Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest
Leonardo da Vinci
‘Where am I?’ David Lee thought before seriously contemplation his situation.
He searched around the old barn but could only see the rusty wooded walls, starched dry hay that smelled of urine and animal droppings. He also spotted the flock of sheep that surrounded him. They were fairly clean but were shivering in fright.
"Uh, G'day?" He said while waving towards the group of trembling marshmallows in a friendly manner.
Baaaaaa
The marshmallow like animals returned the greeting, and after a few minutes, they begin to slowly drop down their guards. They quickly got back to their ordinary life, munching on dry straws while drinking water from the watery buckets and forgetting everything thing that just happened.
He slowly stood up from the cold hard earthy ground with some dry stubborn straws that were stuck onto his clothes. He then searched around at his own body, only to find that everything was the same from before he died. He still had the same ball boy uniform on, his body is the same, and he had no terrible wound on his head.
He thought about what the woman said at the afterlife terminal.
“You will be sent to a random world”
Maybe he was sent to back to Earth? Because he everything he saw so far in this ‘world’ fairly resembles Earth, perhaps he could find his parents again. But how will he explain the situation, after all he had died.
'Mother, Father...'
He couldn't help but get teary eyes, droplets of tears dripped down his face, a young man sobbing could be heard throughout the barnyard. He walked forward towards a bucket of water, shoving the sheep that was drinking peacefully to the side.
Baaaaaaaa
That sheep kicked off with its leg and hid behind its fellow kind, frightened by the sudden push from the strange human. That sheep then curiously looked toward the human from afar, only to see that human cry-baby staring at the reflective mirror of the bucket water.
David Lee touched his own face, it was exactly the same as before. Every detail was painted perfectly. His handsome rugged sharp-faced head, thick manly eyebrows, dark hair, brown eyes, blue shorts, a plain white t-shirt, sneakers, long white socks, and a tennis ball his pocket.
He knew that it wasn’t his original self, it was a perfect clone because his past self-died. Maybe his original body is being buried by his parents right now…
‘Wait?’
‘Tennis ball hmm?’
He grabbed the tennis ball out of his pocket slowly.
‘This came with me too?’
Throwing the ball up and down in his palms had made him calm down considerably, but he then realised that he didn't have his dragon bracelet anymore. His family heirloom was gone just like that.
‘What was it exactly and why did my birth family have something like that?’ He thought strangely.
He then started to play with the tennis ball, bouncing it everywhere out of boredom. It was miraculously able to calm his mind.
The sheep were watching with blank faces, ‘what a weird human’ they thought as they sat down as a crowd, watching the human bounce the ball over and over.
[Notice]
+ 1.01 Ball Handler EXP
[Ball Handler] [Level 1, EXP 1.01/100]
A message appeared through the holographic interface, He couldn't help but open his eyes widely as he was dumbfounded. This was real life here and all he did was bounce a ball for around a few minutes, and was giving an experience point?
Mumbling to himself as to keep himself sane, he didn’t notice that the barn door was opening from behind him.
"Excuse me"
"Excuse me..."
"Boy with the weird clothes, over here!" A sweet-sounding voice resounded through his ear, he couldn’t help but turn around while rubbing his eyes that had gone reddish from crying too much.
‘Huh?’ He hadn’t hallucinated, so he really heard a woman’s voice?
He had turned around, but his face was stunned still. Obviously, he was shaken up as he accidentally dropped the tennis ball, it went rolling towards the now opened barn door where he could see a bright shiny sun light up the outside world, but also the sun shine reflected off the skin of the woman making her seem like a goddess.
She was a young woman who looked to be around eighteen years old, she had long black hair, white rosy skin, and her dress was fairy like with many different flower patterns, her perfume smelled like a freshly plucked peach, coupled with her clear blue eyes that were like the oceans at a five-star holiday resort island, her cute button nose and her sharp exquisite eyebrows had raised her beauty many folds.
She was unfortunately sitting down in a wooden wheelchair with crossed arm with a hint of anger in on her face, but when she saw his reddish teary eyes, she eased up a bit.
"What are you doing in my farmhouse?" She said courteously.
"Uh, I got lost, I stumbled upon this barn by accident, I'm sorry if I had intruded..." David said slowly while trying not to look at her legs. He had accidentally caught sight of her silky smooth long legs. He was about to drool as something arouse within his heart, but he firmly kept a straight face, trying to not seem like a pervert.
"Hmmmm" She was thinking carefully while trying to see through the strangers’ statement, her eyes checked every inch of his body before smiling slightly, she decided that the boy was trustworthy.
"What’s this?" She said curiously at the rolling green ball, the ball rolled softly towards her wooden wheelchair, leaning just below her legs.
