10 Federation Announcement
With the rest of his money, Jack went to the blacksmith and bought a spear. It was unfortunate that being such a small city, the Raven city did not have a mage tower, meaning he could not possibly learn magic in the orthodox way. He could learn it the unorthodox way by purchasing grimoires from libraries or shops, but that would mean he stood against the greatest power on the entire continent; the orthodox mage towers.
Therefore, it was better to stick to physical attacks until he could leave the Raven city, and preferably head towards the larger kingdoms to the north.
Spending 20 gold on a regular spear which did not have the bleed effect, Jack went to the outside of the city one more completely naked, and using a nearby stone, made the smooth and sharp stone edge of the spear into a jagged edge. This reduced its attack boost from +2 to +1.5, however it also added the bleed effect, which was the sole reason why Jack had been able to successfully hunt the Ravelins using purely physical attacks.
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 3
[You have gained 120 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 3]
[You have levelled up]
[You have gained 5 Unassigned Stat Points]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 2
[You have gained 80 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 2]
[You have levelled up]
[You have gained 5 Unassigned Stat Points]
With a second level-up, Jack assigned his newly acquired 10 stat points before continuing his hunt.
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 3
[You have gained 120 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 3]
[You have levelled up]
[You have gained 5 Unassigned Stat Points]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 2
[You have gained 80 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 2]
[You have levelled up]
[You have gained 5 Unassigned Stat Points]
[You have killed Lv 4 Ravelin] x 6
[You have gained 240 Experience]
[You have gained Ravelin Crown feather x 6]
With his current loot in a bag, Jack returned to the city, turned in the crown feather for a cool 96 gold, and rushed to the underground market, where thankfully, no one had bought it yet, mainly because no players had discovered this place yet.
"Thank you for your purchase. Do some again" said the shopkeeper with a smile on his face, not knowing he had lost the single greatest item this entire town possessed for a measly 100 gold.
[You have equipped Common grade Devour Mask]
[Effect: Hides the user's face, Devour metal]
[Durability: 2/2]
[Devour Metal: Allows the item to devour any metal of the one grade higher than itself, or below, in order to increase its own grade, as well as absorb the effects of those metals.]
'Haha! It's the Devour Mask!' Jack exclaimed in his heart as he put it on.
The Mask was a purely white mask with no openings even for eyes, as though the user did not use their eyes to see. In reality, Jack could see just fine through the mask, it was just that no one else could see his eyes.
The Devour mask was a mask used by Luke, one of the strongest Assassin players in his previous life, whose name only came out just a few months before Jack died. His real identity had been kept a secret due to this mask, which prevented anyone from gaining a clue about his real identity, especially since e never removed it, and it seemingly grew along with him, becoming equipment which was suitable to wear at whatever level he was at.
As it turned out, he was actually feeding it tonnes of metals in order to make it grow.
Now that Jack had reached Lv 10, although his combat power was pathetically weak, still needing him to use the bleed damage to deal with Lv 4 Ravelins, Jack was preparing on leaving Raven city. After all, he had already got such a good item, as well as power-levelled to Lv 10. Now, the first thing he needed to do was to gain access to a Magic tower and learn spells in order to be able to utilise his powers as a mage engineer.
But for now, it was getting later and he needed to log out. Just before doing so, Jack went to the ground floor of the inn to buy one night's rest. Along the way, he decided to check the forums, and it was now completely a mess.
However, most of the articles were just random stuff like how someone got hurt or someone was able to kill a Lv 1 creature.
Seeing that there was a large portion of the market on the forums unutilised and laid out bare, almost as though waiting for him, Jack created a new thread and set the profile picture as his face that was covered by the mask. Next, he set the name to 'Beginner's guide to Tether' by Erebus.
This was not just some random publicity stunt he was doing for the fun of it, but rather an important part of his plan. In order to get revenge on so many guilds, and even real-life corporations, he needed a guild himself as no matter how strong he was, it would be useless. A guild would give him the manpower he required for this revenge.
However, Jack did not need a guild like before where everyone was too weak compared to the 'rankers' in the other guilds, and even the elites in his own guild sold him out for money. No. This time he did not mind a much smaller guild, but one that had incredibly strong players, like future rankers and the likes. But to do that, he would need to begin early on in the game to create a presence and build his reputation. Only then would he be able to recruit such players.
In this 'Beginner's Guide' Jack had entered all basic information. Details about the HUD; where things like the mini-map, health and mana, etc., are located. He also included how each of the classes work as well as how stats work. Lastly, he added in all the detailed information on how the 'dependent stats' were calculated, and how they would affect a player while fighting, using very detailed language first, and then summarising it in one sentence for those players who would not read through everything. Such players, coincidentally, were the vast majority of players who would visit his thread in the near future.
'More information will be uploaded as I understand more about this new world called Tether. Till then, Erebus.'
After signing off on his newly created thread, Jack went to bed in the inn's room and logged out.
…
[United Human Calendar Year 4702, 6th of December]
In school, Jack, Ava, and Max were enjoying their everyday life, while the United Human council had finally recovered from the great turmoil of having one of their members killed. They had now collected all information required and had already begun taking action. The very first thing they did was suspend the use of all mass-destruction weapons on populated planets or stations to avoid mass casualties. Many more preventative measures had also been taken to prevent something like this from happening.
They had also come to the decision to finally make an announcement to the entire human race.
During lunchtime, all electronic devices stopped working, and a governmental message began playing. There was dramatic music and sound effects, showing the scientific might of the human race as they left their home planet, just taking their first baby steps into interstellar travel when the aliens invaded. Humans were beaten back to their own solar system once more, and this time period was known as the resistance period. Humans, who were on their last legs, gave incredible resistance to the outside forces of the draconians and stood their ground, and with time, as the draconians became involved in a war with the dwarves, their effort to make the humans submit reduced, given the humans breathing room to rapidly expand. The expansion in both technology and population allowed humans to now begin their counter-attack and begin to take over countless star systems and star clusters, which were essentially just a bunch of stat systems together, and ultimately take over a full 12 galaxies.
Then, a voice began to play.
"Citizens of the United Human Federation. I am the spokesperson of your council. The council has come to the decision after deep debate, sincere contemplation, and strict dedication to the human race, that from this day forward until specified otherwise, any and all who utilise the VR game known as 'Tether', shall be rewarded with a daily salary of 200 credits. Those who are between the ages of 20 and 45, will be given the opportunity to join the military under the special recruitment drive within the new division which is being created called the 'Tether Corps'. For those below the age of 20, you will be eligible to join the newly built 'VR Academy', a subdivision of the Tether Corps, where students will be trained for VR combat. After graduation, if the student so wishes, they will be given the opportunity to join the Tether Corps, with a rank given based on their performance throughout the year. The Tether Corps will be functional in the next 2 hours, while the VR Academy will take 24 hours before it is fully functional. However, you can begin registration for it immediately."
With that, the message ended and all electronic devices returned to normal.
However, Ava and Max both turned to look at Jack as if he was some sort of freak of nature.
'How did he know?' They both through in their minds, while Jack had the simple,
'I told you so' look plastered on his face.
