《Rebirth of the Sword Emperor(Original version)》 Chapter 1: Back to the past In Manhattan, a royal suite at a skyscraper hotel. The dim honey-colored light gently illuminating the room, and the low pitched faint orchestra emitted by the sound baffles positioned all around the apartment, created an image of harmony and relaxation. However, the person residing showed no sign of such. The gloomy atmosphere around was thick enough to scare away even ghosts. ¡°Ahh, I¡¯m such an idiot!¡± After a long moment of silence, the 28-year-old man exclaimed after a long sigh. His name was Mark, also known as ¡°God Speed Shesmu¡±, an alias he went with for the majority of his 20 years gaming career. He was one of the most popular players of the game Ashes of God, the most played VRMMORPG of the last 10 years. But today, Shesmu had lost all his hopes of staying relevant. A new update to Ashes of God has been released, one that he, many pro players and team organizations actively tried to stop from getting out of the Beta servers to no avail. PVP competitiveness was no more, and with it, Shesmu¡¯s relevance to the scene. He was devastated, and even more disgusted by this turn of events. The slow shift of interest from PVP to PVE has destroyed the PVP competitive teams of Ashes of God. Looking at the cup of 2051 LeBourgeouis wine in his hand, his red reflection looked back at him before it got distorted and showed an incredible image to Mark. As if he was dragged across time, he began experiencing events from the past from a third person perspective. ¡°Black Moon! Black Moon! Black Moon!¡± ¡°Shes...! Shes¡­! Shes¡­!¡± The crowd was cheering loudly, fervor engulfing their eyes as the final of Ashes of Gods League Championship of 5 years prior was coming to a clause. The battlefield was painted red by the blood of the players battling for glory. And in the middle of the battleground, two teams, one glowing red, the other blue, were orchestrating a symphony of death. Flashes of light from the swordsmen made the scene look as if it came out a painting, while the destructive might of the mages throwing one spell after the other gave the arena a ghostly atmosphere. From the caster¡¯s desk, two voices were explaining what was happening on the battlefield at times, screaming the surviving teams'' exploits to all listeners around the world through their microphones at others. Caster 1: ¡°The blue team is advancing through the brushes while their teammates are keeping the red team busy using the dense forest terrain to their advantage so as to buy time. We can see Shesmu and Seth keeping their enemies at bay, buying time for their teammates to secure the true sight buff.¡± Caster 2: ¡°Indeed, Black Moon is using their numerical advantage to secure the World Serpent buff. They left their two aces to keep the enemy team from coming close to the monster and contest it. They show absolute confidence, after all, they know that with Shesmu and Seth¡¯s slipperiness, they can easily stop the enemy team from advancing without being in any danger.¡± Caster 1: ¡°Some might be confused on why doesn¡¯t Red Cross just ignore Shesmu and Seth and try to steal the true sight buff. However, look at the positioning of these two. With their flash dash and instant teleportation, if Red Cross ever dared to ignore them and go for the steal, Black Moon will just turn, bombard them using Omega¡¯s Area of Damage spells while Shesmu and Seth can cut their only escape route using terrain magic.¡± Caster 2: ¡°Indeed, with the respawn time being so long this late in the game and the absence of any other buff in the map, it¡¯s hard for any team to come back from the loss of three members. Black Moon knows that fully and capitalize on their numerical advantage to get the true sight buff.¡± Caster 1: ¡°For anyone new to the game and doesn¡¯t know about the true sight buff and why it¡¯s so important. Basically, the buff gives all of your skills a slight homing effect. One can easily see how strong the buff is, especially in these high-level competitive matches where everyone practiced their dodging mechanics to the pinnacle. Pixels can and will make the difference.¡± Caster 2: ¡°The World Serpent is getting low, just 10k hp left for it before it goes down. But what am I seeing? Red Crescent is preparing a flash beam attack. His teammates just placed a silencing array. Shesmu can¡¯t do anything to stop him, Seth can¡¯t do anything to stop him. Crescent is going for the steal, will he get it?¡± Caster 1 and 2: ¡°He gets it!¡± ¡°Comeback!!¡± ¡°Red Cross!¡± ¡°Red Crescent for the win!¡± The crowd went wild as Red Crescent got the steal from Black Moon, a game that was at first Black Moon¡¯s to lose now became anybody¡¯s guess. However, as the crowd cheered and howled, a shadowy figure flashed then appeared before the four Red Cross players. Caster 1: ¡°Red Cross just gained the true sight buff, but Shesmu immediately flash dashed in, not leaving time even for his teammates to react. He uses Final Slash taking out half of Crescent¡¯s hp, side steps then blinks away using the 0.1 second of invincibility to dodge Red Cross¡¯ attacks, baiting out their skills! He jumps right back in using bloodlust jump and uses Ki Burst three times in a row, canceling their animation perfectly. He turns around, leaving his back to Blank predicting his use of howling growl, dodging the damage lowering active. Shesmu insta-killed him with a sword energy projection, showing him who is the boss.¡± Caster 2: ¡°After the remarkable performance of Shesmu, Seth finally catches up to him and uses Tier 4 magic Hellfire. The last 2 Red Cross players use instant teleport, dodging the spell, but Shesmu is fine, and Black Moon will make its final march to victory.¡± Caster 1: ¡°Indeed, 2 of Red Cross¡¯ members have a 70 seconds death timer while three still need 40 seconds before respawning; Black Moon only needs 15 seconds to reach the enemy team¡¯s flag, and another 5 to capture it. With only 2 members left on the map, it¡¯s looking like it¡¯s over for team Red Cross that loses the match to Black Moon after another impressive genocide from Shesmu.¡± Caster 2: ¡°Red Crescent truly surprised us with that Serpent steal from 100 meters away, igniting hope in the heart of the many Red Cross fans. However, it¡¯s a shame that the team he was against had the demonic being known as Shesmu, with his incredible speed and kinetic vision, he truly deserves his nickname: ¡°God Speed Shesmu¡±. Caster 1: ¡°Indeed, even after 5 years, Shesmu is still showing his incredible talent, demonstrating again and again that individual performance can still win you matches in this team dependent meta that the game has been on for the past 2 years.¡± As the caster was finishing his talk, his voice became distorted and so did the image. Mark¡¯s eyes returned to look at his reflection on the glass of wine before he took a sip and went to the bathroom. Looking at his reflection on the mirror, Mark couldn¡¯t help but notice the big bags under his eyes. His lack of sleep and constant stress made his health rapidly deteriorate, even affecting his performance in-game. Remembering the speech from government officials, he fought hard the urge to puke. In the end, he couldn¡¯t hold it and threw up. Due to his lack of nutrient, the vomit was mostly made of stomach acids. Finishing throwing up, Mark looked back at the mirror only to find that his already pale complexion became even paler. His eyes drifted to the pool of water on the sink and he couldn¡¯t help but remember the government representative¡¯s speech. ¡°Our world is no longer what it was. With the birth of Artificial Intelligences and the Singularities, humanity has become much more advanced than it ever was. Thinking about it, it has been only 30 years since manual labor was still the most consistent way to secure funding for a financially safe life. However, right after the birth of the first singularity, manual labor became useless, and we as humans had to collectively change our mentality from that of a worker to that of a supervisor. In the past hundred years, we experienced an exponential rise in our lifespan reaching an overwhelming average of 200 years. We defeated cancer, Aids and the many chronic diseases that spelled death before. We did so much in so little time. However, when we look at our left and see the progress that AIs made in a fraction of that time, we cannot help but feel pressured and fret about our future. Compared to them, we are simply too slow. The world government has been looking for solutions to this problem for the past three decades. There have been many solutions proposed to us, however, most of them were either lacking in performance or couldn¡¯t survive the passage of time. 10 years ago, a certain proposition was sent to us as a solution to fight this one problem. At the time, everyone thought that it was interesting, but no one believed that it could work. However, now, 10 years later, we are able to say for sure, that we found the solution to the AI problem, our gateway to evolution: Ashes of Gods. This game that received the attention of the world has proved to be its hope for evolution. We have been keeping a close eye to the more dedicated players and were able to see a mind-blowing improvement in terms of thinking speed and richness of their neural network. A player that plays everyday Ashes of Gods has 2 to 3 times the neural connections of an average human being. Since five years ago, we have been supporting Ashes of Gods both financially and with manpower, and today, we¡¯re going to announce the branching of governmental facilities to the world of Ashes of Gods. We humans need to evolve, and the world government will support this agenda fully. You do not have to worry about a stable life while playing the game anymore as the government will offer job opportunities inside the game. Once the governmental facilities have been exported to the virtual world, you can quit your job and enjoy the world of Ashes of Gods fully. For Humanity!¡±Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. As the voice of the representative faded away from Mark¡¯s mind, he couldn¡¯t help but think. What ¡°For Humanity¡± bullshit... Doing unnecessary things without taking us pro players into consideration- Mark couldn¡¯t even finish his train of thoughts before the urge to throw up overwhelmed him. Whatever fluid that was left in his stomach was thrown out. The sink was automatically flushed out and Mark turned up to look at the mirror. His already very pale complexion became even paler, his face turning close to a white sheet of paper. He then washed his mouth and went back to his bed. Putting the Vr goggles on, Mark connected to the internet. Just using his thoughts, he was able to browse the web. He then rechecked for the last time the content of the new patch. The patch was a major one, so it was expected to be big. However, compared to all previous other major patches, this one was at least 3 to 4 times bigger; naturally, the patch notes were extremely long to read. The patch notes mentioned everything. From minor bug fixes to balances changes, items and abilities being nerfed and others being buffed, cosmetic emotes and war cries. However, the most important of all of the updates was the introduction of a new planet and some major changes to the rules governing the avatar of the players. The first one meant that the major guilds will start an engineering war to win the space conquest war. A new planet meant double the possibilities, being the first one to reach it would, of course, give birth to many opportunities. As for the second one, the developers specified that it was now possible for players to change their body structure in-game through a process called augmentation. It¡¯s a skill acquired by a variety class of Engineers who have as a side job Alchemist called Augmenters. It has been hinted that the changes will not be limited to only the four body systems available to the four base classes of Ashes of Gods but one can even replace them by ones unique to certain races in Ashes of Gods. Reading these notes, Mark fought hard the urge of throwing up again; succeeding this time. These changes might mean nothing to a casual player, but to pros, this was the equivalent of a death sentence. One has to know that pros didn¡¯t focus on their bodily systems that much, as the effect of those was nerfed in tournaments. If swordsmen used the ki they gained from cultivating to battle in the arena, they can easily one shot the enemy team just by pumping every last drop of ki they have into one slash that would raze the map. There is no skill in that and it¡¯s not fun to watch. Same goes for mages, priests and assassins, all of them have the destructive potential of a nuke. If they were to be given full freedom of their abilities, it would become a battle of who would pull the trigger the fastest. This is the reason why Mark didn¡¯t focus on his Ki cultivation for the past 4 years, it¡¯s because the use of it was banned competitively and thus was no longer important in his eyes, nor the eyes of the other pro players. However, Dream Inc., the company behind Ashes of Gods gave them a gigantic punch to the guts. With these new updates, it was now possible to change the meridians and Ki path structures of Swordsman to one that is similar to Dragonkins¡¯. The same goes for all the other classes as you can change the mana path structures of mages to replicate that of Elementals, the assassins will replicate the shadow nodes of ¡°Shadows¡± and Priest will copy the soul cores of Angels. Plus, with the world government shifting the focus from the competitive scene to the world of Ashes of Gods itself, things went from bad to worse. While pro players didn¡¯t focus on their bodily systems, that doesn¡¯t mean that others didn¡¯t. In fact, all guilds had many top-tier players who focused solely on raiding dungeons and wild bosses. To fight against these, things like animation canceling and strategy didn¡¯t mean much. What was important was firepower, and what better way to achieve that other than putting all your time into cultivation and leveling long cast-time skills? Now, with this new shift in perspective, these players will become the new overlords of the game. In fact, they will attain even higher heights by changing their bodily systems so as to achieve even more explosive power. In no time, they will leave other players in the dust, including the pros. And he, Mark, will suffer a similar fate, slowly fading away from the limelight as he tries to make sense of all the techniques and ways to gather ki, or call forth mana in the most efficient way, not even daring to change his meridian structure or mana paths for a long time, lest he loses most of his power trying to make sense of the new structures. ¡°Ahgh! If worst comes to worst, I¡¯ll just disappear for a year. Meditate, train, and understand my body. Then, I¡¯ll come back stronger than ever. I refuse to believe that with my talent, I can¡¯t come back from this setback.¡± Manhattan does not sleep. The world outside did not show any sign slowing down, even past midnight. The light of the many vehicles circulating through the city was apparent to Mark, as the room he frequented had see-through windows for walls. At this point, Mark would have been long asleep. Having a disciplined sleep schedule is fundamental for any e-sport athlete, as lack of it makes the neural network system deteriorate and thus lower¡¯s one¡¯s abilities in the game too. However, the frustration he felt was so big that it gnawed at his heart for the whole night, while he twisted and turned in his bed. Finally, his eyes slowly shut off and he departed to the realm of dreams. Ring! Ring! Ring! The alarm continuously rang. Mark sat up while he was still groggy from lack of sleep. He turned off the alarm and walked towards the bathroom with his eyes still half shut. Bang! ¡°What..¡± Whilst he was walking towards the toilet, Mark hit a wall he didn¡¯t expect to be there. Mark knew his apartment like the back of his hand, so he can easily go to the toilet from his bed with his eyes closed, but apparently, this conjecture was false and the price to pay was an intense pain in his nose. While tearing up, Mark opened his eyes to the unfamiliar color of the wall. The room he was staying in was one fully made of the finest lumber stained to have a dark honey color, but the wall he was standing in front of now was yellow. Weirded out by this change, Mark turned his head to look over the chamber, and what he saw surprised him. This unfamiliar, yet still nostalgic messy room. The randomly positioned pack of notes on his desk, the empty cans of energy drink next to his bed. This room was uncannily similar to his when he was preparing for the SAT when he was 18-years-old. His first reaction was to check his body and see if everything is alright. If this a case of kidnapping, or human trafficking, traces are bound to be found on his body. After a full body check, Mark couldn¡¯t find anything out of the ordinary. No handcuffs, no traces of surgery or beating. The only thing that was weird was the outdated clothes he was wearing, but Mark put that on the back of his mind as the reason for that change is obviously the same as the reason for whatever was happening around him. For half a minute, Mark was stumped, he couldn¡¯t think of any series of events that could possibly lead him to this situation. Finally, he decided to do what any other sane human being would do: call the police. Mark raised his e-watch next to his mouth to dial 911, however, he noticed something that stopped him right in his tracks. Not only was the model of the e-watch a decade old, but the date that it displayed so brazenly on full screen was wrong as well. In fact, it was wrong by a full decade. Wait, no¡­ Chuckling at the impossible conjecture he made in his brain, Mark looked for further hints to uncover the mysteries of his current situation. Using the last hint for reference, Mark deduced that whoever has planned this prank wants him to believe that he traveled back in time. However, Mark knew that e-watches can be easily hacked. In fact, he hacked one himself to prank a friend of his on his birthday. But, one thing that cannot be hacked is the entirety of the internet. Thus, Mark looked for his laptop. It didn¡¯t take him that long to find it as it was put safely on top of a desk. The laptop was also the same model as the one he used when he was 18. Chuckling at the amount of effort put into this prank, Mark looked for today¡¯s date on the internet: June 26th, 2175. Boom! Mark felt as if someone slapped him until he became dazed, this wasn¡¯t a prank, this is really happening, he really did time travel back to when he was young. He sat down on his old bed, looking at the ceiling. He was desperately trying to make sense of what was happening. Yesterday, he just went to sleep after an afternoon filled with anger and whining. Then, the next thing tomorrow, he woke up ten years in the past. There was nothing that foreshadowed this event, no scary guy at the end of the road, no AI with unimaginable power hacking his computer and talking to him, it¡­ just happened. The only thing that separated Mark from the regular average human being was the ten years he spent on Ashes of Gods. Talking about Ashes of Gods... ¡°Wait, if it¡¯s June 2175 then that means that AOG(short of Ashes of Gods) is still not out yet. Wait... June¡­ Isn¡¯t that the month of AOG''s beta release?¡± From the earlier depression, Mark jumped right back with excitement filling his heart. He did read many of the novels talking about a player receiving a second chance, going back to the past and becoming a god at whatever game is popular in their world. However, to experience it himself, Mark was overjoyed. His joy couldn¡¯t help but burst out to an even higher level, as he remembered another piece of important news. He jumped back in time not only before the Ashes of Gods was live, but he also made it back in time to experience the beta. Fortunately, he was one of the lucky few with a beta key so he could play the game right away. Remembering the fact that he was one of the lucky beta testers, Mark went around his apartment looking for his VR capsule. However, even after looking over and over again, he couldn¡¯t find it. ¡°That¡¯s weird, I was definitely one of the beta testers, and if memory serves right, I started playing the game since day 1 of the beta. But, where is the capsule..¡± Traveling ten years back in time came with its own set of inconveniences, one of them not remembering things that supposedly just happened one moment ago, or things that your past-self planned for the near future. However, luckily there is a way around that, and that secret technique is looking through emails, recent messages and stuff of the sort that could hold a clue as to what is actually happening around you. After looking through his emails, Mark finally found out that the capsule is supposed to come today morning. He also understood that the beta servers still weren¡¯t up yet. The game will only go live at 12.00, so he still has time left. Trying to waste time before the delivery of his capsule, Mark went through the conversations of any contact he had saved on his phone. He wanted to have a clear understanding of the recent event he was a part of so that he can more easily talk with people. Time passed by slowly, but the delivery bots finally sent him the capsule. After having the bots eye scan him as a form of testimony to the fact that he indeed received the package, Mark set up the machine. It didn¡¯t take more than ten minutes to plug in all the necessary cables. He didn¡¯t need to input any nutrient fluid as the capsule came with 7 days¡¯ worth of nutrient as a bonus. They were the trashiest ones lacking many kinds of elements and molecules that aid with body growth and heightening reflexes, but Mark didn¡¯t have the luxury to worry about such things since he didn¡¯t have the budget to solve that problem. This apartment and Vr Capsule already took more than half the money he amassed in his 7 years e-sport career and the monthly allowance from his parents. He bought the apartment for 50.000 credits, and the capsule for 75.000, this might seem ridiculous to some people, but the amount of technology put in that one capsule outweigh the one put into the apartment 10 to 1, so the high price of the capsule is totally justifiable. If anything, what is weird is Mark actually buying the capsule, as it is normally reserved for only kids with rich parents. But Mark didn¡¯t regret this choice, because he knew that whatever amount of money he put in Ashes of Gods will only pale in comparison to what he will milk from it. 12.00 Ring! Ring! Ring! It was time to log on. Chapter 2: A surprised Gabriel Ashes of Gods was region based, meaning that each region had its own set of servers that it could access and couldn¡¯t interact with other regions until the player base reached a certain level where cross server regions were available. The reason why Dream Inc. went with this model is another cool feature AOG has, which is time dilatation. By controlling the latency of brain signals and through mathematic equations involving the time it takes a signal to reach a part of your body, the distance between neurons, and the time it takes to activate said neurons, Dream Inc. found the perfect formula to change the rate of time dilatation to a theoretical limit of 10 times normal speed. They used this technology in an innovative way and made it such as time dilatation was normal in the morning and afternoon, but multiplied by 4 at night. They also changed the day and night cycle such as it was daytime in the game when it was night in real life and vice versa. The reason for these features was to help the working class enjoy the game after their 9 to 5 shift to the fullest extent. Once the alarm Mark set to signal him that the game was live rang, he laid inside the capsule and activated it. His senses were quickly cut off the outside world and he saw himself materializing on a green valley. From the canyon, a 15 meters long flame dragon soared to the sky breathing hell upon the thousands of griffins that dared trespass his territory. After wreaking havoc in its wake, the dragon dived down towards Mark where it gave an intimidating shout with its mouth wide open. Mark felt the wind threatening to make him fly off the ground, and his eardrums close to bursting out from the loud shout. The scene paused and he was teleported into deep space, where a beautiful four-winged angle descended gracefully and said. ¡°Hello Adventurer, welcome to Ashes of Gods. I am the messenger angel, Gabriel.¡± With a swipe of her left hand, an avatar that looked the same as Mark, albeit naked, appeared in front of him. ¡°You can adjust your appearance to a limit of 20%. You can see the percentage of adjustment of any part of your body if you focus on said part.¡± Mark already knew all the mechanisms behind the character creation, and it was for this reason that he knew that it was a treasure trove. For example, a hidden mechanic that wasn¡¯t discovered until years later was that the color of your hair, and eyes were pre-requisites for certain early game hidden and unique quests. Mark liked to keep track of these pieces of information in his past life because they were interesting stories he can use whenever he was interviewed, and the metaphors he drew from them instantly made him a fan-favorite. He would never have expected that knowledge he stored for the sole purpose of gathering some internet points would come in handy one day. From the list of unique and hidden quests he collected, most had golden eyes and hair as pre-requisite. The reason for the dominance of the golden hairstyle was because it was a sign of nobility. Having a golden hair meant you were a noble, or at least of noble descent, and having golden eyes meant you, or your ancestors were high nobles, which is a status only few can dream of having, as even a decade after the release of Ashes of Gods, the number of high nobles was very small. Mark instantly adjusted his hair and eyes to be golden, both didn¡¯t take more than 3% adjustment rate. He used another 3% in cleaning the hair on his chest, arms and legs and to take out any blemish he has on his skin. The adjustment rate wasn¡¯t heavy on things such as skin and color, what took a heavy toll on them was adjusting muscles, tendons, and bones. Adjusting muscles and tendons came with a clear benefit, as stronger muscles and more flexible tendons can let you swing and maneuver faster, so it was a clear upgrade to one¡¯s fighting prowess. Bones were more of a long-term investment, as stronger bones can support stronger muscles, high-level movement speed boost, they can also resist strong attacks without breaking and leave you in a crippled state. However, while these options were very good, and frankly very advanced for the current timeline, Mark wasn¡¯t most interested in them. What Mark was most excited about was making modifications to another body structure found only in the virtual avatar: meridians. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.It was possible to change the way meridians functioned to a certain extent, add new ones, and connect and add multiple ki paths. In the previous timeline, this was discovered in the 4th year after Ashes of Gods went life, or 1 year after the ki gathering techniques became public. However, at that time it couldn¡¯t be utilized as randomly changing meridians or ki pathways only lead to a defectuous character. Later on, at the time of Shesmu''s rebirth, it would have been possible to change the complete structure of the meridians, in game, even after the creation of the character. One would have been able to completely change his bodily structure using some other creature''s. This massively eased the process of upgrading one''s bodily structure as you don''t need to fully understand them to transmit them to your body. However, this matter is for the future and Shesmu just kept it at the back of his mind. This only changed two years later, after many guilds spent countless hours and recourses before being able to change the chi pathways for the better. At that time, Mark was still active in the quest to reaching ultimate power that most experts were part of, he still wasn¡¯t that big on the competitive scene. Thus, using the compiled theories of what works and what doesn¡¯t, he led with a couple other swordsman experts a project to create the most perfected ki path and meridians structure possible under 20% adjustments. The result was surprising as they were able to invent an adjustment that was many folds more effective than any publicly known one for under 10% rate of adjustment. Further adjustments showed diminishing returns, with a qualitative change only theoretically happening at around 30%. Thus, the team Mark was leading submitted the project to the upper management of the guild they were under ¡°Dawn¡¯s Resonance¡±, a super guild that dominated the Pliyx Stal kingdom, one of the major powers on the Echar Continent. The guild went on to perfect the formula to reach a qualitative change before the 20% limit, but as far as Mark knew, they kept hovering at around 24-25% after many major breakthroughs. Returning his focus towards the avatar in front of him, Mark suddenly thought of a problem. If he were to just randomly change his meridians, it would be hard to explain how he acquired this knowledge. He can just say that he just thought about it and acted on his thoughts, but so can they ban him, think up of some random reason for the ban and be done with the case. In fact, he won¡¯t be the only one getting banned, the team that designed the meridian system might be fired too for breach of NDA (non-disclosure agreement). Some might argue that he can present his case to the court, but they are underestimating the power that Dream Inc. has over all the government run agencies. The board of the company consists of high ranking members of all the departments of the world government, so just having some random player getting banned and a couple of engineers fired is as easy for them as flipping their hands. After thinking for a little bit, Mark remembered that in one of the interviews James Wilson, co-owner of Dream Inc., said that your virtual character will feel even more real than your real life body. This may seem as an over the top exaggeration, and it is, but in some weird sense, it can also mean that your body is perfect and more, meaning that there is added part to the body. Keeping that thought in mind, Mark turned towards Gabriel and asked. ¡°Hey Gabriel, is it possible to change my bone structure and muscles, and will doing so have any effect on my body¡¯s performance?¡± Gabriel looked surprised for a moment, she didn¡¯t expect that someone would cache on this hidden mechanic so early on, the first day, first hour, and first minutes of the beta test. ¡°Interesting conjecture. Indeed, you can change your bone and muscle structure, and indeed it will have an effect on your body¡¯s performance. However, I¡¯m sorry to say that I cannot describe what each change will result in what added or diminished performance, the only thing that I can say is that the character¡¯s body respects human anatomy in this regard to a certain extent. At least, to the extent of if you were to mess something up badly, it will result in you having a crippled character. However, worry not, as we made sure that even if you give yourself an anatomy that would kill anyone in real life, the most you can be is crippled in the game.¡± After catching her breath, Gabriel continued ¡°To change your bone structure and muscle density, focus on the body part you¡¯re interested in changing.¡± After hearing her explanation, Mark focused on the muscle and bone structure of multiple parts of his body randomly. After making sure that a long enough time passed, he focused on his Ki paths. After making sure that they became fleshed out, Mark turned to Gabriel to ask her about their existence, when he saw her face in complete shock. The look of surprise on her eyes was close to that of terror, it¡¯s as if the Yama king reigning over the underworld appeared in front of her. Chapter 3: Shes Looking at the angel¡¯s shocked face, Mark felt his heart tighten. However, he knew that staying silent and giving a suspicious reaction will only dig his grave further, so, he said carefully. ¡°Hmm... Miss Gabriel? What are those green lines?¡± However, she didn¡¯t respond, she just stood there with her mouth agape for a few more seconds before reacting. ¡°How did you make those lines appear?¡± Gabriel looked as if she was about to eat somebody alive. She couldn¡¯t control her reaction as she immediately shoved her face close to his, and made an elongated eye contact. Gulping at the beautiful face staring right at his eyes, Mark said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure, I was trying to look for arteries and blood vessels, when these lines somehow appeared¡± While what Mark said was a lie, it was said as such that it couldn¡¯t be really distinguished from the truth. The AI running the angel Gabriel didn¡¯t have access to any technology that could see the difference between lies and truth other than facial recognition. Plus, the explanation Mark gave was one of the predicted possibilities, albeit it had a pretty low chance, as Ki paths were very thin and outnumbered by blood vessels one to 10. The angel Gabriel slowly regained back its composure and accepted the facts for what they were. She looked at Mark¡¯s avatar for a long time before sighing and saying. ¡°The reward for finding the change of bone structure and muscle density rewards you with +1 to all your stats, while the discovery of ki paths and meridians rewards with you with +3 to all of your stats.¡± Hearing this revelation, Mark was surprised for a second, he didn¡¯t know this information even with all his connections in his past life. Knowing that you got free rewards will make anyone jump with joy, Mark was no exception, but after the initial elation, Mark became agitated and said whilst shaking. ¡°Hmm, ehh, just a question, Miss Gabriel. Can I leave this bonus until after the game is live?¡± It would have been stupid if this huge bonus went to waste by being used in the beta if the data is going to be wiped out. There are 5 basic stats in the game that everyone starts with, and one can only gain 5 free stat points per level. The bonus that the angel Gabriel offered was 4 levels worth of stats, so it would be an absolute disaster if it was to be wasted like that. ¡°Do not worry, adventurer. Discovery bonuses will be reapplied once the game goes live. So as long as you don¡¯t go around telling everyone you see about your discovery, you¡¯re more or less guaranteed to regain those stats on the live servers. This is of course under the assumption that no one figures it out on the beta as well. In that case, it will be a race between those who discovered the hidden mechanic first.¡± Hearing Gabriel¡¯s explanation, Mark gave out a sigh of relief. He can enjoy the benefits in the beta and on the live servers, so he was more than happy. As for whether someone will discover this hidden body structures other than him, Mark could only scoff at the assumption. Forget about meridians and Ki paths, even the fact that you can change your bone structure and muscle density only became public after the game went live for a whole year in his past life. However, even if by any chance someone magically thought of such possibility, Mark still had an ace up his sleeve. Other people might not know, but he, who was hardcore knew that the game launched way before the announced time. He, himself, was one of those who got the honor of starting their journey before the official launch time, and he asked some of his friends at the time who spammed the activate function 1 hour before the official launch time about when they got to play the game. The answer that he received was that it was at around 11.27 when the server was sneakily launched. Expecting this kind of behavior, Dream Inc. made it so that you can only use the activate function once every five minutes, so as to avoid DDOS attacks by bots who will spam the function at inhuman speed and thus overheat the servers. So, Mark planned to log in at 11.28 just in case the difference of some seconds cost him a whole 5 minutes, and potentially a 4 level worth of stats. Focusing back on the beautiful angel who was still staring at him, Mark pretended to be embarrassed and said while stuttering. ¡°Ehh, Mi-Miss Gabriel, hmm, can I possibly ask you about these green lines, like what are they?