Rise of the Savant

Plates and cups made a light clanking sound as Shin loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up the dining table. He paced over toward the TV to turn it off but the news broadcast began to catch his eye

"We're beginning to see what seems like the beginning of a massive crash in the economy. Stock markets have begun to show signs of destabilization and prices are beginning to surge as large swaths of people are panic buying supplies from local markets. We may be witnessing a historic event right before our eyes here, Sophie."

His eyes widened upon hearing the news. The Leung household was already in dire straits. Although his father and mother were both working, his mother was the primary breadwinner in the household. Shin's parental situation was complicated. For all intents and purposes, they were separated, but not officially. The only other form of income in the household comes from Shin himself.

In previous MMORPG titles, Shin participated in real money trading. In-game currencies such as gold and silver or resources and services can be traded for real-world money. While many game developers often ban these forms of transactions, that never stops the community or third-party websites and organizations from creating a black market for in-game goods and services.

With Shin's mother unable to keep the household afloat and fleeting formal work opportunities, there was only one way Shin could keep his life afloat.

Shin promptly quickly turned off the TV and went back to his room and PC. With the messenger window still open from his previous chat with his mother, he messaged Qu.

"Dude, you saw the news right?"

While waiting for a reply, Shin checked his online payment portal for the household bills.

"$3820.75 huh..." scratching his head as he plotted.

"Yeah, let's meet up in-game man. This real-world shit is stressing me out." Qu responded.

[Mythos Online]

[Start]

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A world of lights surrounded me. As Shin opened his eyes again, the vibrant world of Mythos Online captured his senses again. The contrast to the dreary world outside of the game could not be more obvious as he stood in the middle of Levendale. The game seemed to have placed him in the center of town even though Shin disconnected in the middle of a forest instance. Shin wondered if this happened every time he reconnected to the game? Either way, this made it easier to find Qu.

Shin knew Qu for four years now. They met in the computer lab in high school during their first year. The two of them quickly bonded over their shared interest in gaming and have been playing games together since then. Qu was never really good at games though. He was often supportive, while Shin would rush in and do as much damage as possible. What Qu really excelled at was breaking in-game systems. He's often data-mined game files to uncover exploits. Shin and Qu got into a lot of trouble together through these exploitations. They got banned from one game after another.

Suddenly, Shin got a notification from a social panel that appeared on the top right side of his vision. It was a message from Nightingale.

"Hey, Shin, I'll meet you by the fountain in the central plaza of Levendale in a few minutes. There really isn't any form of fast travel in this game from what I can tell."

Unsurprisingly, he guessed Shin's in-game name without even asking. While Nightingale was on his way, Shin had time to figure out some of the game systems and purchase weapons and armor

Shin left the party that he was in yesterday.

Navigating around Levendale was troublesome. Although the town was small and compact, Shin had to make an effort to find the armory as there wasn't any form of the minimap.

After wandering around for more or less five minutes, he stumbled upon the Levendale Armory.

The sign at the entrance automatically translated to English as he focused on the words.

The inside of the armory was darker than he expected. Unlike the guild hall and the merchants that line the streets of Levendale, the shopkeeper was a player.

Unfortunately, Shin didn't accept a quest earlier due to the debacle in the guild hall so he didn't get any additional silver from defeating goblins. Shin pulled out a pouch from his belt strap and an inventory panel opened up while he was holding the pouch.

All Shin had was a measly 30 silver and three rookie potions that restore 30 health. When he gave it some more thought, Shin hasn't even seen his health bar yet. He speculated that it may have been because he hasn't taken any damage yet. There were also a lot of attributes and stats that were missing from his attribute page. Shin guessed that they wouldn't show up there until he acquired some points in those attributes from equipment or skills.

The armory had a small selection of lightweight armor and rookie weapons. These items were different than the rookie equipment found on Hale and his party as the armory items were crafted.

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[Rookie Dagger]

Crafted

[Specialization: Bandit, Savant]

[Attributes]

Agility: 3

Attack: 13

[Required Attribute]

Agility: 5

(?) - Attributes of this weapon are reduced by 50% when equipped by a Savant

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Shin noticed that crafted rookie equipment was slightly more powerful than the rookie equipment that players were given at the start of the game.

Shin decided to purchase a dagger as it fit the fighting style that he was used to in previous MMORPG games. He used up the majority of his silver.

Since he didn't have enough money to purchase any new armor, he left the armory and went toward the fountain to wait for Nightingale. It was a little weird to Shin to not call him Qu since he knew Qu in real life. However, he decided to call him Nightingale anyway for the sake of immersion.

++++++++++++++

Blue-colored slime flew through the air and I was left panting.

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[YOU REACHED LEVEL 5]

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The beginner slimes didn't give Shin as much experience after a few levels. He estimated that he had killed at least thirty of them.

Shin didn't have any special skills yet as a Savant. However, this was the moment he'd been waiting for. His skill tree expanded.

When Shin was level 4, he didn't see the rest of his skill tree. The branching nodes of the skill tree were visible but they were darkened to the point where he couldn't read any of the skills.

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[Savant Skill Tree]

[Swift Strike] - Dash a short distance forward and attack enemies with your equipped weapon with 110% of your attack power.

[Retrieval] - While your equipped weapon is not currently held by you, call the weapon back to your hand so long as it's within 3 meters of you.

[Efficiency] - When consuming a resource or ammunition, there is a 15% chance that the cost will be refunded back to you.

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"These are a lot more interesting" Shin thought.

To Shin, the Savant skills were very generic, but he started getting ideas about how he could use some of the abilities.

Since he didn't have any offensive abilities, Shin decided to learn [Swift Strike]. He thought that taking this skill first would increase how quickly fastleveled.

Shin wasn't too far from the entrance gates of Levendale so it was only a five minute walk back following the road. After he returned to Levendale, Shin immediately made his way to the central fountain.

"Shin, yo, you kept me waiting!" Nightingale waved at Shin.

Nightingale wore a dark metal plate over his torso but the rest of his legs and arms were what seemed like a dark skintight bodysuit. He was rather slender and held a teal codex in his right hand. His light skin was accompanied by his long black hair and green eyes. His hair was longer than Shin remembered it. Nightingale's hair went down to his shoulders before splitting at the ends.

"Hey, Nightingale!" Shin smiled and waved back to him.

Shin made his way closer and sat down on the bench next to him. The water from the fountain was carried by the wind and lightly sprinkled on his arm.

"So... did you find anything interesting?" Shin asked.

"Yeah... well, this game seems like it's pretty well built. There's a lot of things that they accounted for but that won't stop me." Nightingale said, clicking his tongue.

"As expected coming from you."

"Right? You can still just call me Qu by the way." Nightingale replied with a slight hint of annoyance in his voice.

"Well, I like to immerse myself into the game. You should do the same, ya know?" Shin replied.

"Ehh... I guess but- fine. I'll just deal with it. There's no point in arguing this back and forth for the 20th time." Nightingale groaned as he quickly gave up.

Shin and Nightingale had this conversation many times before in just about every single game they played together. Shin was always the one trying to put himself in the game while Nightingale was spending most of his time researching the game and exploiting it.

"Anyway, you heard the news, right? There's a really big market in Mythos for RMT right now especially considering the rumors about the economy crashing in real-life. I think we outta exploit it early while we can." Nightingale said while crossing his arms and nodding.

"Do you have any ideas?" Shin inquired.

"Yeah, wait till you see this!"