[System]: Ring of Ooo.
[System]: Soul bind? Y/N?
"Yes."
Visdre was surprised that this item could be bound. This was quite a rare characteristic in this world.
He activated the ring and appeared in the temple of Libra.
The priest looked at Visdre. Because of him using the special ring. The priest had assumed he had just died. The mechanics behind how the players respawned weren't entirely known by the NPCs. They only knew players were immortal and would appear in temples after death.
"Do you need another guild charm?"
"I'll be fine."
Visdre thought about the best way to complete the task. He hadn't actually created this NPC personally. But had some fragments of memory related to it. So even he didn't know the difficulty of this quest.
He needed to fill ten flask with blood from vampires.
In the town there was a auction house. This was essentially a depot where one could store their items or bid/buy items listed by other players.
The were some donwsides to this system. For example. If you stored something in the depot at Libra. You couldn't fetch the item from Luxa or other towns. Each town operated independently.
There was a mail system. The way the auction house worked was the items could be listed from any town in the world. When you bought something. It could be mailed to you. You could check your mailbox from your home or the post office.
Fighting vampires at level 21 would be a death sentence. While he needed to be above level 20 to even be able to talk to Ooo.
This wasn't actually considered high level. It was only the beginning.
There was no level cap. But the way the experience system worked was based on relative strength. For example. You could level up initially by killing rats. But around level 5. No matter how many rats you killed. You could kills thousands. Your level wouldn't improve.
So despite there not being a level cap. You would eventually become so powerful. That no matter how much you killed. You would be stuck.
This was like an artificial bottleneck.
You would need to wait on expansions to get newer more challenging content. There were many hidden world events that hadn't been triggered yet.
Vampires had near immortal bodies. You had to pierce their hearts with a blessed stake. Otherwise... they were near unkillable.
Acquiring this item required exploring most of the map. You had to visit a shaman and get them to perform a ritual.
This shaman was a special blessed NPC. They weren't restricted to a specific area and could be found anywhere on the world map.
Visdre decided to look at the data directly to see their location. But he was surprised!
"They... died?"
Blessed NPCs normally had special abilities. Like being invulnerable. This shaman also had this perk. Due to their 'class', they also had many different voodoo rituals and curses they could use.
A blessed NPC getting wiped out was a huge problem.
"How did they do it?"
Visdre focused his consciousness and scanned through their final moments.
"Mark?"
----------------------------------------
Mark Teld's POV:
[System]: {
Name: Mark,
Title: Hacker,
Race: Human,
Class: Godiefyer,
Level: 106,
HP: 430/430,
MP: 430/430,
Strength: 30,
Perception: 21,
Agility: 20,
Vitality: 43,
Intelligence: 43,
Attribute_Points: -1
}
"Boss. Are you sure this will work?"
"You doubt my qualifications? Haven't you already suffered a loss? It has already worked on the other NPCs."
The man Mark was talking to called himself God Knight.
----------------------------------------
Tim Eve's POV:
"Boss. Are you sure this will work?"
"You doubt my qualifications? Haven't you already suffered a loss? It has already worked on the other NPCs."
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Tim thought about his humilating defeat. He had thought he stood at the peak of this world ever since he got the title 'Vitality Ocean'. This title made it so his vitality could no longer be increased. But it was like a rebirth. His HP became similar to that of a small boss.
This was a huge advantage as a player. He had felt invincible! His legend had spread around the world!
He felt he lived up to the name 'God Knight'. Any party would kill to have him. Not only did he have a legendary title. But he had a class. Although it was rather basic. It gave him more skills then the average player.
But right in his prime. He provoked a monster!
This man he offended was Mark. He didn't know what sort of class he had. But the man was unfathomable.
His equipment seemed ordinary. So he thought he would show some respect based on his prestige. But the man directly attacked him!
His strength was a bit weaker.
He didn't seem all that intimidating.
But it was as if he hacked his source! The source went haywire and became unresponsive. he sat there stunned and unable to react as he was hit repeatedly.
I was brought down to 1 HP.
He then stopped and spared me.
I was only level 70 at the time. But I was a top combat power.
But in front of that man. It didn't seem to matter. It was as if he was a hacker! But this world wasn't a program. It was like a game, but too realistic.
Just what sort of monster had I provoked!?
If I die. I will lose all 70 levels. So I decided to concede.
I have been following this monster since then. He seemed to know more about this world then others. I even suspected he was a developer smurfing.
But he never showed me his attributes panel. One can't check this without permission from the other player.