Again, David tried so hard not to stare at her rudely, but as he was about to respond, he saw something that shocked him.
"Woooooooosh”
‘Magic!?!.’ David had almost yelled out as he saw this scene.
The beautiful girl was sitting quietly in her chair when all of a sudden, a gust of wind appeared. The wind turned visible as it was slowly caressing her skin, then a bright blinding light appeared. The bright light was azure coloured, he was awestruck by the sight.
A long azure coloured ribbon appeared from under her sleeves, it extended to the ball like a soft whip, the ribbon grabbed the ball pulling it towards her palm. She grabbed a hold of the bouncy ball before recalling the magical ribbon back towards her sleeves.
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"Hmmm... It’s a little hairy and squishy, it also smells like grass?" She said confidently as she continues to squeeze the ball in her soft slender palm.
"Hey, you, what is this thing?......... Hellooooooooo." She said while clicking with her free hand towards the stunned boy.
“Uhhhhhh” David Lee was just speechless.
He was just standing there like a dead zombie, his mouth was just hanging open, but some of the filthy fruit flies decided to land in.
‘Cough cough’
Spitting out the fly in disgust, he finally stumbled out of his stupor before being able to hear what she just said. He couldn't help but elevate this woman in his mind. One of that on a higher scale than that of a goddess, her pure visage, her beauty vastly overshadowed that busty thot who he saw in the afterlife.
"Oh. Goddess of Beauty and Love, that is just a tennis ball" He responded, but immediately regretted it, who told him to be bad at flirting, all he did was rely on his good look to score girls.
But fortunately, she had giggled at his response, and then she flashed him a bright smile, which showed her perfectly pearly white teeth. This made him blush bright red, he shyly tried to avoid eye contact due to embarrassment, he wanted to dig himself a hole to hide in.
"Ten... tennis ball, what’s that? is it a weapon or magical artefact?" She said playing with it in her hands, rubbing it with her soft dainty palms.
"It's a normal ball, like a toy, for playing sports" He said dumbfounded, ‘Did this thing look like a weapon or magic artefact?’
"Sports? what's that..." She said, unsure of the term.
"Uh, you know like a game you play" He said with doubt, ‘Surely you would had heard of tennis or the term sports?’ He thought.
"A game? Like chicken?" She said with a sudden understanding.
"What’s chicken?" He replied.
"Eh, you don't know... it's like this, you have to find a giant monster and whoever runs away first is the chicken" She said as if it was common knowledge, looking at the boy as if he had been living under a rock.
"Sounds dangerous" David said while trembling, he had just realised, he had seen magic, and this girl does not know of tennis or sport, he realised that he was not on Earth!
"It is, my cousin died playing it, sigh, may he rest in peace, he played with a group of friends in the forest, they chose to pick a Volcanic Flame Rooster as the monster, but its giant beak bit of my cousins’ head because he didn’t move at all" She said not realising what David Lee was going through.
"Oh.... my condolence..." He said with watery eyes because he was still thinking about his parents, but the girl thought it was because of what she said.
"Hmm it's ok, by the way, tell me more about this tennis" She said, trying to move onto a lighter topic.
"Oh, it's like this…”
What seemed like an eternity, was only around two hours, he was chatting to her passionately. He forgot how much he loved tennis, so he shared all his knowledge. She was intrigued, her eyes sparkled with longing, but then she looked down towards he legs that were slumped down on the wheelchair unable to move a budge.
He sensed this, and he wanted to know what happened, but she avoided answering with sad teary eyes, so he tactfully moved on and away from this subject.
Continuing with his story, the girl voiced out her thoughts and said she still feels like it was weird to call a score love. He too felt the same way, and they grew closer due to having the same agreement.
After told as much as he could about tennis, he wanted to know more about the world he landed in.
She thought it was weird, but he told her that he was from a faraway land, well it was believable considering tennis is not known in this world and that his clothing style was something she had never seen before, even his shoes, and also he has something called socks which she had never seen before.
She thought it was a great invention because it can warm up the feet. No sock has been invented yet. She wanted a pair of her own, but it would be useless because her crippled leg won’t feel the warmth that it provides, but at least she could style her foot and legs. She made a mental note to make some in her free time.
Her name is Maggie and the area they were currently at is in a low tiered kingdom. He was shocked to learn that there everyone everywhere had an interface. That this world had dangerous dungeons that host multiple different types of monsters that only exist in fiction stories. The higher tiered kingdoms had more dungeons, they also have plenty of sects, schools, organisations and noble families that monopolize and conquer everything. Only leaving the crumbs to adventurers and citizens.
