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After defeating the boar, Flare leveled up two times. He picked up the loot and equipped the shoes. Now he's a little stronger.

Hunting boars turns out to be easy after he leveled up. The boars could always be found to be grazing on the ground so they were easy to ambush. Just like that, he finished the quest and reached level 9.

He returned to the village and submitted he quest. With the quest rewards, he was able to earn back his initial investments and also allowed him to reach level 10. His base stats now had an average of value of 100.

The NPC looked at him and said. "I see that you are qualified. The time has come to chose your path."

"So its the class change."

A new quest appeared and Flare accepted it immediately. He had to level up before the game reveals its true colors.

The quest required him to talk to various class instructors in the village. There is one for each, warrior, archer, mage, assassin, priest, shielder, and monk. Flare talked to to them one by one without actually listening. When he was done with the last instructor, the system urged him to pick a class.

Without hesitation, Flare chose mage. Archer would fit his elf character, but he want to look badass while throwing fireballs and such. Besides, it was much easier to grind with a mage class, their AoE skills would be helpful in clearing weak mobs.

There are reportedly unique and hidden class in the game but it was not worth investing his time on them.

Also, from now on, stats would no longer increase automatically, he would be given 50 stat points to allocate per each level up.

Flare opened his skill menu and was momentarily confused with the complex skill tree shown in the screen. Most of them were greyed out, and on the top of the skill list was a notice. "After reaching level 30, you can chose to reset your skills before class advancement."

Flare inspected the skill tree. There are many paths with one beginner spell available for each. One for fire element, wind, water, void, dark, neutral and some passives on the side.

Flare thought for a moment before choosing the beginner skill for the neutral path, Arcane Missile. Compared to the other spell, its damage was negligible, but its advantage was its low cooldown and low mana cost. It was a good kit for farming.

With ten bonus skill points, Flare used 5 points to upgrade the basic skill to level five and another five points to level up his MP regeneration passive. Now he could spam his skill like a machine gun while minimizing the need for an MP potion. The skill's damage was also upgraded so it was no longer a problem for him to deal with a bunch of boars.

He equipped his default class equipments; an unremarkable robe and an ordinary staff.

With a higher level, Flare was able to accept more quests. He visited he potion shop and bought a set of MP potions, then he left to hunt monsters related to his quests.

The wild boars were the weakest monsters in the vicinity, Flare could take them out with on one cast of arcane missile. Five stripes of light twirled in the air and bombarded the wild boar. After disappearing in a flash of light, it left behind items.

Wild Boar 20/20

He saw that the quest was finished so he decided to move on to the next area. Before that, he pumped all his stats to his intelligence, increasing his magic attack as well as his maximum MP and MP regen.

However, his other stats were dangerously low for his current level. It would only take two hits from a wild boar to KO him.

He reached level 15. He unlocked new skills but Flare did not even looked at them and maxed out his arcane missile first. The cost for leveling up the skill grew the higher it become, and it exhausted his skill points as a result. The mana consumption increased, but so did the damage.

Flare had no fear of facing a pack of level ten wolves. Instead of five missiles, ten missiles appeared and shot towards the pack.

After another cast, the pack was decimated and his level went up by 1.

Wild Wolf 5/15

He invested the point to his passive, MP regen which is now level 6 and could recover 60 MP per 10 seconds. Arcane Missile only cost 50 MP per cast so he could basically maintain his farming pace without being dependent on MP potions.

He invested all his 50 stat points on intelligence which reached a staggering amount of 375. When his intelligence reached 350, it required 2 stats points to increase it by one point.

Flare looked at his magic attack which was about to reach 600. He did some calculations and found that magic attack is 150% of his intelligence.

With his meager vitality, it would only take 1 attack for a wolf to empty his Hp bar.

'This is a problem indeed.' Flare did not worry however, as he looked as his skill tree. There was another passive that he was intending to max instead of using it to learn new active skills. Mage Barrier.

It nullifies damage received up to 10% of intelligence. It would be useless now, but it would definitely become useful in the future.

For now though, Arcane Missile was enough sufficient for him to dominate the mountains.

Watching wolves being slaughtered while unable to even get near him, he felt godlike.

"It was a good idea to become a mage." He thought.

He didn't realized that he had slaughtered wolves more than the quest required because he was too engrossed in role playing.

Ding, a notification popped up from his vision. It was from the real world, from his gaming friends.

Flare Logged out and read the message in the chat group.

GoldenArm: How are you all doing?

Combatspecialist: Doing fine I guess. This game is not bad. Its probably better than 'King's Journey'.

GoldenArm: Hmmp, ofcourse, my insight is definitely no joke. This game would become famous in not less than a month and we would be the first to reap the rewards.

HighlandAmazon: I'm done changing class into Archer and my level is 12. The battle mechanics emphasize freedom and control, I like this kinds of game.

SageoftheMoon: I have good news for you all. The transport company, Grim has begun to invest in Aurora, they were soon followed by leading companies from various industries. The most noteworthy is the tacit support from the government, there were also movements from bank-owners. Aurora's stock are rising gradually. Golden Arm is right, we hit the jackpot.

Aurora is the company that developed Heroic Saga. They started as small and developed a well made MMORPG for pc. Although the game was well made, the rise of virtual reality had overshadowed its brilliance. After the original owners went bankrupt, the military bought it. They immediately adjusted and released Heroic Saga a year later. This was ofcourse, a classified information known only to elites like them.

Flare and the others were fans of the that pc game so they monitored releases from Aurora and other game developers with potential.

Flare begun to type under his nickname, Glorious.

Glorious: Shall we make a guild and dominate the game now?

BarbaricLord: Good idea. But maybe we should rule from the shadows.

GoldenArm: I am more concerned about the stocks.

Glorious: That's simple, we only need to make it popular. Helping the game is helping ourselves. We could do streaming to promote the game and this would increase the game's value.

GoldenArm: Good idea, but I'm not that ready to share the pie yet. Unlike the other games, Aurora is not only managed by humans, it was being monitored and co-developed with a super ai obtained from the military. This would ensure that the game could only keep on improving and upgrading, it would not fade out like other games made by civilians.

This was an information only known to them.

GoldenArm: We first need to build a strong foothold in the game before others notice. It wouldn't be long before the demand for in-game currency soars up and reach a point where it could be exchanged for real world currency. I bet my ass that the military is trying to turn it to a second world.

GentleAutumn: What about others planning to do the same.

Glorious: It's simple. We need to grow faster than them and oppress them.

BarbaricLord: And we crush them.

SageoftheMoon: The next update should be next week. By that time, the game would be gathering public attention, we should meet in the game before that and establish a guild.

Combatspecialist: Sounds good.