2 Prologue Part 2: Orpheon Second Phase

April 25th.

Today's the day the closing ceremony for Orpheon Online begins.

After today - or more precisely, by 8:00 pm this evening for me, this game that my entire life revolved around is going to be gone. Forever. Poof! All that money, all that time, all those top rankings, all gone!

I've spent the past few days still farming and doing dungeon runs as I always did. I couldn't help it, it was all part of my daily routine. I can't just change it, even if there's no reason for me to grind anything anymore. Today, I log on for the last time.

As soon as I entered, I noticed that there were a little more players than usual in the hub village. Nice to see some more life in this game, after all these years...

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kentaros09: yo best!

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kentaros, or ken, was hanging out near the town hall. I haven't seen him since maybe last year. He was one of the guild elders for my guild, Grand Cross.

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kentaros09: so you actually did play until the game died lmao

BestPlayer: shut up

kentaros09: i respect that. sad to see the game go tho

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Yeah, my username is BestPlayer. I could've chosen any username since no other names were taken back when I made my account, but I planned to be the best at this game from the start. I needed to rub it on everyone's faces that I alone was going to be the top player in every possible aspect of the game.

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kentaros09: anyway, it's really all ending, huh. what have you been up to these days?

BestPlayer: nothing much really, just casually being the UNDISPUTED BEST PLAYER IN THE GAME.

kentaros09: you're a funny guy, you know that?

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According to the in-game notice that I read a few days ago, the main event will take place a couple minutes from now. Apparently, they're going to make a "very important announcement" and have some devs join the game to talk to the players for a bit. This is going to be my only chance to try and change their minds about the shutting down the game. I know it's unlikely to work, but I'm grasping at straws here. This has my life on the line.

A window popped up in the middle of the game screen. It's the announcement from the devs.

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Welcome to our final ceremony! Today, we are saying our final goodbyes to our game and the memories we made. Once again, we sincerely thank you all for staying with us all these years.

However, we bring to you some good news as well. You may have noticed that this game has gone without any major updates in the past few years. This is due to the fact that we have been working on a new project that is now ready to launch, and it will be a second phase of Orpheon Online.

This new game will retain many features present in the original game you are playing right now. However, there are some significant changes we are bringing to upgrade the system and provide a much more immersive experience.

All active players who participated in this event will be allowed to carry over a portion of their current character's skills and items, as well as all purchased premium currency.

The release date of this game is planned to be May 1st. We hope you enjoy the experience!"

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I couldn't believe what I was reading.

My life isn't over! Everything I had - or at least part of it - is salvaged! I wasn't sure how much of my current stats and items would be transferred over, but I know that even with just a fraction of what I have here, I could easily climb up to the number one undisputed top player of this new game!

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kentaros09: whoa! best, are you reading this?

BestPlayer: YES I AM!!!!!!!1

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I was doing all I could to contain my excitement and relief when a notification appeared in my in-game mailbox titled "Data Transfer Details."

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Greetings, player!

As told in the announcement, all players who have participated in our final event will be given the opportunity to transfer a portion of their character's skills and items into our upcoming game.

The amount of skills and items you are allowed to transfer will depend on your current progress in the game.

At your current level, you will be allowed to transfer [3] skills and [3] items from your current character to your new character.

A new plus icon will be visible next to each skill and item. Clicking these will allow you to add the skills and items into your transfer list. Please select the skills and items you wish to transfer before the end of the event.

Furthermore, you will be awarded certain titles and benefits based on your current rankings in our various competitive modes.

As the #1 Player in "PvP Arena," you will be awarded the unique title [Conqueror].

As the #1 Player in "Number of Achievements," you will be awarded the unique title [Perfectionist].

As the #1 Player in "Total Experience Gained," you will be awarded the unique title [Savant].

That will be all for today. Thank you for playing the game, and we hope to see you soon!

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Once again, I couldn't believe what I was reading.

Finally, some recognition. Finally, it all pays off.

The amount of skills and items I could choose was somewhat underwhelming, though. I get they didn't want to have people too far ahead as soon as the game started, but just three? I have hundreds of skills and thousands of items!

I went into my inventory. The way this game works is that there are level requirements to use each item, excluding consumables. That means that even if I were to bring my cracked max-refined legendary endgame gear, I probably wouldn't be able to use it for a long time. I wanted something that would give me an edge throughout the entire game.

Fortunately, there are some items in the game that are "level-based." This meant that instead of having a set level requirement, the strength and effects of the gear would increase proportionately to the level of the player. These were generally neglected because other items would tend to be better and it was a wiser choice to use the high-level gear once you reached the level requirement. However, for noobs, these are good budget options so you don't have to spend on gear every time you level up.

Naturally, I had one of the best level-based weapons in the game:

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[Ascalon / Level Requirement: LEVEL-BASED WEAPON]

Base Effect: Increases damage dealt on draconic creatures by 20%. Increases resistance against fire, acid, electric, poison, ice, psychic, and earth attacks by 30%.

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As for my other items, I decided to go with two consumables:

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[Instant Emporium / Consumable]

Instantaneously conjures a magnificent emporium with a random catalog of useful items. The user can select one item from the emporium, after which the emporium will disappear.

[Rigid Egg / Consumable]

A pet Pseudodragon hatches from this egg.

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Pseudodragons are known to be one of the most useful pets in the game. I bought the egg from the cash shop just so I could transfer the egg, since it's the best pet available in the cash shop right now. The pets I've already hatched didn't count as items, so that was unfortunate. All the good pets were limited-time as well, so I couldn't even buy them.

As for the Instant Emporium, I chose that because I realized there would be more items in the new game, and this would then be an easy way to possibly get a good new item rather than bring something I already had before. Plus, the shop generates a number of random items to choose from, and it could allow me to familiarize myself with some new items just by inspecting them.

Next, I opened up my list of skills. There was a new icon that looked like a plus symbol next to each skill. This seems to be the button to add my desired skills for transfer.

I looked over the list, scrolling through countless skills and icons. [Murderous Intent], [Cumulonimbus], [Deadeye], [Swords Dance]... I had every skill from every class. Orpheon Online was a pretty unique game in that skills were not necessarily restricted to each class; it was just inefficient to spend on skills not specific to your class because it cost extra Skill Points (SP). For me, though, that wasn't a problem. Skill Points are generally distributed each time you level up, and there is no hard level cap in the game. Nobody really grinded their levels past level 100 because that's the last level where you get any special rewards outside of SP, but for someone like me who quite literally lived and breathed the game, I could reach my current level, level 720, just by grinding every day for years.

While continuing to mindlessly scroll through my list, a certain set of skills caught my eye.

Of course, how could I forget? These were the skills that allowed me to climb to where I am now. Without these, I could've never been able to become the undisputed top player. These were skills so powerful that they were only distributed once, and even then, the event through which they were distributed was so difficult that only a handful of players even managed to obtain any of them.

Of course, I was one of the people who obtained it.

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[LEGENDARY SKILL: x10 EXP]

Increases EXP gain by 1000%.

[LEGENDARY SKILL: x10 SP]

Increases SP gain by 1000%.

[LEGENDARY SKILL: x10 DROP RATE]

Increases item drop rates from enemies and chests by 1000%.

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With that, I was all set.

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