*This is not a new chapter however I can't figure out how to edit my first chapter. Once I figure out how to use this I will add tables. I tried to paste them in and it didn't work. I have read lots of books on royal road; however, I just set up my account and am still getting used to it.
Chapter 1:
Will was driving home from work when it happened suddenly his blue 2015 Chevy Spark stalled in the middle of the freeway. Panicking he turned the key trying to restart it. Nothing happened and when he looks around him every single other car was also dead. Suddenly a blue screen appeared in front of him and wouldn’t go away from the front of his vision no matter where he looked. He started reading the blue screen.
Your World has come to an end
Prepare for a new era to come. Humanity will face its greatest change ever. No longer will you rule the world, prepare to fight for every inch.
Animals are now able to evolve and monsters will start appearing. All wild animals evolve into monsters now after gaining enough power.
It is humanities challenge to survive in this new world. Prepare to die because only through accepting the likelihood of death will you find the courage to survive, to fight back to the top of the food chain.
As soon as I finished reading this screen it disappeared leaving me sitting there in disbelief. However after less than a minute 2 new screens appeared.
In the new world all money is converted into copper, silver, and gold: 1 gold is 10 silvers and 1 silver is 100 coppers
1 copper is $1 of US currency
1 silver is $100 US currency
1 gold is $1,000 dollars US currency
Your money will be linked to your status screen and it will all be in your virtual wallet. Banks do not exist from this day forth.
You currently have 1 gold, 6 silvers, and 59 coppers
You currently own a 2015 Chevy Spark. In the new world cars are not allowed.
You will be compensated for your vehicle.
The price of it new – 5% for every year old it is
Your car was worth 10 gold to begin with – 10% because it is 2 years old
Your car is worth 9 gold
You know have 10 gold, 6 silver, and 59 coppers
Since your land transportation has been taken you may now look at the various mounts available and get first evolution land mounts. In the future you will need to visit a world shop terminal to access the store. Every house now has a basic one and stores have more specialized and advanced ones.
Mount Categories:
· Land: available animals and first evolution monsters
· Water: available animals
· Flying: available animals
I decided to look through the various land mounts available. I was very ticked off about losing my car though. It was the first car I had ever owned and even though it was cheap it was fairly new. I was still sitting in my car though so I guess it will still exist till I choose a new mount. I reached out and pressed the land mounts tab on the screen in front of me.
Land Mount Main Purpose
· Riding
· Draft
· Dual Purpose
I chose riding because I didn’t want to have to deal with a wagon or carriage and that would just make things probably even more expensive if I had to buy something to pull a carriage and a carriage.
Riding Mounts
· Horse
· Pony
· Cattle
· Llama
· Camel
· Pig
· Reindeer
· Yak
· Ostrich
· Elephant
· Zebra
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· Giraffe
· Tortoise
· Snake
· Lizard
I was amazed by the selections; however, I had no idea what I could really afford with my current budget. I decided to look at horses, pigs, ostrich, elephants, and lizards. In front of me was a window showing all of the animal and first evolution stages of horses, pigs, ostriches, and elephants. I definitely wasn’t buying an elephant, the cheapest elephant was called a lesser pygmy elephant and described as the smallest and weakest elephant standing at 6ft and weighing 2 tons. However a cheap elephant is anything but cheap with the lesser pygmy costing 10 gold, or 10,000 dollars. Evolutions of elephants are in the 50 plus gold or 50,000 plus dollar range. While riding an elephant would be cool I still don’t want to spend all my money on one and the purchase price doesn’t include what it costs to feed one. When I was looking at the elephants I noticed each animal had a list of plants it would eat and I could buy regular plants or evolved plants. It seems that now people can feed mana, their magical energy, into plants to make them grow and produce more fruit. Evolved plants are either slightly sentient plants or plants with an affinity like water or fire.
