First Steps
Before this chapter kicks off, just wanted to make note of a few things. The first world that the main character is visiting is just a beginning starting world, so don't expect absolutely op insane things to happen just yet. He himself will grow strong pretty fast, but the first world is just supposed to be a 'tutorial' world of sorts, so it's not one with insanely strong characters. If anything, it's kind of more a slice of life in my opinion.
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At the current time, Nixon could be seen stretching his arms as he was gazing over his information. The reason for him doing so was because he was about to begin his adventure, so he wanted to make sure everything was in order before he set off.
He had also decided to test if doing basic physical exercises would increase his strength, and before he could have even started, Xur had told him that it wouldn't suffice. The only way to increase the Strength, Agility and Endurance stats are by levelling up and such.
"Leaving already, huh?" The voice of none other than Xur himself sounded as Nixon looked to see the infamous merchant walking over towards him, his back still hunched over. "You certainly are just like I was, I left almost immediately as well when I first started!"
"Yeah, kinda want to get started on everything." Nixon gave a small chuckle as he swiped down to close his menu screen before turning to face Xur. "Thanks for everything you've done for me so far, the food you made was incredible."
"Don't mention it, Nixon. Our paths are certain to cross again at some point." Xur gave a small laugh as he said this. Xur then seemed to hold his open hand in front of himself, confusing Nixon. "Before you head off, how about a small little gift to help you out."
Nixon watched as blue particles started to form together in the palm of Xur's open hand, to which they began to gather together before seemingly taking shape into what looked like a cube of sorts. The cube was mainly white in coloration with some blue neon lights.
"What is this?" Nixon asked curiously as he looked at the item in Xur's hand. Which the man soon held forwards towards Nixon, who blinked before taking hold of the strange cube and inspecting it with a curious look in his eyes. He was going to use the system to identify the item, but Xur beat him to it.
"That is just a portable residence, just simple give it a small toss and it will appear. I suggest you find an open space though, it may not be the biggest, but it is certainly bigger than your average place." Xur explained as Nixon blinked in surprise. "We're not really supposed to help one another out, but if it's nothing too crazy, the administrators won't mind."
"Wow... thanks a lot, Xur." Nixon was completely genuine when he said those words. While he didn't mind sleeping in the wild if he had to as he had some experience with that, he did much prefer to sleep in a house. It was just far more comfortable like that. "I'll make sure to pay you back one day."
"Don't mind, don't mind." Xur gave a chuckle as he waved it off. "Just think of it as a welcoming present to a good business life. I am curious to see just how far you're going to go, and I have a feeling that you'll surprise even the administrators one day."
Nixon just smiled sheepishly at the comment as he soon activated the [World Travel] option from the main menu of the system, and when he did, it obviously displayed that he hadn't visited any worlds as of yet. So, the only option it gave him was whether or not he wanted to select a random world.
Obviously, he selected [Yes].
The both of them watch as a large collection of spatial particles soon began to gather in front of Nixon after the menu automatically closed down, the particles all began to take the form of a circular portal that was in constant motion. A small weak force could be felt pulling both of them towards it, though it wasn't strong enough to actually pull them across the floor.
"Well, I guess I'll be seeing you some other, Xur."
"Indeed. Have a safe and prosperous trip." Nixon just gave a small grin in response before giving a thumbs up before running towards the portal and jumping through, and Xur watched as the portal slowly closed behind after Nixon had jumped through.
Just like that, Nixon's adventures have begun!
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Nixon could now be seen falling through what looked to be a long endless tunnel of swirling lights, a small smile present on his face as he was curious about what kind of world he'd end up dropping into. Was it a dangerous world? A peaceful world? A world like his old one? He didn't know.
Personally, he would prefer if he was sent to a world that was somewhat moderately dangerous, though no too dangerous. He was only starting out, so he wasn't sure just how strong the abilities that he has right now are. Even if they are insanely powerful, he was still probably considered pretty weak.
He was only level one.
As he was pondering on about a lot of things while falling through this wormhole, a sudden prompt suddenly appeared in front of his eyes from the system. He blinked in surprise though just calmly read through the information that was given to him.
『Omniversal Gateways』
『They are the different passageways that connect all different realities together to form what we know as the Omniverse. With them, people who are capable of accessing them are capable of travelling not only through worlds, but also through time. Due to this, it is important to make note that should you falter and accidentally fall out of the Gateway, you risk being flung into unknown territory and unknown time periods』
"Wow, sounds pleasant..." Nixon deadpanned as he read the information. Basically, if he fudged up and fell off course, he may find himself travelling through time accidentally and to some place he didn't know. This would affect him mostly if he was trying to go back to worlds he would have previously visited. "In other words, I just need to not be dumb. Should be easy enough."
