Quickly rushing out of the Blue Moon Inn, he found himself in a city. It had been such a long time since he had directly been in a city. In all honesty, he was a little overwhelmed, as he hadn’t been near a group of people for a while now. However, his pride and his matured mind had already beaten down the slight nervousness, “These were only mere humans, weren’t they? Well, I’m the same as them now, but I will soon rule over them all.”
Since it was a beginner’s quest, it highlighted the path to where the closest monsters were located. He chased after the glowing yellow trail, while he tried to eavesdrop over the other players. His appearance was that of a new player, so nobody paid him any mind as he walked to finish his quest.
Listening to the other players, he realized something. They all had different manners and habits when speaking, it seemed like they had connected from different regions. Though the game automatically translated their mother tongue into the regional language, it still kept their tone and facial habits when speaking. However, if he noticed a common trend, it was that most of them spoke in casual and laid back tones as they communicated with the NPCs and other players.
“‘Yo, how ya doing?’ Hmm, that’s not right, that’s a little too enthusiastic for my taste. How about, ‘Hey, how are ya?’. No, that’s too casual for me. ‘How are you doing?’, that makes it sound too familiar with the person. Eh, whatever, I’ll just say what comes to mind.”. He was constantly trying out greetings in his head. Even he knew that greetings were vital when keeping a conversation, so he copied their manner of speaking.
Shaking his head, he could only let out a depressed sigh. Yet, after doing so, he felt a flame had lit up inside him as he breathed out a determined breath. How foolish and blinded must he have been just a short few minutes ago, so what if his experiences were fake? So what if Abaddon was just a villain meant to be defeated by the “heroes”? He was now Kezner, another one of those humans, however he would trample all of them and rule over as Abaddon again, his potential was a lot more than when he was a demon. Even that didn’t matter, what truly mattered was reigning over the humans in what they called “Earth”.
“Ha, ha, I the great demon that had ruled over this world, will reclaim this position once more!” Kezner laughed towards the sky with a determined yet expectant tone. He was awaiting what was in store for him in this journey.
This enthusiasm quickly turned into embarrassment as he realized that people were staring at him with strange gazes, causing him to keep his head low and pick up his pace. Some laughed, some snickered, some cringed, but most of them felt second-hand embarrassment.
“Oh god, it’s a weeb…”
“Yo did you record that? Send that shit to me, I’m posting it.”
“Don’t lock eyes with him, these types of people are…”
On that day, a video titled “Crazy weeb talking to himself in public” was circulated around and laughed at, the worst part was that Kezner didn’t even know that they could record things, if he did, he would have been more careful about his image. Sure he was arrogant because he was once Abaddon, but in reality, he was a weak level 1 human right now. He looked stupid when shouting those things in public.
Following the highlighted path, he finally reached a large open field. Most areas that monsters spawned in were dungeons, however it was easy to get overwhelmed in dungeons as a level 1, so the developers added an open field with low level monsters to allow players to reach a satisfactory level to fight in dungeons. In the field, the monsters would spawn every one to five minutes in a random spot in the field, it was to stop spawn camping.
Kezner didn’t even have to wait, because the field was already filled with monsters, primarily rabbits. These rabbits, the Giant Rabbits, were the same height as an average man, and they were a hell of a lot stronger than normal rabbits too. Their large watery eyes and cuddly bodies were just deceptive mechanisms to have players hesitate in the middle of a fight. However, what you wouldn’t know at first glance was that these Giant Rabbits were predators. They ate meat and only meat.
However, their deceptiveness had to make up for their lack of strength. They were usually level 5-7, but were barely strong enough to kill a person in a few hits. Originally, there had been much backlash to killing such cute animals, but after they killed a few hundred people on the same day because of these fuzzy cute bastards, everyone gulped down their words and picked up their weapons.
“Ah, it’s this place, I almost didn’t recognize it. Heh, heh. Mitun, you bastard, you honestly thought you could fool others and expect to resurrect yourself by then? Fool, I overlooked this place in the past because of your weakness, but now that I am weak, I can’t allow you to take your revenge, not yet at least.” Kezner knew exactly what this field originally was, this field was originally Mitun’s Forest, Mitun’s resurrection point. Gods and Devils could die, but they could always resurrect. The speed of their resurrection depended on the belief of not only humans, but every race in Megrove. If a God or Devil was a small grain in the sands of time, they would truly die and never resurrect.