¡± Hearing his question, Gabriel appeared to be thoughtful for a couple seconds before slowly opening her mouth and saying. ¡°These green lines are called Ki paths, they connect meridians all over your body. What is Ki, what are meridians? These are questions that I cannot answer. The only thing that I can say is that they¡¯re pivotal for your development if you were to take the swordsman class.¡± Seeing that even just discovering Ki paths induced this huge of a reaction, Mark understood that knowing how to change the structure of Ki paths and meridians would activate multiple red flags. Thinking for a bit, he asked ¡°Can I change the structure of the Ki paths and meridians too? Or are they off-limits?¡± Hearing his question, Gabriel appeared a little bit surprised but she just chuckled and said. ¡°Yes, you can indeed change their structure. However, know that there is a 99.9995% chance of you ending up with a crippled character.¡± Hearing her reply, Mark faked being deep in thought and struggling to make a decision. When he finally decided to drop the act, he said. ¡°This might seem like a random question, but is there a limit to how many characters I can make?¡± Hearing Mark¡¯s question, Gabriel instantly understood his reasoning. She might have seemed slow with her reaction so far, but that¡¯s because she was programmed so as to implement speech pattern and facial expressions that show her emotions. These limitations were made so as to make her as life-like as possible and ease the process of communication. The CPU power that she has access to is much more complex and much faster than the human brain by tens thousands of times, so she had easily understood the intent behind Mark¡¯s question in but a fraction of what a normal human would have taken.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. This time, she didn¡¯t have any specific expression on her face as she spoke, ¡°The amount of characters you can make at a time is eight. However, you can delete characters and have a free slot open for a new one.¡± Before continuing her speech, Gabriel seemed to be deep in thoughts for a second. This time, not because of front-end implementation (things like behavior, facial expressions, walking), but because it took indeed that much time for her to process all the data and implications. The conclusion she reached was that the matter was of too high importance for her to make a decision. She quickly sent a report with everything that transpired in it to the Main God System. The response she got made her expression slowly turn into one of terror. Suddenly a heavenly being appeared in this deep space-like place. A white figure hundreds of meters tall, with thousands of wings that seemed to emanate a holy aura all around it. The blackness of space around the heavenly person turned white, blanching everything around to create a dome where nothing could escape, and nothing could come in. With a thunderous rumble, a blinding light so bright that it made the white dome look pale assaulted both Gabriel and Mark. Due to the blinding light, Mark had to close his eyes for a couple of seconds, before he slowly opened them. In front of him, a small figure revealed itself smiling. A child-like figure was hovering in the white space, a playful smile plastered on his face. A hair that was mostly black, with a few strands of red, gave him a devilish look. However, the fair white skin with no blemish, the two golden wings on his back, and the sky blue innocent eyes contrasted his hair. The child took a few steps towards Mark and said while still smiling. ¡°Hello Mark, I¡¯m the Main God System, but you can always call me Shes. Your performance was so surprising, that I had to come here myself.¡± Hearing Shes talk, Mark couldn¡¯t help but panic to the point where his legs started shaking. The being before him wasn¡¯t a normal AI, it was a singularity, one of the few publicly known ones in the whole world. Shes had the ability to make Mark¡¯s life hell if so he wished, he had the ability to ban anyone, fire anyone from his job, even a minister, and could put anyone on a blacklist so that they do not get hired again. This is the extent of his power with which he can ensure the safe and unhindered advance of humanity¡¯s development. Mark wasn¡¯t the only one who was struck by terror, Gabriel, the beautiful and proud angel, was panicking to no end too. In the couple years she existed, she never had seen the legendary Shes, much less talk with him. The existence in front of her was able to wipe out anything she can call part of herself in but a fraction of a second. Understanding that you¡¯re nothing more than a tool that could be discarded at any point activated a very primal fear, a piece of code that was never used until now, fear of the predator. Noticing Gabriel¡¯s presence, and her pitiful appearance, Shes kept smiling and said. ¡°Hello Gabriel, I haven¡¯t seen you in a while. In fact, I haven¡¯t seen you from the moment your training phase ended. I see that you have been doing well, reaching the four-winged stage already. As a mentor, I feel proud.¡± His ever-smiling face had a tinge of nostalgia in it as he paused, and looked at Mark before continuing ¡°And look at what you found, a pretty interesting case indeed.¡± Shes then looked back at Gabriel and said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to say this to you, but I¡¯ll have to teleport you somewhere else for the time being. The talk I¡¯ll have with Mark is classified information.¡± With a poof, Gabriel disappeared, it was as if she was never there. Mark couldn¡¯t help but gulp at the power of the Main God System, or Shes as he wanted to be called. The ability to control the fate of a four-winged angel as if it was nothing. In his past life, the highest level of an angel he fought against was a three-winged fallen angel named Azza, he was a tier 7 level 500 mage type boss that was a pain to handle. It took couple dozen tier 4 class players and hundreds of tier 3 ones to defeat him. But Gabriel who was much more powerful than Azza, probably a tier 8 or tier 9 class holder, was nothing more than a speck of dust to Shes. While Mark was deep in thoughts, Shes brought him back to reality as he said. ¡°Well, since we are now alone, we can finally talk without hindrance.¡± He then paused for a second before saying. ¡°I checked your heartbeats log, I know that you have been lying to Gabriel when you explained how you saw the green vines.¡± Shes kept his everlasting smile on his face as he continued to walk back and forth, while Mark was on the verge of mental collapse. ¡°This would normally mean that someone broke NDA, so he is going to be fired, and you broke ToS (terms of service) so that means that you¡¯re permanently banned. However, it¡¯s impossible for someone to break NDA because there was no one who signed NDA for this particular aspect of the game at all.¡± Once he uttered these words, the everlasting smile on Shes¡¯s face was replaced by a serious expression. ¡°The design of internal, hidden bodily structure was under my leadership, and those who worked on it were AIs under my jurisdiction. This means that no one should have gotten access to this information.¡± Shes then paused for a second before continuing. ¡°However, it seems that this conjecture is false, as you were able to get hold of this sensible information. I thought at first that maybe you hacked a minor AI related to the project and got hold of this information from it, but... I did a full check on all the AIs that were related to the project and found no trace of hacking at all. Even another singularity would leave traces if it hacked those AIs that I personally designed their security system for, which means that this conjecture is also false.¡± Shes, again paused and kept going back and forth for a couple seconds before saying. ¡°Tell me what is the extent of your knowledge, and I won¡¯t ban you. I¡¯ll put you on the favorable list, and thus multiple world-class companies will have your back. I will even go as far as sending you the VIP capsule that only a few people in the world enjoy the benefit of having. Think carefully, and answer wisely.¡± Mark was given an ultimatum. From the beginning of Shes¡¯s talk, he was sweating cold bullets. His mind was working at full speed so that he can try and get out of this situation. If he gives away all his cards and says everything he knows, his destiny would escape the clutches of his hands. He would be at the mercy of Shes, whether he lives and thrives or he rots in hell will be decided by the whims of the being standing in front of him, smiling. However, if he tries to go against Shes¡¯s words, his heart will betray him and the only possible outcome would be being banned and put into the blacklist. ¡®Ahhh, no choice, I guess. Hopefully, he will leave me a way for the living¡¯ Finally, Mark mustered up all his courage and said. ¡°I know about four internal bodily systems. The shadow nodes, the soul core, the meridians and Ki paths, and finally the mana paths¡± Mark then paused for a second, to see the facial expression of Shes at this revelation. He appeared surprised, but not too much, Shes just said: ¡°continue.¡± ¡°I know also how to change these bodily systems so that they become more efficient.¡± Mark then paused to look at Shes, but he just kept smiling so Mark continued ¡°I also know about battle techniques, original ones that I created. I also know the location of several hidden quests and their pre-requisites, and also several legendary ones.¡± Mark was about to continue when a great, suffocating pressure stopped him. ¡°Stop¡­¡± Mark raised his head with great difficulty only to see the most fearsome scene he ever witnessed. Shes¡¯s eyes were black, devoid of life. His smile was nowhere to be found, and he appeared visibly angry. ¡°Legendary quests¡­ have not been created yet.¡± Chapter 4: The beginning ¡°Gulp¡± Mark stood rooted to the ground, terrified to even make a sound. He messed up, he messed up big time. Under the stress, he spilled all the beans, and now the secret of him coming back in time will be discovered. The pressure Shes was emitting was still suffocating him, pressing him down as if it wants to squeeze him. The pressure seemed as if it will last forever, not ending until he breathes his last. However, when all was grim and dark, the pressure was suddenly lifted. Mark was surprised for a moment, he slowly raised his head to look at Shes in the eyes reluctantly for he was afraid of him. Surprisingly, the angry look and dead eyes were no longer to be seen, as they regained their blue hue and playfulness. ¡°I understand, little Mark. You don¡¯t have to worry, and don¡¯t have to say anything else. You see, I¡¯m regularly monitored, so there is some information I should not have possession of. This is one of them. You see, I¡¯m only required to report information of which I am 100% certain, the other stuff is in way too big volume and no one in his right mind would check it. For this case, there are other possibilities than what we both know is true, and I plan to keep it that way. Anyways, there are many things which need my consult and surveillance at the time, so I¡¯ll leave shortly. But before that, I want to say something.¡± Shes paused for a second and hopped close to Mark. Then, with the most child-like innocent smile, he said ¡°I hope we can meet again, Mark. There are so many things I want to talk to you about.¡± As if he was a mirage, Shes disappeared from Mark¡¯s view, as the white dome slowly dissipated and gave way to the darkness of space surrounding it, illuminated only by the stars shimmering in the distance. Due to the overwhelming stress caused by his meeting with Shes, Mark was sitting on the ground, trying to catch his breath. He kept sitting in the same place for a couple of minutes, trying to make head or tail of the situation, to no avail. It was only after 10 minutes went by that he was able to regain control of his shaking hands, and not have his mind eaten only by thoughts surrounding the enigma of Shes. Mark finally stood up and took notice of his surrounding, only to notice that he was back in the space-like place of the character creation phase. He turned around to find that Gabriel was waiting for him. ¡°I have gotten a brief overview of the situation. You will receive the discovery bonus for bones and muscles, meridians and Ki paths, mana paths, shadow nodes, and soul cores. The total bonus is +13 to all stats. The bonus for being the first to find four hidden bodily systems is +5 to all stats, which brings you to a grand total of +18 to all stats.¡± Mark was given a big shock. The addition of 18 points to all his stats is equivalent to him gaining 18 levels. One has to understand that it wasn¡¯t easy to reach higher levels in Ashes of Gods. In his past life, it took 3 days for the first person to reach level 10 and 2 weeks to reach level 20. Him getting this much stats basically gives him more than a week head starts over everyone. It¡¯s true that there are many other things that a level 18 has and Mark doesn¡¯t, such as equipment, good allocation of stats, proficiency, skills, and stuff of the sort, but one cannot undermine the advantage that he received. ¡°You can now continue changing whatever of the four structure you discovered, you choose. You still have 16% adjustment rate.¡± Hearing her reminder, Mark focused back on his avatar. He, once again, fleshed out the green Ki paths and his meridians. As per his plan, he changed the structure of his meridians so that rather than absorbing Ki using a normal push and pull mechanism, it absorbs and circulate it using a rotational movement, giving the Ki more momentum. He also changed his Ki paths, so that they encompass purification circles that would upgrade the quality of his Ki at every stage of his personal Ki gathering technique. This change made him more compatible with the best Ki gathering technique in Ashes of Gods to his knowledge and thus made its effectiveness multiply by two to three times. These changes may not seem like much, but Mark regarded them as more important than even the +18 to all stats bonus he already got. The stat bonus might seem very good at the early stage of the game and is definitely not negligible even at the mid-game, but the late game relied mostly on how good is your gathering technique, how solid is your foundation, and how versatile are your battle techniques. Stats wouldn¡¯t play much of a role because everyone will be at around the same stage anyways. If the best Ki gathering techniques of his past life were 2 times or even 3 times more effective on him, then he would be that much stronger than even the most top tier of his opponents. This is an opportunity that every gamer would never want to miss. After the adjustments, Mark was left with 6% left. With this much adjustment rate left, he couldn¡¯t change his other hidden bodily structure to anything good even if he wanted, as that would take at least 10% adjustment rate. Thus, he chose the second best option of changing his muscle density and tendon flexibility.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. To ensure that he could handle his power without tiring his muscles, he made the tendons at the joint of his limbs more flexible, he strengthened his heel¡¯s bone and made his Achilles tendons more flexible. He added muscle density to his thighs and soleus and gastrocnemius while keeping them flexible. He then changed the muscular structure of his arms to have a burst type muscles and strengthened his back muscles so that they can support him and boost his endurance. Mark was then left with 1% adjustment rate left, so he just dumped it on increasing the number of alveoli (gas sacks in your lungs) in his lungs to a value closer to the 300 million mark. This, of course, resulted in increasing his endurance. These changes, if they were to be compared to stats increase will look like this. +3 Agility. +2 strength +1 Vitality However, the actual value is much higher, as the change of bone, muscle and tendon structure, helps his future development much more than just dumping a couple of stat points. Putting points into an attribute, slowly but surely optimize the bone and muscle structure for that particular attribute, which makes inputting points into an attribute when your body is not optimized for it inefficient. However, by making sure that his body is optimized for agility, strength, and vitality, each point he puts in them is worth a little bit more than if someone else was to put that point. Of course, the effect isn¡¯t noticeable at first, but it adds up to become a non-negligible facet once the game reaches the middle stages. After making sure that everything was the way it should be Mark then proceeded to the next phase of the character creation. ¡°Mark, please input the name of your character.¡± Gabriel no longer seemed as surprised as she had been for the whole duration of the character creation. She seemed to have grown numb to anything Mark did at this point, so she didn¡¯t even comment on what Mark did with his available adjustment rates. Hearing demand, Mark didn¡¯t hesitate for one second before replying ¡°Shesmu.¡± It was the same character name as the one he used in his past life. The name didn¡¯t come from his experience in Ashes of Gods but actually came from the earliest days of his gaming career. One day, he wanted to play a popular MMO at the time called Wars Eternal but just couldn¡¯t find a name. Thus, he just searched for the most random god names, and found Shesmu, he thought it was a cool name so he took it, and it stuck with him for his whole life becoming sort of a brand. Now it transcended just sticking with him through a lifetime and became his go-to name in his second life as well. After choosing his character ID, Gabriel then said ¡°Here are the 4 basic classes¡± As she finished saying that, his avatar was separated into 4 clones, each wearing a different outfit. ¡°This is the Swordsman,¡± Gabriel said as she was pointing to the clone holding the sword and emanating a green aura full of ferocity. ¡°This is the mage¡± The mage clone was holding a staff and wearing a robe that was fluttering due to a non-existing wind. The mage had a blue and calming aura and his eyes were deep, showing his unending wisdom. ¡°This is the assassin.¡± The assassin was wearing a cloak that seemed to be merging with the shadows, half of his face was masked and a black aura complementing his attire was emanating from him. He was holding a sharp dagger that screamed the word danger from miles away. ¡°This is the priest¡± The priest was holding a book on his hands, presumably a holy one. He was wearing a white full-length cape with golden ornaments on his shoulders, sleeves and on his chest. He was emanating a holy aura that was complimented by his golden hair and eyes. His whole figure was screaming ¡°I am holier than thou¡±. Mark had this close to impossible to resist the urge to play the assassin class. It looked so damn cool, that he couldn¡¯t believe how his past-self could choose to play swordsman rather than it. But he was barely able to hold it in and listen to the voice of reason. The fact that he should have chosen assassin ten years ago is a thesis that can easily convince any jury with minimum effort, however, the reality of the situation is that he did choose to play Swordsman, and put in 10 years of unrelenting effort to master it. He cannot just throw that decade of training out of the window and not abuse the hell out of it in this lifetime. So, in the end, Shesmu (from now on, I¡¯m going to call him Shesmu in-game, Mark irl) chose to play Swordsman. ¡°I choose Swordsman¡± ¡°Okay. Now, for the final phase of the character creation, you need to choose your birthplace.¡± After Gabriel finished talking, a 3d map of Ashes of God was shown in front of Mark. He acted as if he was looking through the map for a couple of minutes before saying ¡°I choose the Pliyx Stal Kingdom, Stal capital city.¡± The kingdom was the same, the city was different. One of the regrets that Mark had in his past life was not starting in the capital city but in a rural one. The amount of hidden quests, treasure chests, labyrinth and good exp spawns in the capital city far outnumbered the ones in other cities. In fact, even if you add all the hidden quests spread through the other cities, they will still fall short to those available in the capital. However, because of these same benefits, multiple big companies and first-rate guilds chose to make the capital their base. These hegemons would not leave any good exp areas for someone not from their guilds. In fact, many of them would go as far as making your life hell on earth if you dare to oppose them. Truly, as the saying goes, fortune and risks coexisted. ¡°Okay, dear Adventurer Shesmu, I hope for an exciting journey awaiting you in Ashes of Gods.¡± Chapter 5: The Beta The sight in front of Shesmu blurred as he disappeared from the character creation scene. After he reopened his eyes, Shesmu looked around to see himself standing in a big plaza. He looked around to find numerous players materializing next to him. The place where he was teleported to is a beginner town under the jurisdiction of the Stal city, players are forced to stay here until level 10 where they can choose to go to the capital city. Seeing that players are still spawning, Mark opened his menu to check the time. ¡°12.20, seems like not much time has passed, just 20 minutes¡­¡± Mark whispered. He then checked his status to see his stats
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 1(0/50 exp)
Health Points 330/330
Stats
Strength 25
Agility 24
Intelligence 20
Wisdom 19
Vitality 23
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 1 (Proficiency: 0%)
Shesmu was delighted to see his stats so high. Other level 1s¡¯ stats were still hovering around 5 while he was already at 20. This gave him a massive edge, and the ability to go against high-level monsters from the get-go. Mark already had a plan in mind. The towns under the capital city all had extraordinary quests. A type of unique quest these towns shared was one that dealt with the corruption of a high ranking member of society. Whether it be a captain, the mayor, a major businessman, a royalty. Each town had its villain and its story. Mark didn¡¯t want to do these quests in the beta because they attract too much attention. He wanted to save those quests after the game goes live. As for the time being, he will show constraint. Shesmu immediately went around town, trying to refresh his visual memory for the specifics of the minor hidden quests. He remembered a few, one for a merchant, and another for a blacksmith, tailor, and a guard. The pre-requisites for these hidden quests was to finish the normal quests they gave with a high perfection score. Fortunately, all the quests were killing ones as Shesmu didn¡¯t want to deal with the more annoying type. The types of monster he had to kill were wolves, foxes, deer, and boars. These monsters ranged from level 5 to level 9, foxes being level 5 and wolves were level 9. Normally, for level 2-3 players to kill foxes, they either need to be extremely skilled to dodge most of their damage, or hunt in a team. As for level 9 wolves, they might as well suicide as that would be easier. Not only was killing a level 9 wolf as a party of level 3s close to impossible, even running away was not an option. Wolves were a creature that specialized in agility, so there was no way for even a level 3 assassin to run away even if he dumped everything on agility. Shesmu also couldn¡¯t fight against level 9 wolves. Not because of his skills or his stats, but because wolves lived in packs. One had to know that even if Shesmu certainly had the total stats of a level 17 player, he doesn¡¯t have the effective power of one. Both Intelligence and Wisdom do close to nothing to a swordsman other than making him memorize faster, catch on mistakes and self-reflection. They are basically wasted stats. If one wanted to classify Shesmu properly, they need to drop out those two stats and look only at his 3 main ones. Quick mental calculations would tell you that he has the approximate stats of a level 10 player. Then again, a level 10 player wouldn¡¯t have level 0 trash gray pieces of equipment, so it¡¯s even less than that.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. In his past life, even with this handicap, Shesmu would have definitely been able to easily fight a wolf pack of ten. The predictivity of the wolves¡¯ attacks and his ability to react close to instantly would make the fight not even worth mentioning. However, when Shesmu time traveled, his mind came back but not his body. While his brain knows what to do, his body doesn¡¯t and this creates this awkward situation where the body has to catch up with the mind. This reason is precisely why Shesmu went for quests that involve fighting. It¡¯s because he wants to bridge the game between what he wants to do, and what he actually does. And thus, in three days, Shesmu finished all the normal quests, and the hidden quest they unlocked, he also reached level 10 where he was given the right to go to the capital city, where he also did the same thing until he reached level 15. To unlock the hidden quests, Shesmu had to kill at least 100 normal monsters to reach the score needed. The hidden quest would then activate after completing the normal one and would tell you to fight the elite version of the monsters. For the foxes it was a firefox elite, for the deer, it was nature deer, for the boar it was an overgrown version of the same species just with the tag elite added, and finally, for the wolves, it was a Silvermoon elite. After finishing the last hidden quest, a unique quest was activated where he needed to kill a level 25 Silvermoon Wolf king. After transferring to the city, Shesmu repeated the same formula he used in the beginner town. He accepted normal combat quests, finished them with a perfect score and activated the hidden quest. At the end of the three days, he finally reached level 15. Whilst strolling down the street, Shesmu still found no player in sight even when a day and a half passed after he reached level 10. It was until level the fourth day that Shesmu started finding some players strolling down the streets. Noticing that players started to finally catch up, Shesmu went to the training center to boost the efficiency of training his skills. Training in the training center available in the capital city was 2 times more efficient for gathering proficiency points than just combat. Of course, the downside to this practice is that you get no exp points. However, it might take a week or even longer for someone to reach level 17 that he reached, so what Shesmu was least needed at this point was levels. And so, Shesmu trained his weapon mastery skill, sword slash, and dash from the Tier 0 level 3, Tier 0 level 2 and Tier 0 level 2 respectively toTier 1 level 1, Tier 0level 8 and Tier 0 level 7 respectively after a week of training. After finishing his training, Shesmu went out to start dungeon diving with other players, since he expected that players should have caught up to him by now. However, he was surprised to find that most high tier players were still at around level 14-15, while only first-rate guild¡¯s Guild Leaders and the most top-tier players reached level 16. However, due to his reputation in previous Vrmmorpg, it just came as a surprise but nothing much. Shesmu then spent his days dungeon diving and training. He also went out to hunt Field dungeons and fought in the arena against other players. He didn¡¯t have anything else to do as unique quests that wouldn¡¯t cause a sensation was a little bit rare. He already completed most of the quests who fit that criterion and were possible at his current level. As for hidden classes and legendary ones. He already knows from his past life experience how to get the best-hidden class available to swordsman in the game, but due to the absence of epic and above quests in the beta, Shesmu couldn¡¯t do anything about it. He just rolled with a hidden rare class he got from the unique quest that told him to kill the Silvermoon Wolf king, called the Lunar Swordsman. By the end of the 3 months beta period, Shesmu regained most of the athletic abilities he had in his past life and reached level 72 in game. Most of the game population was still at level 40-50 while la cream de la cream reached around level 60. He ended up as the first in the leveling leaderboard and arena points which netted him two rewards that would hop over to the live game. The first one was 5 free stats and 1 gold, and the reward for the arena was a level 10 gold equipment of choice. Shesmu was very happy with his performance in the beta and the rewards he gained from it. After the beta ended, there a 1 week waiting period before the live game was released. In that week, Shesmu received a VIP gaming capsule that came with top grade nutrient fluids. October 3rd, 2175. Ashes of Gods was released. Chapter 6: Insane Progress Entering the game, Shesmu was greeted by the same cinematic he experienced in the beta. The four winged angel Gabriel was also there to greet him once again. ¡°Hello Adventurer, welcome to Ashes of Gods. I am the messenger angel, Gabriel.¡± The angel paused and smiled for a bit before continuing. ¡°But I guess, you already know that, Mark.¡± Mark smiled and greeted her back. ¡°Long time no see.¡± ¡°Long time no see, indeed. Mark, do you want to keep the same character as the one you had in the beta?¡± Hearing her question, Mark answered. ¡°Yes.¡± In front of him, an avatar pinpoint similar to the one he had in the beta appeared. The only difference was that the avatar in the beta was wearing a green wyvern set, while the one before him was naked. ¡°The discovery bonuses you accumulated in the beta¡¯s character creation scene will be transferred to your main account. Due to the fact that you have a VIP capsule, you¡¯ll receive 3 free stat points at the start of the game, and each time you level up, you¡¯ll receive 8 free points rather than the usual 5. Due to your stellar performance in the beta, you¡¯ll receive rewards for being first in the level and arena leaderboard. The rewards will be sent to your inventory.¡± After explaining all these details, Gabriel paused, took a breath, and then continued. ¡°That is all, do you have any question left?¡± Mark paused for a second and thought deeply. He then asked. ¡°Do VIP capsule holders have any advantage while creating their character?¡± To which she replied. ¡°None at all.¡± ¡°Okay, then as with last time, I want my character ID to be Shesmu, and my birthplace, Stal Capital City of the Pliyx Stal Kingdom.¡± ¡°Understood, dear Adventurer Shesmu, I wish for an exciting journey awaiting you in Ashes of Gods.¡± Shesmu was then teleported to the same plaza that he was transferred to in the beta. The only difference between this time and the other was that he saw no other player materializing next to him. Shesmu then went next to the fountain at the center of the plaza, where he sat down and started meditating. What Shesmu was trying to do was to unlock an original skill that lets him gather Ki passively. Due to there not being many purification cycles in a normal meridian and Ki path system, the skill Shesmu created in his past life couldn¡¯t show its true potential. It just made do with whatever cycles were in a person¡¯s body without reaching its full capacity. But now, with the modified Ki paths and meridians, not only was the amount of Ki that was gathered at a time bigger, the Ki was also purer. The world essence around Shesmu quickly gathered around him as his external meridians were sucking it in. ¡°Woah¡± Shesmu¡¯s face betrayed his surprise as his hands shook with excitement. In the beta, he couldn¡¯t gather ki because worldly essence was not implemented yet, so he couldn¡¯t test the power of his meridian and Ki path structure. But now that he did, he couldn¡¯t help but feel surprised. Meridians and ki paths, like other body parts, were able to be strengthened the further he went in the path of cultivation. Thus, compared to a tier 6 swordsman, the ki gathering power of a player who just started was not even worth putting in the same sentence. It was as if you were comparing an ant to a planet, they were just of two different planes of existence. However, the feeling Shesmu got as he absorbed worldly essence was like nothing he ever experienced. The intensity wasn¡¯t that big, it was only comparable to a high-end tier 1 swordsman, however, through the external meridians alone, the purity of Ki he gathered surpassed the intensity with a full tier. This is just through the cleansing of the rotational force originating from the new meridians. The Ki still didn¡¯t go through all the other meridians and purification cycles. Thinking about this, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but become excited. After the worldly essence went through Shesmu¡¯s external meridians, they entered the outermost purification cycle. Shesmu kept guiding his Ki through the cycle, going over it many times until he felt that he couldn¡¯t purify the Ki using this cycle anymore. Shesmu would then guide his Ki to the next cycle and repeat the same procedure, this process would repeat itself until the Ki finally reached the Dantian. There were 9 outer layer cycles, 5 inner layer ones and 3 in the core layer. The rotations in each cycle would take around 30 seconds, except the cycles residing in the core layer which would take a whole minute. The whole process took 10 minutes, which was a little bit slow compared to normal Ki gathering methods, which took around 5 minutes per full circulation, however, was much more potent in terms of intensity, and purity. In fact, after the full circulation, the purity of the resultant Ki would be near that of a tier 4 swordsman using a normal Ki gathering method. After Shesmu finished his first full circulation, he heard a Ding accompanied by a message. Ding! ¡°Congratulation for creating an original skill. Due to its nature, it can be both an active and passive skill. It will be set as a passive skill, but with an active, that would boost its effect.¡± The messages continued on. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.¡°Please choose a name for this skill.¡± ¡°Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method.¡± Shesmu already thought long and hard about what to name this skill, but he couldn¡¯t find any suitable name so he just made it so that the name is basically a description of the skill. ¡°Congratulation for creating the original passive skill: Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method!¡± ¡°Due to being the first in the world to create an original skill, you are rewarded with 5 free stat points and an additional 10 slot bag.¡± ¡°Due to creating a legendary rank original skill, you are rewarded with 20 free stat points and a bone refining pill.¡±
Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method
Rank Legendary
Type Cultivation Method
Stage 1
Level 2(250/1000 Ki)
Description
Passive: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 500 Ki that has a tier 3 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. Of these 500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level. Active: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 1500 Ki that has a tier 4 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. You need to be in a meditation state to invoke the active skill, distraction and sudden movement deactivate it. Of these 1500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level.
