“Iron Pickaxes! Come and get your Iron Pickaxes! Only 100 coppers” Tim shouted.
We had set up shop in the town square right beside some Guards. The NPCs didn’t seem to mind us yelling loudly right beside them.
“100 Coppers! What a rip off!”
“I don’t have 100 Coppers, will you take 3?”
“Give me all your pickaxes or I’ll beat you up… oh hi guards, I was just joking”
“Hey it’s me, your brother…”
“It’s unfair that you charge 100 Coppers! You exploiter!”
There was an angry crowed gathering by us, some of them were angry, others tried to look pitiful and poor and get a discount.
Seeing this I shouted, “We only have a limited quantity, once they are sold, they are gone!”
Immediately people stopped shouting and began buying pickaxes from us as fast as they could. Some people bought them and immediately tried to scalp them for a higher price. Within 15 minutes we were cleaned of our stock. I sold 18 pickaxes earning a cool 1800 coppers.
I contacted Mr. Morrison and tried to sell him information about not receiving fame from G rated monsters starting at level 10. Unfortunately the information brokers were already aware of that, seems like we weren’t the only ones leveling fast.
The average level of people in town was about 7, some players were level 9, but they looked like they were about to die from lack of sleep.
---
Afterwards we decided to go turn in our quests. First the Warrior Trainer.
The Warrior Trainer had us show our fiercest face to prove that we were truly a fierce warrior. We did convince him of that, but we were unable to convince him of getting any rewards.
[Quest Gained – Way of the Fierce Warrior]
[Perk Upgraded – Warrior become Fierce Warrior]
[You can make a scary face!]
Next was Louie, we forced Alfred to give us 10 copper ores each. We handed them to Louie. He looked at as strangely and asked “You sure you mined this?”
We both pulled out our iron pickaxes, Tim was a little less convincing because he was holding it sideways like a scythe. In the end I think Louie just gave up and handed us a reward… 3 copper coins.
I was pissed and stomped off, I should have known Louie was going to be so cheap. Louie tried to give me a quest to mine 20 iron ore, but we immediately declined it.
Finally we returned to the town mayor and completed the quest ‘Protect the Village’.
“Thank you kind heroes for helping to defend my small village!” The mayor began. “I was 5 when I first dreamed of…”
“SKIP” I yelled, bored of the conversation already.
“Although I can’t offer you much of a reward, I can provide you free passes onto the next caravan out. It will take you to the town of Brookhaven.”
[Item Acquired – Pass to Brookhaven]
[Use this pass any time to exit the tutorial and proceed to the Land of Magic]
[This Item is untradable]
Excitedly I turned to Tim. “This is great! The Land of Magic, I can’t believe this village was only a tutorial.”
Tim replied “Yeah Sweetriver sounds like a great town.”
Wait a minute, Sweet River. I glanced at my pass, it clearly said Brookhaven.
“You mean Brookhaven right Tim? You’re going to Brookhaven!”
We looked at each other in shock when we found out that we weren’t going to the same village. I had a lot of fun the past two days and to think that we’d have to separate was sad.
Tim shook me and said, “It’s going to be fine! We’ll just meet up in the Land of Magic, it won’t take long. Don’t be sad! Please don’t cry.”
“I’m… I’m not crying” I sniffed.
---
It was disappointing to have to leave Tim, but we had to keep on moving forward.
I picked up my Ginseng and make four pouches of health potions. I gave two pouches to Tim as a goodbye gift. To my surprise, Tim gave me an iron crafting knife he made from the leftover ore.
[Iron Crafting Knife]
[+10/+20 Damage -10% Crafting Cost when using the knife 50/50 Durability]
But unfortunately we had to leave. Both of us wanted to move through the game fast, and there was no point in staying in this village.
We said our goodbyes, and then we activated the Passes, ready to see what awaited us.
---
Well. The next thing I saw was Louie.
I was sitting in a blue armchair, in a small doorless room. The walls were padded, as if I was in some insane asylum.
Clap, Clap, Clap
“Hi Jack. You may know me, I’m the Overseer for the starting villages. Congratulations on completing the tutorial. You are only the 14,875th player to finish.” Louie started with a smile.
“14 thousandth…” I sighed “I thought I was doing pretty well.”
“Oh you are!” Louie smiled “This firmly places you within the top 0.15% globally. It is an outstanding achievement.”
“14 thousandth…” I repeated to myself
Louie laughed. “This is what I love about you humans, rather than benchmarking yourself amongst your peers, you only look at people who have more. It gives you that drive to be the best. Or it makes you miserable and never satisfied. It is both a blessing and a curse. How well designed!”
“Still” he continued, “Although you did well. Things aren’t going to be easy from here. Don’t try facing a pack of wolves with only one other person. It’s going to be much harder now.”
“What else is going to change?” I asked, keen to get some more information.
“Well the most important thing is everyone is going to be scattered throughout the new land, rather than separated in separate exact replicated bubbles. You can certainly return to the village at any time, I’d imagine you’d want to come back after level 100.”
It was a little uncomfortable having someone blatantly talk about all of my secrets in front of me.
“Hahaha,” Louie laughed seeing my frown. “I made this village, I made the woods, I made the rabbits everything is my work! I know all of the secrets to this place, and what you saw was only the surface!”
“What kind of secrets?” I asked, trying to prod more information out of Louie.
“That’s not going to work on me, my lips are sealed.” Louie mimed zipping his lips shut.
“Now,” he continued, “Why don’t you sleep a bit, you have a big day ahead of you.”
And before I could complain about not being sleepy at all, I fell asleep.
---
I woke up on in a horse drawn carriage. The ride was really bumpy and uncomfortable, it was a miracle that I could fall asleep on this thing.