Mitun was still prominent as an Old God, but his position was quickly being eaten up by a New God. Gods and Devils all had specified titles and abilities, meaning no two deities could have the same powers, so they had to fight each other for that position. For example, Mitun, the God of Life, was an Old God while a New God, Kertun, was also the God of Life, so Mitun and Kertun had to fight to secure the position of God of Life.
Kezner understood how the cycle worked. In reality, the Old Deities were actually New Deities at some point. Just like any other species, there were generations, and although deities relied on deification to survive, they could still die out, causing another generation to replace them. However, what was interesting was that from Kezner’s experiences, there were never two generations alive at the same time. A new generation usually took place once the older ones perished.
So Kezner’s goal wasn’t to stop Mitun’s resurrection, it was just to move the resurrection point and slow it down a little. Mitun was one of the Noble Gods, so his believers and followers would die for him in a heartbeat. Their belief was strong and airtight. Because of this fanaticism, he would be one of the first to get resurrected and after that, he would speed up the resurrection of his old companions and fight against the New Deities.
Since Kezner was bound to be in the crossfire, he might as well puppeteer this situation a little. By slowing down Mitun’s resurrection he would accomplish two things, the first would be to buy himself more time to get strong enough to compete against them, the second would be to buy more time for the New God, Kertun, to be born to have a fighting chance against Mitun. Mitun already had a firm foundation as an Old God, he already had followers and influence. While Kertun was recently being birthed, he didn’t have stable footing yet. If Mitun and Kertun fought, Mitun would beat Kertun in an instant.
There was a catch to a deity’s resurrection. They would be most vulnerable during the process. Kezner, however, was too weak to change the resurrection point. He felt it in his muscles and bones, yet he was still lacking the strength to move Mitun’s Shrine. A shrine wasn’t an organization like a church, temple or cult, it was more like an indestructible core of a deity. This core was where the deity would resurrect, and it was the central point of where the followers’ prayers went. However, just because it was indestructible didn’t mean it was immortal, but once prayers stopped coming in, the shrine would quickly deteriorate and return into natural energy.
Deities were centered on natural forces, and they all had their counterparts. Mitun, the God of Life, had his counterpart Gorbal, the Devil of Death, but that didn’t mean they were enemies, actually they were close friends and companions, some may call them brothers. On Earth, God and Devil were good and evil, black and white. In Megrove, God and Devil were two entities, they opposed each other, there were also malevolent Gods and benevolent Devils, the reason it separated them was because they would naturally dictate over two of the largest realms, heaven and hell. Their influence reached the beings in the mortal realm and required their belief to continue surviving.
To the former Abaddon, he didn’t care about such trivial systems, he never wanted to be looked up to, he never cared what others thought about him, those that opened their mouths would lose it just as fast as the words came out. To him, the weak should stay silent while the strong should kneel before him. He wanted to climb the ladder of power and reach the peak. However, he learned that the truth was very different to what he initially believed. There was a world beyond him that boasted a lot more power than he could ever achieve. But he didn’t care, he wanted to reach the pinnacle of that world just as he reached the pinnacle of this world.
His burning motivation would never end even when he achieved his greater desire, he would desire more. His blood rushed at the thought of reaching the pinnacle point again, the Giant Rabbits? He could slaughter them in mere seconds. But there was a problem now… he didn’t have a weapon.
He frowned until he suddenly remembered something. He swiped his left hand down and tapped Player Loadout with his other hand. Then a display appeared with a 3D model of himself that almost made him vomit, and a lot of different slots. He was wearing a tunic, tight pants, and barefoot. Tapping the helmet slot, he realized that there was already a helmet available for him to wear. He tapped it without caring about the stats and suddenly a prompt came up;
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“Would you like to equip ‘Leather Helmet’?”
He tapped yes.
“Would you like to add ‘Leather Helmet’ to quick use?”
He tapped yes again, but this time with slight hesitance, however after tapping it, he realized there was another display that appeared, “Quick use allows you to equip weapons, armor, cosmetics, and accessories in an instant instead of manually equipping each individual item.”
