《Real life in a Virtual World.》 Prologue+Chapter One Prologue: When will this end....? This never-ending nothingness.... I can''t feel anything, I can''t see anything, I don''t even have a body. I guess it''s only my soul here, wherever here is. I''m tired.... Tired of floating around in absolute darkness for what feels like an eternity with nothing except my thoughts for company. I can''t even kill myself to escape from this hell. Perhaps I already am dead and this is how it will stay for the rest of time? I really hope not... I just want to end this and go somewhere... even my old life was better then this! Wait a minute! Is that light...? Yes! Light is slowly expanding and pushing away the darkness! Finally!! Looks like I may be able to get out of this place! As long as it''s anything except darkness on the other side I''ll be happy! I can now vaguely see something in the light.... looks like it''s moving.... wait! Is that another person?!? Chapter One: Hell on Earth In a dark, dusty and extremely filthy room, a man is annoyingly supporting a woman in labor. The woman is clearly in pain and really close to giving birth, but instead of showing happiness or even pain, she has a dark expression on her face. "Come on! Push it out already! I don''t have all day!" said the man. "I''m trying alright! It''s not like I wanted this filth inside me anyway!" the woman said with disgust. Finally, after about an hour of bickering and pushing, a beautiful and healthy looking baby boy is born. Any other parents would have had tears of joy at this point seeing the baby kicking and screaming at the top of his lungs. However... "About damn time! It''s a brat... Just our luck. A girl could have had some use to us at least..." said the man observing the baby with hate. "Yeah... this brat will just cost us money and time. I guess we can just throw it away... SHUT UP!" the woman slapped the baby across his tiny face trying to stop his screaming, but luckily she was weak having just gone through labor to do any serious damage. "Nah... someone might notice us getting rid of this shit and tell the cops on us. I guess I''ll find a way to use him somehow. Try and shut him while I go get some business done, guess I''ll have to also spend some of my hard earned money for some clothes and milk for the brat." the man said while standing away and turning around to leave. One could hear his dark mumbles about wasting money all the way to the door. After about 4 hours the man returned and saw that the baby was silent now and the mom had a glazed expression on her face. Smiling, the man said "Ah good job Mary! How did you shut it up?" Mary took some time before groggily answering "He just wouldn''t shut up no matter how much I beat it! So I thought I might as well get high to drown out his revolting voice, when I thought of something awesome! I gave a dose to him thinking it might shut it up for a while and it worked!" "Hahahaha! Great one! But I hope you didn''t give him too much, it''s enough that we have to feed him and all, I don''t want to waste our product on him as well!" "Hmph! Who do you take me as Will? I know not to waste something so good on this brat!" This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. "Excellent excellent!" Will said smiling approvingly. "Oooh! I just thought of something brilliant! Why don''t we test all new products on the little shit! That way we can see if there are any side-effects without harming ourselves, and the damn boy will also keep his trap shut!" "WOW! I never knew you were such a genius Will!" exclaimed Mary with round eyes. "Hahahaha!" Laughed Will with a proud expression on his face. And thus began a living hell for the poor, innocent child. ----------- Over the next few years the boy suffered immensely. His parents, if you can even call them parents, never let him out of the house and no one knew of his existence. He would be experimented on with drugs anytime the parents got their hands on something new or got existing drugs from someone they hadn''t dealt with before. He was just treated as a way for them to be safe from anyone who would try to poison them or from anything that could have side-effects. There were many instances where the boy almost died, but naturally the parents only cared about noting that particular drug as harmful and ignored the boy saying, "If he lives good for us, if not we can always pay some random kid to test stuff for us." If at any time he would dare make a fuss about not wanting to take a drug, he would be beaten harshly without a care of whether bones were broken or not. This truly was Hell on Earth for the poor boy. One day, when the boy was about 8 years old, his father said something that excited him a little! "Brat! You are going out with us tonight. We got a deal someplace and we need you to test the product. Go get ready, hurry up!" This was his first time leaving the house! He had only seen the outside world through the windows at his house! He excitedly went and quickly came back wearing somewhat clean clothes and battered shoes. "Hmph! Can''t even take care of the stuff we get for you! I''ll give you a nice beating when we come back, just you wait!" said Will turning around with a signal for Mary and the boy to follow him. Even though the boy was scared about the future beating, he quickly forgot all about it once he stepped out for the first time! He excitedly sat in a rusty old car and scanned his surroundings with shining eyes. His parents were smoking something while his father drove with one hand on the steering and one hand on a bottle from which he drank from time to time. The boy was looking around at the passing sights with big, round eyes filled with wonder and amazement when suddenly... CRASH! .... And everything around him turned black.... -------- Author''s note: Hi everyone! Hope you like reading this fiction. It''s my first try at writing something and I would love any and all criticisms. Feel free to comment below or send me a private message. Having some trouble with formatting as the paragraphs don''t show up in the same way as I write them, any suggestions? Will