Stepping outside the mage tower, which was actually a nice townhouse, and maybe generously could be called a mansion if one squinted. He could still see the people of the town bustling around, intermixed with a few players here and there. The true popularity of the game was still some way away, but despite that, a lot of people still wanted to try out the game that promised to deliver everything everybody ever wanted in a virtual reality game.
By the time he, or rather the other Sam, joined the game around the end of February, things were already in full swing in the game; the cities, towns, and villages, no matter how small or big were filled with players, both young and old, wanting to experience the wonderful world of Magic Unbound.
But for now, he was one of the few who were playing the new game.
With that thought, he stepped away from the door of the magic tower and headed towards the weapon shop. After all, if one wanted to be an adventurer, one needed to have a weapon to kill monsters. Unless one wanted to be some kind of monk who fought with only their body.
While Sam knew a few excellent builds for monks, he wasn’t talented enough with martial arts to develop in that direction.
The weapon shop was amongst the other shops, mostly catered towards local and traveling adventurers. And despite what he had read in his previous life, one would never be able to meet a master forger or tailor in any of these buildings. These were run by merchants or merchant companies, staffed with disinterested teenagers or older people who were bored sitting at home, who bought up ready-made weapons from a bunch of crafters and resold them for a profit.
Meeting a master forger would be an exercise in frustration, and probably a gigantic quest chain, as they were protected by many layers of well-wishers, economic barriers, and greedy merchants who wanted to use them (and rarely by lords or other nobles).
Stepping inside the appropriately named ’Weapons for every Occasion’, he was met by another bored young lady, but this one instead of reading some romance novel was leaning her head against her hand while her elbow was on the counter and seemed to be staring at nothing.
Apparently retail was the same no matter what dimension or reality, or even game world…
Sam greeted the girl, ignored the grunt that left the girl’s lips, and headed for the racks of swords.
He could have chosen some other weapon, maybe a spear, as they were much easier to use, but Sam wasn’t here to play the game in the most optimized way. He was here to have fun with a game type that was just a dream in his previous reality.
And, of course, swords were cool…
Finally, after going through a few, testing their weight and balance, fully utilizing his inherited memories, he chose a simple steel sword, with decent length, and that was already sharpened.
’Probably made by a journeyman and not an apprentice…’ he thought as he placed the sword and its scabbard on the counter in front of the spiritless girl and went back to look for a proper utility knife.
In the end, Sam came up with a sharp knife, with a cutting edge on one side and a serrated edge on the other side, and a nice comfortable hilt.
Placing it next to the sword on the counter, Sam waited a second for the young woman to react, but she was still ignoring him. So he simply cleared his throat.
“Ahem! I’d like to…”
The sales girl’s hands snapped out, taking the sword and knife from the counter with well-practiced ease, taking a look at them, then looking at Sam. She spoke slowly, her tone of voice clearly communicating her boredom, and how much pain her life was.
“That would be 62 silver coins, sir.” Then she continued in a monotone voice, reading from a small scrap of paper in front of her, not even attempting to hide what she was doing. “Would you like to purchase a care bundle for new and fabulous equipment? If you do, we’re offering 10% off from your entire purchase.”
She looked at him as if already expecting the negative answer, but Sam just smirked.
“Sure, add it to the total.”
There was an entire minute of silence as the young sales girl tried to process that her sales tactic actually worked, but then she jumped into action and began quickly tallying up the merchandise, dipping below the counter to bring a hastily packaged ‘care bundle’, then she told him the final price.
“That will be 58 silver and 50 bronze coins, sir.”
He instantly put the required money into her waiting hand, happy with his purchase. The famous 3 silver care bundle was well known amongst the early players of the game. Some merchants miscalculated and every time they sold it, they lost money. Sadly, by the time the player population increased the merchant owning the shops selling the wrongly priced care bundles (containing some weapon oils, cloth to clean them and whetstones, and a few other odds and ends) wised up and increased the price.
Thus demonstrating that the NPCs weren’t perfect and could be played or cheated.
Leaving the weapon shop, he added the sword to his belt and stowed the knife in his inventory.
He then did some window shopping while walking towards the armor shop, making sure everything was as it was in his inherited memories. In the armor shop, he was met by an older saleslady, who didn’t understand armor and was rather slow to count the money, but thanks to his inherited knowledge, he still managed to buy a plain reinforced glove and a pair of bracers.