Clearing that up, he equipped all the basic equipment given to him, and checked his stats.
Stats:
Health: 20/20
Strength: 7(+3)
Agility: 7(+2)
Dexterity: 5
Stamina: 7(+3)
Defense: 6(+3)
Intelligence: 3
He quickly understood that the parentheses meant the extra stats given by the equipment he was wearing. This brought him to the realization that what he wore was vital to his survivability. Demons naturally had durable bodies, and armor would slow them down, so he wasn’t used to wearing it now that he became a human player.
When he wore the armor and wielded his wooden club, he felt an increase of strength throughout his entire body. It wasn’t all too difficult to get used to, Kezner swung his club around a few times until he felt comfortable with it.
He gave a vicious smile to the cute Giant Rabbits, as he rushed up to a few of them and killed them in a mere few seconds. Though this was a new body, he kept his original reflexes and fighting experiences. He could easily predict their next moves and would usually evade them. Since these Giant Rabbits were one of the weakest monsters in the game, their fighting abilities were laughable. They attacked in a robotic and linear fashion. This was because of their lack of intelligence. When he was Abaddon, he was an entity with the highest intelligence stat in Megrove.
For NPCs and bosses, intelligence was not only related to mana, but to actual cognitive ability. A boss with a low intelligence stat meant that they fought straightforwardly with no plan in mind, and an NPC with a low intelligence stat could barely critically think.
However, now that Kezner was considered a player, he kept the cognitive intelligence he had as Abaddon, yet didn’t have the actual intelligence stat. To be fair, Kezner could now be considered a genius on Earth. His intelligence as a human would be one of the best minds in the world and in history.
[+13 Experience]
[+1 Bronze Coin]
[+14 Experience]
[+2 Bronze Coins]
[+13 Experience]
[+15 Experience]
[+13 Experience]
...
This went on for about five more times before Kezner completed his first quest, but by the seventh experience notification he leveled up to level 2, and at the end he was about a third of the way to level up again. To go from level 1 to level 2 was 100 experience, and from level 2 to level 3 was 150 experience. He thought it would be easy to get to level 100 in a few days. Oh, this poor ignorant fool.
Anyway, he quickly got the “Standard Leather Armor Set” and “Steel Club”. There was a difference between the “Beginner’s Leather Armor” and this armor. This was a set and not individual random pieces, they contained synergy that made them overall better when all pieces were together, yet individually lesser. Thankfully, he got the full set and not a piece of the set.
Putting on the “Standard Leather Armor Set”, he noticed an effect on it. Abaddon was no fool with equipment effects, however he had never seen it visualized and written bluntly in front of him. This made his lips twitch whenever he remembered the years he spent on figuring out his most treasured sword’s effects. With a sigh, he put on the armor and equipped the Steel Club, and felt another increase in strength. When looking at his stats, he noticed that his health had slightly increased from 20/20 to 30/30, most likely because of the level up.
Looking at the stats of his Steel Club, he realized there was a skill attached to it;
Steel Club (Common) [7-9 Base Damage]
Skill:
Bang (Level 1) [40 Damage] - A two-handed attack that crashes down on the target.
-50% Chance of giving the target the “Stun” status for 3 seconds.
-Uses 50% of the user’s stamina.
-Requirements: Warrior Class, Level 2
-Cooldown 5 minutes
Overall, it was a decent skill for his current level. Kezner was pretty intrigued by the stamina usage, but figured it was an invisible effect. For example, health and mana were visible with bars at the top left of the UI, while it hid stamina to make the game more immersive, the player would feel exhausted if all of their stamina was used before recovering.
After equipping himself, he continued his slaughter of the Giant Rabbits. Although they spawned every 1 to 5 minutes, there had ceased to be a large influx of players and now there was a steady stream of new players every day, the thing was that there wasn’t only one starting city, there were many countries on the continent, and many cities in those countries. And although Geford City still had new players, they usually only killed a few rabbits, then tested their luck in the dungeons because of the lack of experience gain from the monsters in the fields.
However, Kezner was different, there must have been stronger monsters in Mitun’s Forest… Well it was actually more like Mitun’s Fields it seemed like Mitun had demolished his own forest to throw Abaddon off of his tracks, little did he know that Abaddon already predicted this would happen. Kezner estimated that there must be stronger monsters defending Mitun’s Shrine. That would be a significant amount of experience to level up.