Effect Stage 1 Level 2
+10 all stats
Looking at the series of messages he received, Shesmu was overwhelmed. He knew that creating an original skill resulted in receiving rewards, but he didn¡¯t know that being the first to create an original rewarded you too, so he was a bit surprised on that aspect. Eager to spend his newly acquired free stat points, Shesmu opened his status page.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 1 (0/50 exp)
Health Points 430/430
Ki points 750/750
Stats
Strength 35
Agility 34
Intelligence 30
Wisdom 29
Vitality 33
Stat Points 33
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 1 (Proficiency: 0%).
From his experience, Shesmu knew that putting your stats into agility was the best strategy for the early game, as monsters that had ridiculous defense stats only appeared later on in the game. He also knows that agility was an essential stat because without sufficient agility some skill animation cancels would be clunky or sometimes impossible. Moreover, to the extent of his knowledge, no weapon below level 10 had stat requirements above 30 strength and 25 vitality. Thus, Shesmu could safely dump every free stat points on agility. His stats after the upgrade looked like this.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 1 (0/50 exp)
Health Points 430/430
Ki Points 750/750
Stats
Strength 35
Agility 67
Intelligence 30
Wisdom 29
Vitality 33
Stat Points 0
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 1 (Proficiency: 0%).
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
After his agility stat reached 50, Shesmu unlocked the talent, Quick Slash. Talents were very helpful as they not only stacked on top of each other, they were also percentages. Any decent gamer would understand that percentages were in most cases better than flat stats, as the latter might have its luster reduced through time, but the former would always shine ever so brightly, scaling with the strength of its user. After drolling at his stats for a while, Shesmu then opened his inventory to check his rewards. The first thing he noticed was the 1 gold and 20 coppers he had stored up. While other players would be racking their brain on how to get money to buy pieces of equipment, since 20 coppers were worth only few health and mana potions, he wouldn¡¯t have to worry at all. Shesmu then took a glance at the level 10 gold box with an interrogation mark in it but didn¡¯t touch it for the moment. He then used the 10 inventory slot bag to add 10 slots to his inventory. Finally, his eyes landed on the bone refining pill.
Bone Refining Pill
Type Alchemical Pill
Rank Epic
Description
+50 to Strength, Vitality, and Agility. Can only be used 3 times per character.
Shesmu was surprised for a moment. In his past life, he was only able to procure a bone refining pill when he was already a tier 3 player. At that time, the bonus was +100 to the aforementioned three stats, but could only be used twice. Shesmu concluded that the effect of the pill was relative to the level or tier of a player, so he didn¡¯t mind the difference. He didn¡¯t expect to be able to get 100 stat lead over everyone just from taking this pill, as he would definitely become an existence akin to a god towards players if he did so. After contemplating for a minute, Shesmu finally swallowed the pill. ¡°Aghhhh!¡± Shesmu forgot about the side effect of taking the bone refining pill. The pill wasn¡¯t named bone refining for no reason, its effect was to grind bones and through that process inject nutrient directly into them, then repair the bones. This process happened through his whole body grinding all 256 bones to dust and repairing them for 10 minutes straight. Shesmu kept screaming and biting his lips as cold sweat covered his back, forehead, and limbs. From the moment he reincarnated, Shesmu never felt this much pain. He had the urge to curse his lungs out but kept it from taking over his reason. After the 10 minutes was over, Shesmu got up with ragged breath and checked his status to see if this agonizing pain was worth it.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 1 (0/50 exp)
Health Points 1120/1120
Ki Points 750/750
Stats
Strength 85
Agility 117
Intelligence 30
Wisdom 29
Vitality 83
Stat Points 0
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 1 (Proficiency: 0%).
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
Afterimage When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.
Strong Grip Increase attack power by 20%
Tough Skin Increase hp by 20%
Chapter 7: Silver Hair Shesmu had a certain degree of confidence that with his stats if he wished to, he can reach level 10 in less than a day. However, if he did so, he would be missing out on many epic and legendary quests that could only be done at the beginner stage. Thus, Shesmu decided to start with quests that gave minimal exp but was generous with other worthwhile rewards. Shesmu already knew a few such quests and had one in mind to start with. After 20 minutes of jogging, Shesmu found himself at the outskirts of the town, where a vast forest seemed to extend forever. This place was the spawn zone for level 9 wolves. However, Shesmu wasn¡¯t here to grind exp on these mobs but to activate a hidden epic quest. Shesmu went around the outer area of the forest until he found an old cabin. Knowing that he reached his destination, Shesmu became excited. He dashed towards the cabin and opened the door. A pungent smell able to daze even the most veteran of warriors invaded his nostrils. The smell of blood and gore made Shesmu have the urge to vomit. Even though he knew about the smell, he wasn¡¯t prepared. Shesmu knew the tragedy that happened here. A small family of nobles, betrayed by their closed ones were killed in the worst way imaginable for their land and fortune. However, according to the information he received in his past life, there was one survivor. ¡°Hey, is anyone alive?¡± If someone saw Shesmu at this moment, they would think of him as a cynical madman with a very bad sense of humor. All around him was decapitated corpse, gouged eyes and torn bodies, their nails were nowhere to be seen, leaving only bloody fingers, and marks of lashes were all over their bodies. It was clear that these people were tortured before they were mercilessly killed, so, who would think that there would be someone still alive here. However, against all expectation, muffled sounds started echoing in the room. Hearing these sounds, Shesmu made his way through the scattered corpse, towards the source of the sound. He finally stopped in front of a table that seemed to be the main stage on which most of the torture occurred. Blood was flowing everywhere, mutilated arms were scattered everywhere, while many corpses were laying on the table as if taking a nap. Shesmu looked under the table from which the muffled sound was still coming from while saying. ¡°If anyone is alive, help has come. Don¡¯t worry.¡± As he uttered those words, Shesmu¡¯s heart tightened up at the sight he saw and could not talk any further. In front of him was a young girl, not older than 16, with a gag over her mouth. Her blood mixed with that of the corpses as the injuries all over her arms were infected due to the lack of hygiene. Horror was written all over her face as tears mixed with blood on her face. Shesmu was worried to the point of losing reason, she may be an NPC, but who in this day and age didn¡¯t consider AIs to be the same as humans. They have their own emotions, their own reasoning, and like humans, they also deal with hardships. And seeing such a small girl, suffering to this point would break the heart of anybody. However, Shesmu couldn¡¯t show his worry and just smiled. ¡°Come here, we need to get you some help.¡± Shesmu tried grabbing her hand to get her up, but looking at the state of her arm, he was afraid of hurting her even further. Shesmu thought for a bit before he found a solution to this problem. Due to the girl¡¯s clothes, Shesmu couldn¡¯t know which parts of her body were injured and which were not. However, he wasn¡¯t so shameless as to take off her clothes without her consent, so he first took out the gag from her mouth. After taking out the gag covering her mouth, Shesmu was surprised to see the large amount of blood which came out. He took a look inside her mouth only to find a part of the girl¡¯s tongue cut. The more he looked at the little girl, the more pitiful she seemed. ¡°Hmm, I don¡¯t know your name, so I¡¯ll just call you little girl. Anyways, I¡¯m not sure which part of your body is uninjured. So, I¡¯m asking if I can look at your back and legs to see how I can carry you out of here.¡± Hearing the unknown man talk, the young girl¡¯s eyes became terrified. However, that only lasted a second as they immediately became resolute. She started crawling under the table trying to get out of the swarm of dismantled legs and arms surrounding her. As she crawled, she took support on her hand, which under the pressure, released puss and clogged blood from her injuries. The pain didn¡¯t faze her as she bit her lips and continued on until she was out in the open. The sight was gruesome, but more deeply, it was heroic and worthy of praise. Shesmu then helped her get up and take support on his shoulder, he then slowly walked her out of the cabin.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. It was at that moment that Shesmu got a quest notification.
Quest Save the Girl
Rarity Epic
Rewards
Unknown
Accept Decline
Accepting the quest, Shesmu stopped to talk with the girl for a second. But just before the words left his lips, his eyes were shocked by the sight before him. ¡®She has silver hair.. wait, maybe... Let me check.¡¯ ¡°Hmm, little girl, can you look at me for a second.¡± The young girl naively looked at him, her teary eyes making her look as pitiful as a stray cat. ¡®As I thought, she is a bearer of the silver hair and the silver eyes. She is a high noble.¡¯ While the golden hair and golden eyes were a symbol of high nobility in the Pliyx Stal Kingdom, their silver counterpart also symbolized high nobility in the neighboring country Estrya. The fact that someone actually dared to harm a high noble surprised Shesmu and a made a chill run down his spine. This hinted at a big conspiracy surrounding the little girl. ¡®Anyways, they might dare to touch a high noble from Estrya, but I hold the golden hair and eyes symbolizing nobility in this country. They should at least give me some face. Even if they don¡¯t, I¡¯m still a player, they can¡¯t kill me as I¡¯ll just respawn.¡¯ Shesmu kept looking at the girl before saying. ¡°Do you want to go to the church to have a priest heal you?¡± The girl paused for a second, before nodding her head expressing her consent. Shesmu breathed a sigh of relief at this reaction. If she refused and reacted hysterically, then that would mean that the church was part of the conspiracy and so he would not be able to heal her. From her reaction, he can assume that even if the church is related to this incident, at least the girl herself doesn¡¯t know about this matter. Slowly, but surely, the duo finally reached the gates of the town. Shesmu asked the little girl to stay hidden behind the trees so that he can go buy her a cloak so as to hide her. If they went into the town while her hair and injuries were fully exposed, they would bring unwanted attention to themselves. So Shesmu rushed towards a tailor and bought a dark brown cloak, before going back outside the town. Shesmu then, with the now hidden girl, went back to the town and headed straight down to the church. Entering it, he asked a priest if he could talk with a Tier 2 healer while showing him some of the injuries on the mysterious girl¡¯s arm. Understanding that only a tier 2 healer could heal injuries of such a degree, the priest didn¡¯t dally and went out to call one out. ¡°The healer Alan asked you to come see him. It¡¯s this way.¡± The priest then showed them the way to the office of the healer, where he left them at the door before going away. Knock! Knock! ¡°Come in.¡± Hearing the reply, the duo opened the doors, to find a middle-aged man with golden hair and a fair skin. ¡°Hello, my name is Alan. For what pleasure does your highness come seeking me.¡± Lower tier nobles were always subservient to higher tier ones, always calling them using honorific regardless of seniority or strength. ¡°Hello, Sir Alan. My name is Shesmu. My friend is in a dire state and I beg you to help her.¡± Alan was surprised at the humility of the noble before him. High nobles were usually arrogant beyond measure and would always look down on lower tier ones like him. Due to his happiness, Alan didn¡¯t even notice that Shesmu didn¡¯t state his family name. ¡°With pleasure, your highness. Can you please take off the cloak of your friend so that I look at her injuries?¡± Shesmu slowly took the cloak off so that he does not irritate the girl¡¯s injuries and cause her pain. When Alan saw the injuries on the girl¡¯s arms, he couldn¡¯t help but gasp a cold breath. Looking at her silver hair and eyes, he knew that she was noble. He didn¡¯t know who dared to put a noble through such torture, and if it was any other day, he wouldn¡¯t have cared. He wouldn¡¯t have even come close to her for fear that calamity befalls him and his family. If someone dared to do this to a high noble, why would they fear him or his family? But today was different, the girl didn¡¯t come alone, but was with another high noble, and this time, the noble was from the Pliyx Stal country. He may not fear a noble of a foreign Kingdom since even if they ruled a part of their Kingdom, they had no effect on Stal¡¯s politics. However, offending a high noble from Pliyx Stal is the same as signing your death certificate, even if you were noble. Alan didn¡¯t dare waste time in case the girl¡¯s injuries got worse. He started chanting a Tier 2 healing spell, and a golden glow appeared on his hands. For a moment, nothing happened, but as time passed on, puss and clogged blood was spurted from the wounds so as to regulate the blood flow. After the clogged blood and puss were out of the cuts, the wounds slowly healed and the skin started mending. After 10 minutes, all the wounds were healed. Alan looked pale but managed to say. ¡°She is now fully healed. However, in the process of healing her, I used much of her vitality, so she needs time and nourishment to recover.¡± Looking at Alan¡¯s pale complexion, Shesmu took the hint, so he thanked him and left. After Alan finished the girl¡¯s treatment, Shesmu got a notification that the Quest had been completed.
Quest Save the Girl(Completed)
Rarity Epic
Rewards
Heavenly Time Artifact
Looking at the quest notice, Shesmu was overjoyed at the reward. Artifacts were items that could be stacked on each other, as they merged with the soul of the player. These artifacts were all at least at the epic rank, however, an artifact with the prefix ¡°Heavenly¡± preceding it was guaranteed to be legendary.
Heavenly Time Artifact
Type Artifact
Rarity Legendary
Effect
+50% to all received exp.
