11 Beginner's Guide
After school at the location under the bridge…
"So, how did you know about this?" Ava asked.
"Listen to me carefully. This is incredibly important and could change your life forever. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear me saying this." Both Ava and Max leaned in closer to listen, even the two bodyguards in the invisible overtrick quietly listened to Jack.
"I guessed."
Silence reigned in the area as both Max and Ava were too stunned to speak.
"Alright, alright. Stop spacing out. There will be many things I tell you guys to do from now on, and when they turn out to be true, I will be unable to give you guys an explanation, since there is none. So just trust me, and convince your families to get you both VR capsules. If not, give me all your money, and I'll try and figure out a way to get you both enough money to purchase a VR capsule. Once that is done, just start playing in the Loan kingdom. Remember, do not go to the other two medium-sized kingdoms, only the Leon kingdom."
…
With that, their talks were over, and Jack put the 7,000 credits into his Shadow Inc. account, which was the combined savings of Ava and Max. He needed to increase this value by almost 300 times in order to be able to afford good quality VR capsules, and this would not be possible in the short run, therefore, he told them to instead try and convince their parents to buy them a VR capsule.
In the meantime, Jack would collect more and more in-game gold, until the currency exchange and the auction house were opened up in a few days' time, where he would sell his coins to collect enough funds for the two of them to enter the game.
While returning him, Jack opened the government website for VR players using his touchscreen phone.
[Name: GH0STZ0NE12]
[Age: 13]
[In-Game ID: Erebus] (This will be protected by AI security such that even members of the council directly cannot check its information)
[DNA Scan]
After allowing the phone to scan his DNA, the account was created. However, this would only start working once he opened his account with the same name and DNA and allowed the connection to be established. Of course, Jack made sure to use his Shadow Inc. account even for this, to prevent any future issues from arising.
Soon, he reached his apartment and entered the game.
[Logging in]
[Logged in]
[Welcome, Erebus, to the world of Tether]
Getting out of bed completely naked except for the two spears as well as the pure white mask, Jack left his room and checked the vault, making sure his 11 gold he had deposited yesterday was gone.
Leaving the inn, Jack went straight to the forest. In order to make his way anywhere outside the city, there were two options. Either he needed to be strong enough to walk his way through the 'barrier areas' which contained high-level creatures at high-density creating barriers between areas, or spend money and join a caravan, which would ensure your safety, but after taking its prices yesterday, Jack knew he would need a lot of crown feathers. 500 gold was not a small amount.
Of course, this 500 gold was to take him to the nearest large city of the Leon kingdom. If Jack wished to go to the large-sized kingdom called Jerome where he had spent most of his previous life, he needed almost 5,000 gold, an amount which was not possible for him at the moment. Therefore, he first needed to get to a larger city, and gain spells the orthodox way, before collecting enough money to get to his destination.
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 19
[You have gained 760 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 19]
[You have levelled up]
[You have gained 5 Unassigned Stat Points]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin]
[You have gained 40 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 1]
After selling everything including his two spears with the bleed effect, Jack had collected 130 gold after about 2 hours. He needed to enter further into the forest to collect his 500 gold, and to do that, he needed better equipment.
Spending 100 of his 130 gold, Jack bought a common dagger and a common poison-imbued dagger which paralyses the opponent if it is able to hit.
After bashing up the edge of the common dagger, it lost 0.5 of its +3 attack, but instead gained the bleed effect, while the common poison dagger had a +2.5 attack, to begin with.
With these two weapons, especially the common poison dagger, Jack's efficiency in fighting greatly improved. As soon as an enemy came close enough to Jack, he would stab with the common poison dagger. Since it was so close, it would rarely miss, causing the creature to be paralysed for 5 seconds, long enough for Jack to repeatedly stab it until it lost most of its health, before dying.
With the new weapons, Jack ventured further inwards into the forest, finally meeting Lv 5 and Lv 6 Ravelins.
