[p=center]Day 1[/p]
From the moment I spawned in the flash of light, I noticed that other players were also being born as well. It was only a month since the game had been released and still the rapid number of users was being born was still very high.
In total there were millions of players on at a time for a new virtual game that was released a mere month. That was something that was without precedent in this world. However despite the large number of new players, all of them immediately wondered off to do their own thing.
I looked around to scout the place first since that was one of the most important things to do. Knowing the area well enough will give you the advantage in the end however I must also consider various other things in this game as well.
The first thing is food and water. The system in Royal Road made it essential to drink water and eat food once in a while in order to survive. This element is popular with hard-core players but not that much for other casual players. But either way both groups get immersed into the game due to its new and realistic world with NPCs that seemed more like humans than anything else.
The place I was in, Citadel of Varhales was a moderate size city that was based around the centre which was the castle in which the ruler of the region, the Brent Kingdom lived. As such there were a large number of soldiers and knights in this city to protect the King. However no player was able to meet the King since a certain level of Fame was required.
Fame is something that represents how known you are in the game. If you do a good act you gain Fame in the form of how known you are for that bad action. If you do a bad thing then you gain Infamy in the form of how known you are for that bad action. However it was known that getting fame was extremely difficult but yet rewarding if you do.
[quart=Name,Alignment]Alice,Neutral[/quart][quart=Level,Profession]1,None[/quart]
Status Window
Race
Humann
Title
None
Health
100
Mana
100
[quart=Fame,Infamy]0,0[/quart][quart=Strength,Agility]10,10[/quart][quart=Intelligence,Wisdom]10,10[/quart][quart=Vitality,Stamina]10,11[/quart][quart=Offense,Defense]10,10[/quart]
[quart=Light,Dark]0%,0%[/quart][quart=Fire,Ice]0%,0%[/quart][quart=Earth,Lightning]0%,0%[/quart][quart=Wind,Nature]0%,0%[/quart]
Magic Resistance
0%
Elemental Resistance
This was the status window which in detail told you of your character. Along with showing your stats, it also tells you, your class and title as well. Class is something that represents the job you have such as warrior or mage. A title is something more special though as it represents the action in which you are known for. If you slay enough of a creature than you will be called the slayer of that creature and gain bonuses against it is one of the things I heard from the information given to me.
Another thing was Magic Resistance and Elemental Resistance. These are two different things but usually are stacked together. Magic Resistance is a resistance of magic in general, magic attacks or curses are reduced in strength the higher this is. Elemental Resistance is something that only affects elements. A 100% resistance in Fire Resistance theoretically make you immune to all fire related attacks.
As such people are looking for ways to increase elemental resistance in any way possible since it is one of the most useful things you can increase. However it seems it is even harder than getting fame in that aspect as well.
Looking at this city more closely it seems it’s a place that lives on the fashion that those who are nearer to the centre are richer. While the outer area of the city is mainly made up mostly markets and other shops that carter to certain professions while the inner are of the city are where most of the housings are with the more expensive shops lie such as jewellery shops and high quality decorative items.
Believing that I should know the city better I moved around the place making mental notes on where some key locations are such as the places to train, to sleep and to buy things are. There was a total of 5 different inns I discovered till the sun was about to set. There were also a large number of fountains around the city at places near the shops and all kinds of stores were around those places. The inns were mostly situated near the entrances of the city. It didn’t even take a full day to travel around the city though my pace would be considered higher than normal.
Checking my status window there was no change which was a bit disappointing, however my hunger bars and water levels were low to the point I needed to eat and drink something. After eating one of the bread the game initially provided for me and some water from the fountain with a water canteen, I decided to log off so I don’t need to spend the night in the game.
[p=center]Day 2[/p]
Logging back into the game from skipping the night, it was already almost noon due to me sleeping longer than I expected in real life. It seems I didn’t expect the game to mentally exhaust me more than I expected. But now and from now on I have to have a clearer goal on what to do.
