5 Welcome to Exodia Quest
After finishing the first step of his plan, Markos was kicked back to the main screen of the VR Headset, where he would have to wait until the official launch of Exodia Quest's servers at midnight.
Markos wanted to use this time to plan his first steps into the game in detail, but this was impossible in his case. In his past life, Markos had been assigned to Dry Forest City at the start. The problem was that such a city was not available at the beginning of Exodia Quest!
Each Beginner City had different quests, monsters, and secrets. Therefore, Markos could only use his knowledge of the standard quests available. While there were not many, they were at least enough to accelerate his progress and stand out from the other players.
Although Assassins liked to hide in the shadows, Markos could not keep a low profile. OneKill had to become a famous and recognized name to attract the attention of the guilds and their big contracts.
The thought of his sister's condition and the aura of death that haunted her broke his heart, so Markos decided to capitalize on his advantages early. It would hurt his profits in the long run and surely invite the occasional unwanted trouble, but life was not perfect. Being able to save his sister was enough for him.
Ready to accept the consequences of his future actions, Markos spent the remaining time watching the seconds tick by on the clock, trying to remember any useful piece of information.
19:14
22:31
23:59
00:00
The time had finally arrived, and Markos decisively entered Exodia Quest. With his knowledge, every minute lost was equivalent to thousands of dollars lost.
[Player OneKill, welcome to the Exodia Continent. You have been randomly assigned to the Cloud Kingdom's Broken Bridge City. Enjoy your adventure in the new world.]
All players from the Old Continent had been assigned to the Cloud Kingdom, located south of the Exodia Continent.
Markos was neither sad nor happy with the Beginner City he had been assigned. Although it was not the infamous High Bell City, the weakest of the 16 Beginner Cities in Cloud Kingdom, it was far from the level of Old Glass City, the most famous of them all.
Old Glass City was the base of operations for 'Voices of Thunder', one of the four strongest guilds in the game, which had joint support from Old Continent's most powerful business conglomerates. The first updates were focused on content within the Beginner Cities, so he had no way to get his hands on the sweet cash from Voices of Thunder.
Despite not being one of the strongest, Markos remembered that some famous players had started their adventures in Broken Bridge City, so he would not have to beg for money.
Stopping himself from thinking about things he could not control, Markos focused his attention back on the game. Without even paying attention to the thousands of players around him who were curiously observing the surroundings without knowing what exactly to do, Markos opened the [Character Interface].
There he checked the [Skills] tab to make sure that his return had not caused any butterfly effects.
Although these two skills were not game-breaking, with similar skills being available in the next stages of Exodia Quest, they provided a significant advantage at the start.
The description of the two new skills earned by Markos were as follows:
<Hunter's Eyes> (Passive)
[The eyes of an eagle in a human. Refined through years of experience and adventures filled with danger. Allows to see any object within a fifty meters range and sense the danger level of other creatures.]
Although <Hunter's Eyes> was simply garbage for other classes, it was an essential skill for Assassins. Planning was the most important part of an assassination, so a skill that provided excellent surveillance of the target was indispensable. While detecting the level of danger was not very relevant for someone like Markos, who knew all the important figures of Exodia Quest from his other life, it was still useful.
Despite being a good skill, <Ankle Breaker> was the one Markos was looking forward to.
<Ankle Breaker> (MP: 5 - Cooldown: 5s) [Epic Grade 0 Stars].
[Pushing the human body's capabilities to the limit is the minimum requirement for survival. Allows you to experience an explosive increase in Movement Speed (+400%) for 1 second.]
Describing how powerful this ability was in words alone was difficult. <Ankle Breaker> was so strong that it was still being used in the fifth year of Exodia Quest. This was largely due to how efficient it was, requiring only 5 Mana Points per activation and having a low cooldown. This made <Ankle Breaker> good at creating time windows for other skills to recover their cooldown without wasting MP.
In addition to these two skills he had gotten by customizing his character, there was another one more peculiar to the Assassin class.
<Slash > [MP: 0 - Cooldown: 0s] [Common Grade 0 Stars]
[Teaches the most basic skills for wielding a weapon. The most basic skill of all. Inflicts damage equivalent to Physical Attack (110%)]
An undetectable smile appeared on his face. There was not any butterfly effect for the moment. Immediately afterward he opened the [Status Page] tab to use the five attribute points given out at the start.
[OneKill - Status Page
Class: Assassin
Level: 0
Title: None
HP: 200 (+0)
MP: 100 (+0)
Physical Attack: 10 (+0)
Attack Speed: 5 (+0)
Movement Speed: 5 (+0)
Defense: 2 (+0)
Comprehension: 2 (+0)
Recovery: 1MP & 3HP every 10 seconds
Experience: 0/200
Attributes (5): Strength 0 - Agility 0 - Intelligence 0 - Endurance 0 ]
Every character in Exodia Quest was a blank piece of paper. The only difference was whether they had Physical Attack or Magic Attack. This allowed each player to take a unique path in their character development.
Correctly allocating the five free points given at the beginning and the four points earned for each level was the foundation to become a powerhouse. Attribute points were the only way, along with class evolution and leveling up, to improve a character's base stats. This meant that the percentage improvements given by equipment and accessories were only applied to these stats.
Strength gave +2 Physical Attack and +1 Defense.
Agility gave +1 Attack Speed and +1 Movement Speed.
Intelligence gave +2 Magic Attack and +1 Comprehension.
Endurance gave +100 Health Points and +50 Mana Points.
Aside from the four free attribute points, each level also gave +1 Attribute to each category. Exodia Quest's leveling system was designed like this to make players focus on a development path and avoid putting their attribute points all over the place.
Both Intelligence and Endurance were useless attributes for Assassins. Markos did not hesitate in his choice and put all his points in Strength. Thus, his stats became [Physical Attack: 20 - Defense: 7].
Although assigning all points to Agility would make <Ankle Breaker> an invincible skill at the beginning of the game, Markos was satisfied with the advantage it gave him for the moment. Equipment and accessories with a % bonus were only relevant to base stats, but skills applied to total stats. This way, Markos could search for equipment with high movement speed bonuses to compensate for his Agility in the early game.
Therefore, he decided to make OneKill a character with an insane attack in the early levels.
Not bothering with the NPCs in the surroundings, Markos activated <Ankle Breaker> and rushed towards the food market in the city's outside ring to accept his first mission.
