Max walked around Novus while scrolling through a holographic display with interest. The game developers had released an update while he was sleeping, changing all sorts of things.
Patch Notes:
* Player death penalty is reduced from 24hrs to 12hrs and is no longer incurred by players under level 10. Ongoing penalties have been revoked for all players meeting this criterion.
* Fast travel to the capital city is now unlocked by default for all players in their home kingdom.
* ‘Threat Level’ has been added to description tags.
* Burning players and NPCs by holding a fireball near them is now considered a hostile action.
* High-fives and fist-bumps are no longer considered a hostile action.
* Barricading doorways will now lower your standing with affected NPCs and all NPCs will now be more proficient at removing the barricades.
* Attempting to remove pants from yourself or others will now render a weak electric shock.
* NPCs will no longer mistake people of short stature for dwarves.
* NPCs will no longer accuse identical twins of dark sorcery.
* ...
* ...
Other: An additional patch will be released later today with further changes. We thank you for your patience and ask that you treat our support team with kindness and respect.
Max smirked while reading through the dot-points; some of the fixes were quite amusing.
It was good that the death penalty was phased out for beginner players. Checking his friend list, he found that Lemonade had already come back online. Rone on the other hand, stayed up late after going back to his house and was still asleep. Though, it would be strange if he was awake, because it was currently only 5am in the morning.
*Yawn*
As for Max, there were two possible explanations for why he woke up this early: the first was that his sleep schedule could have already been ruined from waking at 3am yesterday, and the second was that his own anxiety woke him up, as he had been worried that oversleeping might cause him to miss out on the meeting that Parker would supposedly arrange with the crown prince today.
He suspected the latter, as he believed he’d done that sort of thing previously... the accidentally waking himself up part, not the crown prince part; he hadn’t met any princes previously.
Rone shared a concerning piece of information with him last night, which was that time passed faster in the game world than in the real world. A full day cycle here was only 12 hours long, so when Parker had told him to meet her at the royal barracks in 2 days’ time, she really meant in 24 hours’ time.
This meant that he would only have around 12hrs to reach the kingdom’s capital after he woke up in the morning and would need to rush to arrive in time, as the kingdom’s size was extremely vast. However, fast travel to the capital city had recently been unlocked for everyone, as per the new patch notes... In other words, he could now literally just teleport there.
This was why Max was currently wandering around the streets like a lost tourist. According to Rone, there should be a tall stone somewhere around here called a ‘monolith’, which effectively functioned as a fast travel point. Fast travel would only be possible when touching the stone.
‘Hm... Still no sign of it.’
Despite not yet finding his magic rock, Max admired a tall ivory clock tower to the side of the throughfare. It looked unnaturally elegant compared to the other buildings in the area, which might explain why a large body of players were gathered near it.
‘Actually, they look like they’re here for the park.’
‘...Mm? But why would they be here for just a park?’ Max did a double take.
The adjacent parkland was occupied by an inordinate number of players. ...After thinking for a moment, Max concluded there was no way it was just a regular public park. Grass and gazebos were nice, but not enough to warrant this level of attention.
Approaching from the street, Max pulled himself up a tree branch to see over the crowds. Following the dense areas of the crowd, his eyes rested on a tall stone prism a short distance away. One player happened to touch the stone right at that moment, and abruptly vanished into air without any special effects.
‘Monolith! Luckyy~’
Max dropped down from the tree and made his way over, nimbly weaving through the bystanders. A few seconds later, he was already there and prodded the monolith with his finger, not caring about the intricate engravings carved into the stone’s surface.
[ Please select your fast travel location: ]
A map popped up in front of Max, which was quite fortunate for him because he actually didn’t know the name of the capital city. He selected the only available option.
[ Location confirmed. After confirming, fast travel will be locked for (8) hours. Confirm? Y/N ]
‘Dang, there’s a cooldown. Oh well, whatever. At least it looks like it’s free.’
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Since Max had already sorted out everything he needed to do in Novus, he pressed ‘yes’.
With a flash of light, he immediately found himself transported to a gigantic plaza.
‘Woah.’
Or at least, he thought it was a plaza. It was a bit hard to tell when you couldn’t see the ground. Tens of thousands of players filled the area, rendering seeing or hearing anything extremely difficult.
Not wasting any time, Max opened his map and looked for a market. Before meeting with the prince, he needed to do some shopping. There were a few things he needed, such as arrows, potions and some formal clothes to wear to the meeting. Finding the direction, he did a spin and started traversing the masses.
After completing that mission yesterday, Max received a whopping 50,000 gold as a reward from the guard captain, Ken. With such a massive amount, it was time to splurge!