The first thing I need according to the information I have is to get money to buy food. Although there are rare quests that would eliminate this, it was much easier and safer to just get a stable job for a while until the 1 month ban in game is lifted so you can go outside to fight.
The bread that had a mild taste remained me of the rations I had to eat for days at a time when I had to hide observing a target for weeks. That was not a good time and I ended up having to go to hospital in the end with a case of malnutrition since the time I spend there was more than the nutrition the rations gave me.
According to what I know, the most basic of food is the bread and it costs 3 copper each to buy. Each bread can increase the hunger bar by around 30-40% each time. I’m currently sitting on 30% hunger which means if I eat 2 more bread then I can get 100% fullness in hunger. However that would mean I would only have 7 more bread left and would not survive till the month ends
As such I decided to get a job. Looking at the shops and restaurants, it was known that you can get basic jobs such as delivering things or washing the dishes but they were low pay for long hours. For each hour you could get perhaps 1 or 2 copper at most unless you push yourself in which case you would only get a bit more but would not break even with the hunger you will gain. But you may be promoted to a slightly more enduring job in exchange which would have more returns for the efforts made.
I want to know this city better and also the people in it since they may give me valuable information on Seoyoon, my observation target. Because of this I went into a relatively empty weapon shop that seem to sell low quality weapons and took the filer for a job.
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Wanted: Person to deliver supplies and weapons to and from shop to customers
Requires: Just the determination to do so
Pay: 2 Copper per hour + Extra for tasks done
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Seeing this I went to the owner of the store who seemed to be an old man that was shorter than my 170cm height. I estimated his height to be around 150cm at most. Judging by his body structure that was muscular despite being that short, this man was most likely a dwarf and probably a blacksmith of some kind as well.
“I want to accept the job” I said to the dwarf owner.
The dwarf grunted and said, “Name?”
“Alice.”
“Kay, you’re in. Don’t disappoint like the others that quit in hours. Name’s Scon Blackfur, a blacksmith/shop owner,” Said the Scon.
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You now have a job at the store Blackfur Products
Pay is 2 copper per hour of work + Extra for tasks done
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Scon pointed at several large boxes and said, “These need to go to the smith on the end of the street. It’s the only blacksmith in this area so you can’t miss it. Tell Alwen the blacksmith there it’s from me and I want the usual shipment of weapons made from them. You’ll get 1 silver if you do this right.”
It seems the crates of boxes are in fact filled with several different types of metals used to forge weapons from them. I tried lifting one crate up but it was extremely heavy and only after adjusting my balance I steadily walked to the end of the street where the blacksmith lied. It felt to me that each crate was at least a hundred Kilos heavy but according to the information I have, everyone starts the same way with only 10 strength which was apparently the average stat for a small child.
However despite the low amount of strength I had compared to the amount I need for this job, my balance and instinct kicked in and I eventually made it to the blacksmith down the street. Somewhat dropped it on the side of the entrance another dwarf appeared who seemed to be Alwen looking at me.
“You must be a newcomer from Scon. Don’t look too tired, pick it up and put it near the back of the room.”
Picking up the crate again with pains in my back, I carried it to the back of the room and returned back to Scon’s shop to deliver the rest of the boxes. There were 4 more in total and it felt like my body was being ripped apart from the sheer weight I had to carry.
After exhausting myself several times for the rest of the day carrying those 5 crates in total, I sat leaning on the wall in the shop trying to catch my breath. A silver coin plus 16 copper coins was tossed to me as I lay exhausted. I placed them in my inventory before logging off.
[p=center]Day 3[/p]
After spending 3 hours in real life eating some food, taking a shower and getting a bit of sleep I re-entered the game back where I left it. Regulating my body was a basic skill you would need and by doing it properly for a long period of time, the body can be adjusted to stay active for far longer than a normal person’s. Right now from years of experience I can get by with 3-4 hours of sleep a day with some food. However Royal Road was sped up 4 times in game which means in one day, there was 4 days in Royal Road. Every 6 hours in real life was a day in the game.