While he would have preferred to leave town with better protection, for now, his budget was only good for these.
With a quick detour to the general store for a waterskin, a few odds, and ends, and some rations, he finally headed to acquire his first quest.
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For the next step of his plan, he would have to finally step outside of the town and start hunting the numerous beasties around Greenwood. And on the way, Sam would pick up a few quests.
Opening the door, he ignored the small bell that went off, and walked directly to the blood-stained counter, already making eye contact with a visibly frustrated butcher.
“Good morning!” he greeted him, while the man just grunted in response.
“What do ya want?”
“I wanted to ask if it is possible to bring beasts here that I hunted and get them cleaned up?”
The man grunted again as an answer, but the frustration was visibly replaced by something that seemed to be a mix of hope and annoyance.
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“Ye. Can do that, kid,” came the terse reply, and Sam cheered inwardly that once again his inherited memories were confirmed. “Tell you what, you seem like a halfway competent person, so here is the deal: I’m in need of some fresh rabbit meat and my usual supplier is out of town. And, of course, this is the exact day some fancy schmuck wants to have a fancy dinner. So if you get me some clean rabbit meat before sunset, I’ll clean the rest for ye free.”
Sam thought about it for a second, then nodded. ‘Exactly what I needed!’
“Deal!”
The butcher grunted again and reached for a dirty rag to clean his counter with while glaring at Sam. “Then what are you still doing here?”
Sam chuckled and quickly left the store.
Outside of the store, he stepped away from the windows that showcased some prime cuts to prevent the butcher from seeing him standing around and took a look at the quest screen.
[New quest acquired!]
[Help a butcher out!]
[One of the butchers in Greenwood has had a bout of bad luck. A well-paying customer has ordered very fresh rabbit meat, but the butcher’s regular supplier, one of the hunters, is out of town for some reason. This is where you come in! Gather the meat of a dozen rabbits, but be careful to keep the meat clean and not in pieces. The better the quality of collected meat is, the better the rewards.]
[Time limit: Until sunset]
Looking up at the sky, wishing for an enchanted clock, Sam nodded to himself, and with an errant thought, headed for the same gates that he used to enter the town.
‘Let’s see how good I am with the sword…’ he thought sarcastically, while frantically going over everything he could find out from his memories.
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Leaving the town was an easy affair, but the surprisingly awake guard told him that he should get an ID made if he planned to leave the town a lot.
These IDs were unique to each location, though some of them could be used in multiple countries or areas. But if you wanted to do anything more than exist in a place, it was highly recommended to register at the local office that handled such things. For example, in Greenwood, this could be done at the mayor’s office.
But for now, he was good with the guard simply knowing his face. IDs were more important in bigger cities where guard rotations happened frequently and the populace was big enough that no guard could, or even cared to, remember anybody’s face.
Sam headed directly to a field that was south of the town, where no areas were being worked by farmers, just the slightly tamed nature, tall grass with a few wildflowers and a dense forest awaited him. The entire forest was kept as a reserve, for the population to have something to hunt in, and of course, it helped that the forest was home to several beings that would erase Greenwood with their mere snort if the humans even thought about removing it.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry about those high-level monsters, as they lived way deeper in the forest, but there were several occasions in the past that one of them wandered closer to the town. And not just in Greenwood.
One of the famous events at the beginning of the game was at the town of Evergreen, up north (sadly too far away for Sam) where an ancient ice fox chasing one of its kits wandered too close to the town. And the players, of course, decided it was a bonus boss or maybe an event boss…
The area was renamed Ice plains, and until the highest leveled players reached around level 100, nobody even tried to get near that place.
He had a few tactics to deal with such monsters (which didn’t include fighting them, as you couldn’t even cheese the fights) but to his best knowledge, no such monster approached Greenwood around this time.
So, he only had to deal with the local equivalent of rabbits.
While their fur was indeed cuddly and soft, they were extremely territorial, yet placid. They would only attack, even a dragon (some ranger with rabbit pets tried it), if they were provoked.
And, of course, they were gigantic.
The males sometimes reached four feet in length, while the females varied between two feet and six, depending on the age. Thankfully, they were kept in check by the local predators…
Curiously, Sam couldn’t see any other players out on the field.