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 4
[You have gained 160 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 4]
[You have killed Lv 5 Ravelin]
[You have gained 50 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Jewel feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 3
[You have gained 120 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 3]
[You have killed Lv 5 Ravelin]
[You have gained 50 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Jewel feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 6 Ravelin]
[You have gained 60 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Tail feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 5
[You have gained 200 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 5]
[You have killed Lv 6 Ravelin]
[You have gained 60 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Tail feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 5 Ravelin]
[You have gained 50 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Jewel feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 4
[You have gained 160 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 4]
[You have killed Lv 6 Ravelin] x 2
[You have gained 120 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Tail feather x 2]
[You have levelled up]
[You have gained 5 Unassigned Stat Points]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin]
[You have gained 40 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 5 Ravelin] x 3
[You have gained 150 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Jewel feather x 3]
[You have killed Lv 6 Ravelin]
[You have gained 60 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Tail feather x 1]
[You have killed Lv 5 Ravelin] x 2
[You have gained 100 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Jewel feather x 2]
With his new killings over 3 hours, Jack had accumulated enough to leave Raven city, and so he did right after returning to the city.
"Where would you like to go?"
"Herald City"
Herald City was the closest large city to the Jerome kingdom. From Raven city, Jack just had to go West for a few tens of kilometres before reaching Herald city.
"That would be 500 gold"
"Here you go"
After handing over the money, Jack was given a token and taken to a carriage, where he handed over his wooden token and got inside. Once h was inside, he would no longer have to worry about anything, after all, he was getting treatment equal to 500 gold. For this price, the NPCs who would protect him should at least be Lv 20 or above, and in a group of 4 to 5 people. That should keep him safe for the journey. Normally, this journey would take a day or two, however, after paying 500 gold, along with the few other people in the carriage with him who each paid the same amount, the horses carrying the carriage were not normal either. They were Lv 12 war horses, and with their speed, in just an hour or two at most Jack would reach Herald City.
Sitting inside the carriage were 5 other NPCs, each of whom was either too weak, scared, or too rich to make the journey alone, and therefore chose this method to travel. He did not engage them in the conversation for a very simple reason, getting entangled with the wrong kind of NPC might bring him on the wrong side of the powerful forces, perhaps even getting him hunted down. He did not wish for something like that to happen, and so he just kept quiet while opening the forums, which he had not checked since yesterday.
==========
Forum
Human Race
Leon (Medium sized kingdom)
Roland (Medium sized kingdom)
Cretes (Medium sized kingdom)
==========
Clicking on the 'Leon Kingdom' Option, Jack checked the top few threads and only saw the same regular threads. By now, there should be around a few hundred billion humans playing the game. Although this figure might sound like a lot, considering humans had control over 3 whole galaxies, with many more in contention, this number was pathetically small, only summing up to the population of a few planets.
Of course, the number of people was actually spread through the entire united human territory, consisting of those who could afford a VR capsule, and from them as well, there had to be those who were willing to put their minds at risk playing a game that humans had no control over. Despite the Government benefits, it was not enough to convince those rich pricks who had enough money to begin playing the game. It would still take some time until the government began offering benefits like tax cuts and protection schemes for excelling players would more and more people crush the military.
Scrolling down to his thread, Jack began readings its details and comments and was pleasantly surprised.
[thread: Beginner's Guide]
[Writer: Erebus]
[Views: 2,671]
[Lkes: 1,678]
[Comments: 297]
…
[Thank you so much!]
[Although a lot of this information was easily inferable, seeing it prepared like this makes it so much easier.]
[Lol, thanks]
…
Most of the comments were positive, and since not a single one was fake or from people Jack had paid to comment and leave, some conversations were even ignited within the comments section. Therefore, Jack decided to create a sub-thread for discussions, so that the comments would not be flooded by conversations between players.
Next, he split the information he had into parts.
[HUD details]
[Classes and Subclasses]
[Stats Information]
After that, he added some bits of information to each of them, before adding a new category.