He had also noticed that there were other intercepting gateways that probably lead towards other worlds aside from the one he was currently going to, though his course didn't deviate when he went past them. His trip stayed in this one singular gateway, so that was a thing.
『Arriving in 5 seconds』
『5』
『4』
『3』
『2』
『1』
Nixon widened his eyes when the countdown finished as everything came into picture in an instant as right when the countdown finished the sight of the gateway vanished in an instant, and his vision was now graced with the sights of a vast landscape as he was falling...
"Wait, falling...?" Nixon blinked as his mind soon registered everything. Looking down, he could see that he was now falling down at incredible speed. The fortunate thing was that he was falling towards a large lake of water. "Well, this is certainly quite the annoying predicament..."
Nixon could only state those words calmly as any kind of fear of such a height washed away instantly thanks to the power of Gamer's Mind. He could only calmly wait as his body soon quickly approached the body of water, to which he soon made impact with as a large pillar of water shot up in response to the impact.
'Hm, no pain...' Nixon shrugged as he honestly thought that he would feel some pain due to the speed in which he was going, though he did remember that apparently pain was now null to him. He found himself at the bottom of the lake, so he bent his legs and pushed off the bottom of the lake before swimming up.
He honestly found it a bit weird that while the Gamer's Body removed the ability to feel pain, it didn't remove things like hunger or thirst, or even breathing. Game characters tend to not require any kind of nutrition, those things were mainly used for healing. Breathing was on the edge with that one as many games had a respiration mechanic.
Meh, he wasn't too bothered by it. The ability to taste and feel the satisfaction of eating food was something he wouldn't want to remove, even if not needing to eat or drink anything was a very useful thing to have. Plus, he was more than happy with what he had as of right now.
It didn't take him too long to swim to the surface as the lake was thankfully not incredibly deep, so he was able to easily swim back up without running out of breath. When he did, he looked around for a second before swimming towards the shore.
He looked around while doing so as he wanted to see if there was anyone or anything around that might have seen him fall through the sky, such a thing would bring many damn questions which he really didn't want to have to answer at the moment. "Oh, my damn clothes are wet..."
Nixon frowned as he climbed himself up onto the shore, pulling on his clothes as the water was dripping down from his hair and clothing. He wringed out his shirt to remove most of the water, though the rest of the water on his body would have to dry by itself over time.
『Congratulations!』
『You have made your first big step into your journey. Would the user like to set this world as the 'Standard World'? By doing so, the user can travel back to this world without needing to wait for the World Travel cool down. However, this will only be available once the user has left this world for the first time after the cooldown』
『Do keep in mind that to be able to leave this world, you would need to wait for the cooldown if the user had travelled to another world prior to revisiting this world. Cooldown won't be reset if the user hasn't used it to travel to another world aside from this one』
『Yes』『No』
"Interesting, so I can just come back and forth, huh?" Nixon muttered as his attention was now on the new prompt. From what he understood, he would have to first leave this world after the cooldown before he could freely travel to this world whenever he wanted.
From the second part, he understood that it meant that the cooldown phase for world travel wouldn't reset back to a week if he comes back to this world. In other words, if he visits another world and the countdown goes down to around three days or something left, then it will continue counting down from that timeframe even if he went back to this world.
That honestly sounded like a very useful thing. Consider the situation that he finds himself in a world that he absolutely didn't want to deal with, something like Highschool of the Dead or whatever, he could just instantly leave it by going back to this world if he set it as a 'Standard World'. Of course, he'd have to wait a week before he could leave the Standard World as he would have used the World Travel function to have gone to the HOTD world.
Which he didn't mind doing, he ain't dealing with a zombie apocalypse world. Even if he became really strong, he still ain't wanting to deal with that bull. A zombie apocalypse world was a zombie apocalypse world, he didn't care if he had Gamer's Mind. Screw that.
"Can I withhold that option for later?"
『Indeed』
"Okay, thanks." Nixon was a bit surprised at the response as he didn't expect an actual response. The system always never talked to him as if it was sentient, though it seemed to probably respond if he actually addressed it. Good thing to keep in mind.
The reason why he wanted to withhold the option was because he wasn't entirely sure what kind of world this was just yet, so he wanted to get some information and everything first before making any major decisions like that.
"Hold on, system. Would I be able to change the Standard World later on?"
『Unfortunately, that is not an option』
"Okay, then withholding the option it is." Nixon nodded as he heard the response to his question. If he was unable to change it then he will wait a bit before deciding. If this was a peaceful world to relax by going back to, then he was all for it. If not and this was a total shithouse, then yeah nah. "Hm?"
