Chapter 3: Starting village
The cutscene disappeared and the space around Noah started to glow, in just a second the previously dark space was replaced by an almost real-life-like village.
This was the starting village where all players started, there were, of course, multiple starter villages but each one was identical to the other, only later on in the game would different continents, countries, cities, and villages be accessible, in the start everyone would be at the same place, just different servers, all quests, NPCs and monsters would be the same for now.
He was the first player to arrive but he could already see a few glows, most likely people who didn't care about customization and chose the most cool-sounding monster part.
The best thing for Noah to do at the moment would be to gain the free stat points that you could get by going to the training grounds.
'Status' Noah thought silently.
[Status
Level: 1
Exp: 0/500
HP: 100/100
MP: 80/80
Strength: 3
Vitality: 5
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 6
Physical defense: 5
Magical defense: 1
Stat points: 0
Balance: 0]
Noah was quite satisfied with his current status, originally he had started with 1 or 2 in all stats so this was already a huge increase, but for now, the thing he had to do was go to the village's training ground.
The training ground was the best place for him to go right now, it would grant him some pretty good skills early on and would increase his stats with minimal effort, while quests would be a good thing to have, the extra stats would be better in the long run.
The training ground was also the place where you would get an important questline.
Noah decided not to waste any more time and started going towards the training ground, while it was called the starting village, the village was more like a small city, it took Noah 10 minutes of jogging to get to the training grounds.
There were only a few people wearing the same uniform, the training grounds were quite large, there was a large section lined with wooden, stone, and iron dummies, the dummies could move their hands and hit you, but first Noah had to go and talk to the instructor.
At the start of the training ground, there was a large wooden house, Noah could see a man moving around, he went up to the door knocked on it, and entered.
The man moving around stopped and looked at Noah, above the man's head there was a green title.
[Gerald, the instructor]
Gerald was a giant of a man, he was 2 and a half meters tall and was built of pure muscle, in the future a theory of him being the descendant of a giant came out and Noah wouldn't be surprised if it was true.
"Oh? One of the newly summoned has already arrived here?" Gerald said loudly.
"I commend your dedication, most newly summoned immediately try to go out and kill with no training, my name is Gerald, I am the instructor of the training grounds, may I ask what your name is?" Gerald asked
Noah answered, "It is great meeting you instructor Gerald, my name is Noah, I've been summoned recently, I was hoping you could help me out in my training?" Noah asked Gerald back.
Gerald hummed "Your body is quite weak at the moment, first you need to increase your physical capabilities." Gerald handed Noah a wooden sword, "Use this wooden sword to hit one of the wooden dummies outside, every thousand slashes will increase your strength stat by one, once you've reached 10 strength come back to me and I'll give you the next step to your training." Gerald said to Noah.
As soon as Gerald finished a notification appeared in front of Noah.
[Training: step 1
Description: Gerald the instructor has given you the task of increasing your strength stat to 10.
Remaining slashes: 7000/7000
Rewards: 50 Exp, 5 bronze coins]
Noah sighed, while this was the best way to quickly gain stats in the beginning it was also the most boring way to do it, at least it would pay off in the end.
Noah grabbed the wooden sword and immediately set out to finish his task, it would take a few hours but it would be worth it in the end.
Noah could perform around a thousand slashes in an hour, coupled with the rest he had to take Noah managed to finish the task in 8 hours, normal players would most likely take a lot more as many would not want to spend all their time training.
Noah decided that it was time to go and eat some food, the food in the game wouldn't provide any real nutrients so he had to eat in real life which meant making some food, the best part about the game pod though was that it substituted sleep, so you could continue playing even if you were asleep, this was again an advantage of the better game pods.
After a quick meal, Noah laid back down in the pod and started up the game.
Since he had finished the task he went to talk with Gerald.
He entered the wooden building and stood in front of Gerald.
"Instructor, I have finished your task, what is the next step in my training?" Noah asked.
Gerald looked surprised "That was quite quick, but the next step in your training is raising your physical defense, it is important to raise your defense if you want to become a strong person, increase your physical defense and vitality to 15, once you're done come back to me."
A notification once again appeared in front of Noah.
[You have completed the quest Training: Step 1
You have gained 50 Exp and 5 bronze coins.]
[Training: step 2
Description: Instructor Gerald has given you the task of increasing your physical defense and vitality to 15, you can raise your Physical defense and Vitality by withstanding hits from the wooden dummies, every 100 hits raises your Vitality and Physical defense stat by 1.
Remaining hits: 1000/1000
Rewards: 50 Exp, 5 bronze coins]
Noah set out to do the next part of his training, there were two types of dummies, one that you could hit and one that hit you, both raised different stat points and both were equally useful.
The wooden dummy dealt 10 damage with each hit, since Noah already had 5 Physical defense he could negate 5 damage, meaning he could take a total of 20 hits, the dummies hit twice each minute, Noah would regain 5 health every minute because of his 5 vitality, this allowed him to get hit 30 times every 15 minutes before he had to heal up a bit.
Noah started and after a few hours, he reached 10 vitality and physical defense.
Since the wooden dummies only dealt 10 damage he should be taking 0 damage right now but it was designed that he would still take 1 damage even if his physical defense surpassed the damage that the dummies dealt, but now it would only take a bit of time before Noah would reach 15 physical defense and vitality.
'Status.' Noah thought to himself.
[Status
Level: 1
Exp: 100/500
HP: 100/100 --> 300/300
MP: 80/80
Strength: 3 --> 10
Vitality: 5 --> 15
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 6
Physical defense: 5 --> 15
Magical defense: 1
Stat points: 0
Balance: 5 bronze coins]
Noah was quite satisfied with his current status, his stats would be comparable to someone at level 4 maybe even 5 if they only used stat points, sadly the wooden dummies wouldn't increase his stats anymore so he went back to Gerald.
"Instructor I've finished the second step of my training!" Noah said to Gerald.
Gerald nodded in satisfaction, "You really are something else kid, well for the third step I want you to gain some combat experience, some bandits have appeared around the village, you could just go and fight the weak monsters that the other summoned are fighting but that wouldn't benefit you, so go and take care of all the bandits, I may teach you some skills if you take care of enough of them." Gerald said with a grin.
[You have completed the quest Training: step 2
You have gained 50 Exp and 5 bronze coins]
This is what Noah had been waiting for, the skills that Gerald would teach him were very important for quickly progressing early on.
Gerald handed Noah an iron sword since Noah didn't have any weapons, this was another benefit of gaining this quest, it would grant him free equipment that would take him at least a couple hours to get, so it saved him quite a bit of time.
Noah set out to take care of the bandits, it would be quite difficult since he was still level one but with his increased stats he would be able to take care of most bandits.