Well... Max was too miserly to actually ‘splurge’ money per se, but he was still going to buy a lot of things. He also planned to buy a better bow since he was still using his beginner one. His strength had increase by a decent amount after levelling up a few times, so he would now be able to use something with a bit more of a kick to it.
[ Received a message from ‘Lemonade’ ]
‘Hm?’
A message from Lemonade?
‘Oh, right.’
He probably wanted the reward money from helping him out yesterday. Max opened the message and read through it.
[ Gun! Do you want to do a dungeon with me and some other streamers in the capital? We’re down a person and could use the help of an expert ]
‘Expert? Aw, he’s so nice.’
Caught off-guard by the unexpected yearly compliment, Max quickly replied: [ I’d love to! Where should I meet you? ]
‘Wait.’ Max froze after sending the response. ‘I’ve already received help from him at the mission, and then again when he raided my stream... now he’s inviting me to a streaming collaboration?!’
This was unacceptable! Max would end up way too far in his debt.
[ ‘Lemonade’ has invited you to their party. Accept? Y/N ]
‘Ahhhhh!! Dammit!’ Max pressed accept and started sprinting to the merchant. He would need more arrows for this.
...
...
Max arrived at the dungeon and found Lemonade standing with two people he hadn’t met before.
“The weapon of mass destruction has arrived!” Lemonade called out cheerily.
“Dunno about that; maybe a weapon of minor destruction. Who are these guys?” Max replied with interest.
The two strangers stared back, sharing the same curiosity. Both of them looked to be of similar age to Max, in their early-to-mid-twenties. The first was a petite girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, while the second was a confident-looking dude with blue hair and orange eyes.
“These are my viewer-magnets! On your left is Jasmine, a romance game streamer who acts as our healer. On your right is-”
“Hey, I don’t play romance games, I play ‘Otome’ games. There’s a difference,” Jasmine corrected him. “Also, you can’t just replace Ruby with another model. He’s not even the right gender.”
“... Jasmine, for f*ck’s sake can you not wait 5 seconds before flirting with the newcomer; I haven’t even introduced him yet.” Lemonade rebuked her before resuming, “On your right is Rafael, a renowned Esports streamer who plays FPS and fighting games. He chose the rogue class and is very proficient with it.”
“How come you say renowned when you introduce him, but not with me?” Jasmine complained.
“Because you’re not as renowned.” Lemonade responded simply, “He has double your subscribers.”
Jasmine stared at him open-mouthed in feigned offence.
“Who’s he, then?” Rafael asked.
“This is Gun, an archer-class streamer I met yesterday. He’s extremely-”
“Archer?” Rafael grimaced. “...Welp, we’re screwed.”
“Okay, is there some reason you guys feel compelled to keep interrupting me? Seriously.” Lemonade took a breath before continuing, “As I was saying, Gun is extremely good with the bow. He took out an entire platoon of orcs yesterday, so I can personally attest to his skill.”
“Orcs? Are those strong?” Rafael hadn’t encountered any of those.
“Far stronger than goblins; they’re level 20 monsters. And what’s your problem with archers? We have 2 melee users and a healer, so bringing a ranged DPS should be common sense.”
“Dude, archers are weak, haven’t you seen the forums? They need to be within 10 metres to hit anything, and even if they do, they don’t insta-kill unless it’s a headshot.”
“That’s not true at all. In fact, Gun could probably take on 5 of you at the same time.”
“What?”
...
Max inadvertently tuned out from the conversation while starting his stream. He was debating whether to set his default camera perspective to first-person or third-person. Remembering Lina’s complaint about the video he watched with her last night, he decided to choose third-person. That way, the viewers wouldn’t become as dizzy if he ended up moving around a lot.
“...Alright, you’re on. I’m going to order the most expensive steak there, so cry while you can still afford tissues.” Rafael smirked.
“When I win, I’m going to just have my regular order because your ignorance is too pitiful to take advantage of,” Lemonade retorted. “You’ll be embarrassed enough by that point already.”
“Hoho, alright. You hear that, archer? This guy’s going bankrupt because of-”
“Hm, what? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
“...” Rafael stared at him.
“Pfft, hahaha.” Jasmine burst out laughing.
“My bad.” Max smiled amiably. “I was setting up my stream. Are you guys ready to go?”
“...Archer,” Rafael walked up and pressed a finger against Max’s chest, “Let’s have a duel in this dungeon; whoever kills the most enemies wins.”
“Uh, I’m not sure that’s-”
“Or are you too chicken?” Rafael grinned provocatively.
...After a moment of silence, Max’s lips curved up slightly. “If that’s what you want. Fine, I guess I can indulge you.”
“Good. Then let’s go.” Rafael forcibly held back a laugh.
‘Oh, this poor guy.’ At the same time, he felt a bit bad for the archer. ‘He has no idea that I’m a clearer. Lil bro’s boutta get steamrolled.’