also likely have trouble with adding tables when the MC gets into the game, but I guess we will cross that bridge when we arrive at it... Thank you for reading! Edit: Managed to get some formatting done, hope it looks better now. Chapter Two: The cruelty of humans Year: 2032 Dr. Richard was sitting comfortably on his chair in a large office on the top floor of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA. He had short black hair, a handsome clean-shaven face and light-brown eyes. He stood at good 6 feet 2 inches tall and had a gentle aura about him. A gamer at heart, he was excitedly browsing the internet looking up any information on the virtual reality game: Conqueror. Boasting a mind-boggling 99% realism rate, it was naturally the talk of the whole world as the next closest virtual reality game had a measly 25% realism rate. Naturally, Dr. Richard was no exception as he could hardly wait to play the game which was scheduled to release in 3 months time. Apart from the extremely high realism rate, Conqueror was also able to capture so much attention because the makers of the game, Cyber Illusions, claimed that there would be no separate servers for the different countries, instead everyone who wants to play will play on a single server. Language issues? Cyber Illusions announced that they had made a unique universal language software that will translate any spoken works of other players/NPCs into the language chosen as default by a player in real-time. This meant that a person speaking Japanese and a person speaking French would be able to understand each other comfortably as if they were speaking the same language! Giddily reading any information that he could find about Conqueror, Dr. Richard felt as if he were a small kid again impatiently waiting for Christmas to come so that he could get new toys! Chukling to himself, he was about to click on a link detailing news about the upcoming Beta test for the game when he was abruptly interrupted by his door opening and a nurse running inside with an extremely worried expression! "Sandra! What''s the meaning of this?" asked Dr. Richard annoyed at being disturbed during his break. Noticing the expression on her face, he added "Is something wrong?" "Doctor! There''s someone here to see John!" the nurse almost shouted at him. "What?!? How can that be?! Is it a relative?" asked Dr. Richard while jumping out of his seat and putting on his white coat anxiously hurrying out of his office, with Sandra following behind. "I don''t know! 3 official looking people just came in and asked about the doctor in charge of the patient in room 306 as they wanted to speak to the patient!" "Speak to him?!? Are they crazy?" Dr. Richard was now clearly baffled as to why someone would even think about speaking with John. He could still remember it like it was yesterday, the day he realized just how cruel humans could be. 9 years ago, a family of 3 arrived in an ambulance as a result of a car accident. Apparently, they tried to run a red light and a jeep slammed into the backside of the family''s car. The parents, who were in the front had some minor injuries and weren''t in any danger whatsoever; however, the same couldn''t be said about the 7-8 year old boy. He was unconscious and covered in cuts and bruises while nurses and doctors hurried him to the Emergency Operation Theater trying to stop his bleeding. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Dr. Richard was in charge of the emergency shift that day and ended up being the doctor in charge for the little boy. After cleaning the boy''s wounds and stitching him up where needed, they were about to do further tests to check for internal injuries like X-rays etc. when everyone operating on the boy stopped. They had been busy cleaning him up and getting rid of the dried blood on his skin, and now that he was clean they could see a horrifying sight. The boy''s body was covered with bruises, and they could see only a few of the bruises were fresh, the rest were all old. His body was thin, extremely thin! All his bones were sticking out, clearly visible under his pale white skin. His face looked like it had been used as a punching bag, with his nose and jaw broken in many places with varying signs of healing indicating that he had suffered constant injuries throughout his life. Everyone present was trained enough to know what these signs pointed to: child abuse! Dr. Richard had seen some cases of child abuse, but nothing even close to the brutality visible on this boy. After somewhat coming to terms with the sight in front of him, he ordered all the staff to continue the treatment and keep a close eye on the boy. He then turned with fury clearly visible on his face. He briskly walked back towards the entrance of the Emergency Room and demanded to know where the two parents were. Everyone present was shocked at the anger which Dr. Richard showed, as he was usually a nice and easy-going guy. After finding out where the parents were, he was about to confront them with some physical abuse of his own when he stopped because there were policemen present around the parents, questioning them. Dr. Richard found out that both the mother and father, named Mary and Will respectively, were high on drugs and drunk to the point where they had no idea where they were. What he learned later was beyond his wildest imaginations. The parents, completely unaware of where they were and what they were saying, readily answered any and all questions about the boy. Everyone present was shocked to learn about how the boy was abused, about how he was used as a drug-tester, about how he was kept barely alive by giving him the minimum amount of food needed. When asked what the name of their child was, the father simply answered "Hmph! Why waste a name on a brat like that? All we had to do was call him brat or little shit and he knew he was being referred to. Hahahaha!" At this point, unable to control himself any longer, Dr. Richard punched the father so hard that he immediately lost consciousness! The policemen restrained him from continuing his beating, but didn''t arrest him