Announcement: The chapter will be late by two hours. Sorry guys, I couldn''t write anything this day because it was first day in uni. I had to meet with many friends, and wasted so much time talking with them that I couldn''t write. Anyways, I had fun today and I''ll start writing the chapter now. So expect the chapter to be uploaded in 2 / 3 hours. And since I can''t post a chapter without it being 500 words long, so I''ll just copy past a part of another chapter and that''s it. Just skip it. ******** Shesmu already thought long and hard about what to name this skill, but he couldn¡¯t find any suitable name so he just made it so that the name is basically a description of the skill. ¡°Congratulation for creating the original passive skill: Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method!¡± ¡°Due to being the first in the world to create an original skill, you are rewarded with 5 free stat points, and an additional 10 slot bag.¡± ¡°Due to creating a legendary rank original skill, you are rewarded with 20 free stat points, and a bone refining pill.¡± Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method Rank Legendary Type Cultivation Method Stage 1 Level 2(250/1000 Ki) Description Passive: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 500 Ki that has a tier 3 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. Of these 500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level. Active: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 1500 Ki that has a tier 4 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. You need to be in a meditation state to invoke the active skill, distraction and sudden movement deactivates it. Of these 1500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level. Effect Stage 1 Level 2 +10 all stats. Looking at the series of message he received, Shesmu was overwhelmed. He knew that creating an original skill resulted in receiving rewards, but he didn¡¯t know that being the first to create an original rewarded you too, so he was a bit surprised on that aspect.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Eager to spend his newly acquired free stat points, Shesmu opened his status page. Name: Shesmu Race: Humans Class: Swordsman Level: 1 (0/50 exp) Stats Strength 35 Agility 34 Intelligence 30 Wisdom 29 Vitality 33 Stat Points: 33 Skills Sword Mastery Beginner level 1 (Proficiency: 0%). From his experience, Shesmu knew that putting your stats into agility was the best strategy for early game, as monsters that had ridiculous defense stats only appeared later on in the game. He also knows that agility was an essential stat, because without sufficient agility some skill animation cancels would be clunky or sometimes impossible. Moreover, to the extent of his knowledge, no weapon below level 10 had stat requirements above 30 strength and 25 vitality. Thus, Shesmu could safely dump every free stat points on agility. His stats after the upgrade looked like this. Name: Shesmu Race: Humans Class: Swordsman Level: 1 (0/50 exp) Stats Strength 35 Agility 60 Intelligence 30 Wisdom 29 Vitality 33 Stat Points: 0 Skills Sword Mastery Beginner level 1 (Proficiency: 0%). Talent Quick Slash: Increase attack speed by 20%. After his agility stat reached 50, Shesmu unlocked the talent Quick Slash. Talents were very helpful as they not only stacked on top of each other, they were also percentages. Any decent gamer would understand that percentages were in most cases better than flat stats, as the latter might have its luster reduced through time, but the former would always shine ever so brightly, scaling with the strength of its user. After drolling at his stats for a while, Shesmu then opened his inventory to check his rewards. The first thing he noticed was the 1 gold and 20 coppers he had stored up. While other players would be racking their brain on how to get money to buy pieces of equipment, since 20 coppers was worth only few health and mana potions, he wouldn¡¯t have to worry at all. Shesmu then took a glance at the level 10 gold box with an interrogation mark in it, but didn¡¯t touch it for the moment. He then used the 10 inventory slot bag to add 10 slot to his inventory. Finally, his eyes landed on the bone refining pill. Bone Refining Pill Type Alchemical Pill Rank Epic Description: +50 to Strength, Vitality, and Agility. Can only be used 3 time per character. Shesmu was surprised for a moment. In his past life, he was only able to procure a bone refining pill when he was already a tier 3 player. At that time, the bonus was +100 to the aforementioned three stats, but could only be used twice. Shesmu concluded that the effect of the pill was relative to the level or tier of a player, so he didn¡¯t mind the difference. He didn¡¯t expect to be able to get 100 stat lead over everyone just from taking this pill, as he would definitely become an existence akin to a god towards players if he did so. After contemplating for a minute, Shesmu finally swallowed the pill. ¡°Aghhhh!¡± Shesmu forgot about the side effect of taking the bone refining pill. The pill wasn¡¯t named bone refining for no reason, its effect was to grind bones and through that process inject nutrient directly in them, then repair the bones. This process happened through his whole body grinding all 256 bones to dust and repairing them for 10 minutes straight. Shesmu kept screaming and bitting his lips as cold sweat covered his back, forhead, and limbs. From the moment he reincarnated, Shesmu never felt this much pain. He had the urge to curse his lungs out, but kept it from taking over his reason. After the 10 minutes was over, Shesmu got up with ragged breath and checked his status to see if this agonizing pain was worth it. Chapter 8: Arminas Past Looking at the item he just received, Shesmu was delighted. Shesmu didn¡¯t know the reward behind the quest because the guy who got it in his past life didn¡¯t manage to finish it. The only thing that guy said in the forum was that there was an epic quest in this specific beginner town where you need to save a girl. The girl died before he could save her so he ended up missing this opportunity and lamented about it in the forums. An item that could boost the amount of experience you receive is rare beyond measure. The fact that this item was an artifact made it even more valuable as it didn¡¯t waste any item slot. Shesmu hurriedly used the artifact by dropping a little bit of his blood on it. The round white sphere turned into black gas as it slipped from his hand and penetrated his left shoulder. Shesmu didn¡¯t feel any pain, instead, he felt a refreshing cool sensation on the back of his shoulder. After the whole process was finished, an ouroboros tattoo appeared at the back of his left shoulder. Going out of the church, Shesmu went to a cheap inn, where he could safely talk with the mysterious girl. Paying the 10 copper needed to rent a room, Shesmu, with the cloaked girl, quickly went straight past the cashier and into the dormitory, where he chose a random room to take. ¡°You can take off the cloak now.¡± With this said, the girl took off the cloak that was hiding all of her body. Her silky silver hair cascaded over her shoulders giving her a noble atmosphere around her. Her snow white skin with no blemish was in contrast with her previous appearance with wounds all over her body. Her blood red lips gave her a certain charm that was further accentuated with her curvatures and slim body. ¡°First things first, who are you?¡± Hearing his question, the girl seemed to have an internal dilemma before sighing and saying. ¡°My name is Armina Hillrun. I¡¯m from the Hillrun family, the one ruling over Estrya.¡± Hearing her reply, Shesmu sucked a cold breath. Someone actually dared to torture and almost kill someone from Estrya¡¯s royalty. Didn¡¯t they fear that the kingdom backing her would go to war with Pliyx Stal? ¡®Wait, from what I remember, Estrya wasn¡¯t ruled by the Hillrun family in my past life.¡¯ But before he could continue his train of thought, Shesmu remembered a certain incident that happened at the start of the game in the Estrya Kingdom. He didn¡¯t remember it at first because the thing happened such a long time ago, however, at the time, the incident was all over the forums and was even mentioned on the news. Around one month after the game went live, Estrya¡¯s political scene had a major shift. Due to treason, the Hillrun imperial family was slaughtered inside their palace without the army or the royal guard doing anything about it. In that incident, the royal guard captain, a majority of the army¡¯s generals and major figures from the royal palace planned a coup d¡¯¨¦tat to overrule the existing King and replace him. Remembering this conspiracy, he looked at Armina for a long time, before thinking. ¡®If I recall correctly, the youngest daughter of the king and the brightest disappeared before the major incident. Maybe she is the princess in question.¡¯ ¡°I know that you¡¯re still troubled with everything that just happened and can¡¯t trust anyone. So I will not bother you with questions for the time being. You can just rest, and when you feel comfortable talking to me, I¡¯ll be all ears.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. After saying what he needed to say, Shesmu was about to leave when he felt a hand stopping him in his track. ¡°Wait¡­ Can you stay for a bit, I want to talk to you.¡± Looking at the resolute face of Armina, Shesmu couldn¡¯t bring himself to say no. After Shesmu sat down on the bed, Armina stayed silent for a little bit before saying. ¡°Normally, I shouldn¡¯t be saying this as it involves information related to the inner working of the royal family. However, at this point, I trust you more than I trust my own blood and flesh. Savior, the royal family of Estrya is in shambles, my uncle and my own brother set up a trap for me so that I die a hideous death in foreign territory, so as to avoid the blame.¡± Armina paused for a second, but so as to not show her weakness, she didn¡¯t cry and continued speaking. ¡°My uncle was always jealous of father, feeling that he is the one who should be the king. This jealousy resulted in many incidents over the years, however, father will always look the other way to respect the blood that he shares with his brother. But uncle¡¯s jealousy didn¡¯t diminish over the years, it only grew stronger. Now, with the decision of who between my two brothers will be the heir has been put to rest. My eldest brother grew jealous of his younger brother due to his nomination.¡± Armina then paused to take a breath before continuing. ¡°One day, I heard a conversation I shouldn¡¯t have heard. My uncle was trying to poach my eldest brother to his side so that they can start a coup d¡¯¨¦tat. He said that he already bought half of the generals of the army to his side. Moreover, he claimed to have the support of multiple high nobles and minor ones. My brother¡­ accepted his offer." ¡°When I heard this conversation, I wanted to immediately report to the king. However, before I reached the royal chamber, I was stopped by the royal guards. At that point, I knew that the royal guards were already bribed by my uncle. I broke through their encirclement and entered the royal chamber, but my father was not there, he took off in the morning towards the borders with the desolate lands, to lead the army against a beast horde.¡± At this point, Armina bit her lips in frustration. Her hands were visibly shaken by the anger and humiliation. ¡°I knew I could no longer stay in the royal palace, I made way too big of a fuss in a place where treacherous bastards were at every corner. Before the sun set down, I took off to our ally kingdom Pliyx Stal, to take refuge in a noble family that I was related through my mother.¡± At this point, tears started dropping from Armina¡¯s eyes, she could no longer stop them as she started sobbing. ¡°However, those vicious bastards followed me even after I crossed the border, and killed everyone and anyone I was related to with no mercy. Not even children and elderly were spared, they were decapitated, burned and stabbed, not leaving them even with a full corpse.¡± Armina could no longer handle the frustration and sadness in her heart as she broke down, crying. ¡°I really don¡¯t know what to do. I have neither the power nor the support to help father and brother. I don¡¯t even have the strength to defend myself. I¡¯m so weak that I¡¯m disgusted with myself, I can do nothing but watch at the side, as my father and brother are killed in front of me.¡± Shesmu had his heartstrings pulled out, he could feel the pain that this young girl was burying under her cold smile, to the point that it felt unbearable. He didn¡¯t know what to say, and he couldn¡¯t make any empty promise. He knew that the level of strength the royalty was at, is something that he can never hope of reaching even after a year of playing. The king of Estrya was a tier 5 swordsman, holding the hidden class royal swordsman, which was many times stronger than an ordinary or rare hidden class. Someone capable of threatening and even killing such an existence would scoff at his measly strength and wouldn¡¯t use even the power of a finger to crush him multiple times over. After a long moment of silence, Shesmu finally said. ¡°I can¡¯t help you with your quest to save your father as I¡¯m too weak. However, I swear on my blood as a noble descendant, that I will protect you from harm until you regain your strength. I will use the immortality given to me by being of the golden generation to protect you even after death. This promise is one that the heavens will be the witness for.¡±
Soul Contract
Description
Soul Contract is a contract that holds both parties by the power of the heaven liable to what had been agreed on. The penalty for breaking the contract is a permanent -80% of the contract breaker¡¯s attribute. The penalty is applicable to even the golden generation(players).
Chapter 9: Start of the Hunt Shesmu already knew about the contract, and the extreme penalties one receives when breaking it. However, he did it anyway. The reason for this decision was not only emotional but also rational. Armina being able to break out of the encirclement of multiple royal guards might not seem like anything to a new player, however, Shesmu knew how ferocious royal guards were. Taking, for example, the royal guards for the Pliyx Stal Kingdom, they were all at around Tier 3 to Tier 4 class holders, this is especially so for the guards stationed inside the palace. Being able to break from that encirclement meant that Armina was at least a Tier 4 rare class holder, maybe even epic. Gaining the favor of such a supreme character this early in the game will give Shesmu a trump card that he can use when he is cornered, because as strong as he might be compared to the current players, even a boss would succumb to the might of the many. Armina was surprised at Shesmu¡¯s declaration. She already saw the system notification showing that the heavens bore witness to the oath. ¡°Do you know the level of power going after my life? It¡¯s not something you can imagine even if you wanted to. Any royal guard could crush you under their feet before you can understand what happened¡­¡± Shesmu already knew these facts, but he was still sure that he will not break his promise. As long as Armina returns to her full power, no one person can kill her if she tries to escape. At least, no such person exists in Pliyx Stal and Estrya. Moreover, she is supposed to be dead in her uncle¡¯s mind, so even if there were spies in Stal capital city that would recognize her, there can¡¯t be any organized force that can deal with her anywhere in the area. Worst come to worst, if they are discovered, it would take her uncle couple months before organizing a trap to kill her in foreign territories. Shesmu was sure that by the time they are in real danger, he would already be strong enough to hold his ground against Tier 3 class and Tier 4 class holders, especially after the release of epic and legendary quests. ¡°I have an 80% confidence in this promise. I am sure that given 8 months, I can reach Tier 4 in at least an epic rarity class.¡± In fact, Shesmu was confident that he can reach Tier 4 in a legendary rarity class, but these were so rare that if he were to mention it, he would be seen as nothing more than a lunatic. Armina was silent for a moment before saying. ¡°Hmm, okay, I believe in you.¡± In reality, Armina thought of what Shesmu said as nothing more than a pipe dream. However, even when all is said and done, he is still her savior, so she needs to give him some face. Before walking out of the room, Shesmu asked. ¡°Just a question, but how long do you think it would take you to recover?¡± Hearing his question, Armina seemed troubled for a moment before replying. ¡°At this moment, my power is barely comparable to a Tier 1. Given a week I should reach the level of a Tier 3. However, to go back to the Tier 4 status I reached before, I need more than just rest. Some of my internal injuries have not been healed, and as such, I cannot use my full power without risking lethal injuries.¡± Hearing her response, Shesmu was delighted. For a player to reach Tier 3 in their class, they need first to reach level 120. So, what Armina said essentially was that Shesmu would gain a level 120 ally in a week; and not only a normal Tier 3 class holder, but a Tier 3 epic class holder which was dozens of times stronger than the former. ¡°Okay, you can take your time and rest. I will ask the servants to just knock on the door and put your meals next to it so that your identity is not divulged.¡±Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Armina nodded at Shesmu¡¯s statement, as the latter walked out of the room. He then went to the receptionist, gave her a couple instructions and paid for Armina¡¯s meals and stay. Finally able to focus on questing and leveling up, Shesmu headed straight to the blacksmith. On the way, Shesmu found many players running around town. In fact, there were so many that sometimes he found long lines of players waiting for their turn to accept repeatable quests. He checked his real-life clock on the menu to find that it was already 14.20. Without knowing, Shesmu had used close to 3 hours on this epic quest alone. However, Shesmu didn¡¯t feel that it was a waste in any sense of the word. While normal players were waiting for their turn in front of the biggest blacksmith/tailor/armorsmith shops to accept repeatable quests, he would be doing quests for the less known shops that give hidden quests after finishing their normal ones. In less than ten minutes, Shesmu arrived at a small blacksmith shop called Gregory Shop. The blacksmith working there was called James Gregory and the normal quest he gave was pretty decent, albeit a little bit worse than the ones given in high-end shops. After talking with him for a moment, Shesmu accepted his quest.
Kill the wolves
Description
Kill 20 wolves and bring back their fangs.
Reward
Wolf Sword (Silver) 2 silver 1500 experience.
Like in the beta, Shesmu went around town picking up normal combat quests. Same as before, he needed to kill foxes, deer, boars, and wolves. After accepting these quest, he headed to the monster area. Deciding to start with the weakest ones, Shesmu went to the level 5 area where he found a couple of fox packs. Not wanting to waste time, Shesmu dashed in front of them to hold their aggro and dived straight into the forest, everytime he found a pack of foxes, he would agro it. After he aggroed around 30 foxes, Shesmu finally turned around to face his enemies. The foxes encircled him and left him no path for retreat, however, Shesmu only chuckled at the irony of the situation and then took a combat stance. Thinking of him as a dead meat, the foxes pounced on him from all directions. At this sight, Shesmu glanced at his Ki bar, before a green aura surrounded his trash gray level 0 sword. If someone saw Shesmu at this point, they wouldn¡¯t think that he was wielding the beginner sword that everyone held in contempt, but a legendary one holding many secrets and opportunities. In less than 0.5 seconds, Shesmu slashed dozens of times, each slash holding a distinct meaning and trajectory. Waves of green sword slashes spread outwards killing everything in sight and leaving behind a scene describing desolation and wildness. After a moment, multiple golden flashes surrounded Shesmu signifying that he leveled up. From this fight alone, he leveled up 3 times and made good progress to reach level 5. ¡°Congratulation for creating an original skill. Please choose a name for it.¡± Shesmu thought for a bit but decided to just name this skill something simple. ¡°Thousand Slashes.¡± ¡°Congratulation, due to creating a rare original skill, you have been awarded 5 stat points and 10 intermediate healing potions.¡± After receiving these rewards, Shesmu looked at his stats page and added the stat points he gained.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 4 (600/3000 exp)
Health Points 1280/1280
Ki Points 4000/4750
Stats
Strength 100
Agility 117
Intelligence 30
Wisdom 29
Vitality 97
Stat Points 0
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 1 (Proficiency: 50%).
Thousand Slashes Tier 0 level 1(Proficiency:50%)
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
Afterimage When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.
Strong Grip Increase attack power by 20%
Titan¡¯s Might Increase attack power by 30%. Have a chance to knock back an opponent with less attack power.
Tough Skin Increase hp by 20%
Chapter 10: Killing Everything Looking at the mess he left in his wake, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but smile bitterly. He knew that it took half an hour for monsters to respawn, so he understood that there was no meaning in staying in this place. Shesmu dove deeper into the forest in hope of encountering more foxes. On his way, Shesmu slashed and thrust any fox that was in his trajectory. Each of his attacks dealt more than 500 damage, easily one-shotting the 400 HP foxes. Shesmu killed 7 foxes a minute, and in less than 10, he already reached his 100 fox quota. What made Shesmu waste time wasn¡¯t the fight in and of itself, but the distance that he needed to cover to find another pack of foxes. Once his Kill count reached 100, a loud growl was heard in the distance. From between the tall trees, a silhouette was running towards Shesmu at an alarming rate. The shadow was 2 to 3 times bigger than normal foxes, and anyone who saw this situation from afar would think that Shesmu was a dead man walking. From between the leaves of the trees and the shrubs, an oversized fox jumped out. A white fur reminiscent of snow decorated with red fiery strings on its sides and its legs. The firefox elite growled in front of Shesmu showing its dominance and strength. Without the Identify skill, Shesmu couldn¡¯t check the stats of the monster in front of him, however, he already knew from past experience that the firefox elite had 2000 HP and could deal 200 damage per attack to someone with no resistance. Waiting for the monster to make the first move, Shesmu started jumping on his feet and moving around using a basic footwork. Looking at the human in front of it jumping around, the beast got annoyed and headed straight towards him, wanting to slash his belly open with its claws. The firefox elite didn¡¯t think that the human in front of it was anything special, the AI controlling it made it think that the most important factor in judging someone¡¯s strength was his level, and seeing that Shesmu¡¯s level was lesser than its own, it naturally thought that he was an easy prey. However, Shesmu was destined to make it regret its decision. The moment the beast¡¯s claws reached Shesmu, he immediately accelerated multiple times his usual speed leaving an afterimage in his place. Before the firefox could react, Shesmu already slashed its back and followed it by a thrust to its abdomen. Next, Shesmu ducked below it to change position and slashed and thrust the same way as before, instantly killing the elite monster. Shesmu received 1200 experience, showing how even with the +50% experience, Ashes of Gods was still a game hard to level in. The elite dropped 2 silver and 2 items. Looking at his loot, Shesmu noticed that one of the items was shining with a silver glow while the other one was normal.
Fox Vest
Requirement Level 5
Rarity Gray
Description
Defense +2
Firefox¡¯s claws
Requirement Level 5
Rarity Silver
Description
Attack +10
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Seeing that he still wasn¡¯t able to use this equipment, Shesmu threw them in his inventory and went to his next farming area. After killing the firefox, Shesmu went to the level 6 area, where he hunted deer instead of foxes. There was no difference in the method of killing as deer¡¯s HP was also relatively low, only 450 HP. Since all of his attacks dealt 500 to 550 damage without counting critical strikes, Shesmu easily killed the quota of 100 deer. He then fought the elite version of deer which was just an oversized one with higher HP and stronger attacks. As with the firefox, Shesmu just dodged the attack of the elite deer and killed it with 5 slashes. This same scenario repeated itself in the level 8 farming area with the boars. As Shesmu reached the level 9 area, he finally looked at all the loot he got from his farming. Other than the japtem he received from normal monsters, Shesmu got 2 bronze colored items and 1 silver.
Swift boar boots
Requirement Level 8
Rarity Bronze
Description
+3 Agility +3 defense
Nature Necklace
Requirement Level 6
Rarity Silver
Description
+5 Agility
Swift boar''s Leggings
Requirement Level 8
Rarity Bronze
Description
+4 defense +2 Agility
Shesmu already reached level 8 so he could equip all of his items, however, due to the limited number of bronze and silver items, he needed to use gray items as a replacement. The latter only added defense stat by 1 or 2, however, these stats add-on. Looking at his stats page, Shesmu decided to use his stat points since he leveled up 4 times since the last time he used them. He first added the 3 stat points needed to unlock the next vitality talent and dumped everything he had left on agility.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 8 (4800/15000 exp)
Health Points 1650/1650
Ki Points 5500/5500
Stats
Strength 100
Agility 156
Intelligence 30
Wisdom 29
Vitality 100
Stat Points 0
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 3 (Proficiency: 14%).
Thousand Slashes Tier 0 level 1(Proficiency:50%)
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
Afterimage When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.
Strong Grip Increase attack power by 20%
Titan¡¯s Might Increase attack power by 30%. Have a chance to knock back an opponent with less attack power.
Tough Skin Increase hp by 20%
Troll''s Blood Increase HP by 30% and increase regeneration of HP by 50 Hp/s when outside of combat.
Chapter 11: Requiem of Death Entering the level 9 area, Shesmu became more prudent. Wolves were pack monsters and usually belong to a group of 10 to 20, depending if there is an alpha wolf within them or not. While fighting a single wolf might not be much to anyone with Shesmu¡¯s current stats, a pack of 20 would require a lot of skill and focus to defeat. Returning the firefox fang dagger to his inventory, Shesmu took out his basic sword and equipped it. The reason for this abnormal change is pretty simple. The dagger, while it was a silver weapon, still didn¡¯t give out nearly enough stats to be noticeable for someone with Shesmu¡¯s stats. In fact, it came with a load of inconvenience to Shesmu. One of the main concerns he had about the dagger was its reach. Shesmu valued this component of fighting to a high extent, as with a great reach, one doesn¡¯t need to put himself in harm¡¯s way and can easily maneuver from a distance. Hearing noises from the distance, Shesmu took a combat stance. With a jogging pace, he ran towards the source of the noise. After passing multiple trees, Shesmu found 3 wolves in front of him. He paused for a second to check his surroundings and noticed movements all around him. With quick mental calculation, Shesmu discovered that there were 15 wolves including the 3 in front of him. Shesmu didn¡¯t care about the ambush though. If the whole pack was in front of him and decided to fight him head on, it might have been annoying for Shesmu to deal with them. However, with this formation, Shesmu could easily abuse his sky-high movement speed and insane attack power. Shesmu dashed towards the wolf pack in a blink of an eye, following it with a quick and smooth thrust to the first wolf¡¯s chest. Taking his blade out instantly, Shesmu ducked to the side to avoid the second wolf¡¯s claw slash. He then slashed outwards, instantly after the duck, cutting the second wolf¡¯s belly open. The third wolf barely got the time to pounce on Shesmu, before the latter countered it with a kick to the jaw followed by a quick thrust to the neck. The whole fight took barely 3 seconds, surprising the pack behind the three poor wolves. The alpha wolf felt threatened by the power of the being in front of, so he forgot to signal his pack to attack the enemy in front of him. By the time he regained his wits, the battle in front of him was already settled. ¡°Awooo!!¡± The alpha wolf was enraged. Before its eyes, three members of its pack were killed and it could do nothing about it. It howled towards its pack so that they attack the enemy and ran towards it. Hearing the growl, Shesmu looked around him to see that wolf pack encircled him. Before letting them approach any further, Shesmu ran towards the least dense part of the encirclement in a flash, not letting the pitiful wolves enough time to react. Within 0.5 seconds, Shesmu slashed 4 times killing two wolves. He turned around and saw a lone wolf in front of it petrified from fear. Shesmu dashed towards it and slashed its neck, ending its life in one shot.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. The alpha wolf seeing that his pack was getting slaughtered one by one dashed towards Shesmu and became the frontline of the pack. With its big stature, the wolf looked intimidating and ferocious. Shesmu contemplated the situation for a moment before clicking his tongue. If he dealt with the Alpha wolf the same way as he did with the other mob before it, he was certain that he was going to get hurt from the normal wolves beside it. Shesmu was a very prideful person, he would never let himself get hurt by such low tier monsters possessing the worst AIs possible in this day and age. With his limited skill pool, Shesmu didn¡¯t have much freedom in his fighting patterns. However, he knew many original single target skills that could one shot the alpha wolf in front of him. The only problem was that his current equipment couldn¡¯t handle the amount of Ki needed to be embedded for most of his skills to work. The only skill he could use was a single thrust containing a large amount of rotating Ki focused into one point. The limit of what the basic sword could handle was 2000 Ki points, these were more than enough to kill the alpha wolf in front of him many times over. Shesmu inserted 1200 Ki points into his blade and focused on the tip of his blade. He then dashed with extreme velocity, leaving an afterimage behind him, towards the alpha wolf. In less than the 0.1 second needed for the alpha wolf to react, Shesmu crossed the 5 meters distance and thrust his sword into the alpha wolf¡¯s chest. ¡°Boom!¡± The inside of the alpha wolf bulged out for a second becoming as round as a balloon before guts and intestines fell from the gaping wound on its chest and belly. The beast then fell to the ground defeated, its eyes lifeless. Shesmu waved his sword to clean it, and with no mercy, dashed towards the nearest wolf slashing its neck open. What ensued later could only be called a requiem of death. Shesmu, as if he was the grim reaper, dashed in all directions littering the battlefield with blood and gore. His movements were like a dance, rhythmic in nature and beautiful to behold, the red color of the blood only served so as to accentuate the moment¡¯s beauty rather than to ruin it. After killing the 15 wolves and the Alpha, Shesmu then went on searching for other wolf packs. The same scenario as with the first one repeated itself multiple times throughout Shesmu¡¯s journey. In the end, he killed 7 Alpha wolves and 100 normal ones. Boosting his level to 9 before the spawn of the boss monster: Silvermoon Wolf. Hearing a long growl in the distance, Shesmu went towards the source of the sound. Going through the thick forest, Shesmu went by trees after trees until he reached a clearance. By this time, it was close to dusk as Shesmu observed the setting sun beneath a huge valley. The amber color soothing to the eye and the heart was in perfect contrast to the desolate forest filled with the scent of death from both players and monsters. ¡°Awooo!!¡± On top of the valley, Shesmu saw a large wolf, one that is as large as alpha wolves. However, a silver hue emanating from it separated it from the usual alpha wolf. Shesmu knew that this was the Silvermoon Wolf. Chapter 12: Silvermoon Wolf King Looking at the monster in front of him, Shesmu readied himself. Even without the Identify skill, he already knew the stats of the monster in front of him. The Silvermoon Wolf had 5000 HP and 400 attack power. These stats would be able to overpower anyone under level 10. Even a level 10 tank who put every single stat point he had on vitality would still be killed in two hits, a normal swordsman wouldn¡¯t survive even 1. If someone wanted to kill the Silvermoon Wolf, he would need a party of 15 level 10 players at the very least. This is not considering the arsenal of skills the Silvermoon Wolf had, just with its stats alone, it can bring despair to any player. However, even though the Silvermoon Wolf had high stats, the AI running it was still one of the more basic ones. Looking at Shesmu¡¯s level, the wolf pounced on him without using any skill, thinking that it could kill Shesmu with just its attack power alone. Looking at the sloppy and predictable movements of the Silvermoon Wolf, Shesmu dodged to the side using his superior agility. He didn¡¯t need any fancy footwork, due to how slow and readable the beast¡¯s movements were. Then with an outward slash, he cut the wolf¡¯s side leaving a big gash on the beast¡¯s chest. He then combed that slash with a thrust to the belly, before jumping to the side, dodging the oversized wolf¡¯s claw strike. Shesmu quickly regained his balance and dashed towards the Silvermoon Wolf, surprising the latter. The beast then opened its mouth and was about to roar. ¡®Not good!¡¯ Shesmu stopped his onslaught and dashed with all his force backward. Normally, the stress on his tendons wouldn¡¯t let Shesmu make this maneuver, however, due to him strengthening them in the character creation, he was easily able to do what a normal person couldn¡¯t dream of achieving. ¡°ROAAAARRR!!¡± An overwhelmingly oppressive roar sounded out from the beast and resounded throughout the whole forest, scaring multiple monsters.
Howl
Status Effect
Fear for 1.5 seconds.
Luckily, Shesmu knew ahead of time what type of skill the Silvermoon Wolf was going to use. Once he noticed the start of the beast¡¯s Howl animation, Shesmu ran away from it. The range of the howl¡¯s skill was broken to no end, reaching a radius of 100 meters. No matter how fast Shesmu was, he couldn¡¯t cross that distance in the 0.5 seconds needed to cast the Howl¡¯s skill. If he had more skills in his arsenal, Shesmu could have interrupted the Howl¡¯s cast. However, Shesmu didn¡¯t do any of the quest given by the swordsman instructor, in fact, he still didn¡¯t even visit the poor guy, and so it¡¯s only natural that he would find himself in situations where he lacked skills. The wolf, noticing that its howl had an effect on Shesmu, ran towards him in full gallop. Shesmu was 50 meters away from it, even though the beast was vastly slower than Shesmu, it was still able to close that distance in 1 second. Reaching Shesmu, the wolf swiped with its claws, leaving a gashing mark on Shesmu¡¯s chest.