And this meant the three hours I spent in real life was actually 12 hours in the game. If I alternate my time in real life and in game properly, that would mean I would spend exactly half the day in the game over 4 days. It was a simple thing to do logging off at night in the game and waiting in real life for day time. While there may be other changes in the future, this arrangement fit me well for at least the first month.
Back at the Blackfur Shop which sold weapons of varying quality, there was nothing to do at all since yesterday since that was the only work to be done for a while. As such Scon told me that I could do whatever I wanted since it would a waste of time and money for me to stay. Because of this I had a whole day of free time. I wanted to make a map of the city I could use and so I asked Scon for paper and something to write with.
“You think I would have something that expensive and even give it to you are free? Ha!”
That was Scon’s reply to the request. It seems that paper was quite rare in this world. No, according to information gathered, paper was just uncommon but there weren’t many people who were trained to write and read among the common folk. Only nobles along with certain professions could read and write properly. Because of this there was a high demand for scribes though no one would accept players as one that easily.
Because of this I spent time walking around looking at things while also trying to find the one called Seoyoon. According to the Dr, she was in the game but I couldn’t find her at all and we were in the same city! I guess it means I’m looking in the wrong places then.
It is also the third day in this game and I have to consider a class soon. While also getting money and food to eat, there was also the consideration of what kind of class to get. From my real life experience I would most likely be a thief of some sort. The skills that are associated with that class were mainly agility based and there were a few hiding skills and even tracking skills as well which made it perfect for someone like me.
However this class was one of the weaker ones in the defence and health department. One mistake and I would properly die. In that case, a class like warrior with high attack, defence and health would be also perfect as it is a good class for soling. Even in parties the warrior class shines as other classes can only support compared to it. The thief class also only shone properly in parties as well due to the high difficulty in using the class properly.
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Another class to consider is the archer due to its range ability. While it requires some skills in using the bow the advantage was that it had one of the highest range attacks known so far. The class’ tracking ability was superior compared to the thief’s as well in both enemy and trap detection. It was still unknown if there were more benefits to this class but it was something I would consider to go towards.
These were the three main classes that I would consider going to. However the magic classes were something I couldn’t even try to get. This was due to the unknown nature of magic to me. As someone who actual skill in the real world with weapons and spying, magic was something that was impossible for my instincts to accept. Another and more cruel reason was that magic users were all party classes where other people support and protect them when fighting due to their low health and defence as well as long cast times of spells. This was enough to deter me from the class itself but I knew the need and popularity of the cleric class as well as the mage which held the highest damage of all classes.
Thinking about classes I walked to the information guild which according to players gave them suggestions to classes based upon the stats you had. As someone who only played three days so far my stats did not change at all. Because of this I would not be able to get a suggestion to a class at all. Plus there was also a rule that newer player can’t get a suggestion as it would be a waste of time.
However from the information guild there was plenty of other information you could get from just staying there.
“Why did you run away?!”
“My health was at critical!”
“You were being healed so it didn’t matter!”
Such conversations that resembled a shouting contest were usually heard once in a while by new players that had recently gone into battle. The main problem of parties was that you needed to know the specs of you team-mates but people usually don’t want give out even some of the basic information they had to others such as the skills or weapons they had. Because of this and the generally new nature of the game, these kinds of things were common at least. However thanks to this, the ones who are at least informative are smart enough to stick around to see what kinds of things work and more importantly, what kind of things do no.
From the rest of the day I learnt that a team of mages is useless due to all of their long casting times as well as there were many people either running away from battle or just simply charging into the battle senselessly.
[p=center]Day 4[/p]
The day started again and this would be the first full day in real life I actually played the game. I was quite curious on the side effects the game had on the game since it speeds up the brain 4 times. There were already many theories thrown from overseas companies about the safety and health issue of the game even though this kind of technology was proven to be safe from previous testings.