I saw three other people wake up, they must be players. One of the players, an Asian looking girl with short brown hair mumbled ‘five more minutes’, rolled onto the floor of the carriage and went back to sleep.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The short brunet girl spoke up first, “Hi! My name is Sarah! I’m from Canada!”
“I’m Jack,” I replied, “I’m from the States”
“And I’m Gustav, from Sweden.” Gustav was dressed in full Iron Armor, and had a wicked sword by his side.
“Nice… uhh armor” Sarah asked, I thanked her for asking the hard questions.
“Thanks!” Gustav replied, “I made it myself! You can skip the requirements for Smith if you refine and make everything yourself. I never thought this hobby would be any use, but here I am.”
“Did you get Heavy Armor Skill? What does it do?” Sarah asked again. She talked like she was really interested in Gustav, giving him lots of eye contact and smiles.
“Yeah!” Gustav replied “It allows you to go into guard mode, level 2 gives you 6 damage block and -2 speed per piece.”
“And how about you.” She smiled sweetly to me, “I like your light armor, what does it do?”
“Yeah the helmet is great it is a … Wait a minute, your stealing information from me!”
Sarah started laughing “Drat I was caught!”
Man she was good.
Gustav recovered first, “Hey, I gave away the information because we should all be friend here.”
Sarah said encouragingly, “Yes, because you are such a nice… smart… man”
I tapped Sarah playfully with my fist, “Comeone now, stop messing with the blondie.”
She looked hurt, and then quickly changed her face and said “Fine, it’ll be more fun this way.”
I said encouragingly, “Yeah the four of us would be a fun team!”
Sarah glanced at sleeping beauty, who was passed out on the bottom of the carriage with her mouth open and drooling.
Gustav agreed, “Yeah if she was able to get through to here as fast as we were, she must be good.”
“Hey Miss… Miss…” Gustav tried to wake sleeping beauty up, but it was futile.
“Watch this!” Sarah said. She jumped on top of the other girl, shook her and shouted “The British are coming! The British are coming!”
Wham Sarah got socked straight in the face. The other girl sat upright, “Whaaa….” And Sarah started crying.
---
It took a while to calm Sarah down, she was crying about how much it hurts, and Gustav tried to comfort her. Then she complained about how uncomfortable the armor was. It is pretty funny seeing Gustav awkwardly trying to comfort her without touching her.
Denise, the Singaporean girl, sat at my side glaring at Sarah. Denise refused to apologize, saying it was Sarah’s fault.
Although it was a rocky start, but soon we were all laughing and chatting as friends.
“So” Sarah asked, “Totally not a psychology question, but what class do you want to be? I know that no one knows what classes are possible, but I want to be an archer!”
“I want to be a swordsman!” I said “I want to face dragons head on in combat!”
“I want to be a tank!” Gustav said excitedly “I want to test my armor against the fiercest of blows!”
Denise added “I want to be a martial artist, I want to beat people… I mean monsters up with my bare hands and toss em aside!”
“Wait” I said “Isn’t this supposed to be the Land of Magic? How come no one wants to do anything Magical?”
“Why don’t you Mr. Swordsman?” Denise replied sarcastically “Why don’t you become a magic swordsman?”
“Fair point” I stammered. Trying to change the conversation I turned to Gustav “He Gustav, do you know a skill called taunt? It’d be great for tanking.”
“Taunt? That sounds awesome!” Gustav said excitedly. “How do I get it?”
“All you need to do is swear at some monsters really loudly. The raunchier the swear, the more effective it is!”
Gustav complained “But I’m a nice guy, I don’t know if I could do that!”
“Hey! Let’s help him practice!” Sarah said excitedly. Gustav looked at her with gratitude and thanked her
Sarah had an evil grin on her face and continued “Now repeat after me Gustav…”
---
Gustav was red in the face when we pulled into town. He learned much about the world on the trip here, Sarah knew things that I didn’t even know, and I thought I was good at the internet.
Denise filled us in on the latest Newcomer gossip, apparently she had a good contact in the information brokers. Paris had been completely leveled, the AIs even removed the beloved Eiffel tower; however the AIs were building something aboveground too. There was a tall pyramid of metal, almost Egyptian.
The town we were approaching was far quainter. There was a wooden wall surrounding the town, we were told there were only two entrances, the North Gate and the South gate. The town itself was a collection of very tasteful wooden cottages with thatched roofs.
The area around the town was very dangerous, our Carriage was a part of a small convoy that had high leveled mercenaries as guards. The mercenaries were so far above us we couldn’t see their level, they suggested we pick a class before we left the town.
The town smelled nice when we entered, food sellers were all over the place and there certainly was not a lack of spice or smoke. It was a bustling town, although we didn’t see any other players, Children were running around, merchants on the street with their wares interacting with NPCs that were buying and selling.
We decided to split off and go to the class trainers first. Unfortunately there were only four classes to choose from, Archer, Cleric, Mage and Warrior. Sarah headed to the Archer trainer, Gustav and Denise went to the warrior class trainer.
Before Sarah left she put her hands together and said “You know it would be really awesome if you could become a cleric! Pleeease!”
“Fine” I grumbled. Sarah totally did not have any influence in this decision.
Guess I’m becoming a Cleric.
----------------------------------------
Thank you for reading! Writing this has been fun for me, and I hope you enjoy the story as much as I have been writing it.
Superloner noted yesterday that the game seemed too easy, and I agreed. The game got too easy, and it felt kind of boring. In addition I did want to do a soft restart, I didn’t add enough character and description to the story.
I just finished things up in the village a little faster than normal. Fear not, Tim will be back, the AIs will get crazier. I just hope to rebuild a more vibrant, colorful and enjoyable world.
This should be a good learning experience.