As I followed him. I noticed he didn't seem to care about my bag of holding. He seemed to have an inventory! This further proved my speculations. I was following the developer of this world! But I didn't dare leak his abilities.
[System]: {
Name: God Knight,
Title: Vitality Ocean,
Race: Human,
Class: Knight,
Level: 99,
HP: 8700/10000,
MP: 200/490,
Strength: 60,
Perception: 10,
Agility: 20,
Vitality: 1000 (locked),
Intelligence: 49,
Attribute_Points: 0
}
The main downside to having such a big health pool was how long it took to bring it back up to full.
There were various potions. But they were rather expensive. This game world didn't have any play to win mechanics. If he could convert real life money into gold. He would in a heartbeat.
----------------------------------------
Mark Teld's POV:
Mark had been thriving in this world. It was an excellent escape from real life. He was an almost god like existence here.
Visdre had left most of the perks for Mark. Since he was the first player. This included him keeping his hacker title.
So he could manipulate source and feel it. This saved him from getting ambushed. It also helped him prove his strength and recruit some other players.
He was currently in a meeting with a party of players.
Most of these people didn't even have a class. The best one here besides him was God Knight. He had a basic class that hadn't even been promoted.
Mark was a bit jealous of God Knight's title. But if he wanted to steal it using his title. He couldn't use it either way. 1000 permanent vitality was quite powerful. But it was still weaker then his title.
He had done his research. It seemed the other players never interacted with the gods. He talked about his tutorial process with other players and found his experience was completely different.
He found his experience was actually legendary!
Unfortunately. When he reached level 99. It was as if he hit a bottleneck. No matter what he killed. He couldn't level up.
This was due to lack of sufficiently difficult enemies.
He was too strong to fight most of the mobs that spawned.
But he was too weak to fight bosses.
So he changed his plans and stopped being solo. He assembled a team to fight bosses. But the main problem was finding them!
Some mobs respawned in certain areas. Bosses were harder to come by.
He then thought about killing an NPC for experience. Not the ones in town. He would need one with great strength. Something that outclassed him and his team.
So he started to travel the world. This only took a few days, because the world map was quite small. Talking to most NPCs wasn't too hard of a task. If it weren't for spending time talking with NPCs. One could travel across the entire map in a few hours.
He finally found his target. A shaman named Tuu.
He observed this NPCs habits and conversed with them. He found that this NPC seemed proficient in debuff curses.
Thanks to his soul bound items from his class.
He figured he would be able to beat this NPC!
But he needed to get around its invulnerability and immortality. The NPC wasn't an idiot. But all blessed NPCs had a certain amount of arrogance. They thought their invulnerability meant that they could act however they pleased.
It wasn't like the players could actually harm them.
This was their biggest mistake!
Mark gathered a group of players and ambushed this shaman. The shaman almost singlehandedly defeated them all.
Mark had something that was a cheat.
He just needed the others to distract the shaman so that he could make contact. Various debuffs were cast on him. But his gear made him mostly immune.
He had grabbed Tuu's arm!
He then used an ability that costed him a level.
Location Refusal!
He teleported into a town he had visited before. But had his hands positioned into a building. The shaman started to glitch wildly as if its collision was malfunctioning.
It then blew up scattering items everywhere.
Mark leveled up. Multiple times!
This method costed him a level to teleport. But it paid for itself!
Unfortunately, most of the team he had assembled had died. They were not too pleased. But he was the boss! They would only need to wait to respawn and then grind again. Not much was lost, except a few days of work.
Mark started to look for boss type blessed NPCs to kill.
This was how he got to level 107!
Now he was planning to kill an even stronger NPC. Because, his last kill didn't increase his level!
This was why he was at level 106. It had costed him a level to use location refusal. But he didn't increase after the kill.
----------------------------------------
Visdre saw the entire process of the shaman getting besieged and killed.
"Hmm... I didn't think of him using the ability this way."
Visdre's consciousness adjusted the rules of this game world.
The shaman respawned in confusion and decided to go into hiding. It thought that 'players' were scary!
There were a few other NPCs that had died. But they were restored. This 'bug' was patched. No clipping into buildings to kill others in the future.
Visdre was surprised that Mark thought of such a plan. But with this fix. It should be impossible for other NPCs to get killed off.
It didn't matter if they were unimportant NPCs. But some NPCs gave resources that couldn't be found elsewhere.
Mark instinctively felt a change in his source. He knew that this 'bug' had been patched. So he would need to find bosses in other ways.