It was simply out of jealously that these companies tried to complain even though their claims included the notion that something related to games and new technology was fine even though the same couldn’t be said for the military and new technology as well. It was something illogical that I couldn’t understand.
Today the Scon order me to go to the blacksmith that was owned by Alwen to see his progress on the weapons Scon ordered. I walked down to the blacksmith and to my surprise there were other people there. Though most of them were NPCs judging by their actions but there were still some players who were dwarves who fumbled in using their tools. Alwen quickly bashed them with words whenever they made a mistake.
“Scon want to know what progress you made.”
Alwen scratched his beard and said, “Most of them are made but the last few requests are beyond even my skills. You need a blacksmith with certain qualifications to make those weapons though I think there was one around here that could do that though not a blacksmith himself.”
Alwen pointed at the 10 crates that seemed to hold weapons in them and a smaller crate that had unused materials. I spend the next hour carrying them back to the Blackfur Shop and got another silver for it. However something unusual happened in which there was a window in front of me even though I didn’t call for it.
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You have gained 1 Stamina Point from your actions
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I checked the window and indeed my stamina increased as well. On the side of the menu there was a basic help screen in which what seemed to be a tutorial was there. I quickly checked it and it was mostly the information I knew minus some extra stuff that I found out from the information given to me from the start of the job or from finding out myself.
I looked under the list of gaining stats via actions. It read that stats can be gained via two methods, the easiest way was to just level up and you would gain 5 stats no matter what. Dying however makes you lose a level and those 5 stats at the same time along with decrease in skills you have. The other way was to accumulate actions in which increased the stat.
Strength was mainly affected by actions that included heavy lifting and the likes. Agility was affected by actions that involve quick movement. Intelligent and Wisdom were affected by the mental mind and was affected by accumulated information from books and the like. Vitality was connected to the actions involving the body’s health while Stamina was affected by the exhaustion of the energy in the body. Leadership was affected by actions that involve commanding over other people while Luck was the only unknown one that was affected by actions that involved chance and succeeding.
Those were the basic skills that all humans had though there were rumours with good sources that said that more stats could be gained after a while. This is supported by the fact that the tutorial said that there was a maximum of 15 stats a player could have. Including the ones you start off with, there were 7 more stats a person could get. Also from the information from the tutorial there was a maximum limit on the number of skills you could get while being classless as well. It was unknown on how many skill you could get with a class but the maximum amount of skills was 10 for the classless. That was one of the reasons besides having a stat bonus that having a class was so important. You would not go anywhere far without a class.
“So he wasn’t able to make those custom weapons eh” muttered Scon while looking at the unused material that was in front of him. After some words Scon placed the materials on the shelf while muttering below his breath on what he should do now. Words such as can’t leave the store and have a duty to still do the job was heard by me.
“Ah, Alice you can go then” said Scon without giving me the smaller details of what his plan was.
After expression this concern that I didn’t know he was talking about and he should explain it to me piece by piece, Scon was red face and quickly said, “I’ll explain it to you tomorrow or the day after, we now have materials to sell.” He threw an old book at me and said, “Read that and learn the prices of these weapons. It’s okay to scam people a bit to gain a bit more money but half of it better go to me haha!”
Scon was quite happy as he put up a sign that he store was no open. For the rest of the day I was forced to help Scon sell his weapons and a woman with silver hair with hints of red points was interesting enough to attract customers which made Scon extra happy to lure and bait people in.
For the first time I felt that Scon wasn’t exactly the respectable type of person and decided that it was still better than the normal trash that wanted to be respectable to begin until when it was convenient to them. They say a good person does not exist. But it’s more like a good person will die before too long.
[p=center]Day 5[/p]
The same thing happened from the previous day with me only being ordered to help Scon sell weapons at the store. However now I was also in charge of buying things from other people as well which was a lot more difficult than you think.