I was trying to decide between a pig or horse mount. Ostriches could be bought for as little as a single gold if you got a poor quality animal, but though it would be cool to own an ostrich I couldn’t really imagine myself using one as a mount. They just seemed too awkward to ride. I was leaning toward getting a pig mount. A crappy old horse, known as a poor quality horse cost 3 silvers; an okay horse was 5 silvers, good horse 1 gold, and a superior steed cost 2 gold. Evolved horses based on okay quality were war horse 2 gold, a race horse was 2 gold 5 silver, a night steed which had a small dark affinity was 3 gold, a wind rider horse which has a minor wind affinity was 3 gold, a lesser water horse which has minor water affinity was 3 gold, a flaming steed with a minor fire affinity was 3 gold. Good quality evolved horses were 1 gold more than okay quality horses. While superior quality was 2 and a half gold than okay quality evolved stages.
I liked the wind, darkness, and fire affinity horses but after some thought I decided to get an evolved pig mount. While horses were only good for riding, a pig could be used to help in battle goring enemies with its tusks and barreling them down with its massive size once it evolves enough. A poor quality pig cost 2 silvers, an okay quality cost 3 and a half silver, a good quality cost 6 silver, and a superior quality pig cost 1 gold. This meant they were quite a bit cheaper than horses and starting at the first evolution their tusks grew in. There were only 3 evolved pigs though the feral hog at 8 silvers, racing pig at 1 gold 2 silvers, and war hog at 1 gold 5 silvers. Good quality evolutions were 6 silver more than okay quality and superior quality animals were 1 gold 3 silvers more than okay quality animals. The prices of pigs and horses were probably lower than the ostriches and elephants due to the fact that pigs and horses are both relatively common animals in nature and around the world. Pigs were cheaper because there is less demand for them, the laws of supply and demand simple economics really. I decided to go all out and bought a superior quality male war hog known as a superior war boar. The war boar was 750 lbs., had foot long tusks, long coarse hair and was a pitch black color. For 2 silver I bought a good quality leather pig saddle and bridle for my war boar. The saddle was basically the same as one for a horse only modified to fit a pig and I got a sort of bridle used to control my mount.
After confirming my purchase I was asked if I wanted to buy food for my mount now. I looked at the food recommendations and decided to buy feeds I and the pig could eat. First off I removed all of the regular crops and foods I couldn’t eat. I was left with corn, potatoes, along with various fruits and vegetables. I decided to read more about how foods really affect animals and humans. It turns out that in the new world evolved plants can help a monster evolve if they consume enough of them. For example if a regular animal eats a plant with a fire affinity for between a week and a month depending on their quality straight and then they will probably be able to evolve into a monster with a fire affinity at their first evolution after fighting a little. Monsters that have already evolved once need to eat more of the fire plant but after they have eaten enough and been involved in enough fights they will gain fire affinity at their next evolution if they have less than 2 affinities and no opposing affinity like water to counteract the fire affinity.
People don’t really evolve however eating plants with certain affinities can raise our affinities in them and up our resistance to them. For example a fire mage might eat a fire plant to get more powerful fire magic and gain more fire resistance. They even have the possibility to help you meet the criteria for becoming a stronger race. I decided to buy first evolution, because that is all I have access to, fire corn, flaming sweet potatoes, fire rice, burning mushrooms, and red hot pumpkin plants. I got 5 corn plants, 4 sweet potatoes, 4 rice, 3 mushrooms, and 3 pumpkin plants. As I was going to press buy though I stopped and decided to look into what sentient plants were more. It turns out plants gain true sentience after their second or third evolution. Unlike animals who gain some intelligence after their first evolution even if they focus on something else like strength or building an affinity. Plants must choose to gain a small amount of sentience incomparable to animals at the first evolution or gain a type of affinity or other protective trait like poison. However, their second or third evolution if they can reach it offers plants that choose the sentient route to evolve into nature sprites and further into fairies or the second route becoming treants and then man eating trees. Fairy and man eating trees are the two main paths for sentient plants to take. It is a lot more limited than the choices offered to non-sentient plants; however, there are still hundreds of different variations of treants and sprites not to mention the diversity of further evolutions. With the idea and hope of meeting a nature fairy and the wonder of turning a plant into a person I caved and decided to buy a sentient plant. I decided to look at some of the cheapest sentient plants and found one I was interested in called perceptive maple. It was described as being aware of its surroundings. It could change its shape to adapt to its surroundings, grow bigger or smaller leaves, and could gain experience and progress toward evolution by absorbing mana. The last point was one of the key reasons why I wanted this plant well and the fact that if my plan doesn’t work out I can always have maple syrup. With my choices confirmed I pressed the buy button. A screen came up telling me that the qualities would be randomly determined based on the ratio of 25% good, 50% okay, and 25% poor quality and for every 10 plants I purchased one of my good quality plants would become supreme. I ended up paying 1 gold, 2 silver, and 35 copper for everything. The perceptive maple cost 50 copper, each of the fire corns was 50 coppers, the flaming sweet potatoes were 55 coppers each, the fire rice was 85 coppers each, the red hot pumpkin plants were 65 copper each, and the burnt mushrooms were 60 coppers each. My perceptive maple was one of the cheapest because it doesn’t really have any true sentience; it is from a very common tree maple and has no special affinity. Corn is the same price because even though it has fire affinity it is from one of if not the most common food plants. Rice is the exception to the rule of pricing equals rareness of traits and rareness of plant because while it is a very common food plant it must have a stronger fire affinity to survive because it lives its whole life in water. This causes it to develop a resistance to water and greater fire affinity increasing its price.
