Rewards

"Haha" Han lightly laughed then looked at the bones of the skeleton.

'Maybe I can make a weapon out of it.' He thought. Then he looked back at the item in his hands. 'The rusty pipe wasn't that strong but it managed to break open the skeleton's skull one of the hardest bones in the body. If this sh*tty pipe can do that then these bones are probably too brittle to use as weapons.'

Thinking so he tossed the body aside and checked out the notifications he had received when he killed the skeleton.

[Defeated, Level 0 Skeleton Minion, gained +1 exp, gained +1 regional Map!]

[Map function has been unlocked!]

[Unlocked General Skill <Heavy Strike: Lv1>!]

Seeing these notifications Han's happily smiled. Obviously the system was the reason for that skeletons summoning. Han's had heard about it from some beta players. To help the players who were lost the system would put in this event and if the players killed the monster they would gain the map from it 100% guaranteed.

Han's also felt happy for the skill he had learned. In this game there were four categories of skills. Production skills, General skills, Esper skills, and Magic skills.

The last two wear for the two classes in the game and the first two were for almost every player. Production skills included skills for alchemy, blacksmithing, and so on. While general skills were basically martial arts or physical skills.

So although there were only two classes in the game people could get even more specific then just being an esper or an mage like a magic swordsmen, or a alchemist esper.

This was something that new gamers didn't know and only gamers like Han's knew about it. In theory the classes one could follow were a lot more than just 2.

Han quickly checked the map function and was given an top view of his surroundings. Along with it everything after a 3 km radius was darkened out and he couldn't see or tell what anything was on it. Then a text box came out.

[Would you like to use one region map to unlock your current region on the map.]

<Yes> <No>

"Yes!"

After clicking it the small circle of vision he had on the map began to grow larger and larger. Now he could also zoom in and out from that vision. Zooming in would allow him to see more details in a smaller area.

When he zoomed out he also realized how big this games world really was. It was already said in the games description that it would be around 20 times bigger than their planet but seeing was believing. Even though it was only a region in the game the size seemed to almost be the same as an entire country.

"Man good thing the time ratio is 1: 10 Otherwise it would take decades of real life years to actually explore the whole game." Thinking this Han was quite happy that the time ratio was this large.

He also checked another icon that had been unlocked. On it was an image of a tree. Clicking on it Han saw the screen change and the four categories of skills showed. For now the other three categories were grayed out only leaving the General category as unlocked.

Clicking on it a new section was shown and on it were a new things.

[General Skill Slot (1/5): <Heavy Strike: Lv1>]

[General Skill Storage: <None>]

Seeing this Han's clicked on his Heavy strike skill and a few text appeared giving out information about it.

<Heavy Strike: Lv1> (Type: Active)

[Skill Effect: Strike a target forcefully dealing +5 ATK DMG on top of your base ATK DMG.]

[Skill Proficiency: 0/100]

[Cost & Cooldown: 20 Stamina, 60 seconds.]

Seeing the skill effect he felt that it wasn't half bad. Nodding to himself Han looked on at the dark city. He knew what would happen next.

'The system will now spawn a skeleton every 1 hour in this city. Each skeleton spawned will be stronger than the last one.' He couldn't help but want to hastily leave.

These skeletons would be incredibly strong after a certain point and not only that but not exp or reward would be given when killing these skeletons. The first was special because it was planted to help the players.

"Alright let's get the f*ck out of here." Han's mumbled to himself. He ran off until he arrived at the edge of the city like it was shown on the map. While he was checking his map to find another city or town he suddenly heard the sounds of footsteps.

The footsteps sounded like a group of people were headed straight towards Han's direction.

'Players? No the system won't let the players meet until later when they make it to a safety shelters. So npcs.' Han assessed. He looked at himself and thought about something before throwing his items on the ground.

He silently waited for the Npcs to walk over. As he hid himself behind a pile of rubble.

"Haha! Hank did you see how we robbed those kids clean!" One of them spoke. The others laughed as they remembered what they had just done 10 minutes ago.

"Really Hank you need to lighten up, look at your shirt so much blood is all over it." Another one joked. Han's expression grew dark. He understood that they were bandits and their boss Hank was definitely a ruthless guy from the other guys comment.

He couldn't help but be disgruntled with his bad luck. He was 99% sure he would have to fight them if they noticed him. He couldn't help but think about the background of the npcs.

All the npcs in this world are all familiar with supernatural stuff. Not only that but all npcs have greater strength then their levels shows. This was because they were in this world filled with monsters. Natural selection truly got rid of all the weak.

While Han thought about the background of this world he suddenly felt that the group of bandits grow silent.

"Whose stuff is this?" A voice Han's hadn't heard yet spoke up. Form the chilling and cold tone Han's knew that it was the guy named Hank.

"Uh... Hank don't tell me someone was here before us?" one of them questioned. There was a moment of silence before Hank spoke up.

"I think someone was here and they seemed to have noticed our footsteps and ranway." Hearing this the rest of them fell silent.

"Well... should we take these items or try to catch them?" One of them asked.

"These things are all trash that we could find lying everywhere. I feel like they couldn't have gotten too far since they managed to hear us before running away so the three of you will go head to see if they ran that direction while you two go that direction. When your finished searching come back and report to me." Hank responded. The rest of the bandits nodded their head and ran off towards the direction they were told.

While Han who was listening felt that a chance had arrived. He waited until he could no longer hear the footsteps of the searching bandits and slowly took a peek from his rubble.