[Monster encyclopedia]
Within this, he created a sub-category for Slimes and added information about how they worked, their strengths as well weaknesses. The fact that slimes were afraid of fire was also written on it, but he also added that using fire would only push them back. Doing this in a forest would temporarily push back a few but would act as a beacon for more and more until you were completely surrounded.
After that, he created another sub-category for Ravelins, putting up their information as well as weaknesses. Of course, he did not put in how he added the bleed effect to his weapons and just told them that using weapons with bleed effects or poison-paralysis effects were the most useful on Ravelins.
After that, Jack added a new category called [Travel Log]
[After that 'beginners' special surprise' with the slimes, I was teleported to a small city called Raven city, where I fought with Ravelins until I collected enough gold to leave the place. Note: You need 500 gold to get to the nearest large-scale city called Herald City, which is where I am currently heading. Unfortunately, I am still naked, since I had to put all of my gold into travelling. Current money = 0 gold]
After that, he closed it and went to sleep, waiting for the journey to end.
…
About an hour into the journey, the carriage came to a sudden stop. Immediately, Jack stood up and peeked out of the carriage, hoping to see Herald city. Unfortunately, he saw a group of bandits facing off against the mercenaries protecting their group.
This was one of those 'optional quests' where he could assist the mercenaries if he wanted. That way, he would make friends with them and possibly get them to help him in the future as well.
However, jack did not have the Level, nor the spells to be of any use, so he just returned back since his carriage and waited. About 10 minutes of fighting later, the carriage began moving once more. This time around, Jack did not fall asleep, as he would reach his destination within the next 20-30 minutes based on his mini-map. Therefore, Jack went on the forums and continued typing on his [Travel Log]
[I will be adding some 'Lore' about this continent, and the reason for me so urgently shifting locations is due to this lore. All Mages in all kingdoms please beware. If you purchase your magic from ordinary merchants or shops, you will be branded as 'unorthodox' in nature. This means you will likely be hunted down by orthodox NPC mages when you are spotted by them. Instead, if you head to a larger city and go to their mage tower, you can get the same spells, for free, and you will be considered as an 'orthodox' mage. The only downside is that you will be obligated to complete a certain set of tasks for that Mage tower for every spell you take. The reasons for not wanting to be part of the 'unorthodox' mages will be explained in the Lore category. But please make sure to heed my warning.]
After that, Jack created the new category called Lore, and the sub-categories:
[Lore:]
[Continental]
[Kingdom]
[Leon]
[Roland]
[Cretes]
After entering the Continental Lore, Jack began typing.
[The very first mage of the continent created his magic tower after reaching the 5th circle, at which point he felt like he could protect any students he took in. Which was exactly what he did. The unforgiving sands of time caused the life of the first mage of the continent to come to an end as well, however, his tradition of reaching the 5th circle before establishing a mage tower and only then accepting students was passed down from generation of mage to generation.]
[However, as time passed, radicals and free-thinkers were bound to appear; those who did not wish to conform to the norms of society. Split over generations, such people made it their belief that allowing all mages no access to magic regardless of being a disciple would lead to the prospering of magic as a whole, and so they spread the knowledge of spells everywhere]
[Angered by the blatant disregard of their tradition, the mages renamed themselves as the orthodox mages, while those who spread the knowledge freely were renamed the unorthodox mages, and such mages were to be hunted down on sight, or at least reported to the nearest mage tower.]
[Currently, the orthodox mages have almost 20 legendary rank mages; meaning they have surpassed the 10th circle. On the other hand, the unorthodox mages had just 2 Legendary ranks mages. Considering the constant killings and deaths on their side, the unorthodox mages are incredibly weak and are likely to remain so in the near future unless something drastic changes the entire power structure of the entire continent.]
[Please note: A mage can change to become an unorthodox mage at any time after undergoing an initiation ceremony. However, an unorthodox mage can never become an orthodox mage]
After thinking about the best information to write without making it seem as though he knew too much, Jack finished writing and posted it.