As I was about to hit the pay I noticed another screen flashing in the corner of my vision. I reached out to bring it closer and enlarge it.
Because we decided to be nice to humanity we are allowing a person to teleport with all of their possessions to their place of residence.
Please note that while no monsters will spawn in your house this does not stop them from breaking in and killing you.
You must fight and become something greater than human if you wish to survive in this new world.
Suddenly, the world blurred around me and I found myself in the living room of my apartment. Since I still had the purchase screen in front of me I hit buy. A new screen appeared in front of me and my plant sprouts, pig saddle, and bridle appeared around me.
2 gold 8 silvers has been charged to your account for the purchase of a superior war boar
2 silver has been charged to your account for a bridle and saddle
1 gold 2 silver 35 copper has been charged to your account for a perceptive maple plant and various fire affinity plants
You now have 6 gold 4 silver 24 copper
***
Because of your space constraints your mount has been granted the ability minimize allowing it to shrink to 1/100 of its real size when you want it to
As your mount is 750 lbs. it can shrink to 7.5 lbs.
Well the part about my mount being able to shrink was a relief. In my desire to get a unique mount I hadn’t really considered were I would put it. Suddenly a little black pig appeared in front of me looking at me reproachfully I guess he didn’t really appreciate being shrunk.
Now that I was back in my apartment I finally allowed myself to breakdown. The world was no longer a safe haven. Magic and monsters were taking over this very instant. My life was turning into one of those games I played as a kid and this time it wasn’t a game I only had 1 life. Death was a mystery, the dark abyss nothing had changed about that only the dangers we faced had magnified a hundred fold.
I focused on the plants in front of me and concentrated on moving energy into them. My hands started to show a white glow and the plant a fire corn shot up in front of me growing to maturity in a minute. I felt a little tired after doing this but nothing too bad. The fire corn was yellowish orange corn plant with three ears of bright red corn. I focused on rowing the other corn plants up and they all grew too maturity they had between two and four ears of corn each. After growing the five corn plants I was starting to feel pretty tired and it was getting late. I decided to grow one of the pumpkins and the perceptive maple, eat a pumpkin, feed the pig and then go to bed. The pumpkin turned out just like a regular pumpkin except it had a glowing red eyes and mouth like a jack o lantern only the it was all on the outside and not a carving. The plant was more compact and yielded three small pumpkins. I started eating one of the pumpkins; yes you can eat them raw, and focused on growing my perceptive maple. The pumpkin had a distinctive spicy almost smoky taste. It was like you were eating a pumpkin while at the same time had a fire in your mouth that left a smoky aftertaste. Not bad but certainly like nothing I had ever had before.
The perceptive maple grew about three feet tall, had large red leaves, but other than that looked like any old tree. Oh, well I can deal with everything tomorrow. My apartment should be able to hold off the monsters till morning I thought and with that I picked five ears of corn and 2 pumpkins then laid them in front of the pig so he could eat them.