Yowo moved through the streets of Rava like a water serpent. Though she’d only been to the city a few times, she had meticulously studied the streets on the mini-map in her interface, knowing every nook and alley, as well as the main and secondary roads.
"This place is a rat's nest," she thought as she walked among the bustling bazaars crowded with beings of every imaginable race, from orcs to werewolves, tritons, and even a shifty-looking elf or two. "Better to know all the exits, though I’m sure none of the ones I’ve crossed paths with could take me on. But the city guards, with their heavy slow-down spells, are always around. I should finish what I came to do in this flea market and head back to the jungle."
Despite everything, she felt at ease. She moved through the cobblestone streets wrapped in a green cloak common among locals, which would have granted her some stealth if not for her beauty. Though the people she passed couldn’t see her face, they could glimpse her curves beneath the silk.
She hurried to the main market, where a bored-looking goblin with a long beard served customers at a wooden kiosk.
“Give me twenty mana potions and a chainmail with added magic damage,” she said.
The little green creature whistled when he saw the gold coins on the counter.
“Seems dungeon raiding pays off quite nicely,” he said, handing her a heavy red-tinged armor with metal spikes on the chest and shoulders. “Haven’t sold a level-three item since last year.”
Yowo merely shrugged as she stored the mana potions in her backpack and gazed in awe at the armor.
“Better to be prepared.”
She headed to a tailor’s shop and donned the chainmail. Then she read the stats displayed on the blue interface before her eyes.
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Profane Smith’s Chainmail: 800 health points. Reduces healing: 300 points.
Additional Passive: for every second in melee combat, the opponent receives true magic damage.
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"Music to my eyes."
After drinking two potions to max out her mana, she made her way down to the lower part of the city via some steep steps.
A group of burly orcs stared at her for a good while as she walked through a dark alley.
"Go on, boys. I wouldn’t mind boosting my experience. Just give me a reason," she thought, meeting the gaze of the leader, a two-meter beast with blood-red skin.
Although her new chainmail was ideal for fighting creatures like them, she spared them. With her current stats, defeating a group of high orcs would be as easy as slaughtering a litter of pigs.
Yowo had been designed to acquire abilities from four different classes—something unheard of for any other character in the server. The most powerful could acquire up to two classes, and even then, the second with significant limitations.
Though she’d made many mistakes at first, she eventually managed to adopt the roles of fighter, assassin, and mage. She hadn’t chosen the fourth yet, but she was as lethal as the mightiest warrior.
The lower city of Rava was an underground world where sunlight never reached. As she descended the dark cobblestone streets, she saw smugglers, thieves, and assassins of all races.
"This must be where all kinds of deals go down. Not even the city guards reach this point. If I were an NPC or even a player, I wouldn’t come here for anything."
She quickly found the inn thanks to the mini-map interface and took a seat at a corner table, where the torchlight barely reached. Her contact arrived at the agreed time.
He was a sturdy-looking triton in leather pants, in the form that allowed him to exist on land. He greeted Yowo with a disdainful nod.
“Gold first, then the information.”
The girl placed half of the agreed amount on the table.
“Sea folk sure are distrustful. I wonder if things down there are half as shady as they are here.”
“You bet they are. The king of Ixtul’s patrols are guarding the coasts as we speak, afraid that your people will attack by sea too. There are barely any patrols. Your bandits can do whatever they want in the Border Waters.”
After hearing the news, Yowo handed the triton the other half of the money, and he vanished into the shadows with his smooth skin and ridiculous clothes. She ordered a frothy beer, and as she drank it slowly, she glanced at the stats of the core she had left deep in the jungle. "My new orchard. My new slave farm."
CORE OF THE GODDESS TLALOC
* Accumulated Experience: 3,600 points.
* Number of Buildings: 20.
* Linked Heroes: 4.
* Controlled Creatures:
* 35 primates,
* 28 macaws,
* 1 harpy (hero creature), current dungeon boss.
The last notification caught Yowo’s attention, and she expanded the information on her interface.
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Navare’l: The Winged Shadow of the Forest. Level: 2.
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She examined the image of the creature closely.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
"She’s beautiful, like me. No, her nature makes her even more beautiful." She took a sip of beer as she admired the curves and long hair of the bird-woman. "I need to go see her immediately."
Before leaving the lower city, she stopped by a mount shop and bought a tiger with the gold leftover from her last dungeon—a type-three portal infested with vampires.
She rode the massive feline up the stairs of the suburbs, soon reaching the outer wall. With the fierce appearance of her mount, she easily carved a path through the streets. It was time to return to the jungle.
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Meanwhile, a dolphin devoured sardines with eager enthusiasm on the ocean floor, while Kulad stroked its back gently.
"Come on, sweetheart, we don’t have much time."
The other triton next to him chuckled, although his gaze darted nervously in every direction.
"Relax, brother. It’s Monday in my world; not many players log on to come to the forbidden zone," said FinHunter to reassure him.
Kulad tried to calm down, but he couldn’t forget the last time he ventured this far from Coral City. The mission had gone wrong, and a group of underwater bandits had ambushed them, stealing all their equipment and killing them slowly and painfully. He not only lost three levels but had taken a full week to respawn in Nautiloria, the far-off reef capital.
"Maybe others think like you do, and that’s precisely why today is a prime time to collect fish... and rookies."
"We’re no rookies, Kulad," said his hunting leader as he handed his dolphin a bit of seaweed, having already filled his load. "I’ve been playing this game for over fifteen years."
"Sure, but with this newbie gear and hardly any PvP experience, we might as well be noobs."