[+15 Experience]
[+1 Bronze Coin]
[+13 Experience]
[+2 Bronze Coins]
[+12 Experience]
[+3 Bronze Coins]
[+16 Experience]
…
In a brief hour, he had already reached level 7 from grinding Giant Rabbits alone, barely anyone else would accomplish such a stupid act, however, Kezner just kept moving through the fields as fast as possible, he had to reach the center. However, just as he reached level 5, he received the notification that he still hadn’t distributed his Level Up Stats. Usually, a person would receive 10 Level Up Stats per normal level, yet Kezner received an extra 15 Level Up Stats, making them 25 stats that he could raise per level.
This may seem overpowered when combined with his permanent 30% experience increase, when in reality, it seemed pretty balanced in the grand scheme of things. Later he would be chased by the Old and New Deities, and could only receive their curses and not their blessings. They would most likely see him as a potential threat now that Abaddon could resurrect like the immortal humans, so they would try to limit his potential and limit his leveling up abilities. Kezner knew this, that’s why he was eager to delay their resurrection and level up fast. He had to be strong enough to contend against them by the time they resurrected.
When learning about the Level Up Stats, he suddenly realized why the immortal humans could gain so much power so fast. NPCs gained power over time and experiences, a genius without experiences could still be a decently high level by the time they were middle-aged. However, players just had to kill monsters to get experience that raises their level, and they could attribute points to any of the stats they wanted. NPCs had their stats rise along with their level yet couldn’t dictate which stat would be raised.
At level 7, you were supposed to have 70 Stat Points, but Kezner had about 100 more, with 175 in total. Kezner was beyond optimistic now. With these powers, what could stand against him in Megrove? He realized that before going to Earth; he had to gain at least some power first, at least level 40, sure it didn’t seem like much compared to the best players, but that was the minimum required to move the resurrection point. He knew that for every hour on Earth; it was 4 hours in Megrove, meaning that the 8 hours spent on Earth would be 32 hours in Megrove, he couldn’t be away for so long, even if it was a day and a half, Mitun was one of the most famous deities, his resurrection could happen at any day.
He decided to increase his grinding speed, so he distributed his stats to the best his situation could accommodate;
Stats:
Health: 80/80
Strength: 47(+10)
Agility: 57(+15)
Dexterity: 25(+5)
Stamina: 47(+12)
Defense: 26(+20)
Intelligence: 3(+5)
The distribution of his stats immediately made him feel so empowered that he couldn’t describe. So much so that he started laughing and talking to himself again…
“The weeb is back!”
“Isn’t that the chuuni?”
“*Sigh* Such a good-looking kid has such a crap personality. The heavens are unjust.”
People walking by took notice and started pointing fingers again. This time it wasn’t as funny since most of them had already seen what he did earlier. They could only shake their heads in pity, they knew that a few years he would look back and cringe. Kezner noticed the weird situation again and ran further into the fields.
“Huh? Isn’t he a lot faster than last time?”
“Maybe he’s an Assassin?”
“Nah, look, he’s wearing the Standard Armor Set, he’s a Warrior.”
“Don’t tell me he invested all of his points into agility…”
“Cringey and talentless, poor kid…”
Putting all of your eggs in a single basket was looked down upon, as those were usually troll builds. If an Assassin put all of his points into agility, then it wouldn’t be as bad, but it would still suck as they would still need some strength and dexterity. But if a Warrior put all of his stats into agility, it would be an atrocious build. A Warrior’s focal point was stamina and strength or defense. Every 50 levels there would be a Class Advancement quest, and for a Warrior, there were two options; Berserker or Tanker. One of them was centered on doing damage, a strength build, while the other was centered on absorbing damage, a defense build. Overall, a lot of agility on a Warrior was useless, especially in a party where there were scouts.
However, Kezner didn’t even know there were other classes, he just thought everyone was automatically a Warrior like him. However, even if he knew, he would have still chosen Warrior, it was because demons were very skilled at close range damage dealing and absorption. However, it wouldn’t matter anyway, he had his own methods to change his race back to demon, and he was planning on changing back after shifting the resurrection point.