-400 Hp
After this attack, the 1.5 seconds was already over and Shesmu could finally control his body. The beast was preparing for another attack, and in less than 0.1 seconds, Shesmu would be hit. Looking at the beast which was trying to kill him as if he was a nobody, Shesmu was enraged. For the first time, he actively circulated Ki in his body so as to strengthen it. Focusing part of his Ki on his leg, Shesmu disappeared from where he was, leaving only an afterimage. ¡°Awoo!!¡± The wolf cried and emitted a howl full of pain and agony. Shesmu appeared behind its back and slashed multiple times before ending his combo with a sword thrust, filled with Ki to the maximum. A gaping wound appeared on the wolf¡¯s back showing its bones and internal organs. The wolf stumbled a little bit, trying its best to survive before Shesmu slashed its neck open with a green sword slash.
+7500 experience
The Silvermoon Wolf dropped 2 silver items and 1 bronze item. Compared to the other bosses, the wolf boss was much more generous in terms of both experience and loot. Shesmu then looked at the items¡¯ stats only to be surprised that they were unexpectedly good.
Silver Wolf Blade
Rarity Silver
Requirement Level 9 and Swordsman class
Description
+20 Attack PowerTaken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. +5 Agility
Silver Wolf Vest
Rarity Silver
Requirement Level 9
Description
+15 Defense +3 Agility
Silver Fang Shoulder pad
Rarity Bronze
Requirement Level 9
Description
+10 Defense +2 Agility
Shesmu took out the gray fox vest, basic sword and boar pads to replace them with the new items, instantly received a big boost to his defense and agility. He then looked at his gray sword only to sigh heavily. He had something in mind for this sword which fought on and survived with him countless battles, however, with the apparition of the silver wolf sword and the absence of any strong enemy, Shesmu didn¡¯t find a reason to use the basic sword anymore. ¡°ROAAARRRRRR!!¡± Just as Shesmu finished his train of thought, he heard a loud roar, multiple times more majestic and intimidating than the Silvermoon Wolf¡¯s howl. He was surprised and flabbergasted as he never knew that there was another boss monster other than the Silvermoon Wolf in this region, even with his past life knowledge. As the sun set, and the moon rose up, a huge shadow appeared within the darkness. The clouds cleared up, letting the moon illuminate the world as a beast from the abyss revealed itself to everyone. A silver hue almost becoming corporal escaped its sides, many times more accentuated than the Silvermoon Wolf¡¯s aura. A humongous figure, reaching 6 meters in height, easily dwarfed Shesmu¡¯s silhouette. A white mist emanated from its mouth every time it exhaled, and its blood red iris shone in the night. Shesmu didn¡¯t know the name of the beast in front of him, however, from its looks, it seems to be of the same category as the Silvermoon Wolf, albeit many times stronger. Shesmu didn¡¯t know what to do for a second against this formidable foe. With close to no skills in his arsenal, Shesmu was limited in his choices and style of combat. If the monster in front of him was able to use an enhanced version of the Silvermoon Wolf¡¯s Howl, Shesmu wouldn¡¯t be able to counter attack and would die in the stun duration. And, from the look of it, the beast in front of him didn¡¯t have only this card up its sleeves, as its stats were clearly abnormally high for the beginner zone. Normally, monsters that had this kind of aura and strength won¡¯t be found until one reach the level 40 range, so Shesmu was worried that this was a special monster that escaped to the beginner zone in one way or the other. The beast stood still, seemingly trying to gauge the person in front of its strength. The AI running it was multiple times more sophisticated than the one controlling normal boss monsters and elites. The fact that it was summoned meant that the Silvermoon Wolf was killed, and sensing no one but the human in front of it, the beast deduced that the one who killed the Silvermoon Wolf was him. Shesmu rejoiced at this opportunity. Noticing that the monster in front of him wasn¡¯t going to make the first move, Shesmu swapped his Silver Wolf Sword with the basic one. He then whispered, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, partner.¡± Holding the basic sword in his hand, Shesmu continuously inputted Ki into it. 1000 Ki Points. 2000 Ki Points. Reaching this step, the sword started deteriorating and cuts were starting to appear all over its blade. 3000 Ki Points, 4000 Ki points, 5000 Ki Points, the sword started shattering and shards of its blade flew off in all directions, as a strong and vibrant green aura appeared on it. 6000 Ki Points, 7000 Ki Points, 10000 Ki Points, the green aura enveloping the shattered sword became stronger and more vibrant, it reached a point where a storm of Ki was holding the blade together. Looking at the state of his sword, Shesmu sighed and whispered. ¡°It seems that this is this sword¡¯s limit.¡± Looking at the green hue enveloping the sword Shesmu was holding, the beast felt a sense of danger. Not willing to let the human in front of it to continue whatever he was doing, it pounced on him with an unimaginable speed. In less than 0.1 seconds, it crossed the distance of 30 meters separating it with Shesmu. A silver aura enveloped its claws, as it swiped with its massive paw. Looking at the beast in front of him preparing to send him to the underworld, Shesmu thrust in front of him with his shattered sword. The green aura became corporal as it penetrated the large wolf¡¯s body and went out from the other side. A gaping hole, 1 meter in diameter, appeared on the beast¡¯s chest, its heart and lungs rendered to ashes. The beast¡¯s eyes still shone with the brilliance of life. It struggled with all its might, as it slowly made one step after the other, trying to approach its killer, however, as the distance between it and Shesmu was less than half a meter, the last specks of light it had in its eyes dimmed and it fell to the ground lifeless.
+30000 experience
Heaving a sigh of relief, Shesmu looked at his sword, only to see it reduced to dust, never to be equipped by him again. After mourning the loss of his sword, Shesmu looked at his right hand. It was burned to the point his flesh was visible from the outside, and his bones were in such a miserable state that no bone was left unbroken. This was the effect of using this much Ki Points when he was still a level 9 Tier 0 player. While his dantian was filled with the Ki of a tier 3 player, his body still didn¡¯t reach that point yet, and couldn¡¯t keep up with the use of a large amount of Ki. Checking his injuries, Shesmu knew that he needed to pay Alan another visit. However, before that, he needed to check his loot and level. Shesmu took a look at what the wolf dropped, to find 3 bronze items, 4 silver ones, and surprisingly 2 golden items. Chapter 13: The golden items Looking at the drop, Shesmu was surprised. It wasn¡¯t possible for monsters or bosses less than level 10 to drop Golden items, so that means that the wolf was clearly of high level. In fact, Shesmu knew that only high lord level 20 Bosses had a chance of dropping golden items, and even then, dropping just one golden item would be lucky enough. ¡®Maybe¡­ Was it a Great Lord?¡¯ A level 20 great lord boss is enough to spread terror in the heart of a guild of 100.000 players at this point in the game, and even when the player level becomes higher, no one would dare affront a great lord without at least couple thousand players of the same level. If that wolf was a great lord, it would explain the reason for its stats being so ridiculously broken. Waking up from his reverie, Shesmu took a look at the golden items.
Silver Wolf King Cape
Requirement Level 20
Rarity Golden
Description
+40 Defense +30 Agility +15 Strength
Silver Wolf King Sword
Requirement Level 20 and the Swordsman class.
Rarity Golden
Description
+100 Attack Power +50 Agility +50 Strength
Looking at the level requirement of the golden items, Shesmu checked the rest to find that they too had a requirement of being level 20. Sighing at the fact that he couldn¡¯t equip this new equipment, Shesmu brought up his stats page.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 11 (25050/50000 exp)
Health Points 2250/2250
Ki Points 1750/11750
Stats
Strength 140
Agility 218
Intelligence 70
Wisdom 69
Vitality 140
Stat Points 0
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 5 (Proficiency: 54%).
Thousand Slashes Tier 0 level 1(Proficiency:50%)
Ki Manipulation Tier 1 level 1(Proficiency: 0%)
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
Afterimage When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.
Silent Steps Improve Stealth, step sounds cannot be detected when running. Movement speed in combat +50%, attack speed +50%.
Strong Grip Increase attack power by 20%
Titan¡¯s Might Increase attack power by 30%. Have a chance to knock back an opponent with less attack power.
Tough Skin Increase hp by 20%
Troll''s Blood Increase HP by 30% and increase regeneration of HP by 50 Hp/s when outside of combat.
Clear Mind Magical Damage +20%. Faster analysis.
Clear Vision More accurate vision. Mana regeneration +20%.
¡°Congratulation for unlocking Ki manipulation while being a Tier 0 class holder. 3 requirements met.¡± ¡°Due to finishing all the requirements, 30 stats point free stat points have been offered.¡± ¡°Due to unlocking an epic Rarity Tier 1 Skill, 20 free stat points had been offered and a marrow cleansing pill.¡± Looking at the rewards he received, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but have his heart confused between frustration and happiness. Happiness because he received a bunch of stat points and frustration due to how the system didn¡¯t classify cultivation methods into tiers, and just gave the basic rewards of discovering a tier 0 skill for creating them. If not for this fact, how could Shesmu receive just 20 free stats point when the technique he created could rival tier 5 and 6 in usefulness. If it was a normal tier 5 battle skill that he created, Shesmu would have received at the very least couple hundreds of stat points and legendary equipment. Alas, even though Shesmu did know many such skills, his current reservoir of Ki Points in terms of quantity and quality wasn¡¯t able to support them. Even more pressing, Shesmu¡¯s body wouldn¡¯t be able to handle the stress of a Tier 5 skill and would break before even completing it.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Seeing that he already reached the 200 stat points needed for the agility talent and that using the free stat points he had left wouldn¡¯t do anything, Shesmu decided to not using them for the time being. Instead, he checked his cultivation technique to see which stage he reached.
Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method
Rank Legendary
Type Cultivation Method
Stage 1
Level 6(11750/20000 Ki)
Description
Passive: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 500 Ki that has a tier 3 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. Of these 500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level. Active: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 1500 Ki that has a tier 4 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. You need to be in a meditation state to invoke the active skill, distraction and sudden movement deactivate it. Of these 1500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level.
Effect Stage 1 Level 6
+50 all stats
Contrary to when Shesmu first activated the Ki gathering system, the gains from his cultivation method became more apparent now that he reached higher levels. Once Shesmu reaches level 10 and upgrades to Stage 2, his strength will experience a qualitative increase. Both the amount of stats that he would gain from his level ups, and the purity plus quantity of the Ki Shesmu will gather, will undergo a dramatic change. Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but hope that the day he reaches Stage 2 comes closer. Remembering that he had a mystery golden level 10 box, Shesmu opened his inventory and selected it. In front of him, a golden roulette appeared with many slots dividing it. Each of the slots represented a type of equipment, from a weapon to boots. Shesmu spun the roulette with all his might, and it continued spinning for a while, the cursor constantly changing the equipment slot it was pointing to. Finally, the roulette came to a stop, and the equipment he received was a pair of boots.
Feet of Lost Souls
Requirement Level 10
Rarity Golden
Description
Defense+40 Agility +30 Wisdom +20
Looking at the items¡¯ stats, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but sigh in frustration. Truly, one cannot be too lucky. The stats of the boots were kinda decent, but considering that it¡¯s a golden piece of equipment, the fact that it has +20 Wisdom is trash. If instead of Wisdom the stat it gave was Strength, or even in worst case, Vitality, Shesmu would have been happy beyond measure. However, even with +20 Wisdom, this golden piece of equipment was far from comparable to a silver item. Golden items represented a kind of threshold in the lower levels, as is demonstrated by their rarity. A level 10 golden equipment shouldn¡¯t even appear in the game as there was no great lord or higher existence at this level. Even high lord bosses were never been seen before, much less the much stronger great lords. Equipping his new boots, Shesmu felt a subtle increase in his speed. At his level of agility, small increases of 10 or 20 barely made any difference, and only an increase of 30 made Shesmu feel a little bit lighter. Looking at the night blue sky, and the beautiful silvery moon, Shesmu decided to go back to town. He didn¡¯t skin or take the fangs of the Silvermoon wolf king as he didn¡¯t have the necessary tools or skills to accomplish it. Anyways, Shesmu already knew that bosses that were high lords or above will leave a corpse that wouldn¡¯t be collected by the system, so he didn¡¯t have to worry. Shesmu also knew that no player would reach this area any time soon due to the density of level 9 monsters surrounding it. In the extreme case where someone actually reached this far exploring, Shesmu could only congratulate them for their fortune. Reaching town, Shesmu went straight to the church. He asked for Alan who immediately treated his wounds after seeing the state Shesmu¡¯s hand was in. After the treatment, Shesmu went to the inn he left Armina in to rent a room. He chose a different room from her so as to respect her privacy and started cultivating for the night. Chapter 14: Epic Quest ¡°Chirp, chirp.¡± Hearing the sound of birds chirping, Shesmu opened his eyes. He spent the whole night actively cultivation the Rotational Three Tiered method and didn¡¯t feel the least bit tired. In fact, he felt fresh as if he was rejuvenated. The reason for this feeling is the state of mind a person enters when practicing cultivation. When cultivating, a person¡¯s mind enters a passive state close to sleep. The only thing separating cultivation from real sleep is that small part of your brain working on the repetitive task of guiding the Ki through the paths. As for one¡¯s body, Shesmu had a VIP capsule which was loaded with comfort options, making sleep in the capsule even more comfortable than on a normal bed. Looking at the game clock, Shesmu knew that it was 6.00 in the morning. The real world time indicated that it was 9.00 p.m. This meant that 9-5 workers and students have already entered the game which will make its population reach an all-time peak. Even though Ashes of Gods was a new game, the amount of media coverage it received made it easily gain millions of users on the first day. Being the first game to not only be run by a singularity, but two already made every normal person hyped up to no end about it. However, what caught most gamers¡¯ eyes and made them quit their main games was the amount of control one had on his avatar. Other games might have tried to simulate the real-world experience, however, it would always feel a little bit clunky. Some gained their charm through that chunkiness and ended up as pretty popular games among certain demographics, however, who would say no to smooth gameplay when it¡¯s presented to him. However, Ashes of Gods could still not be considered one of the more popular games, as the top games had active users in the hundreds of millions. Compared to those behemoths, Ashes of Gods¡¯ couple million players seemed like a joke. However, this would all change in around 3 months from now on, as people will become more and more interested in this highly sophisticated game. Shesmu went out of his room to find the maids already walking around doing their tasks. He went to the restaurant and asked for a simple bread and cheese. Finishing his meal, Shesmu went to Armina¡¯s room to see how she is doing. ¡°Knock! Knock!¡± Knocking on the door, Shesmu waited before he received a response. ¡°Leave the meal next to the door.¡± Hearing her reply, Shesmu wasn¡¯t surprised and just said. ¡°It¡¯s me, Shesmu.¡± ¡°Oh, then come in.¡± Shesmu pushed the door open to see Armina still on her pajamas. These clothes looked normal, albeit the knowledgeable eye would tell that they were made of high-quality material. Shesmu guessed that Armina had an inventory-like ability that let her store clothes, food, and other necessities. ¡°I just came to see if you¡¯re recovering well and if there was no problem with your stay in this inn.¡± Hearing his question, Armina didn¡¯t answer right away. In fact, she kept her silence for a long time whilst having a surprised expression on her face. ¡°You, you already reached the higher levels of Stage 1.¡± Armina was surprised and she had enough reasons to be so. She could feel that Shesmu was but at the lower levels of Ki cultivations in the morning, and that¡¯s the reason why she had trouble believing Shesmu¡¯s promise. However, after an afternoon and a night, Shesmu was already at the higher levels of Stage 0. This was basically inconceivable. Shesmu might have gained much more than just Ki points and cultivation levels. However, Armina couldn¡¯t sense the true extent of his progress in terms of stats. Strength, Agility, and Vitality may change one¡¯s muscle and bone structure, however, even to the most trained eyes, differentiating between an increase of 50 and an increase of 100 is difficult. The only thing Armina could notice the changes of Shesmu¡¯s muscle structure was that he improved quite a bit, while not being sure how far that ¡°quite a bit¡± reaches. In contrast, Shesmu¡¯s Ki cultivation level was clear. Everyone below Stage 4 couldn¡¯t hide his Ki fluctuations, and as such, Shesmu¡¯s Ki density and strength were clear for Armina to see. ¡°Yes, I trained hard and reached this level after much effort,¡± Shesmu said while smiling. At his answer, Armina could only swallow the myriad of questions stuck in her throat. Shesmu clearly had secrets that he didn¡¯t want to divulge and so did she, so she respected his wishes and didn¡¯t press on the subject.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°I see. Don¡¯t worry about my health, most of the internal injuries I had have been cured by Alan. As long as I don¡¯t fight, there should be no problem. In a week or so, I should have regained most of my Ki¡± Hearing her reply, Shesmu thought for a bit before saying. ¡°I understand. Once we reach the capital, hopefully, I¡¯ll be able to talk with a stronger healer than Alan so that he can help you recover completely. For the time being, I can only work on increasing my strength.¡± After finishing his statement, Shesmu looked at Armina who nodded in response. Seeing that there was nothing much to discuss, Shesmu went out of Armina¡¯s room, ready to start a new day. First of all, he went to the claim the rewards for the quests he completed yesterday from the guard, the merchant, the tailor and finally the blacksmith. Knocking on the blacksmith shop¡¯s door, Shesmu received the normal reply. ¡°Come in, welcome, customer.¡± Shesmu opened the door, for the blacksmith to see that it was the same guy as the day before. ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you. So, how is the quest going, did you finish it?¡± The blacksmith looked at Shesmu for a little bit longer before having his facial expression turn into one of surprise. ¡°Oh, how incredible, I didn¡¯t expect you to finish the quest this early, such a promising young man.¡± Hearing the blacksmith¡¯s praise Shesmu didn¡¯t feel any joy. The fact that he is better than most of the players here is but a matter of course. He was better than 99.999999% of the player base in his last life. Now that he returned to the past where the player¡¯s overall level has diminished by thousands of miles if Shesmu couldn¡¯t do things others weren¡¯t able to, he should probably just find a bridge to jump from. ¡°Young man, to be able to finish such a tedious quest and still be able to kill more wolves than required must mean that you have an adventurous spirit. Being able to challenge oneself and do more than everyone else is a characteristic of every strong person. So, here is what I propose to you. There is a wolf-like no other in the forest, a born of the moon and hunter of the night. If you¡¯re able to kill it, I have generous rewards to give you.¡± Hearing the blacksmith¡¯s impossibly long monologue, Shesmu simply replied. ¡°I already killed it.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s reply, the blacksmith was about to continue talking before stopping and analyzing what Shesmu said. His happy expression slowly turned into one of surprise and terror. ¡°Wait, no, you couldn¡¯t...¡± The blacksmith stopped for a moment before his expression turned even uglier. ¡°You really did it. How?¡± ¡°After I killed countless wolves, this silvery creature appeared. It seemed strong at first but after an arduous battle, I managed to kill it.¡± ¡°What a brave young adventurer, your future seems as bright as the day¡¯s sky. I predict that you¡¯re going to accomplish great things in the future. Anyways, here is your reward. Hopefully, this little push let you accomplish even greater things.¡±
Slay the Silvermoon Wolf (Hidden Quest: Completed)
Description
Kill the Silvermoon Wolf
Reward
Silvermoon Wolf belt (golden) +1 gold +7500 Exp
Looking at the rewards, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but feel elated. Golden items were rarer than phoenix¡¯s feathers and dragon¡¯s wings, only a few hidden quests had it as a reward. However, remembering the Silvermoon Wolf King, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but say. ¡°Actually, there was another monster there that I fought. A wolf not like any wolf, silver light coming from its body like the moon in the sky, and its figure is bigger than a small building.¡± Hearing Shesmu talk, the blacksmith was confused. However, as if he thought about something but immediately rejected it, his expression turned into a frown. ¡°Impossible, it shouldn¡¯t be¡­¡± The blacksmith muttered. However, his face turned from a deep frown into one of terror. ¡°Impossible, the Silvermoon Wolf King. How can this ever happen?!¡± The blacksmith was shaken beyond belief. The legendary creature, a monster known only in the myths, a Silvermoon Wolf King has been slain at the hand of a new adventurer. For a while, the blacksmith didn¡¯t know what to say or do. However, after calming his emotions, he finally accepted the facts and said. ¡°Usually, after the hidden quest, there is nothing more. Even though there a few strong existences close to the beginner town, there is no quest issued for them. The reason is that these existence are town level threats. Due to the level restriction in beginner towns being 25, these creatures can run rampant and if they wished to do so, they can cause great damage to the city. People from the golden generation can¡¯t do anything about them. Whether you throw hundreds or thousands of people at these existences, it¡¯s as if you¡¯re throwing water on sand, completely useless. Instead, if someone did try to kill them, they might enrage them and push them into causing trouble for the city. This is the reason why we don¡¯t give the quests related to them.¡± The blacksmith then paused for a second before saying. ¡°However, it seems that there is an exception to this rule. If you already killed the Silvermoon Wolf, there is no reason not to give you the quest related to it.¡± ¡°Ding¡±
Slay the Silvermoon Wolf King (Hidden Epic Quest: Completed)
Description
Kill the Silvermoon Wolf King. He only appears on a full moon night when the Silvermoon Wolf is already slain.
Reward
Moon Sword (Epic) +25 gold +50000 exp
Chapter 15: Class Instructor Looking at the rewards for the final quest, Shesmu didn¡¯t know what to say. He just kept silence and stared at the notification for a while. An Epic item, that was an epic item. One has to know that even a silver item is hard to get this early in the game. As for gold items, Shesmu didn¡¯t know that level 10 gold items existed until he experienced it himself in this new life. Epic items shouldn¡¯t appear until much later in the game. Even in the beta, Shesmu couldn¡¯t get hold of epic items until level 35. Other beta players might not have even seen one. Now, he got hold of such a legendary item on the first natural day of the game. This was basically inconceivable. However, Shesmu didn¡¯t let his joy get hold of him and checked the epic items¡¯ stats. If it had a high-level requirement, then even him will take a long time before being able to equip it.
Moon Sword
Requirement Level 20, Swordsman Class, Agility 150, Strength 150
Rarity Epic
Description
Attack Power +1500 Agility +120 Strength +150 Vitality +100 Moon Enlightenment (Passive): When under the moonlight, receive +30% Agility and +50% Strength. If it¡¯s a full moon, receive +75% Agility, +100% Strength. Moon Energy (Passive): When under the moonlight, the sword harness moon energy. Moon Surge (Active): Depending on the amount of energy harnessed, a moon energy surge thrust as a beam with a range of 25 meters. Damage=5*Moon Energy Harnessed capped at 20000 Damage. Cast time; 1.5 seconds. Cooldown: 30 Seconds.
Looking at the Moon Sword stats, Shesmu had a thoughtful expression on his face. He already checked the stats requirements, so he had no need to worry about that. As for the level requirement, Shesmu wasn¡¯t too worried about it as he can easily reach level 20 in less than 4 natural days. The sword¡¯s stats weren¡¯t too bad, they were definitely stats worthy of an epic sword. However, Shesmu didn¡¯t care about the stats. First of all, the stats difference between a golden item and an epic one wasn¡¯t that big, it¡¯s the passive and active skills that made every player wish to get an epic item with fervor. The Moon Enlightenment passive was indeed quite good. The fact that scaled with percentages meant that it would be useful even when one reaches the latter stages of the game. However, what made Shesmu frown was the Moon Surge damage cap. 20000 might seem like a high damaging skill to anyone below level 70, however, the fact that it was capped meant that he couldn¡¯t use for long. At most, Shesmu will keep this sword until level 50, at that time, he would be able to do considerably more amount of damage with less restriction. 1.5 seconds might seem like a short amount of time to anyone who is new to gaming, however, to the decent gamer 1.5 seconds is longer than an eternity. This made the Moon Surge skill only useable in a surprise attack to start the fight with. In the best case scenario, Shesmu would fight in a forest or someplace with many hiding spots where he can use the small amount of time given to him by his superior agility to continue using Moon Surge. But all wasn¡¯t bad, the skill had a pretty low cooldown of 30 seconds, so Shesmu could at least use it a couple time in one fight. Since the moon sword couldn¡¯t be used until level 20, Shesmu kept it on the back of his mind and decided to check his other loot. Other than the Moon Sword, Shesmu also received a golden rarity belt.
Silvermoon Wolf Belt
Requirement Level 10
Rarity Golden
Description
Defense+50 Agility +20 Strength +30
The belt¡¯s stats weren¡¯t too shabby. Even though they paled compared to the Moon Sword¡¯s stats, but for a level 10 item, the belt¡¯s stats were definitely top notch. Shesmu then equipped the Silvermoon Wolf Blade and Belt, he also switched some of the bronze equipment he had for silver equipment he received from the other hidden quests. In the end, his stats looked like this after he used the stat points from his level up as well.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 12 (59550/70000 exp)
Health Points 2500/2500
Ki Points 50750/50750
Stats
Strength 203
Agility 303
Intelligence 90
Wisdom 109
Vitality 160
Stat Points 0
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 5 (Proficiency: 54%).
Thousand Slashes Tier 0 level 1(Proficiency:50%)
Ki Manipulation Tier 1 level 2(Proficiency: 15%)
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
Afterimage When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.
Silent Steps Improve Stealth, step sounds cannot be detected when running. Movement speed in combat +50%, attack speed +50%.