There are Dungeoneering, Mage and Warrior Guilds and others in almost every town. She told him that there is almost every type of guilds for every type of class or job in this world, but some rare class had guilds that were rarely seen. Such as something like a Dragon Hunter Class. There was only one guild in existence for that class, but its location was unknown to the public.
You can only sign up to guilds that represent your class or job.
There’s a universal identity card for this world, it shows your name, age, race, level and class. Maggie had a unique mage class, arcanist, but unfortunately, she had an accident which in turn ruined her career as a Dungeoneerer.
The card also changes colour depending on your total average attribute, and like Dungeoneering levels, higher average attribute can get you into special regions in a dungeon, or hidden sections of the dungeon shop. Some people also say the average attribute hidden sections are better than the Dungeoneering hidden sections because it is much harder to raise your average attributes as there are ten attributes in total that you had to raise to get a higher average attribute score, while raising your Dungeoneering is simple.
If you were average ranked;
F, your identity card was Green,
E, Bronze,
D, Silver,
C, Gold,
B, Platinum,
A, Diamond,
She didn't know what came after diamond, but Maggie slowly took out her dungeon identity card.
Maggie Faeris / Age 18
Human / [Dungeoneering: Level 10]
Title: Nil
Class: Arcanist [Level 14]
Subclass: Tailor [Level 17]
Average Attribute: F+ [Green]
She wanted to see his card, but he said that he had lost it, so he would have to buy a new one at the local Dungeoneering guild. It was said to cost around 5 silvers coins, which he didn’t have.
So, he figured out that levelling up Dungeoneering was different to levelling up your main class and sub class.
Levelling up Dungeoneering, gets you access to the higher levelled dungeons. Access to an exclusive dungeon shop. This system was rumoured to be created by the gods. Maggie was level 10 in Dungeoneering, but it was still too low of a level to access this exclusive dungeon shop.
Since you can only level this Dungeoneering in a dungeon. Having her legs crippled had crumbled any notion of being able to advance in this category anymore, because nobody would team up with a cripple like her to challenge a dangerous dungeon expedition.
Classes are entirely different, you can level both your main and sub classes anywhere in the world. Sometimes levelling classes, or skills can boost your attributes. But there is something called Gods Shackle. This limits the levelling of attributes harshly.
For example, if you have both, a main class warrior and a skill that boost your strength. When you level your Warrior class from one to level five, you get a strength attribute boost.
F will go up to F+
But when you also level that strength skill from one to five, you can get another strength attribute boost. Which in theory would get your already strength attribute of F+ to E-
But unfortunately, because of Gods Shackle, it won’t work. The System only rewards quality and not quantity. Things of similar attribute and level will not stack. So, the attribute boost of the strength skill will become voided. Therefore, it is best to have many different classes and skill that branch out to other attributes, so they don’t conflict. But by going this way, it also makes your focus spread out too much, thinning out your strong points.
You also need to take note of synergy. You can’t just any random skills of different attributes, you need skills that can stack up a combo, like a chain of attacks that connect perfectly with each other. Your killing and fighting ability is much more important than maintaining an equal and balanced attribute. This is why many people will just focus on what is good for battle. ‘Who cares if every attribute is raised equal’ they are just focusing on skills that can connect and chain together.
Therefore, some people of the world will just forget an unimportant attribute entirely, perhaps keeping it at F rank while they focus on their main specialty, this also keeps their average attribute to an all-time low and that’s why 60% of the population are not able to unlock higher hidden average attribute regions.
Levelling up Dungeoneering will not give you an attribute boost, but everything else will. And in every five level up, you will get an attribute boost. But David Lee felt it was a pity that the God Shackle was there otherwise he would be able to choose two similar class, to boost a single attribute to A or S rank very fast.
Maggie has a few skills, they were giving to her by her class, including a bunch of arcane skills like the azure ribbon, and some tailor skills, skills can also be levelled up. Some skills can evolve.
Evolving a skill can increase your attributes accordingly. but this is an extremely hard thing to do. Even if you max level a skill, it won’t evolve. You need to properly understand the secrets of the skill. David Lee suddenly thought that this was like understanding a Dao path in certain cultivation novels. If you understand a skill so deeply and intimately, making it become one with yourself, then evolution of a skill would proceed. From what Maggie knows, you can evolve the same skill many times, but only nobles, geniuses or people with a strong backing are known to do this.
After learning a little bit more about the world, they were interrupted with a set of footsteps coming out from nearby. A young man was seen entering the barn.
"Maggie, so this is where you are" He said with a cheerful voice.
"Oh Malcolm, I was just talking to this young man over here" She said in return with a smile.
"Eh? who are you!" That boy said with shock and turned vigilant as he pulled out his sword. David was now trembling in fright from the dangerous new threat, the sword points directly to his low part, threatening to cut ‘that’ off ruthlessly.