Their dolphin completed its load of two hundred sardines, and they swam back to the nearest coral zone—a tiny habitable island amid the ocean’s vast floor.
"There’s no way I’d want to be stranded in a place like this without a mount." He thought, looking at the vastness of the ocean floor.
They exited the "Void" within two hours and reached Sky Valley, Kulad’s island, a place filled with houses and buildings made from corals of various colors.
These underwater cities were inhabited mostly by tritons, along with other amphibious classes.
It took them a while to get through the traffic and reach FinHunter’s small dungeon, if you could call a sardine-and-barnacle warehouse that.
The dolphins unloaded seventy percent of their haul, absorbing the rest as fuel. This was their third trip of the day, and according to FinHunter, they still had two more to go.
"The longer we stay, the more players will log on, and the greater the risk," thought Kulad, fearful but resigned. Though he wasn’t his partner’s slave, he needed the gold this risky “farming” job in the Void provided. It was the only way to support his parents and siblings. For a low-caste triton, this was one of the few jobs that paid enough to survive.
The two tritons swam on their dolphins past various coral buildings, slowly leaving behind the high algae dominating the underwater jungle.
As they ventured farther from the coral island, the vegetation grew taller and darker, soon leaving behind any official triton patrols mounted on young sea dragons, which regulated farming laws and controlled inter-bandit raids. This would be Kulad’s dream zone, but the loot was cheap, which didn’t appeal to his boss.
"He also finds it boring because there’s no risk of evading enemy gangs."
As they neared the usual fishing bank, the NPC triton decided to ask his master a question that had been gnawing at him for weeks.
"Why haven’t you thought about expanding our hunting party?" he asked, casting caution aside. "If you bring more players, whether you control them yourself or get a friend from your world to join, we could accomplish more with less effort… and far less danger."
Luckily, FinHunter didn’t seem offended and responded with indifference.
"You know I like to keep things simple, Kulad. What’s wrong with two people doing a job usually handled by seven or eight tritons? True, the loot isn’t huge, but it’s enough to pay you and make improvements to the warehouse. A couple more years of steady farming, and we’ll have enough to hire mercenaries for the dirty work. Then, we can handle fish processing safely back in the shed. For now, let’s focus on getting by day-to-day."
"Sure, for him ‘a couple more years’ means another decade." Kulad thought bitterly.
Time was Kulad’s enemy in this job, as he didn’t have many lives left. Without him, his family would surely starve. For his part, FinHunter could easily hire another NPC from the city or create a new character altogether.
Kulad focused on the navigation toward the farming area to calm his anxiety. He knew that, for his boss, this was just entertainment—a diversion from his “boring life out there,” as he’d mentioned on more than one occasion. He only had to help him enjoy the fantasy if he wanted to keep his job.
"For FinHunter, this is just a game—literally. A game where he can build a fictitious business, feel the thrill of getting decent loot, even if he risks losing gear and mounts he worked so hard to acquire. For me, it’s life itself."
Ignoring his situation, he urged his dolphin forward, watching as it swiftly consumed unsuspecting sardines when they reached the pool.
Just as both dolphins were nearing full load, Kulad noticed unusual movement in the submarine horizon with his metallic eyes.
"It can’t be."
He hurriedly opened the blue mini-map in his interface and saw that, indeed, a group of at least twelve beings was moving in their direction.
He sharpened his gaze, confirming they were harpooners on orcas—a gang specialized in preying on rookies in the Void.
"Sir, they’ve spotted us! We have to go now!"
The player looked as scared as him, but ambition gleamed in his eyes.
"They’re almost done loading. Then we can lose them in the kelp."
The dolphins filled their load points in what felt like an eternity to Kulad, but once ready, they shot off like lightning.
From time to time, Kulad glanced back, confirming the hunters were drawing closer.
"They’ve got prestigious mounts. If their cosmetics look that good, I can’t even imagine their stats."
Kulad and his leader wore only light mail and wielded a silver spear—no match against these hunters.
The first harpoon narrowly missed his back. With the orcas' speed, they’d catch them long before they reached the reef. Killer whales were almost twice as fast as dolphins and far more intelligent, able to perform complex formations and ambushes beyond the smaller cetaceans' abilities.
"We can’t go into the kelp, or they’ll catch us in a heartbeat! Change of plans—head to the surface. Follow me!" FinHunter shouted, glancing worriedly at the closing enemy players.
"How can he enjoy this? I’m about to piss myself," thought Kulad as another splinter almost pierced his smooth skin.
Years of experience allowed him to maneuver atop his dolphin with unpredictable feints, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the harpooners improved their aim.
"They must have maxed-out ballistic scrolls, giving them homing accuracy."
As they neared the surface, fishing traps set by boats started appearing.
FinHunter began dodging them with ease, which Kulad quickly imitated, but it shortened the distance with their pursuers.
With a quick glance, Kulad saw one enemy caught in a trap. But the rest were still too many. They were nearly upon them.
Then the misfortune he’d feared struck. In a rapid attempt to dodge one harpoon, he failed to see a net in time and got caught, along with his dolphin.
Before the harpooners closed in with their hungry orcas, the net rose to the surface. It was over. He was now a pirate's prey, and unless they bound him, he wouldn’t be able to respawn in the kingdom’s capital. His days were now reduced to slavery, and his family left to face poverty in Sky Valley.
Three ruffians tied him hand and foot to the mast on deck.
"Look, Captain! Our third triton this week, and he’s brought us a fish for dinner. We really struck gold."