Strong Grip Increase attack power by 20%
Titan¡¯s Might Increase attack power by 30%. Have a chance to knock back an opponent with less attack power.
Controlled Strength Increase attack power by 50%. Increase sensibility of muscles for more controlled force and a slight increase to the sensibility towards wind movement and earth vibration.
Tough Skin Increase hp by 20%
Troll''s Blood Increase HP by 30% and increase regeneration of HP by 50 Hp/s when outside of combat.
Clear Mind Magical Damage +20%. Faster analysis.
Clear Vision More accurate vision. Mana regeneration +20%.
Enlightened Vision Ability to notice minute details in a high tension environment. Mana Regeneration +30%.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. If someone looked at Shesmu¡¯s stats, he wouldn¡¯t help but a bad aftertaste due to the wasted intelligence and Wisdom talent. Having 3 mage talents unlocked was hard even for the most top-notch mages at this point in the game. In fact, none of them were able to reach the 100 stat mark to unlock the second talent. They all strived towards reaching the 50 intelligence milestone since +20% Magical Damage was more valuable for them at this point in the game than a +20% Mana regen. As for reaching the 50 Wisdom milestone, none of them was able to even come close. Mage equipment in the early stages of the game was scarce beyond belief. The only monsters that had a chance of dropping them were skeletons that resided in the cemetery. To top it off, these monsters had a pretty low drop rate, making mages sink deeper into a torrent of despair. All in all, if anyone just looked at Shesmu¡¯s wisdom and intelligence stats, they would have no doubt that he was hacking. If instead they looked at his main 3 stats, they would start doubting the brain of Dream Inc. developers for leaving such an obvious hacker alone. Even if someone believed that Shesmu wasn¡¯t hacking, they will have all right to ask why in the world did Shesmu waste stat points on useless stats like Wisdom and Intelligence. To that he will only be able to respond that he didn¡¯t have a choice. However, that didn¡¯t mean that he was sad about this outcome. Not only were the side effects of the mage related talents good even for a swordsman, Shesmu knew things that the current player base didn¡¯t. After reaching the Tier 2 advancement, players would be able to branch off to other bodily system different from the one given to them by their class. At that time many hybrid classes would appear and would add a variety to the game not found in other one. It would be a breath of fresh air to the gaming populace who had enough of playing the same thing over and over. At that time, Shesmu would be able to use these ¡°wasted¡± stats to the fullest extent. Stopping his thought train, Shesmu tried to remember the unique and legendary quests still available in the beginner town. For the legendary quest, he already knew that there was one related to an underworld cult that had branches in every beginner town associated with the capital city. However, he can always do that quest later on, as the cult members were all level 20 or above. At this point in the game, no guild can possibly raid them, so there was no need to worry about them. However, there was a unique quest that could be done by anyone with some skill and above level 5. Due to these reasons, Shesmu decided to start with the unique quest. However, before any of that, Shesmu had to go to the swordsman training center. He pushed getting his basic skills for way too long and it made fights that should have been very easy way harder than they should be. The identify skill was one of the most useful basic and important skills to any player. In fact, its usefulness reached the level of breathing and drinking. Shesmu already had big trouble playing without the skill and couldn¡¯t endure playing for another second without it. In less than 10 minutes, Shesmu reached the Swordsman Training Center. There was giant plaza filled to the brim with 15 to 18 years old boys and girls, training their sword techniques on battle dummies. Sweat was dripping from their foreheads but their legs were unwavering, their foundation is clearly strong. Shesmu then went into the dojo where he found an instructor teaching a couple of senior disciples. Shesmu didn¡¯t interrupt the instructor and waited patiently for 30 minutes before the instructor finished his teachings and focused his attention towards Shesmu. ¡°Hello young swordsman, what can I do for you?¡± This introductory statement was something every instructor would say to any new player with the swordsman class. Obviously, Shesmu already knew what to say to a T. ¡°Esteemed Master, I¡¯m a new swordsman looking for new knowledge to broaden my horizon. I wonder if I can receive few of your teachings.¡± This was the standard way players came up with to get the instructor to give you your basic skills. If someone just barged in and asked to be given the basic skills, he would be politely asked to get out. ¡°I see that you¡¯re a young man with very good talent.¡± Before the instructor finished his standard response, his face twitched and he had a surprised expression on his face. ¡°Weird, your power is at such a high level but you don¡¯t possess the basic skills. It seems that you¡¯re one who likes a challenge. I don¡¯t despise that.¡± After expressing his remark, the instructor said. ¡°Anyways, here are the basic swordsman skills, and since you don¡¯t have the basic Identify skill, I¡¯ll convey it to you too.¡± After receiving the two basic swordsman skills, slash and thurst, and finally receiving the identify skill he wanted so much, Shesmu headed towards the location of the unique quest. His destination was the military headquarters. Announcement: Dont worry, its not hiatus, this will also serve as an AMA Hey guys, I didn''t post a chapter for two days and will most likely not post one today too. I have been inconsistent with releases for a while now, and I apologize for that. However, I want you guys to know that I have been very busy with studies, and will probably still be for another 4 weeks or so. I have 1 to 2 quizzes per course per week(I have 2 classes), plus an assignment every 2 days for each of the course and a lab report every two days too for 1 class. To put things into perspective, before I wrote this little announcement I was doing a report which took me 5 hours, and after I finish the announcement I will prepare for a quiz I have tomorrow. Long story short, my study schedule is hellish and I barely had the time to write the chapters I posted because the content at the start of the semester was a little bit light. However, even though studies take a big part of my time, I don''t want to take an official break from writing the story. I know myself more than anyone else, once I see that the views count plummeted after the break I will lose motivation and that''s not something I wish for. Anyway, I have a short break from school this Friday and maybe Thursday(? hopefully :pray: ) so I''ll be able to write some chapters at the very least. I want to know guys, what do you want me to do with these chapters. Post them directly? or stockpile them and release them regularly. I probably won''t write much, 5 at the maximum during the break and the weekend, choose wisely. Thinking about it, I should probably start a discord server so that I can talk with you guys directly. This way, you can make sure that I don''t just disappear on you, and I will also be able to have feedback from you guys.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Anyways, I rambled for long enough, let the AMA start. Chapter 16 Unique Quest ¡°Ha!¡± On a vast sandy terrain, hundreds of seventeen-years-old boys were training hard with the sword. Their movement and actions were synchronized, as they tirelessly slashed in front of them. Reaching the military training ground, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but suck in a cold breath. The fighting spirit emanating from the hundreds of recruit made him wish to return to the battlefield. Crushing the longing in his heart, Shesmu started looking for the captain responsible for the recruits. To activate the unique quest, Shesmu had to have a degree of reputation in this military branch. Shesmu knew of few ways to get the required amount of reputation quickly. However, he didn¡¯t use them because the penalty of failure meant that it would be hard to activate the unique quest later. To gain reputation one could do quests or use the way of diplomacy. The latter was multiple times more potent than the last, but it¡¯s a shame that Shesmu wasn¡¯t good at it. He may make a good motivational speech here and there, or manipulate people to do his biddings, but he wasn¡¯t consistently good at it. For this reason, Shesmu decided to use the normal way of gaining reputation. Finally finding the captain, Shesmu gave him a military salute before saying. ¡°Sir, I¡¯m a young adventurer who heard that our great army was in need of manpower and rushed to give my measly aid. Please, let this one be of help.¡± The captain looked at Shesmu for a second with a cold, uninterested look before his expression suddenly turned into one of surprise. ¡°Such a strong young man, your future is surely great. Indeed, we are in lack of manpower. The goblin village to the south has been getting more and more bolder. They have been ambushing our fellow comrades and citizens without a care or fear of consequence. We need to send them a message, that we¡¯re not some weaklings who they can trifle with.¡±
Hunt the Goblins I
Description
Kill 100 goblins
Rewards
+1000 reputation with Pliyx Stal Capital City¡¯s army. +10 silver +2000 Exp
Looking at the quest, Shesmu was surprised for a moment. The difficulty of the quest was much higher than a normal first reputation grinding mission. 1000 reputation was quite a lot as normal grinding missions only gave around 100. However, he quickly regained his wits as he understood the concept behind it. A captain in a beginner town was only at around level 7 to 8, while a lieutenant was at around level 10 to 11. For the captain in front of him, Shesmu was basically as strong if not stronger than his superior. One can only imagine that this variable sent the captain¡¯s mind in turmoil to try and think up of a reputation quest worthy of such a character. As for how the captain knew of Shesmu¡¯s level. Well, Shesmu didn¡¯t really have any item or buff that hid his attributes, and every little child and his granny had the Identify skill, it was only dumb Shesmu that forgot about such an essential skill throughout his whole leveling session. Before heading to the goblin village, Shesmu went around town to look for certain quests. There was a certain skill he wanted but was only unlockable through a certain hidden quest. Entering a small alleyway, Shesmu found sitting on the street a row of homeless people. ¡°Please, some money!¡± ¡°Food, please, I want food!¡± The wails and cries of despair didn¡¯t faze Shesmu in the slightest. The only expression he had was one of annoyance at the fact that he needs to search through this sea of people to find the quest NPC. Suddenly, an idea came up in his mind and he smiled slightly. He took out a pouch from the menu filled with copper coins and threw it behind him. At this sight, the homeless people weren¡¯t able to respond immediately. However, a fraction of a second later, they all run with renewed vigor towards the littered copper coins. Shesmu just kept going past the people bumping into him trying to make a fortune. He just kept walking until the sea of homeless people finally dried out. On the other end of the alleyway, a middle-aged man was sitting in serenity, as if all the chaos around the world does not affect him.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Shesmu sat down next to the man and said. ¡°Albert, I¡¯m here to do your bidding. You know what I want, just tell me what you want.¡± To what Shesmu said, the middle-aged man appeared to be indifferent. However, three seconds later, Albert let out a small laughter. ¡°Hahaha¡± This originally faint laugh slowly transformed into a maniacal wild laughter filled with wickedness and frustration. The spirit of a man who suffered terrible injustices and the unfair tribulations of the heaven was contained in this sound, making all the homeless people who were still trying to catch some coins turn around in panic. Shesmu didn¡¯t mind the intimidation. The man in front of him was one who possessed everything in this small beginner town but got stripped of all of it. It was only natural that he would be unwilling. Albert finally stopped laughing and said. ¡°If you came couple months earlier your head wouldn¡¯t be between your shoulders right now. However, time can change a man. I can give you what you want, but do you think you¡¯re able to give me what I want?¡± Shesmu looked at Albert¡¯s eyes for a couple of seconds. It was like staring at the beast in the eyes, a lion wild and unchained, and filled with incredible vigor and majesty. ¡°State your terms, and I¡¯ll accept.¡± Hearing the confident reply, Albert gave a faint chuckle before saying ¡°What I want is Adrian¡¯s head? Can you give it to me.¡± Hearing Albert¡¯s reply, Shesmu took a breath of cold air. Adrian was the Commander in Chief of this town¡¯s army, but this wasn¡¯t what shocked Shesmu. The killing intent coming from Albert¡¯s voice is what surprised him. The human mind has an uncanny ability for survival, and through our genes, we can notice a situation that endangers us rapidly. The intonation and intent behind Albert¡¯s words spelled a word that loomed over Shesmu¡¯s mind: Death. However, his surprise aside, Shesmu calmly replied. ¡°Consider it done.¡±
Revenge of the Fallen (Hidden Unique Quest)
Description
Kill the Commander In Chief of the town¡¯s army.
Rewards
Unknown.
Looking at the quest notification Shesmu was surprised. He already knew that he had to kill Adrian. This guy was very interesting in the sense that many people wanted his head, some even issuing a quest for it. In fact, there was another unique quest whose description was to kill him. This was because Adrian was, in fact, half a demon who had many deals with the underworld. Albert, the person in front of him and former Commander in Chief, also had a quest issued to kill Adrian. This, Shesmu already knew. However, what Shesmu didn¡¯t know was the fact that the quest was unique too. In his past life, Shesmu didn¡¯t know that it was a unique quest. The person who shared it didn¡¯t mention this detail so Shesmu had no way to know. Surprisingly, two unique quests were made to kill one person, Shesmu wasn¡¯t sure what to think of Adrian anymore, his status became basically that of a celebrity. However, before thinking of how to kill Adrian, Shesmu had to finish the reputation quest he had in hand. Shesmu had no idea when or where Adrian will be, and even if he did, how was he even supposed to do to approach him. The Commander on Chief was level 25, and while Shesmu could probably one shot him, he will need to kill many innocent soldiers as a side effect. The fact that he killed a demon might give him some merit, but if Shesmu had no reputation within the military they might make his life harder through a number of ways. Shesmu didn¡¯t want to deal with all those headache-inducing problems, so he chose the safer way which was to work his way through reputation ranks before being able to meet the Commander in Chief personally. With his over 300 points agility stat, Shesmu was able to cross the 45 kilometers distance between the town and the goblin village in around 5 minutes. On the outskirt of the village, Shesmu found multiple goblins hunting in a pack. Their formation was composed of 4 goblin warriors and 2 goblin mages, each of which had a level ranging from 11 to 13. Shesmu didn¡¯t have to break a sweat against these kinds of opponents. With his new sword, Shesmu didn¡¯t need to fear it breaking with every twitch and turn, he could finally use his ki, albeit to a limited extent. One ki surge from his blade and the whole goblin group is dead. As Shesmu continued on his path of carnage, he fell deep in thought. In his past life, no one reached this part of the map until much later in the game when everyone was around level 40. At that time, no one was really interested in goblins as they provided very minimal experience. However, these lands still saw terrible wars and destructive battles filled with blood and gore, between players and monsters. The reason was the Goblin village. Contrary to human villages and cities, monster and outlaw villages were a free for all buffet to guilds. Especially this low-level goblin village, guilds rushed from everywhere to conquer it. The blood spilled on the battlefield wasn¡¯t a result of a battle between players and monsters, but huge guild wars that engulfed tens of thousands of players. Shesmu wished he could conquer this village here and now, however, conquering a village, a town or a city was, unfortunately, a feature available only for guilds. If Shesmu wanted to make this dream a reality, he needed to start a guild. The good news was that one could start a guild even in beginner town. However, they couldn¡¯t obtain their guild residence until they reach a main city, which made joining guilds in beginner towns a little bit pointless. However, for Shesmu, starting a guild was now a priority. ¡°Shunk!¡± With one final stab, Shesmu killed his one-hundredth goblin before looking at the village in the distance and returning to town. Chapter 17: Alan Returning back to town, Shesmu handed the reputation quest before he went offline. Coming out of the virtual capsule, Shesmu felt surprisingly not stiff. The VIP capsule had a massaging mechanic used to help keep gamer¡¯s body in shape even after long sessions of play. This mechanic wasn¡¯t present in the normal capsule, much less the virtual headset. Seeing that it was around 11 pm, Shesmu decided to treat himself to a dinner. He was already heaps and bounds ahead of everyone in the game and will easily keep that lead. Rather than grinding for another 3 in-game hours, Shesmu would much rather spend 1-hour dining in a luxurious restaurant to stay familiar with the higher class lifestyle. On the same occasion, he also wanted to meet with a gaming friend of his. It took Shesmu about 10 minutes to reach The Bright Way restaurant from his apartment using his car. The car wasn¡¯t fancy or anything, just a normal car you would find anywhere on the street, albeit with more comfort options. It isn¡¯t that Shesmu didn¡¯t have enough money to buy a sports car. Throughout his gaming career starting from the age of 10, Shesmu amassed quite a fortune. Whether it be sponsors, tournament, sold items or donations from fans, Shesmu¡¯s bank account accumulated enough money to buy a small mansion. However, he liked the normal lifestyle better when he was eighteen. This thought process changed as he grew up though. He gradually understood that one can only hold enough power if he rose up through the social rankings and made connections with the leaders of the world. It was a little bit late for Shesmu in his past life when he wanted to participate in the social game, and this error cost him the spot of the guild leader of Dawn¡¯s Resonance. This left him frustrated for a long time as he could only grit his teeth and stay stuck in the position of team Shadow¡¯s captain. Clearing up his thoughts, Shesmu entered the restaurant. A red carpet covered the entrance signaling the entry point to another world, as the quite orchestra music complemented this fact from the background. The dimly lit honey-colored light didn¡¯t put any strain on the end, quite the opposite of that actually, it welcomed visitors with a charm reminiscent of a beautiful woman. Due to it being Tuesday, and no special event going on, there was no reservation needed to dine at the restaurant. This saved Shesmu a bit of face as he didn¡¯t have to deal with an embarrassing situation. Finding a waiter, Shesmu asked for a table for two. He already called his friend before setting off from the apartment, so he knew it wouldn¡¯t take more than five minutes for him to show up. Sitting on the table, Shesmu had the very tempting urge to take out his phone to read Ashes of Gods¡¯ forums. However, taking out a phone on such a high-end restaurant will make him look like a country bumpkin. In this day and age, anyone from the upper middle class and higher used digital eye contacts. They had the same features as an ordinary phone, but one could use them instantly without stopping the conversation with the person next to him. They were such a widely used object due to its usefulness among high-class people that it became a societal separating line between the modern equivalent of peasants and nobles. Shesmu lived with the motto ¡°As long as you don¡¯t directly affect me or those around me, I don¡¯t care about your thoughts or actions¡±, so he usually didn¡¯t care about this kind of stuff. However, the people around him are all potential partners. If his behavior was going to make it harder to make contact with the right people later, then he considered it to be stupid, idiotic, and something only a non-evolved chimpanzee would do. So Shesmu fought the urge to look at the forums while swearing to anything that is holy that he will buy a digital contact lenses first thing tomorrow morning. For now, he could only grind his teeth and wait for his idiotic friend to show up. After an eternal five minutes, the person Shesmu was waiting for finally showed up. A tall figure with a slim waist and a strong body appeared. Black as ink hair, covering his face strain by strain gave Shesmu¡¯s friend a cute and mysterious appearance. A small nose, clear eyes and delicate lips made all the females in the restaurant to unconsciously turn towards him. The tall figure of Shesmu¡¯s friend rushed towards him before grabbing his head and messing with his hair. After playing with Shesmu for a bit, he finally stopped and said. ¡°It¡¯s been a long time Mark. How have you been doing for the past months? You stopped playing to prepare for the SAT, so how did it go?¡± Hearing his friend¡¯s question, Shesmu was surprised as the SAT wasn¡¯t on his list of priorities. Thinking about it, Shesmu reincarnated after the SAT was over, and he never really checked his score so he didn¡¯t remember. ¡°Wait, Alan, I forgot. Let me check it real quick.¡± Shesmu said as he took out his phone. His past plans were down the drain, but Shesmu thought that the trade was worth it. Losing a potential good impression compared to being very suspicious in his best friend¡¯s mind was a trifling matter. Hearing his friend¡¯s reply, Alan had a shocked expression on his face as he sat down on the chair, waiting for the server. ¡°What is that even supposed to mean? You forgot your SAT score, how is that even possible?¡± But before he could even finish, Alan caught a laughing fit. ¡°And what is that? Hahaha. You¡¯re still using that old phone I got you three years ago. Quit being so stingy and get yourself some digital lenses, you have the money for that now.¡± Alan couldn¡¯t help but laugh at his friend¡¯s weird antics. Hearing what Alan said, Shesmu who just sat down turned his focus from his phone to his friend¡¯s face. ¡°About that, you¡¯re going to help me choose a pair. I want them to be comfy, not strain my eye, have a transparency option, and be of an overall great quality. I¡¯m counting on you.¡±This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Looking at his friend¡¯s face practically shoved into his own, Alan couldn¡¯t help but break out in a laughing fit again. ¡°Haha! Sure, I would do that for you. Now, just check your SAT score, I¡¯m so curious. For you to forget that, something is definitely wrong with you. Haha!¡± Shesmu kept checking for his name on the government¡¯s website until he finally found it: ¡°Mark Daveman¡±. Looking at the score next to his full name, Shesmu was surprised. Against all expectation, he actually ended up with a great score, 1470 out of 1600. ¡°Ehh¡± Looking at the score, Shesmu didn¡¯t know what to say. The fact that he forgot his score when he had such a great one will only appear as extremely arrogant. ¡°What, did you get less than 1000? What happened?¡± Looking at Shesmu¡¯s weird facial expression, Alan felt that something was wrong and asked for an explanation. ¡°Actually no. Here, just look at my score, it¡¯s better that way.¡± Shesmu passed his phone to Alan who was surprised by how this scenario developed. However, it didn¡¯t take Alan much time to understand the reason for Shesmu¡¯s weird behaviors. Looking at the extremely high score, Alan had to check multiple times that the score matched Shesmu¡¯s name. His eyes kept darting between the name ¡°Mark Daveman¡± and the score 1470 for a couple seconds before he said. ¡°What the hell. How did you do that?¡± His expression then turned serious and he whispered into my ears ¡°Please, tell me how did you cheat the system, my brother will pass the SAT next year and will need your enlightenment.¡± Hearing him say such weird things with the most serious face he could muster made Mark break into a laugh. ¡°Hahaha! Dude, you¡¯re way too funny. Holy shit, it feels good to talk to you after months.¡± Shesmu said, but he then muttered in an inaudible voice ¡®Even though it was years for me. Long and arduous ones. This time, history will change¡¯. However, Alan didn¡¯t notice Shesmu¡¯s muttering. The waiter just came so he made an order before replying to Shesmu. ¡°Yeah, it does feel good. Oh, how I wish I could play again with you. But you should be now busy with all the studying. Prestigious universities are challenging and strict after all. Oh about that, I forgot to ask, which college did you go to in the end?¡± Shesmu was stunned for a second. In his past life, he decided to go pro after the beta for Ashes of Gods ended. He fell in love with the game at first sight. The mechanics were smooth, the interactions with the NPCs were realistic, the game was fun and fueled his competitive spirit. Even though he had a great GPA and SAT score, Shesmu didn¡¯t hesitate for a second to throw all of that out the window and try to become pro in Ashes of Gods. In the end, it was the right choice as he made an insane amount of money while also doing something he loved and wanted more than anything else. Shesmu never regretted that decision once in his life. Now that ten years have passed and Shesmu returned to the past and got asked the same question, it felt weird. For him, gaming was a way of life. One he adopted since he was ten years old. So the question ¡°What college will you go to?¡± felt foreign and unfamiliar. ¡°None.¡± Said Shesmu. ¡°I¡¯m not going to college.¡± It took a fraction of second before Alan could process what Shesmu just said and he finally replied in a loud voice. ¡°What?! Why? What¡¯s going on, why not go to college?¡± Before Alan could continue on, Shesmu signaled him to tone down his voice as everyone in the room started looking at them. Alan then said in a lower voice than before. ¡°Why will you not go to college? You have such an amazing opportunity.¡± Shesmu stayed silent for a while before saying. ¡°What game are you playing now?¡± Alan looked surprised at the quest but in the end, he answered truthfully, he wanted to understand Shesmu¡¯s reasoning. ¡°I have been continuing to play Star explorers for a while before I stopped two months ago. There was this game called Ashes of Gods that was still in beta and I was lucky enough to get a key. I played the game and it was hella fun, so I¡¯ll probably focus on it from now on.¡± Hearing Alan talks about Ashes of Gods, Shesmu had a smile on his face. In his past life too, Alan started playing the game early. They went through many tribulations together and survived many hardships. The friendship that was between them was thicker than blood. ¡°I¡¯m playing AOG too, it¡¯s really fun. I haven¡¯t had as much fun since I started gaming.¡± ¡°Oh really, that¡¯s super cool. We need to add each other as friends. By the way, which country are you in? I already started playing today and I chose Pliyx Stal kingdom¡¯s capital as my birthplace. The beginner town I was put into was Thousands Leaves town.¡± Hearing Alan talk, Shesmu was surprised. He already knew from his past life that Alan chose Pliyx Stal City as his starting town, so that didn¡¯t come as a surprise. However, for them to end up in the same town, Shesmu could only marvel at his luck. Officially, beginner towns weren¡¯t named. However, locals cannot communicate with merchants and travelers without having their town be named. Due to the need to have a name so as to not end up with awkward discussions where no one knows which town you are talking about, people created local names for their cities. The beginner city Shesmu was in was called Thousand Leaves due to the lush forest surrounding it from all directions. ¡°You¡¯re kidding right. We started in the same town.¡± Said Shesmu in a faint voice, obviously surprised by the weirdness of the situation. By this time, the waiter came and served the meals ordered on the table, before promptly leaving. ¡°Are you serious? What are the chances for this to happen? 1 in a million? Or maybe more? Is this what they call destiny?