‘Maybe they already out-leveled the area?’
Not that Sam cared. They were all racing for the highest level, and he was here to build a foundation.
Walking a good distance away from the town (yet close enough to run back if he encountered something big and nasty), he looked around, took a deep breath, then slowly let it out.
‘So amazing… Compared to the VR games in my previous life, this is miles better…’
Shaking his head, Sam then turned his attention towards his goal. Namely killing the cute bunnies. They weren’t exactly running around freely like in other games, where the tutorial town always had a field full of level 1 monsters for people to level up and try out their new abilities. He actually had to hunt for the rabbits.
But once again, he knew something that most people didn’t.
The rabbits near Greenwood had a favorite flower they liked to nibble on.
So he spent a few minutes gathering said flowers, which looked like marigolds with slightly fewer petals than the ones found in the real world. Sam simply ripped their flowers off the plants, easily crushed them in his hands, then placed the resulting mush onto a flat rock in the middle of a clearing where the grass wasn’t as high as everywhere else. Then he took a few steps back and stood in an unfamiliar stance.
Making use of his memories, he unsheathed the sword, grabbed it with both hands, then waited patiently. Sometimes he moved a little, trying to find the most comfortable position that the stance allowed. In his previous life, he never once held a sword in his hand, yet the other Sam used the sword for years. And with that came a generous amount of memories and experiences about sword-wielding.
Luckily, only after a few minutes of waiting, Sam spotted one of the giant rabbits sniffing around on the other side of the rock, where he placed the bait.
The size of the beast was truly surprising. From where he stood, it looked at least three feet long, with short, but seemingly very fluffy, brownish fur.
Judging that the rabbit was close enough, he took a hesitant step forward, only for the rabbit to raise their head in alarm and look directly at him.
Then the rabbit growled. Growled!
He tightened the grip on the sword and waited for the perfect moment (according to his memories) to strike.
Then he took another step forward.
The rabbit growled again, then fell silent, but Sam saw its leg tense.
There was a moment of silence as if the entire field and forest fell silent just to witness the titanic battle between man and rabbit.
Then the rabbit jumped, and Sam slashed down.
Sadly, he only managed to catch the rabbit with the flat of his blade, and by the time he realized this, the rabbit gathered its wits, and once again jumped at him, aiming at Sam’s torso.
They danced around like this, with Sam slashing at the charging rabbit, either missing the animal entirely or only nicking it with the tip of his sword.
Finally, after minutes of draining jumping around, Sam was breathing heavily and his hands holding the sword were shaking slightly, but the rabbit was in a similar situation. Its hide was in tatters, bleeding from numerous small holes, and was glaring at Sam with the strength of a thousand suns, the bait on the rock long forgotten.
However, it was clear that the animal was too exhausted to move again. So Sam, swallowing heavily, took a big step forward and raised his sword with his shaking hands.
“Sorry, little buddy!” he told the rabbit while trying to calm his hammering heart. ‘This game is too realistic…’
He swallowed again, looked into the rabbit’s eyes, and swung his sword.
The sword landed with a heavy thunk on the ground, and the rabbit’s head fell silently into the dirt, blood flowing freely from its neck.
‘It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real…’
Sam closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths, trying to ignore the stench of blood originating from his first kill.
For a long moment, he reconsidered playing the game. After all, if the death of a simple (albeit gigantic) rabbit was this realistic, then what would happen the first time he fought people?
Would he be able to handle it?
Then he heard a crisp sound originating from inside his head, and as he opened his eyes, he saw a new screen.
[You killed a Giant Forest Rabbit!]
[You gained 10 Experience points!]
Broken out of his thoughts, he waved away the screens, retrieved some rope he bought from his inventory, and began the process of hanging the rabbit up to drain the blood properly.
While this was a game, and some processes took a much shorter time, some actions still had to be done to get the best quality items. He could have simply taken the corpse of the rabbit as it was, put it into his inventory, then handed it over to the butcher, but he would get a much better quality of meat back if he were to take the time to do some basic hunting activities. Like draining the blood.
Then, as his first hunt was being drained on a nearby tree, Sam squared his shoulders, quelled his hammering heart, and stepped back towards the stone where he left the bait, as he could already see another rabbit sniffing around.
He had some hunting to do…