First you need to determine what kind of weapon it was and its approximate value. In this case the thing I’m holding was an iron sword. The status window of the weapon was as such though I had Scon identify it first.
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Worn out Iron Sword
Durability: 5/15 Attack: 7-12
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That would be a weapon that would have a value of around 10-15 silver at most on average. The next thing to determine was the quality of the weapon. The one in my hands was a worn out one but still had some edge so there was some skill in making this but it disappeared with time and use. Low quality iron swords were worth around 5 silver still which was more my small fortune altogether. However the high quality ones with extra effects were easily inflated to several Gold Coins instead.
“I’ll take is for 5 silver” I gave the person the average value of a weapon like this.
“What?” the person was confused and it was made apparent that this person was a player like me, “Why is it that low? I brought it for 20 silver at least!”
Another thing to consider is the durability of the weapon as well. A weapon which had lower durability was naturally worth less than weapons with high durability. It seems this person was delusional at least on this point thinking using a weapon and reselling it would still allow it to have the same value.
The player who was a male of around 20 years I think started complaining and was shouting that this place was a sham which drew that attention of Scon who was really picky on people who even indirectly insulted him.
A fist was thrown and the player was killed in one shot. There was a small commotion afterwards with some guards appearing but seeing the murderous eyes of Scon plus the fact it seems he was well known in this city to start with made the guards turn away.
“Never let them complain kay. If you complain then they will want to insult and that means worst business” advised Scon even though I could see some flaws in his logic with the fact that he killed a player without thinking much about it.
However since he could do that to a player that was seemingly higher level than me, than it was more than likely Scon was of a high level and could do the same as me. As such I shut my mouth with those distasteful comments and continued my work.
In contrary to my beliefs on killing a player will cause less people to appear, there were in fact an influx of more people coming to the store. Many of which wanted to talk to Scon apparently. After the fifth or so person, Scon put up a sign that said the following.
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Those who annoy me with talking will die. Buy something first, Scon
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This caused many people to leave as they didn’t actually have any money. But for those who started earlier in the month which meant they had 4 months in the game already, this made it easier for them to get to Scon.
According to what I know, Scon as a dwarf was not known for his blacksmithing skills like other dwarves are known for but his battle skill in combat. He was called the Iron Steel Wall against Dragons the natural enemies of the Dwarves and openly challenged a strong Dragon to a fight and lived to tell the tale though he almost died in the process. Knowing this my opinion on Scon was raised a bit higher due to the fact that he was at least known for something before he became like this.
Another name he was called was the battlefield blacksmith as he once often created new weapons on the go with little time and high quality to face enemies. Thanks to this and his combat skills, he was able to match the Dragon which I mentioned before. In terms of skills, he was lower than the average master blacksmith but his skills to quickly make quality weapons were unrivalled apparently.
This would also explain why his movement had a certain amount of skill or rather lack of wasted movements to them unconsciously.
The rest of the day was done with me and Scon selling as many weapons as possible before closing down. In total there was around 30 weapons sold to players which were sort of high quality but with low costs which would explain the reason why this store was so popular. In total I gained 5 silver today from negotiating prices to the players who had no idea of the true price of the weapons they brought. It was simply a few copper at a time but soon it added up to become several silver in total.
It was not a bad gain for a day of work. I logged off from the game and went with my general routine in real life which was now eating food as well as gathering information on the forums.
The problem was that I still did not meet the target Seoyoon after 5 days.
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Author's Notes:
- Word Count: 4800~
- The first chapter Wooooooo! Got the style of this series set down now. Its going to be similar to a journey style or a summary style based one. Frankly this is a copy and past sort of imitation style of Re:Monster which is also in the same format.
- Going to do this day by day which means I theoretically have a total of 2920 days to write which means 584 chapters at this rate :shock:
- More or less going with 2 pages worth of content per day as well unless something serious or important happens which means more pages for that day/less pages for less important days.