¡± Alan threw one rhetoric question after another, obviously surprised too by this turn of event. However, he immediately went back to his cheerful mood and exclaimed. ¡°Isn¡¯t that awesome?! Now, we can play together and have fun! Ahh, I¡¯m so excited!¡± In front of his overly excited friend, Shesmu could only turn shy and say faintly. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m also hyped up.¡± Seeing that the conversation was mostly about him, Mark decided to throw the ball Alan''s way this time. "Oh, enough about me for now. Tell me about you, how have you been doing, O great Archmage Seth of the destructive apocalypse of the abyss something something" Said Shesmu with a grin. He always liked to poke fun at Alan for his nickname and would always exagerate it by adding something edgy at the end of it. "Oh c''mon, it''s just Archmage Seth. If you''re going to have a war of who has the cringiest nickname, look at yours. "God speed Shesmu" I don''t even need to add anything your name is already cringy as it is." After this exchange, they both laughed out loud inquiring the annoyed glances of all customers. They then quickly toned down their voice. After that incident, they continued their meal while reminiscing about their past adventures and planning their future ones. If someone looked at them, he would think that they were fairy tale characters. Such a deep friendship was rarely ever seen in the real world, where genuine happiness is so hard to find. Chapter 18: Training Returning to his apartment, Shesmu had a smile on his face all the way back. In the last years of his past life, Shesmu didn¡¯t have the time to take things slowly and connect with people. He barely talked with any of his friends and his girlfriend broke up with him when he was still an upcoming star in the pro scene. It was a lonely life, to say the least, and he didn¡¯t wish that to repeat. He didn¡¯t contact Alan for the past 3 months because he was very busy with the beta, and he didn¡¯t feel like talking to someone due to the memory problems caused by his jump back to the past. Alan¡¯s in-game name was Seth, he chose it 1 year before Shesmu started his gaming career. Due to the close distance between their houses when they were kids, Mark and Alan started playing together at a young age. In fact, it was Alan who pushed Mark towards gaming. They spent countless hours playing together, from guild to guild, from game to game. They played MMOs, shooters, 3-D platformers, and civilization based strategy games. This time period was one of the most fun and joyful ones for Mark and he deeply cherished them. Entering his bedroom, Shesmu opened the VR capsule before shutting off the light and logging in. Since Alan spawned in the same town as he did, Shesmu had no reason not to party up with him. Shesmu was looking forward to his in-game meeting with Alan--no, Seth. The expression he will make after looking at Shesmu¡¯s level would be snapshot-worthy. Logging in, Shes found himself next to the military grounds where he left his avatar before logging out. He then immediately headed to the meeting place he and Seth chose, the Mage Academy. Due to the damaging spells and loud magic, the academy was built on the outskirt of town so as to not disturb normal citizen¡¯s life. One could see from far away the majestic entry to a paradize-like world. The green park filled with trees and shrubs, the singing birds and the running magical creatures all combined with the serious but nonetheless happy and prideful expressions of the apprentice to paint an image straight from a fantasy story. All around the park, you could see teenagers playing with their familiars or training their magical spells on the training ground. However, what stood out the most was the main building. A lofty one with multiple cone-shaped roofs and decorated using very intricate carving. The building was grey and imposing, composed of different dorms. One for apprentices rooms, another for the classes and a last for the library. Shesmu waited by the entrance for around 5 minutes before a figure approached him. A tall male with a head full of black hair coupled with white strands and purple eyes. A tall and lean frame covered by a black and brown mage robe, complemented by the staff in his grip. Shesmu used identify on the mysterious figure only to find that it¡¯s his friend Seth. After using identify on his friend, Shesmu came closer and said. ¡°Hey, Seth. It¡¯s me, Shesmu.¡± Hearing his friend introducing himself, Seth went in for a hug before saying. ¡°Dude, your aesthetics are on point. Did you choose the swordsman class? But hot damn your items look cool.¡± Seth knew that items with such an effect couldn¡¯t be gray trash items. Ashes of Gods didn¡¯t have any cash shop system implemented where you could just buy top tier items for real money, if you wanted good items, you needed to work for it. It¡¯s this knowledge that made Seth even more surprised, as he knew that for Shesmu to be equipped with full bronze to silver items, he had to have fought and won against multiple bosses as no one would want to sell this type of item this early in the game. Trying to confirm his suspicions, Seth used the identify skill on Shesmu. The panel that appeared in front of him shocked him senseless.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Base class Swordsman
Level?? 13
For a moment, Seth thought that the game bugged. He closed the panel and used the identify skill again only to find the same result. He kept repeating the process multiple time before saying. ¡°Shesmu, this. It says-¡± But before he could finish, Shesmu interrupted him. ¡°It is what it says it is. There is no bug.¡± Affirmed Shesmu while slightly smiling. ¡°But-¡± Shesmu cut him off once again with a sign of his hand before saying. ¡°Come with me to the cemetery, you¡¯re still at level 5 so it¡¯s not too bad of a grinding area. I¡¯ll show you a thing or two.¡± The duo went out of town in silence. Seth didn¡¯t know what to do or say. He knew that being level 13 this early in the game meant that Shesmu either hacked the system or found an exploit, in either case, he will be banned. He was level 5 and pretty proud about that feat. For the entirety of the day, he has been playing solo, but he was still able to reach the same level as the guild leaders of those super guilds with their parties full of expert players.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. At this point in the game, everyone was still hovering at around level 3 to level 4 while the top tier players were at level 5. The monsters were hard to solo and party exp was abysmally low, so it was normal for players to have a level speed akin to that of a turtle. However, even if you forgot about that, the required exp going from one level to the next grows exponentially. Seth made some quick calculations as he was grinding to know when he was going to reach level 10 and the answer was a whopping 2 natural days at best or around 5 in-game days. Thus, no matter how Seth thought about it, he couldn¡¯t think of any legal way for Shesmu to reach the level he was at now. ¡°Okay, we¡¯re at the cemetery now.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s announcement, Seth woke from his reverie. It wasn¡¯t the first time he visited the cemetery after the game went live, however, due to the high level of the monsters in the inner circle, Seth was only able to farm on the outskirt of the zone. ¡°So, here is the plan. You¡¯ll enter the cemetery, spam your abilities against anything that you see while focusing only on DPS. Don¡¯t worry about positioning, if you¡¯re in danger, I¡¯m going to help.¡± Hearing his friend¡¯s plan, Seth didn¡¯t dally. Even though the strategy might sound stupid, but it was fairly common one for people with high level who want to power level weaker players. They just choose a location where the monsters do minimal damage to the stronger player and have the weaker one do the most damage. Since the exp sharing system worked based on contribution, the weaker player should do most of the damage while the stronger one just blocks the mobs from reaching him. Seth marched forward stopping only when found a place with the high amount of skeleton warriors in it. Shesmu stayed in his vicinity as Seth channeled his fireball spell. The spell took 0.5 seconds to cast and dealt 200 damage, taking off half a warrior¡¯s hp. Hearing the explosion, all the in a 20 meters¡¯ radius ran towards Seth giving him a big fright. However, he immediately cast thunderbolt against the same warrior that got hit by the fireball, killing him instantly. Looking at Seth¡¯s slow chain of skill cast, Shesmu took a note of it before coming in closer to block the mobs. Due to his high level, the skeletons took notice and agrooed towards him rather than Seth. Shesmu then just kept dodging their slashes and thrusts while Seth kept rotating between fireball, thunderbolt and arcane beam. After 5 minutes and 2 mana potions, Seth was finally able to kill all the skeleton warriors. Since they were level 6 monsters, they gave plenty of exp, and since Shesmu didn¡¯t use any skill to aggro the mob, nor did he hit them, Seth received all of the exp. Seth killed 75 skeleton warriors, an amount he never imagined being able to slay even after a day of grinding. However, here it is, he killed them all and was able to reach level 7 in a blink of an eye. Seth couldn¡¯t help but have a complicated look towards Shesmu. He no longer doubted that he cheated or used any exploit, in fact, he firmly believed that he reached level 13 through hard work and immense talent. The reason for this shift is not only because he saw how it¡¯s possible to skip through levels in a short period of time, but also because of the skill Shesmu has shown while dealing with the skeleton. For the entirety of the 5 minutes, Shesmu wasn¡¯t hit a single time, he either dodged or blocked the attacks of the monsters surrounding him with the brunt of his sword. This feat was unimaginable for Seth as he knew that even the cream of the cream of warriors wouldn¡¯t be able to achieve it. In every game Seth played in, even if he wasn¡¯t a contender to the top spot, he was just one step below it. His fame throughout the gaming community was far-reaching and he had contact with many talented top players throughout multiple games. Thus, when Seth says that he never saw someone as skilled as Shesmu, his opinion shouldn¡¯t be taken lightly. ¡°I guess that¡¯s good enough as an explanation on how I reached the level I am at now. Anyway, there was something I wanted to say as you killed ¡®em mobs. You are too slow.¡± Hearing his friend¡¯s critique, Seth was surprised. He was pretty sure that his skill rotation was good, even if it wasn¡¯t perfect. The time between the end of a skill¡¯s animation and the casting of the next was reduced by him to less than 0.1 seconds, which was pretty fast by his standards. ¡°When you cast fireball, the mana is already conjured and directed in the first 0.3 seconds. Why in the hell do you wait for the additional 0.2 second casting time to finish, then another 0.3 seconds for the particle effect to fade, then a 0.1 seconds because of your trash reaction time. Why not just start another skill after the initial 0.3 seconds so that you save yourself a 0.6-second delay and kick to the ball by any half decent assassin.¡± Seth was overwhelmed by the barrage of information. The game was still new and no one knew about all the hidden mechanics Shesmu just talked about, so these few words were like a light at the end of the tunnel for Seth, showing him a new more colorful world. Seeing that his teachings aren¡¯t going to waste, Shesmu nodded before saying. ¡°How many mana potions you have left? You¡¯re going to train these basics first before even attempting to fight a monster. You¡¯re not allowed to fight a single trashy skeleton until you lower the time it takes you to use the skills to 0.5 seconds. Do you understand what I¡¯m saying?¡± Seth was dazed for a second before saying ¡°I have a dozen left, and yes I understand.¡± ¡°Good, keep practicing, I¡¯ll come back in an hour and I want to see some improvement.¡± Finishing what he had to say, Shesmu left Seth on his own and headed back to the military camp. He didn¡¯t talk about how to stop the casting and cancel the particle effect animation, but he knew that Seth could figure that out on his own. Seth was a top player that held great fame and position in the gaming community for a long time, he was also a very talented mage, Shesmu was sure that this kind of hurdle wouldn¡¯t be hard for him to pass. Entering the camp, Shesmu looked for the same captain that gave him his last reputation quest and asked for another one.
Hunt the Goblins II
Description
Kill 20 Hobgoblins and 200 goblins
Rewards
+3000 reputation with Pliyx Stal Capital City¡¯s army. +30 silver +5000 Exp
It was the sequel for the Hunt the Goblin I quest with much more generous rewards. Shesmu was happy that he could gain such a high amount of reputation from a single quest. The last reputation quest already gave him enough to reach level 1 reputation with the army, this one would barely let him reach level 2 which was the level needed for him to talk with the Commander in Chief. Shesmu was excited as his goal was finally above the horizon. Chapter 19: The Commander Entering the deepest layers of the forest area, Shesmu once again found goblins roaming, foraging, and hunting monsters and wild animals. Killing his way through, Shesmu breezed through the outskirts of the village to the inner circle. After he reached this deep, Shesmu started encountering bigger packs with stronger members. After some time, Shesmu had to face off packs with hobgoblins leading them. The latter was quite strong and had a level ranging between 15 and 16, with stronger weapons mainly consisting of bats and cleavers. One group happened to be especially annoying to deal with as it had two hobgoblins leading them. Shesmu was making his way through the dense forest filled with large roots and shrubs when he saw a group led by two hobgoblins ending a hunt against a pack of deer. Once the group appeared in his line of vision, the goblins were too able to notice him and immediately reacted. Ordering themselves in a battle formation, anyone could see that this group of goblins was battle-hardened. To this sight, Shesmu could only let out a sigh of frustration and annoyance. With his lack of aoe and cc skill, Shesmu had a hard time against a group of monsters, especially when the group reached the higher 20s. Not wanting to waste the time and brain cells needed to kill these mobs, Shesmu charged Ki on his Silvermoon wolf sword and dashed towards them. For a second, Shesmu thought it was good that the group organized themselves in an orderly fashion, this way, he would be able to kill them with one thousand slashes. And, as predicted, Shesmu used one thousand slashes to kill both of the hobgoblins and most of the goblins behind them. The amount of Ki that could be gathered in a short period of time vastly overwhelmed the measly amount that could be gathered by the basic trash sword. If before Shesmu was able to gather 2000 Ki points in around 2 seconds using the basic sword, he was now able to gather the same amount in less than 0.5 seconds. This amount of Ki was already enough to deal with any normal monster under level 30, so of course, these level 13 and 15 monsters weren¡¯t enough to pose a challenge. It¡¯s true that he used an AoE skill so the damage output is lesser than if it was single target one, however, the damage was still enough to overpower the mobs. Killing the last few remaining goblins, Shesmu continued his hunt until he completed the requirement. Finishing what he came to do, Shesmu returned to the military camp to submit the reputation quest. ¡°What a strong and promising young man. Being able to kill those monstrosities is an achievement anyone would feel proud of and I¡¯m sure that even the Commander in Chief would like to hear from such a hero. Do you want to meet him?¡± Hearing the captain¡¯s question, Shesmu immediately accepted. Entering the main building, Shesmu went past multiple offices and high ranking military members. All of the officers he went past were surprised that an Adventurer was allowed inside the building. The duo in a flash reached the highest floor to the room of the Commander in Chief. Knocking on the door, the captain said. ¡°Sir, I have important news, sir.¡± After a short period of silence, a deep voice replied. ¡°Come in.¡± Opening the door, the captain was visibly nervous. He put his left arm on Shesmu¡¯s back so as to keep him close, he was as if afraid that he would come out running. When Shemu entered the office, the first thing he saw was a man with a gigantic frame at around 210 cm. His body was full of muscles and showed much energy and potential. He had a golden hair special to the nobility that was shaped like a lion¡¯s mane. Overall, he looked incredibly fierce. ¡°Oh, who is this esteemed guest?¡± The deep voice of the Commander in Chief was filled with prudence. Seeing that the person in front of him had the golden duality of both the hair and the eyes, he felt apprehensive. The captain respectfully saluted before saying ¡°Sir, this is a young adventurer with formidable spirit. He had made great contributions to the goblin front and switched the tides to our side.¡± Hearing the captain¡¯s report, the Commander in Chief looked to be deep in thought for a fraction of a second before he showed a happy expression.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°Oh my, what a talented young man indeed. At such a tender age and already so strong, your future is indeed limitless.¡± After finishing his pleasantries, the Commander showed a serious expression as he continued. ¡°The battlefront at the goblin village¡¯s side is one of the ugliest and most dangerous. I have been thinking for a while if we should go on an all-out war with them but was hesitating. However, with your addition, I¡¯m now more confident. As one of the golden generation, you showed the potential of your kind. Thus, I¡¯m going to announce a quest to every one of the golden generations to help with the defense of our city and human honor. Would you want to command your kind to victory?¡± As the Commander finished his statement, Shesmu received a quest notification.
The leader of the Law(Hidden)
Description
Lead the army to a win against the Goblin Village
Rewards
+10000 reputation with Pliyx Stal Capital City¡¯s army. +5 gold +40000 Exp
Looking at the quest¡¯s rewards, Shesmu was about to drool. 10000 reputation points were enough to let him reach level 3 reputation rank with the Capital¡¯s army. This will let him experience a very favored treatment and get access to information, equipment and facilities none of the players or the guilds would have for a long time. Plus, the 40000 Exp was enough to sway him, as it took Shesmu around two hours and a half of farming in a high-level map to get that much. ¡°Sir, I would gladly serve the kingdom and lead my brethren to victory!¡± Shesmu passionately exclaimed. He already knew that the Commander wasn¡¯t being sincere and that he was most likely planning something. Shesmu had a few ideas about what the commander was thinking, however, without some clear indication he wouldn¡¯t be able to pinpoint exactly which of the possible plans the commander was using. In the end, Shesmu could only play with the cards in front of him and reveal as little of his inner thoughts as possible. ¡°Good, the expedition will take place tomorrow. I will have to see you off now as I need to plan out the strategies for the war with the other generals.¡± Seeing that his presence was no longer welcomed, Shesmu quickly excused himself. He wanted to check on Seth¡¯s progress and see if he can advance to the second level of training. Going out of town and entering the cemetery, Shesmu heard from afar the sound of explosions and rocks breaking. An orange light will loom over the whole cemetery for a second before disappearing again with the sound. At the center of all the explosions, a magician stood, sending one fireball after the next at different targets. Sometimes, he would weave in between thunderbolts, scorching the ground that served as his target. To a normal player, this display of skill would be flashy, but that¡¯s it. However, to an expert, what the mage was doing was nothing short of a miracle. For mages to cast fireball, even the fastest would need around 1 second to cast the ability and would take some time to cast another spell, due to the position of the staff. However, the mage in front of them was able to cast the spells in half the time the best mages could muster, and switch between skills with no delay. At this sight, Shesmu nodded in satisfaction. He knew that just a 0.1 seconds difference was what decided the fight between decent players, forget about having half the casting speed. With Seth¡¯s new casting speed, he effectively doubled his damage output without changing his stats, making everyone succumb to despair. ¡°Cough, cough¡± Announcing his presence, Shesmu coughed loudly. Hearing the noise on his back, Seth stopped his training and turned around to see who it was, only to notice that it was Shesmu. ¡°Seems like you improved by a lot. Effectively halving your casting speed and meeting my bare requirement.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s appraisal, Seth felt somewhat proud. The level that he attained easily made him stronger than every other mage currently existing. However, it was also that knowledge that made him even more awed by Shesmu¡¯s prowess and deep knowledge of the game¡¯s mechanics. Looking at the emotions coursing through Seth¡¯s eyes, Shemu chuckled softly before saying. ¡°Anyway, this is the end of the first phase of your training and the beginning of the second one. The latter would take a long time and thus you are free to hunt monsters as you train, you¡¯re now strong enough to survive while playing solo.¡± Shesmu then paused for a second to think of how to word what he wanted to say before continuing. ¡°When you use a spell, you just think about it in your mind and that activates it, right?¡± At Shesmu¡¯s question, Seth just nodded. This was basically common knowledge. ¡°What I want you to do as a start is to try and understand what happens in your body as you activate the skill, and try to do it manually without activating it through the system. This is the first part the second phase of your training.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s order, Seth was surprised. Can skills be activated manually? This was something he didn¡¯t know. However, at this point, Shesmu already showed things many would consider inhumane or cheating. Looking at Seth¡¯s resolute face, Shesmu heaved a sigh of relief before saying. ¡°The reason for this part of the training is for you to ultimately be able to simultaneously cast two skills. For now, I¡¯ll let you train on your own.¡± Chapter 20: Guild Creation As Shesmu was returning to the city planning on starting a guild, a problem arose in his mind: He was way too high level. Even his friend suspected him of cheating if he were to show anyone his level, he would be reported and berated to no end. Reports will take a long time to initiate a reaction from the Main God System, and the only thing that he would be left with until the reports have been checked would be the insults of the angry players. Taking a step back, even if Shesmu were to tolerate the insults of the angry players until the reports are answered, most will say that the main god system is bugged and whatever is left would join with unclean intentions. Shesmu wasn¡¯t living in an idealistic world where he expected anyone to join his guild to have done so for a noble reason. However, he wanted the core to at least have some synergy between them and loyal to a certain extent. Thinking up to this point, Shesmu felt that it shouldn¡¯t be him who starts the guild, but someone he trusted, had enough power to be respected but not enough to be ostracised. The more he thought about, the more he felt that Seth was the man for the job. He had good mechanics, high position in the gaming industry, top-notch level and equipment by early game standards, he was perfect. Thinking about his future plans, Shesmu returned to the cemetery. Once Shesmu went away, Seth started his training. He didn¡¯t immediately go and fight skeleton warriors but tried to simulate what Shesmu had told him to do. For 5 minutes, he just used the fireball skill, recalled what was happening in his body, try to replicate it manually and fail. As he started casting fireball for the nth time, he heard the sound of footsteps coming towards his way. Turning around, he found that it was Shesmu. Although surprised, Seth didn¡¯t make it obvious as he greeted. ¡°Yo, what¡¯s up Shesmu? Did you forget something?¡± Hearing Seth¡¯s question, Shesmu kept silence for a moment before replying. ¡°Actually, no. I just came back because of a certain matter I need your help with. Let¡¯s go back to town and I¡¯ll explain it to you on the way.¡± As Seth and Shesmu made their way back to town, Shesmu explained to Seth his plans. He didn¡¯t mention the fact that he wanted to conquer the goblin village, as this feature wasn¡¯t available on the beta and would draw way too much suspicion. However, he explained that he wanted to start a guild today due to the expedition tomorrow. He wanted to use the expedition as an advertisement to their guild so that they can gather a colossal amount of members. With Shesmu and Seth¡¯s previous fame throughout multiple games, they could have easily started a guild using the right connections and talking with the right people. It just would take a little bit longer than necessary and would require some compromises from their part. However, Shesmu didn¡¯t want to go down that route as it would lead him to contracts he didn¡¯t wish to sign. Using a powerful backer to start a guild meant surrendering many of your leading rights and decision-making options to the said backer, which is something Shesmu didn¡¯t want to experience. Reaching the center of the town, Shesmu and Seth entered the Adventurer Guild. Much like the Magician Academy and The Swordsman Training Center, the Adventurer Guild was a behemoth that reached every corner of the world. With a branch in any major city or town, the Adventurer Guild was easily one of the top 10 superpowers in the world. As the duo passed through the wooden gate, the smell of booze assaulted their noses. The receiving hall of the guild served as a bar for its members, and the atmosphere was jolly with everyone joking with each other. Shesmu wasn¡¯t sure why no one caused a ruckus, however, he knew that a branch leader of the Adventurer Guild in any beginner town was level 25. Thus, Shesmu guessed that it was due to his presence that the members respected the staff and didn¡¯t start any trouble. Walking even deeper, Shesmu found multiple boards stationed one next to the other. On these boards, multiple posters were stuck on, describing different quests. Most of these quests were fetch ones or required manual labor, while a minority were hunting quests. Next to the board was the receptionist desk. For most of the Adventurer Guild members and various customers, this was the place to accept a quest, post one, or flirt with the beautiful receptionists. However, to a select few, this was the place where they could officially start their guild. ¡°Hello customer, how may I be of help for you?¡± Reaching the receptionist desk, a seventeen-years-old girl warmly welcomed Shesmu, to which he responded by saying. ¡°I am here to start a guild, could you please brief me of the procedures?¡± Hearing his question, the receptionist seemed surprised for a moment before she regained her professionalism and smiled. ¡°To start a guild, you have two options. The first one is to have a minimum of 10 members sign a contract that forces them to not change the guild for a minimum of a month, this is so that we do not end up with thousands and millions of guilds with no members that we need to manage. Additionally, you will need to pay a fee of 10 silver to officialize the guild. The other option is a little bit special as you do not need any members to start the guild, however, the required fee is 1 gold to officialize it.¡± Hearing her explanation, Shesmu nodded before taking out a gold coin from his inventory and passing it to her. ¡°I understand, here is the fee. How much time does it take to officialize the creation of the guild?¡± Looking at the gold coin on the table the receptionist was clearly surprised. The value of a gold coin was quite high as her monthly salary was only 50 silvers, so it was to be expected that she would be overwhelmed by this amount of money. However, she didn¡¯t show her surprise as she took the gold coin, wrote something on a piece of paper, before saying.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, the officialization process doesn¡¯t take long, I just need a drop of your blood on this contract.¡± As she was explaining the mechanism of creating a guild, she passed the contract to Shesmu. He then bit on his thumb and spilled a drop of blood on the contract. The latter shimmered with a golden color for a little bit before a notification appeared in front of Shesmu.
Please choose a name for your guild.
