The scan on your iris and vein has determined that you are an unregistered user. Do you want to create a new account?

A feminine voice asked seemingly from right next to him. But Alexander floated in the middle of nowhere, just like in the training room of Kami in Dragon Ball, an infinite white world.

“Yes, please”

-- Select the name of your avatar –

“Someone”

He had always used that name in every single game he played, since he thought it funny when System message popped up saying:

“Someone has accepted the quest. Someone cleared the dungeon. Someone leveled up”

--Select your gender from male, female or neutral –

“Male, I consider myself normal thank you very much!!”

He was freaked out by the option to choose ones gender. Probably many perverts would choose the opposite gender and feel themselves up or even worse. Ewww.

~Hmm, Jonathan probably would choose to be a girl. I really should reconsider him being my friend ~ (Authors note: ~ indicates an inner monologue~, “when something is said out loud”)

--Royal Road has forty-nine races. You may select your race from the primary-twenty nine—

“Human”

Alexander didn’t have to think much about it, since Unicorn had provided detailed information regarding the different available races. They had posted about the different strengths and weaknesses of each one. And after much comparing between the different races in regards to what he wanted to achieve in this game and which skills and stats he wanted to level and increase he was left with the human race and elven race, but since he had a slight interest in sword fighting and no interest in magic, he was left with only the human race to choose from.

--You may alter your appearance in any two ways you like—

~Hmm that is interesting. They never mentioned something like this on their webpage.~

“Change eye-color to red. Change skin-color to raven-black during the night. Is that possible?”

--Please wait a moment. I am contacting the administrators. ……………. Thank you for waiting. The administrators have allowed your wish to be fulfilled, since you are one of the first 100 players to register.—

“Thank you. That is really great.”

--Your account has been activated. Your stats and class shall be determined while you are playing Royal Road. Now please select a city and kingdom you want to start at—

“The Citadel of Serabourg, Rosenheim Kingdom”

--Welcome to Royal Road. May your have a grand adventure on your journey to become the Emperor—

“Nah that doesn’t sound too appealing. I don’t like being the center of attention.”

Suddenly a bright flash blinded me. And the next thing I notice is that I am standing on a town square. Hundreds of people were bustling about. All of them probably being NPC’s since only a few hundred players have preordered capsules and over a hundred major cities and thousands of towns exist in Royal Road.

And Alexander had chosen this particular starting place since it was not in the center of the continent and most players will probably start in one of the center kingdoms, due to their bigger size and their geographical position on the continent. Exploring would be made easier by starting out in the middle.

He was amazed at how real everything felt. He felt ecstatic.

~This is so awesome~

Every sense he had told him that everything was real. It seemed unbelievable that something this life-like could be created. Jumping up and down and doing a number of shadow punches showed that his avatar has the same physical attributes as his real body. This seemed necessary or else players would be unaccustomed to their new bodies and would probably stagger around, but what would happen if one were to drastically change ones weight or height?

Pondering about different scenarios of which some brought a smile on his face he had started walking in a random direction. Mostly due to the reason that not a single map had been published by Unicorn. The reason was quite simple. They wanted players to have a general knowledge of the game before they started it, thus gave information about the main classes and a few other things, but they didn’t want the player to know everything. The player was supposed to figure such things out by himself.

Alexander had been walking quite some time now and hasn’t come across a single blacksmith or tailor. He could have asked someone but generally speaking Alexander was very nervous when speaking to a different person, even if they might have been a NPC.

After three hours of unsuccessful searching he found himself back where he had started out.

~DAMN IT~

After calming down he watched the crowd carefully, looking for a friendly face. He spotted many beautiful women around the square. In fact it seemed as if the programmers didn’t intend for there to be any ugly female NPC’s. The men on the other hand looked rough and tough in comparison to the suit-wearing men he was used to in real life.

Seeing an elderly couple he walked up to them.

“Hello there sir and madam. Can I ask you a few things?”

“What is it that you wish to know, dear?”

The woman asked my kindly. I felt more at ease now, because of their friendly manner.

“I am new to this continent and I am searching for a tailor and a blacksmith to help me along my way. And what can I do here in the citadel of Serabourg to get stronger, so that I can go adventuring in the future?”

This time the man answered a bit gruffer than his wife.

“If you follow that road you should reach both the nearest blacksmith and tailor in about an hour.