Nixon's ears seemed to twitch when a strange sound invaded his ears, and when he turned to see what the source of the noise was, he could see that it was what looked to be a silver-colored wolf that walked out from a nearby bush. It had just come out from within the forest surrounding the lake.
...
『Status』
Name: Wolfe
Race: Wolfe
Level: 6
Health Points: 150/150
Mana Points: NULL
● Strength: 12
● Agility: 30
● Endurance: 15
● Intellect: 10
● Luck: 2
...
'Wait, wolfe? Not wolf?' Nixon couldn't help but blink in confusion at the thing. It looked exactly like a wolf, but apparently not one? It was obvious that whatever person named this creature got really damn lazy, they literally just put an 'e' onto the end of the word wolf.
Anyway, aside from its unoriginal name, the wolf was faster yet physically weaker than he was. He was glad he liked to do gym work, his strength was mainly thanks to that. It's luck was absolutely abhorred, though it had some decent speed in it, which made sense as it was a damn wolf... well, wolfe.
'Interesting, so just having intelligence doesn't mean you can use magic. Should have assumed that, but good to know.' Nixon got into a guarded stance as he read over the status that was given to him. The wolfe didn't have any mana points, so that meant it was incapable of magic despite its intellect. Although low, it still had it.
Nixon didn't want to charge in first as he knew that it was faster than him, so it would be very risky if he was in close proximity if he couldn't move fast enough to dodge its attacks. You have to fight smart if you really want to survive, and that was what he was intending on doing. He was going to wait for an opening.
The headphones that he usually wore over his head were mainly just there whenever he wanted peace and quiet as they were good soundproof headphones to block out outside noise, though he had them hanging around his neck right now as even using his hearing was a good way just in case his eyes couldn't track his opponents.
Never rely on your eyes all the time.
The wolfe was obviously getting impatient, this was good. Nixon gave a taunting smirk as the wolfe growled at him, to which it then angrily charged towards him with its fangs on full display. Nixon just watched as it approached him, he didn't blink at all as he then quickly turned his body when it pounced at him.
The attacking wolfe ended up narrowly missing Nixon as he had managed to avoid the attack, though he didn't let the chance pass up as narrowed his eyes. He clenched his fist and reeled it back quickly. 'I hope this freaking works...'
Not long after, red lightning soon started sparking off of Nixon's clenched fist. The young male smirked before punching forwards, managing to deliver a strike that struck the wolfe right on its side. When his fist made contact, the lightning seemed to transfer over to the wolfe as it cried in pain as it was sent skidding to the side with sparks coming off of it.
"Nice! Imagination is key." Nixon gave a small grin as he said this. It seemed that to utilize the powers of the contract, he just needed to imagine the lightning forming and he could call it forth. "Let's try this out then, I hope you're ready!"
Pointing his right hand forwards, a his hand gave off a quick number of red sparks before a bolt of red lightning shot out from his hand and struck the wolfe that had only just managed to recover. The lightning caused its body to dance a bit as the wolfe soon fell back to the ground. Smoke could be seen coming off of its fur due to the attack.
Nixon honestly felt a bit bad doing this, though the wolfe was trying to kill him, so he had to defend himself. It brought this upon itself, and he might as well use this opportunity to test out his lightning abilities. Once again, the wolfe brought it upon itself by attacking him.
...
『Status』
Name: Wolfe
Race: Wolfe
Level: 6
Health Points: 68/150
Mana Points: NULL
● Strength: 12
● Agility: 30
● Endurance: 15
● Intellect: 10
● Luck: 2
...
"Wow, he's almost dead already. Not as difficult as I thought it would have a been..." Nixon rose an eyebrow when he checked the stats of the wolfe. He knew that he did some decent damage, though he didn't expect it to do that much, and his mana was only slightly drained at the moment. He had only used two attacks. "Guess I'll finish you off with something a bit stronger."
There was still something Nixon wanted to test out with his lightning abilities, and that was the ability to call forth lightning spirits. Unlike wind spirits, lightning spirits were far less abundant, so he wanted to test how fast he could actually call them forth.
'I hope this works...' Since the wolfe was still twitching on the ground, it gave him time to do this. Raising his hand towards the sky, Nixon imagined something like small particles gathering into his hand. It seemed to actually work as a number of crimson red sparking particles started to fly towards his hand from all over the place. 'Alright, not too fast, but still not bad!'
After gathering a few spirits, he clenched his fist as those spirits surrounded his entire hand, causing it to give off a dense red glow along with sparking electricity. He then thrusted his hand forwards, resulting in a far louder and stronger bolt of lightning to unleash upon the wolfe.
It didn't even get to give a cry of pain before the attack finished it off, and the smell of burning fur was very much prominent. The lightning attack had also caused the area to light up for a second due to the intensity, though that flash quickly went away as it came when the attack stopped.