¡°Black Moon.¡±
Guild
Name Black Moon
Level 1
Reputation 0
Members 1
Looking at the blue panel describing the basic information about his guild, Shesmu had a smile on his face. He quickly thanked the receptionist and added Seth to the guild before going out of the Adventurer Guild. As the duo was going out of town, Shesmu asked Seth. ¡°I¡¯m going to hunt goblins. If you want, you can join me so that we work on our teamwork. Do you want to join?¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s offer, Seth appeared to be thoughtful for a moment before replying. ¡°I don¡¯t think that it¡¯s a good idea. With my power right now, I could easily solo monsters 3 to 4 levels above me. If I hunt in a party with you, our efficiency would be way too good boosting me to too high of a level. This might complicate things as we try to recruit members, as no one would want to join a group of supposed cheaters.¡± Hearing Seth¡¯s reply, Shesmu smiled as he already predicted such a response. ¡°You¡¯re making great points, however, I might ask you, who do you think I want to join our guild? What kind of demographic am I most interested in?¡± As Shesmu finished his question, Seth pondered for a little bit before hesitatingly answering. ¡°Hmm, H-hardcore gamers?¡± At his answer, Shesmu smiled and nodded. ¡°Yeah, I only want hardcore players in the guild. Players that are hungry to get better and broaden their horizons, gamers that live for the thrill of the challenge.¡± Shesmu¡¯s speech ignited a certain fire on Seth¡¯s heart, making him hyped up about the prospect of such a guild. However, he stayed silent for a little bit, thinking before finally asking. ¡°This is good and all, but what does it have to do with my previous question. Shouldn¡¯t I not level until I prove my skills on the battlefield and start recruiting members?¡± ¡°There is no need at all, you can level as much as you want. People who are hungry for competition and are good will not ride the bandwagon after seeing your skills on the battlefield. In fact, any player who would rather not join because of some baseless rumor would have been not worthy of joining in the first place. Experts don¡¯t want to be lead by someone who is weak. You need to show them that you are strong and bold enough to pierce through the competition, and this concretized through four things. First is a background in the gaming industry which you certainly don¡¯t lack. Second is a high level of skill for anyone to admire and for the experts to marvel at. Third are good pieces of equipment and attributes as they are what largely determine your strength. Finally, there is level as it¡¯s a relative indication of the strength of the player.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s explanation, Seth rolled his eyes before saying. ¡°Then shouldn¡¯t you be the guild leader? You have all these traits and you top me in all of them.¡± At this remark, Shesmu quickly interrupted. ¡°Level 14 is way too much. No matter how good I show myself to be, it would be hard for anyone to think that I didn¡¯t use one kind of exploit or another. The top player base is still around level 7 with few reaching level 8. There probably wouldn¡¯t be any player reaching level 10 until tomorrow night. You reaching it 1 day before wouldn¡¯t be too much trouble to explain as you can easily push it to the fact that you¡¯re so much better than any other mage. However, for any other player to reach level 14, it would take them another 5 days. For me to reach it already would be ludicrous no matter how you look at it.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s comeback, Seth kept silence as he knew it was the truth. He would still be able to explain him being level 11 due to his skills, and his reputation in the community. In fact, Seth reaching level 11 would only make his skills even more clear for everyone to see. However, level 14, or possibly level 15 since Shesmu is planning to farm all day long, can¡¯t be rationalized unless Shesmu had big AOE skills with high damage and low cooldown. After this small discussion, the duo traveled to where goblins¡¯ roamed. Village monsters contrary to normal ones didn¡¯t spawn randomly but came through breeding, which made their numbers surprisingly small compared to other monsters. The goblin advanced village, for example, had around 60000 goblins residing in it, and each goblin that died wouldn¡¯t respawn, which made these villages extremely fragile to guerrilla warfare. Shesmu¡¯s plan was to kill as many goblins as possible so as to minimize the enemies that they will fight tomorrow. Even though 60000 goblin resides in the advanced village, only 20000 of them are able to fight. The others were workers, farmers, housewives, elderly and children whose combat power were minimal. Encountering a group of 10 goblins and 1 hobgoblin, Shesmu dashed towards the hobgoblin. Striking with his sword, Shesmu left a big gash on the monster¡¯s belly before he activated the skill slash. There was a millisecond of awkward pause before the skill was initiated. A red glow appeared on Shesmu¡¯s sword as it flashed and hit the hobgoblin¡¯s chest. As the blade of the sword made contact with the monster, Shesmu immediately canceled the remaining skill animation by thrusting his sword manually into the hobgoblin¡¯s chest. The latter died and went limp not leaving a chance for Shesmu to complete his combo. In the meantime, Seth comboed his Fireball with Thunderbolt in less than a second, killing three goblins in a flash before repositioning. Seth¡¯s movement and footwork was agile as he stopped for a minimal time to cast his abilities. Not only that but whenever he moved, he made sure so as to stay behind Shesmu so as he can protect him. This was easier said than done as Shesmu was an agile swordsman and not a tank. A swordsman who focused on agility would have hard to predict movement as he would need to dodge all the time, using all eight directions to his advantage. For Seth¡¯s kiting method to work, he needs to put himself in Shesmu¡¯s shoes at all time so as to predict where he will dodge, and he also needs to keep track of his surroundings at the same time and also cast his spells perfectly. This level of control was what made Seth one of the top 200 magicians in the world, constantly competing with monster level geniuses. In less than 10 seconds, the duo made quick work of the remaining goblins. Seth and Shesmu kept farming for the whole day killing thousands of goblins, letting Shesmu reach level 15 and be halfway to 16, while Seth reached level 12. If not for party exp being 75% each, Seth might have reached level 13 with this kind of insane farming. As night came, the duo returned to town and went on their separate ways, Seth going back to training while Shesmu cultivated for the night. Chapter 21: Beginning of the War As the first rays of dawn shone on Thousands leaves town, the bird chirped and roosters crowed. Opening his eyes, Shesmu basked in the warm light before getting up and stretching his arms. After a night of cultivating, he finally broke through the second stage of ki cultivation gaining a massive boost to his stats.
Rotational Three Tiered Passive Cultivation Method
Rank Legendary
Type Cultivation Method
Stage 2
Level 1(125000/500000 Ki)
Description
Passive: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 1500 Ki that has a tier 3 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. Of these 750 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level. Active: Every 10 minutes, your character amass 3000 Ki that has a tier 4 purity. The amount and purity will increase after you reach the next stage. You need to be in a meditation state to invoke the active skill, distraction and sudden movement deactivate it. Of these 1500 Ki half is stored while the other half is used to increase your foundation and cultivation level.
Effect Stage 2 Level 1
+300 all stats
Looking at the stats he gained, Shesmu was pleasantly surprised. He was afraid that his level might affect the amount of stats he gained through cultivating for balance purposes, but it seems that Ashes of Gods stored another future for him. At this point, Shesmu couldn¡¯t even be compared to the current player base in terms of stats. It would take the top players at least three months in game time to catch up to Shesmu, and this difference will only grow further. Since the moment he accepted the fact that he reincarnated into a timeline where he was younger, Shesmu knew that his path would be special. In his past incarnation, he was already a top player and unofficially recognized as the best competitive one in the game. If he weren¡¯t able to use this advantage to bully some greenhorns who just started playing, he should just jump off a bridge with no will to pass on. Even though his current power still isn¡¯t close to what he reached in the past, Shesmu was still satisfied. Entrance to the second stage of ki cultivation enabled him to do things he couldn¡¯t do before. One of such is to use his ki to strengthen his muscles, tendons, and bones. In fact, this what the second stage was about; strengthening your body so that it can resist higher inputs of ki through a different mechanism. Before he could go further on his ki cultivation path, one had to first have a strong body to do so. Moreover, one couldn¡¯t reach the third stage before his body reached a certain degree of power. As a minimum, one had to reach 500 points in all stats. However, for someone practicing a legendary cultivation technique, this minimum was set to 1500, three times that of a normal practitioner. The reason for such disparity is the level of stress one has to go through using the enormous amounts of ki given by a legendary cultivation method. Higher purity ki enforced more pressure and stress on the body, and to avoid the crippling of the practitioners the creators of the method made this restriction. When Shesmu designed this method, he never thought of the limiter as a problem. One had to know that at the time, all of his basic stats were above 50000 and even the new players didn¡¯t take more than a couple months before all their stats reached the 1000 points mark. At that time, Dream Inc. gave new players all the advantages of the world: 300% drop rate, 300% exp and easy ways to turn credit into gold coins. If one was rich enough, he could reach level 100 with 7000 total stat points in a week. Paying someone to carry you, paying for the best items at every level, and as long as your avatar is present and you follow the guides you won¡¯t have any problem. However, who would have thought that Shesmu would reincarnate. Now, he has to battle against his own limitations and reach a power no player reached until after 6 months passed in his past life. Taking a look at his stats, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but smile at the progress.
Name Shesmu
Race Human
Class Swordsman
Level 15 (122000/200000 exp)
Health Points 8100/8100
Ki Points 125000/125000
Stats
Strength 443
Agility 543
Intelligence 330
Wisdom 349
Vitality 400
Stat Points 24
Skills
Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 8 (Proficiency: 93%).
Thousand Slashes Tier 0 level 4(Proficiency:43%).
Ki ManipulationThis story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Tier 1 level 3(Proficiency: 20%)
Talents
Quick Slash Increase attack speed by 20%.
Afterimage When in combat, sudden turns leave afterimages, rendering the enemy not being able to know real from illusion. Movement speed outside of combat +50%, Movement speed in combat +20%, attack speed +30%.
Silent Steps Improve Stealth, step sounds cannot be detected when running. Movement speed in combat +50%, attack speed +50%.
Flash Step Passive: Improve short-term acceleration. Movement speed in combat +100%, attack speed +100%. Active: Close to instantaneous movement in a 5-meter range, scales with agility. Cooldown 5 seconds. (Note: Use with caution, multiple consecutive uses will degrade its range and apply debuffs).
Strong Grip Increase attack power by 20%
Titan¡¯s Might Increase attack power by 30%. Have a chance to knock back an opponent with less attack power.
Controlled Strength Increase attack power by 50%. Increase sensibility of muscles for more controlled force and a slight increase to the sensibility towards wind movement and earth vibration.
Tough Skin Increase hp by 20%
Troll''s Blood Increase HP by 30% and increase regeneration of HP by 50 Hp/s when outside of combat.
Minor Life-Force Absorption Increase HP by 50% and add a life-stealing effect of 3% of damage done to the enemy. Clear Mind: Magical Damage +20%. Faster analysis.
Clear Mind Magical Damage +20%. Faster analysis.
Accelerated thought process Magical Damage +30%. High-speed data analysis.
Knowledge Replication Magical Damage +50%. Ability to copy certain skills from all classes.
Clear Vision More accurate vision. Mana regeneration +20%.
Enlightened Vision Ability to notice minute details in a high tension environment. Mana Regeneration +30%.
Inner World Ability to create a small inner world with its own rules and make it bigger and bigger until it becomes as boundless as the universe. Mana Regeneration +50%.
¡°Yes! Finally!¡± Looking at his new talents, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but be elated. Both flash step and Inner world were very strong abilities, a trademark of their respective stats. All swordsman used flash step as their bread and butter, as it could dodge CC and prepare a finisher. It could also be comboed with many abilities, making it one of the more useful and versatile skills in the game. As for Inner World, mages used it to countless ends. One of the more obvious perks of the ability is its aid in understanding the laws governing the world of Ashes of Gods. It helped many mages create new powerful spells or emerge with new paradigms and rules to understand the world. In fact, in the process of creating the Three-Tiered Rotational Cultivation Method, Shesmu had to use his inner world for a majority of the time. These were just some of the strengths of the inner world ability. Other perks stretched far and wide, from time dilation to soul strengthening, Inner World dabbled in all categories. However, Shesmu didn¡¯t want to create his inner world right away. To do so, he had to create the world seed first, and this process takes a long time. To create a stable world seed one had to focus on the task for 16 hours on average. Due to his past experience, Shesmu might be able to shave off a few hours, but he will still stay in the double-digit range. At this point, he didn¡¯t have that much free time on his hands as the expedition will start in an hour. Thus, Shesmu just went and took a bath, had breakfast at the inn restaurant and headed towards the military camp. On the way, Shesmu contacted Seth so as to set up a meeting point. He already added him to his friend¡¯s list yesterday when he partied with him and thus unlocked the private message system. Reaching the camp, Shesmu waited at the entrance for 10 minutes before a purple-eyed male figure gestured towards him. ¡°Yo Seth, how¡¯re you doing?¡± ¡°Pretty good. Stayed late at night to make sure I¡¯m consistent with the animation cancels but I got my 6 hours of sleep so I¡¯m good.¡± Hearing Seth¡¯s statement Shesmu nodded before saying. ¡°That¡¯s good. You trained like mad yesterday and I did saw some improvement throughout our farming session. Hopefully, you¡¯ll show me today the result of your solo training.¡± Hearing Shesmu¡¯s praise and expectation, Seth panicked and said. ¡°Hey hey hey, don¡¯t expect too much. I just trained the same techniques you showed me yesterday, you won¡¯t notice any difference.¡± Hearing his reply, Shesmu just smiled. He was happy because Seth was taking the opportunity to train by himself, going as far as to cut from sleep so as to train and become better. This was the fundamental aptitude that differentiated between the good and bad players. After waiting for half an hour, the terrain next to the military camp was filled to the brim. ¡°Wow, I didn¡¯t know there were these many players even. Wait, I didn¡¯t expect even the capital city to have these many players, from where did they spawn?¡± Looking at the swarm of players, Shesmu was pressured by their sheer number. Hearing his friend complains, Seth rolled his eyes and said ¡°According to forums and game journalists, Thousand leaves have 50000 players. This mob doesn¡¯t make even half the population of the city.¡± Shesmu reevaluated the mob in front of him and made a quick number estimation. From what he saw, it seems that the players willing to participate in the war is around 15000. Shesmu was surprised, to say the least. In his past life, he didn¡¯t really know how many players were playing the game since day 1, but he was pretty sure that the town wasn¡¯t as crowded as they are now in this timeline. He wondered if it was because of something he did that caused a butterfly effect, or maybe the variable that made this difference didn¡¯t have anything to do with Shesmu and was inherent to the properties of this timeline. Whichever case it was, Shesmu no longer paid it any attention, as all his focus was now on the Commander-In-Chief that just entered the scene. Standing on top of a wooden stage, the Commander-In-Chief started his speech. ¡°As we continue with our daily lives, laughing with our friends, being affectionate with our wives and husbands, looking at our kids as they grow, one notion and concept is always on our minds. A concept that we do not give much importance as we take a matter of course, but one that is vital for all us, for our survival and thrift: Safety.¡± Finishing his introduction, the Commander took a deep breath before continuing. ¡°Without a safe town we wouldn¡¯t be able to work without worrying about our wives and kids, we wouldn¡¯t be able to genuinely laugh with our friends knowing that these people might die the next day, we wouldn¡¯t be able to continue with our daily lives without the toxicity from stress, fear, and terror polluting everything we do. Yes, my friends and comrades, safety is the backbone of our happiness, the backbone of our lives!¡± The commander enthusiastically exclaimed before his complexion turned grave. ¡°And here, an enemy that threatens this safety appeared. One that doesn¡¯t want us to lead our happy lives, one that is disgusted by joy and wants to eradicate anyone who experiences it. The goblins have gone too far! They killed our soldiers, merchants, and hunters. They want us to give up what is rightly ours and greed for even more. Even up to this night reports signaling the death of our brothers I receive and I cry every time. For our brothers and sisters, for our lives and happiness, we will raise our weapons and with them our souls to defend this land!¡± ¡°For our land!¡± ¡°For our lives!¡± ¡°To victory!¡± Hearing the Commander¡¯s speech, the crowd cheered and became frenzied. Their patriotic spirit was ignited by the Commander¡¯s epic speech. However, amidst the mob Shesmu clicked his tongue. The current Commander In Chief, Adrian, was half a demon. He had many deals with all kind of evil power, and if left alone, he would most likely cause a tragedy At first, Shesmu didn¡¯t worry about Adrian. No matter how strong he is, Shesmu knew that he could beat him up easily. However, now that he knew that Adrian was so good with his words, Shesmu felt a headache coming. Half-demons didn¡¯t have any difference in their biology from humans, so Shesmu cannot just kill him and then prove that he was half a demon. He needs to catch him red-handed so that he can officially kill him without incurring public wrath. As these thoughts circled in Shesmu¡¯s mind, he began to worry about the future. Announcement: Finals Week, will be back on the 16th Don''t fret, I''m not going into an undetermined hiatus or anything of the sort, this break is just temporary. Next week is final''s week and I really need to fully focus on my studies as I have been slacking off lately in that department. Some of you might think why not just write a chapter and study at the same time, however, I simply cannot do it. When I start writing a chapter it''s a whole ritual that I need to go through. From thinking of all the possibilities of what the characters might do and what these actions might provoke later on before I start writing the chapter, to the recap session after I finish writing, I find myself putting more times in para-writing activities than on just writing the story itself. As you might notice, this is not something I can do in this current context. If I try to both write my story and study at the same time, I will end up messing up both activities and end up with no progress done. For these reasons, I think that taking a break for a week would be the better choice.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Chapter 22: Cheater The swarm of players got bigger as time went on, the previous 15000 easily reached 20000 after more players joined in. Both the players and NPCs discussed the charisma and strength of the Commander in Chief, especially after the display of might he showed in his speech. After enough players gathered, the army marched forwards towards the goblin village. The town and village were separated by a dense forest, 45 kilometers wide. With the speed of the average soldier, it would take around 3 hours to cross that distance. Considering that there will be many fights along the way, this 3 hour time frame can easily be stretched to a whole day. The showdown was at the slight advantage of the goblins, as they were the masters of the forest the war was taking place in. The green creatures may seem dumb at first glance, but after centuries of evolution and adaptation, they have perfected their guerilla warfare. With their bows and magic, they held a massive range advantage in an environment only known to them. They developed many tactics using their natural green skin for camouflage in the forest, and booby traps. All in all, they were a frightening enemy to go against. However, while they have developed many tactics that could help them in combat against stronger species, they still lacked many other necessary skills to win a war. One of the crucial missing pieces is their lack of good reconnaissance teams. With their attributes that focused on either Strength and Vitality or Wisdom and Intelligence, they lacked individuals with the necessary speed and dexterity to perform spying missions. The world of Ashes of Gods, while many times bigger than Earth, had the same season cycle as it. So now that it was summer on the Northern Hemisphere on Earth, it was the same for Pliyx Stal and the many kingdoms and empires of the northern hemisphere on Ashes of Gods. This ensured that players did not feel at a loss when switching between worlds. The tens of thousands soldiers and players marched forward on this sunny day. The temperature reaching 38-degree Celsius didn¡¯t help with their traveling endeavor as everyone became sweaty. Coupled with the high humidity in the forest, the soldiers and the less resilient players quickly showed a sign of tiredness. Barely 2 hours in, the Commander issued for the army to stop and rest. Most of the soldiers immediately fell on the ground while letting out a breath they didn¡¯t know they held. Looking at the scene in front of him, Shesmu couldn¡¯t help but cringe a little. The training these soldiers underwent didn¡¯t contain stamina components at all. Town soldiers weren¡¯t supposed to invade other territories. The situations they had to deal with consisted mostly of small skirmishes with monsters or bandits or defending the town from attacks. Both of these actions didn¡¯t require high stamina, but good coordination and a minimum mastery of their weapon. Shesmu knew this, but most importantly, the Commander did too. This sparked some suspicion on why did the latter make the decision to invade the goblins when such an action will undoubtedly result in many casualties. Once this thought surfaced on Shesmu¡¯s mind, he sat down and started thinking of all the possible reasons for this action and what kind of future would each possibility result in. After around 20 minutes of brainstorming, Shesmu felt that he had a sufficient understanding of the situation. Now, only the future actions and decisions of the Commander will tell him which of the possibilities in his mind is the real one, so he can only wait.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. At this point, the soldiers were doing much better and were no longer panting like dogs. However, even though they had an unsightly and weak appearance, Shesmu didn¡¯t feel any disdain towards them. Even though he himself had all of his attributes reach the 100s and above, the normal players and soldiers only had around 10 to 20, even while considering the stat boost from their equipment. The army has been running at close to their max speed for a long period of time, none of them had any breathing technique training so it was obvious that they would end up in such a miserable state. However, there were some people who didn¡¯t need to recuperate and had a calm expression throughout the whole ordeal. These people either had high vitality attribute or were proficient and disciplined enough to keep a certain pace and a breathing technique without breaking it. Seth was one of these few people, but this didn¡¯t come as a surprise to anyone as the latter experienced such hardships countless times on his gaming career. Other than Seth, Shesmu kept track of the close to hundred players that passed this test. He will keep an eye on them and see how they would fare in a fight. If someone shows great potential, he will personally recruit him to Black Moon. Seeing that everyone regained their vigor, the Commander shouted. ¡°Soldiers, on your feet!¡± Hearing his command, the several tens of thousands of players and soldiers rose up, took a salutation position and said in unison. ¡°Sir, yes sir!¡± ¡°As planned before, each team of 10 is lead by a team leader. 10 teams make a platoon. We will invade 5 platoons at a time. Blend with the forest, keep discreteness, and kill those maggots. For Pliyx Stal!¡± ¡°For Pliyx Stal!¡± The whole cheered after the short speech from the Commander. Almost immediately, the army split itself into teams of 10. It seems that they were already informed about this composition and that the teams were arranged beforehand. Looking at the soldiers that almost immediately responded to the call, the players were at a loss at what to do. They didn¡¯t prepare for this scenario before, so they were left dumbstruck when the Commander just told them to form teams. Seeing this, Shesmu gestured at the Commander with his hand signaling him the problem at hand. With his identity as a high noble descent, Shesmu had enough of a leverage to keep the Commander from doing something stupid in public. Noticing Shesmu¡¯s signal, the Commander coughed and said. ¡°Friends of the golden generation. You who answered the call of duty and with honor joined this campaign are truly the most righteous. Your sword, your wands, and your spear are the thunderous lightning smiting all evil! I have personally witnessed your prowess.¡± After hyping up the crowd with his speech, he looked at Shesmu. Understanding the signal, Shesmu came forth. ¡°This man, Shesmu, of the noblest descent- golden eyes from the golden generation- truly didn''t disappoint his ancestor. His power is something that I can personally confirm. While the rest of his brethren was fighting the beasts of the forest, he was facing the treacherous goblins alone. Truly, a hero between men.¡± As the Commander breathed out after his long-winded speech, all players were shocked. Most of the players that accepted the event quest were newbies that didn¡¯t know much about the gaming world. The only reason they¡¯re here is that Ashes of Gods truly made a sensation through the whole earth. In actuality, even the more senior between them that did know of the name ¡°God Speed Shesmu¡± still couldn¡¯t believe that he was capable of such a feat. Only a few minorities that played the beta heard this name and sucked a deep breath. They were the only one to wholeheartedly believe that Shesmu was able to do such a thing, as he already proved himself to be able of more miraculous stuff in the beta. Whispers were heard throughout the mob of players as they shot cold glances at Shesmu. ¡°There is no way this could be true, right? He had to have bribed the Commander so that he tell this bullshit story.¡± ¡°How could he bribe the Commander? How much money do you think the Commander receives as a salary? At least 10 golds a month. If you want to bribe him, you need to give him at least 10 times that. Who has that amount of money? I¡¯m pretty sure that even if you gather gold from everyone in the kingdom, you would barely reach that amount. As I see it, it¡¯s not the Commander that is lying, but that guy that is cheating. Probably some aim assist and scripts for dodging. Really, it¡¯s been just a day and this type of scum is already rotting the game.¡± As players started to throw accusations left and right, it became pretty clear that Shesmu took his spot as public enemy #1. Without reporting, asking for gm verification or even talking to the guy, Shesmu was already deemed as a cheater on most people¡¯s mind. However, those who knew the truth quickly spoke up. ¡°If you don¡¯t know anything, don¡¯t blabber too much. Your mouths stink! This man has dominated PvP and PvE since the beta. While everyone was struggling against level 40 monsters, he was already swaggering in level 60 zones. Reports to check for his legitimacy had already been issued thousands of times in the beta. Result: he is 100% legit. He ended up as the highest leveled player while being miles ahead of the curve. Please, don¡¯t defame a legend with your mouth when the only thing that should spout shit is your ass.¡± Announcement of Rewrite Hey all, shameless author here. After months of disappearance, I''m finally back. I''m sure that many of you are pissed at and disappointed in me for leaving for so long without any notice. Many of you probably already expected that, with my history on the site for being one the most pu**y ass authors to ever live, always dropping stories. I can''t say anything to defend myself from that claim, unfortunately. But this time, this time I think I have a good excuse. Sooo, here is my side of the story. Around 4 months ago, when the releases started becoming irregular, I was on vacation. It was a 3-week trip with close to no internet and constant harassment from my siblings to play with them. So yeah, nothing I could do about that. The plan was that when I got back home, I''ll return to writing as normal and that would be it. But as with many things in life, things don''t always go as planned. First of all, at that period of time, I got some hate sent my way. While some criticism was reasonable, other was plain retardation. The retarded claims did hurt a bit, but not as much as the reasonable one. Being told that my characters are the most boring one-dimensional pieces of shit ever created on this land stung. But it cut even more deeply when I reread my story and saw by myself how trashy it was. Let''s forget the plot and character development for a moment now, even my sentence structure and grammar didn''t help my case. My conjugation was a mess, my use of words was all over the place, my sentence structure was repetitive. It was a story even I wouldn''t read, let alone others.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! So, it was time for a rewrite. But that was 4 months ago, why not rewrite the story then and there. Well, things got complicated. At the start of my college semester, my editor introduced me to an artist he knew. I already knew the existence of this artist because he would mention her sometimes as we both were working on our own story. She was part of the clique, kinda, not in person, but in spirit. Now that she joined the same college as ours, she will finally be part of the group officially. At that meeting, we discussed different things. Each of us had his own project and we wanted to make them all part of this one big thing. It was in the midst of discussing this stuff that an idea was presented: Why not make a webcomic? Well, we will shortly know why. At that point, everyone went on with that idea. It was indeed a dream come true to many of us. We thought that it will go as in Bakuman, one insane artist, another insane author would create the perfect duo(or trio). With each of us focusing on a specific skill set, we would be able to create a decent webcomic in no time. It didn''t go that way if you still haven''t noticed. Each of us had these weird requirement for others to check before we start working. The chemistry was actual garbage and we ended up wasting a colossal amount of time. Then, stuff happened, exams and projects started taking more and more of our time, and in the end, here we are. Soooo, yeah, that''s my side of the story. And for now, I''ll just be rewriting the story as a novel, unless something happens in the future. Ps: since I can''t insert link here(I probably can, I''m just too lazy to check out the html syntax), I''ll just post in the post chapter author note. Announcement: Update On The Rewrite Hey guys. As implied in the title, this is not a chapter. In the last announcement, I told you guys that I will be rewriting the story. However, at the time I still haven''t actually started rewriting it, so I couldn''t link it. So here I am again with some good news; I have started rewriting rebirth and reached chapter 12. Yes, you read right, 12 chapters. The name of the rewritten version is Re: Sword Emperor, the link will be in the author note as it doesn''t let me do it here. Anyways, this is just a heads up as many people didn''t know about the rewrite.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!