And for getting stronger you have to train day after day at a training ground. You can go to different training grounds according to your wishes. The training center is located two hours on foot in the direction of the palace that you can see from anywhere in the citadel. They shooting range is located a few minutes away from it and the mage tower is the big white tower you can see there in that direction. You will have to train hard to survive even the smallest dangers outside the city walls, young lad.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Thank you very much for that information and have a good day.”

I told them smiling brightly since now I knew where I needed to go and even got some information in regards to how to get stronger. When Unicorn mentioned how hard work would grant skills and stats he thought it meant leveling by grinding. But now it seemed as if simple training would provide stats and thus maybe by repeating tasks he could learn skills without having to be taught them by an instructor.

Whistling merrily on his jog to the tailor and blacksmith he thought of how easy this game seemed to start out with.

He reached the tailor first but could already see the blacksmith down the road. The sight of dozens of people sewing on clothes greeted him when he walked inside. A stern-looking woman approached him after a moment of standing around, not quite knowing what to do.

“Hello and welcome to ‘Tasha’s clothing’. How can I help you?”

“Hello, Tasha? I was actually hoping to learn the skill of tailoring here.”

“For that please proceed to the second floor. There you can find Miss Ingrid, the instructor. Have a pleasant day and please come back soon to buy yourself some fashionable clothing or even an adventurers outfit.”

Bidding farewell he went up to the second floor, easily spotting Miss Ingrid since she seemed to command everyone around her to work harder and faster. Approaching her wearily Alexander asked:

“Miss Ingrid ..”

She cut him off and asked if he wanted to learn to sew to eventually be able to sew beautiful pieces of clothing, which people would want to wear.”

“Yes, I do”

“And can you manage to sew on a button?” She asked squinting.

~It shouldn’t be that hard. I have seen many people sewing. Admittedly the first time was just moments ago.~

“Yes I believe I can sew on a button”

She handed him a piece of a shirt, a few buttons, a needle and a thread. Alexander took the needle and thread and a button respectively in one hand and started sewing on the buttons. Since he had no previous experience and didn’t really know what to do he tried to use the thread in a way to hold the button. The pronunciation lies on ‘tried to’. After pricking himself a number of times with the needle and the buttons either hanging down on the threads or falling off. Miss Ingrid took the shirt out of his hands, probably to show him how it is done, but instead said:

“Go away now and only come back after being able to at least sew on some buttons.”

Since I didn’t have any money in game to buy the necessary items to learn how to sew on buttons, I would have to invest some time in real life to learn how to do it.

Feeling depressed that it was much harder than it seemed I walked into the blacksmith hoping that I would at least be able to learn how to repair.

The blacksmith seemed to accommodate much less people than the tailor. Not even half the smithies were occupied, and Alexander realized that they were left open for the players, which would mean that Unicorn expected much more players to be interested in blacksmithing than tailoring, probably due to the fact that more players will choose a melee profession like a knight or a warrior, thus needing to constantly repair their equipment. And the ones that didn’t choose a melee profession would rather buy their clothing ones, since they won’t have to maintain it’s durability as often.

The blacksmithing teacher turned out to be a wiry tall mustached man with an intimidating aura around him.

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“I want to learn how to repair weapons and armor.”

“Oh! Really? So you wish to become a blacksmith and train to become a master blacksmith?”

the teacher asked Alexander happily. But Alexander just raised his arms in defense.

“No, sir I regretfully do not wish to become a blacksmith. I only wish to learn the craft, because of its various uses on my adventure.”

“Usually, one would have to show ones ability to fix broken equipment to learn the craft of blacksmithing. But since you are here willing to learn, how about helping me out? In a month’s time we are expecting many travellers like yourself to come to our city, but since they are still inexperienced they will need much basic equipment.”

The Blacksmith’s temporary Apprentice

Due to the high amount of travellers coming to the city,

the blacksmith has his hands full with work.

He needs the helping hand of an apprentice for the duration of a week.

Difficulty Level: E

Quest requirements: Willing to learn blacksmithing, high equipment demand, but low workforce.

Quest Rewards: learn the crafting skill ‘blacksmithing’ (the skill ‘repair’ is included and will not be counted as an additional skill).

“I will help you to the best of my abilities.”

“If you are able to complete 1000 swords by the end of the week, you will receive one additional reward.”

~1000 swords seem to be an awful lot. I don’t know if I will be able to complete that many in a week. I just hope blacksmithing isn’t as hard as tailoring.~