In front of his eyes a middle aged man could be seen in the distance. They had a stubble beard and two pairs of dark eyes. The expression on their face showed that they had experience in killing people and had done it countless times before.

Han's gulped a bit. He thought back to the game warnings in his mind.

"Warning! Players are advised not to fight against the npcs at the early parts of the game unless they have real life fighting experience. All npcs in the game understand and know how to fight, new players are advised."

Now he understood why they had sent out this warning. Something like a newbie who had never fought in their lives fighting against an experience expert, even if the expert was level 1 and the newbie was level 10, the newbie would get their asses kicked.

For most players they had no combat training since starting their game meaning they wouldn't know how to fight, although that would be fixed once they got into the game and learned how to fight and use their skills but right now it was really not wise to fight these npcs.

'Still this could be interesting.' Han thought. He looked at the bandit leader Hank with some great interest. One thing that players had as an advantage was the ability to fight to the death in these types of games. The reason was simple. They would never really die in the game so why fear it.

Han slowly stood up from his spot and took some rocks into his pocket. He then slowly walked towards the bandit leader. Who had seen him the moment he walked close enough. Even when they thought the enemy had already escaped, the leader Hank was still keeping a close guard of his surrounds.

This was because this world was really too dangerous as anything could sneak up and murder you. When he was doing another quick check of his surroundings he had seen the figure of a young man walking towards his direction. He instantly realized that this was the person he had sent his boys to capture.

The expression on face grew grim has he noticed the calm look on the young man's face. He had seen this look too many times. This was either the look of a man who did not fear death or the look of a man who had something up his sleeves.

Here the most dangerous type of person wasn't the one that would get angry or burst forth with emotions but the ones that were as calm and serene as a lake. This was also the reason why Hank had looked so cold and calm before. He wanted to give the same vibes to make others rethink about messing with him.

Hank's expression grew colder as the young man approached. He calmed his mind and decided to get into a fightings stance.

Han looked on with curiosity as he watched the man take out a very old switchblade from their pocket. There seemed to still be some dried up blood on it as a little part of it looked to be chipped off.

Han also felt a strong pressure coming from the bandit leader as soon as he got into fighting stance. Han felt pretty weak. He wasn't sure if he would be able to hit the person in front of him even once before he died.

'Then again this is going to be a valuable fighting experience.' The other reason why he decided to fight him was because he wanted to learn quickly. He wanted to get a head start on the other normal players and experience his first real fight.

"..."

A moment of silence entered the field as neither one decided to speak. They only stared at each other with intense eyes. One of them was waiting for the other to move while the other was cautious of them.

This deadlock lasted for about 5 seconds before one of them acted. The person was the bandit leader. He dash towards Han with the switchblade in his hands. He arrived in front of Han's in about 1 second. He thrusted his switchblade towards Han's eyes. Han had a pretty good reaction time and although hasn't fought anyone managed to move his head quick enough to dodge the thrust.

But because of his inexperience he had used too much force in that one movement causing his body to shift towards the direction his head had dodged. This caused a moment of imbalance and stopped him from quickly turning and reacting to the next attack from the bandit leader.

At that moment Han felt a small sharp stinging pain on his shoulder. It was as if some had pinched him really hard. A wave of weakness rushed towards Han's body. Paralyzing it for a small moment. This only lasted for a moment before Han felt his body was back at peak condition. He quickly turned his head as looked at his shoulder.

Like he thought, the bandit leader had stabbed right into his shoulder. Thankfully a player wouldn't be able to experience the full pain. So unlike the bandit leaders thinking that Han had been weakened he used his left hand and held onto the bandit leaders wrist when he tried to remove the switchblade from his shoulder.

"Here enjoy my fisting!" Making a perverted joke Han punched towards the bandit leaders side. Along with this punch Han had also activated his skill Heavy Strike. The Stamina on the lower corner of his vision drop from 100 to 80. As he felt a chunk of his energy get used.

[-6]+[-6]

A damage texted appeared.

'Huh?' Han's expression grew stunned as he saw something crazy. The damage text in his eyes seemed to have a plus sign with another same damage number at the end of it. While shocked the punch he had thrown at the bandit leader seemed to have broken some bone as Han heard the sounds of bone cracking. Threw that one punch the bandit leader had let go of the switchblade. While Han's also was so shocked by the damage value that he had released his grip from the bandit leaders wrist.

"Ugh!"

The bandit leader stumbled for a moment before he puked out a mouthful of blood. That punch had broken a part of his ribs and one of them seemed to have punctured his lung.

Han's saw waves and waves of damage text appear above the bandit leaders head. A pile of -1 kept appearing every second.

Looking at his condition Han was pretty sure he would die very soon. He didn't need to do anything as he understood the npcs health quite well. Although he couldn't see the npcs life points or level he could still tell how much damage the npc was taking.

The fact that 12 points of damage was enough to cause such a severe reaction he was sure that this npc had no more than 30 life points and unless he got treatment quickly each second his life points would drop by 1.

While the bandit leader was dying, Han looked over at his wound on his shoulder and looked at his life points.

[Life Points: 12/20]

That one attack had managed to reduce his life points by almost half. He was lucky that his Heavy Strike skill had somehow caused such a huge amount of damage. He thought about it again. He wondered what could that strange damage text be and almost on cue a new notification was sent to him.

[Defeated, Level 2 Bandit Leader Hank, gained +5 exp]

[Player has used their innate talent for the first time, unlocked talent's information. Please find it on the help menu.]

"..."