"Interesting, it doesn't use my mana points if I gather spirits. I guess it makes sense, those spirits were what my attacks fueled by..." Nixon nodded in understanding as he looked at the corpse of the dead wolfe. He noticed that none of his mana was used for that attack, in fact, some of it had recovered due to him not unleashing the entire amount of power from the gathered spirits.
The power of those gathered spirits that he didn't end up using helped replenish his mana points, which was very useful as his mana didn't seem to replenish naturally. So, he would either have to drink mana potions or gather spirits to help get his mana points back up.
There were quite a number of things he had learnt so far from this simple learning fight, very useful things to know. First off, he could charge up his lightning attack when using his mana as a power source, so the amount of mana he used depended entirely on how charged his attacks are. He noticed them when he used more mana when charging up that second attack he did.
The second thing that he learnt was with that third attack, which was that he didn't need to use his mana points if he didn't want to. However, that would mean he would have to have the time to call forth lightning spirits, so that was definitely a disadvantage. Unless he could train to gather them even faster, then it could be risky to do that.
Unless he had the time to gather spirits, it would be a big risk to try and gather them for an attack in the middle of a fight.
Also, there was something else he was going to have to verify later on as he didn't want to waste any mana right now. If he could use the power of the lightning spirits for an attack as a substitute instead of his mana points, could he use double power sources being the spirits as well as his own mana pool? That could be a very powerful thing for the future. He'd have to test that.
『You have levelled up!』
『You have levelled up!』
『Received Wolfe Pelt x1』
『Received Wolfe Meat x3』
『Received Common Mana Gem x1』
"Two levels from a single monster that low level? Nice." While he knew that the wolfe was pretty weak considering he could kill it at level one, it was still nice that he levelled up twice from a single kill. It wasn't a hard fight either, so that was good. The wolfe also started disappearing. "What the heck is a Mana Gem? Can I get mana points from it? Eh, I'll check after."
...
『Status』
Name: Nixon Colress
Age: 16
Title: None
Race: Human
System Coins: 10,000
Player Level: 3 [EXP: 8/70]
Merchant Level: 1 [EXP: 0/100]
Status Points: 4
Health Points: 220/220
Mana Points: 764/800
● Strength: 24 <+0>
● Agility: 26 <+0>
● Endurance: 22 <+0>
● Intellect: 40 <+0>
● Luck: 15 <+0>
...
Just like the system had explained when he first checked his [Status], it seemed that his physical parameters, them being Strength, Agility and Endurance have increased by four each due to levelling up twice. He had also gained the four Status Points as well.
The fact that those three parameters will increase every single time he levels up, that was very useful as he could use his Status Points to further increase them on top of that. If there is a way for him to increase any of those amounts, he could get pretty damn strong. Though, that entirely depends on how easy it is to level up as he gets stronger.
Anyway, for the time being. He decided to allocate the four points into his Strength parameter, this was mainly because he didn't have a weapon at all to his name. He only had his abilities, and he couldn't allocate the points to Intellect as he needed read and such to increase that, so making himself physically powerful was a good decision for right now.
"Alright, time to find some civilization." Nixon thought this as his first primary objective. He was a merchant, so for him to actually get people to buy things, he'd need to go to a place with people first. Though, that might be more difficult than he might guess as he had no idea where to start. "Guess I just start walking..."
As he was walking, he did understand that he didn't necessary need to actually do merchant work. However, he was definitely going to do so as by increasing his merchant level, the better the items he would be able to get for himself from the item packs when he gets more of them. That was just one of the main reason for him wanting to actually do this business.
...
『New Quest Acquired』
Task: Save the young magic caster from the group of goblins
● Kill 25 goblins [⚫]
● Save Lurina from the goblins [⚫]
● Escort Lurina back to the city of Crimonia [Optional] [⚫]
Rewards:
● 400 System Coins
● Companion Token [Amount: 1] [Optional Objective Reward]
...
"Eh? That was unexpected..." Nixon blinked in surprise at the sudden prompt of a new quest. He hadn't even been walking for that long, though reading it, it seemed that someone was probably in danger. This Lurina or whatever. "Goblins? Am I in a fantasy world or something?"
He also noticed that the last objective for the quest was optional, meaning it wasn't necessary. However, he'd definitely end up doing it anyway. Two reasons, first being that he was curious to find out what that Companion Token was. The main reason being that he would end up getting to this Crimonia place, a city! That means people!
He could only assume that this Lurina person probably knows the direction there, because god he wouldn't know. It didn't take long either before a scream could be heard echoing through the forest area ahead of him. "Well, that makes it easier. I'm on my way!"
Just like that, Nixon began dashing forwards.