down to recover his lost health. Gii had been grinding levels for the better part of 3 real world days now and his efforts were showing in how easily he was able to take out this group of piglets. He quickly stowed everything away and then opened up his character screen.

Character Name: Gii

Level: 21

Race: Demon (Humanoid form)

Class: Berserker of Reckoning

Title: Courier

Health Points(HP): 2125

Skill Points(SP): 0

Characteristic Points:0

Experience: 1%

Karma: -3100

Soul Energy: 100%

Vitality: 206

Agility: 101

Chance: 101

Strength: 101

Intelligence: 101

Wisdom: 176 (+75 from equipment)

Gii was extremely satisfied with his progress as he did not anticipate the extra boost to his wisdom in the early game to affect his leveling speed so much. Gii had dumped all of his free characteristic points into vitality and had boosted his health to over 2 thousand, but the real culprit behind his increase in damage output was the fact that he had boosted his Retribution of Strength skill to level 4 which took 15% of the damage taken and added temporary strength stats. Near the end of the fight, he had over 250 strength! With his most recent level up he had gained enough skill points to boost it to level 5, which means he could now convert 20% of the damage taken into strength points!

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The other thing that was boosting his abilities was the fact that he had gotten his quillan set pieces and was currently wearing 3 of them! The 4th one required his level to be 28 so he would not be able to get the full set effect yet, but that was only a matter of time. The Quillan set was considered among the best tier 1 sets for 2 reasons. The first was that it gave a great boost to wisdom and so it made levelling much easier. The second thing was that it gave a raw boost to damage output! It had to be known that this was an incredible boost and most sets that had this effect would only give 1-2, however the Quillan set would give 8 when you were wearing the full set!

The damage boost would not just be tacked on top of your original damage, it actually increased your base damage! this means that if you had an attack that dealt 5 base damage and you got something that boosted damage by 1, it would then deal 6 base damage instead. This was calculated before the boost from stats was, which meant it could exponentially increase your strength in the long run!

Because the Quillan set only consisted of 4 pieces, it meant that it was easy to match it with other pieces of equipment and build a customized set. This was Gii's current plan as for him, there was not really a significant difference in equipment until he reached tier 3. Knowing that his main focus for the foreseeable future would be PVE content ,he would only focus on equipment that was well balanced for both PVE and PVP. Either that or he would only pick out equipment that he knew he could use in the long run.

Finishing up his hunting for the time being, Gii made his daily trip to the Sanctorium and used some of the drops he had received from the piglets as tribute. Fortunately his trips had not been interrupted when he went to the afterlife because he was able to clear the conditions to resurrect before a day had passed in the real world.

It's time to start the next phase...

Although Gii had got the class he was waiting for, that didn't mean he had completed his goal. The next thing he needed to do was achieve enough negative Karma so that he could change to a tier 3 race. Just like classes, races also had different tiers and every single tier 4 class would require the character to have achieved a higher tied race. While these races would usually not provide boosts to stats, they would often come with some extremely unique and powerful abilities. The trickiest part for the players would always be to find out exactly what the requirements are to trigger the race upgrade.

Fortunately for Gii, the requirements for those races connected to Karma were extensively studied in his previous life and it was also one of the things that he was most familiar with. He knew that the prerequisite for changing to a tier 3 version of his race would be to get -1 million Karma! If he just resorted to killing NPC and church members, this would definitely be impossible to achieve or at the very least it would require an inordinate amount of time. Fortunately Gii knew that the quickest way to gain Karma was not murder, but the harvesting and corruption of souls and this was his plan for his contracted NPC's

I only have a limited number of spots so I will have to choose them carefully

Although he had already made a few preselected choices he still needed to think through which one would be best to contract first. As he was thinking about this and heading back to his hunting spot, he was idly reading through his guild chat when he started to gain interest in the conversation going on.

[OnyxQueen: Hey anyone remember that Key that dropped when we were fighting the Golems in the mountains?]

[PhotonDan: Yea i think it's in my bank right now. didn't we get a whole bunch of them?]

[xxTerminatorxx: did you finally find what it's used for Queen?]

[OnyxQueen: I think i did yea, there's a cave hidden in a large crack and there's a stone door that looks like it has a keyhole]

[PhotonDan: Lets get a group together and explore it, seems like it might be an undiscovered dungeon!]

[OnyxQueen: Seems like it is, but i'm worried it might be a higher level that we can handle]

[xxTerminatorxx: i'm not afraid of the tier gap if it's just the boss. are all of the monsters in the area tier 2?]

[OnyxQueen: the golems around here seem like they're top of tier 1 but no tier 2 mobs i can see.]

[F4t4lStr1ke: Oh? our first dungeon raid as a guild!? Count me in!]

[Pixiebob: I call dibs as the healer]

[Sundance Kid: beat me to it pixie. well i just got a new set or armor so i can be a tank/healer if need be]

[Gii: if you need a tank i'm free for a bit]

[xxTerminatorxx:look at the newbie trying to leech]

[PhotonDan: Shut up Term. We'd be happy for you to join us Gii!]

[Gii: fyi i can probably only be healed by pixie. assuming i've heard right and pixie uses nature magic instead of divine to heal?]

[PIxiebob: I see my name has spread far and wide]

[xxTerminatorxx: great now he's full of himself]

Gii continued to chat with the guild members until they had decided on a group that would meet up and try out the dungeon. Unfortunately they only had 8 keys currently as they had quickly moved on from fighting the Golems due to the difficult fights and the slow levelling speed they offered. Dungeons in Listonia were instanced for the most part and so keys allowed for groups of people to form up and raid a dungeon without having to worry about outside people stealing the rewards. Of course there were some exceptions to this but that was the reason why dungeon keys would be so sought after.

Gii had offered to join this dungeon raid for a few reasons, the first of which was to test out the current strength of his character. The Golem Dungeon was known to be one of the most rewarding tier 1 dungeons, however it was also one of the most difficult because the Dungeon Boss was actually at the top of Tier 2 and was level 100! Players in his previous life had always complained about the difficulty of this dungeon even after they gained the strength of tier 3.

Because all of the golems were made of hard stone, they usually dropped valuable gemstones and he also knew that the Dungeon boss had a chance of dropping pieces of the Golem set! This was considered one of the peak tier 1 pvp sets for strength based characters in his previous life and players would always fight viciously for pieces that would appear on the market.

His last reason was probably the most selfish, he wanted to get on friendly terms with a few of the players that were joining this dungeon raid, namely F4t4lStr1ke and Pixiebob. Pixiebob was a famous healer in his previous life because he trailblazed a tier 4 healing class that did not rely on divine magic. Because of Gii's choice to go down the evil path, a healer like this would almost be indispensable if he wanted to form his own dungeon team and not have himself get killed by his own healer. Additionally, F4t4lStr1ke had gained a unique class that focused on damage output and would allow him to become one of the highest damage dealers in Listonia. Unfortunately in his past life he seemed to prefer playing solo and so not many people were able to get close to him and determine how strong he actually was.

That doesn't mean the other players were not of interest as well, but these would be Gii's main objectives while trying to clear this dungeon. He quickly teleported to an area where he could meet up with Ralph and re-supply for the upcoming exploration.