as they themselves were completely disgusted by the parents. Naturally, the parents were put away for a long, long time while the boy stayed at the hospital, still unconscious. The boy, called John Doe now because of a lack of any name, had suffered a severe trauma to his head and was in a coma. 9 years had gone by and the boy hadn''t woken up yet, and Dr. Richard still had a hard time understanding how humans could be so cruel. Chapter Three: The kindness of humans Coming back to reality, Dr. Richard arrived at the nurses station on the third floor to find it surrounded with almost all the nurses of the floor with worried expressions on their faces, all of them looking at a certain direction. Following their gaze, Dr. Richard saw the subject of their worry to be 3 official looking guys in black suits with their expressions set in stone. Walking forward hurriedly, Dr. Richard introduced himself, "Good morning, I''m Richard. What seems to be the problem here?" One of the 3 official guys stepped forward and opened his mouth ready to speak only to interrupted by a bright voice from behind. "Good morning! Nice to meet you Dr. Richard. My name is Leonard Hodges." A young man, around 25 years of age, walked from behind the three men with his hand extended towards Dr.Richard and a bright smile on his face. He had short, curly dark-brown hair, a slightly large nose for his oval face and light-blue eyes that seemed to shine. He stood at about 5 feet 9-10 inches tall, wearing casual dark-blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Shaking his hand with a polite smile, Dr. Richard was deep in thought as this person in front of him looked vaguely familiar. ''Leonard Hodges...'' He thought, ''Why do I get this feeling that we have met before? His name and face both seem familiar.... WAIT! Leonard Hodges! THE Leonard Hodges! The young and bright CEO of Cyber Illusions?? Surely not!'' Seeing his expression, Leonard chuckled to himself while saying, "Looks like you have recognized me. Perhaps we could move to a private room and have a little chat?" Still in shock, Dr. Richard absentmindedly nodded and led the way back to his office. Leonard asked the three official guys to stand outside for a bit while he entered and lightly sat down on one of the seats in front of the desk while Dr. Richard took his own seat behind the desk. "So, you might be wondering what I am doing here?" Leonard asked to which Richard nodded, still in a daze. With a chuckle, Leonard continued, "As you have recognized me, I think I can safely assume that you have heard of our company Cyber Illusions and our new game, Conqueror?" Another nod. "Great! Then this conversation can move forward quickly!" "As you may know, our game is designed in such a way to make it seem as real as possible. The players can even set the pain threshold at 100% if they want to! Of course, I don''t think many would change it from the default 15% setting." said Leonard laughing to himself. "Anyways, the point is that our game is so real that it is hard to tell if it really is a game or if it''s another world! Which is where your hospital and the patient in room 306 come in. We have recently found out that playing this game might actually help in strengthening the minds of the players who play it." Dr. Richard, now out of his daze and giving full attention to the conversation, tilted his head and looked at Leonard in a puzzled manner, saying, "That is all well and good but how is this relevant to John?" "Well, as soon as we found out about the possible benefits of the game, we immediately started looking for people who could be helped. We came to know the terrible fate that had befallen a young boy 9 years ago, John you say he is called? His story is filled with nothing but despair, yet there may be a silver lining at the end. We were hoping that the hospital may allow us to give John the chance to play our game, even if the chance that he may improve is tiny, we would like to take it. Even if he doesn''t improve physically, he will at least be able to enjoy the game. Our Beta test will start next week, so if you could give us your answer before then, we will bring the specially designed console for John immediately and help set it up. I must take my leave now and I look forward to your response. Have a good day!" If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. With that, Leonard got up, turned around and left, leaving Richard behind still unsure of what exactly just happened. After about five minutes of thinking, Richard snapped out of his daze and left his office to move back towards the third floor. Arriving on the floor, he noticed the lack of any nurses around the nurses station. Smiling to himself, he went towards room 306 sure he would find them there. Like he thought, almost all of the nurses of the floor were gathered outside the room with fierce expressions on their face like they would kill anyone who would dare try to hurt John inside. Almost all the nurses and doctors present in the hospital knew John''s story, and all of them cared about him. But the nurses of the third floor took it to a whole another level, all of them took care of John like they would care for their own son/younger brother. They took upon themselves to make sure one of them was always present near the room, and if anyone entered room 306, be it a doctor or the cleaning staff, one or two of them would follow them inside and stay in the room up until the person left it. Many times the administrative department had tried to reason with the third floor nurses, trying to make them see that no one here wanted to harm John in any way, but they blatantly refused and continued their special treatment with resolute eyes. When they saw Dr. Richard approaching, they immediately gathered around him demanding to know what all the fuss was about. With a smile, Dr. Richard explained to them about his conversation with Leonard and the reasons for their visit. When he finished, some nurses looked excited but most of them were nervous as they thought this could be a bit dangerous. Dr. Richard assured them that no decisions had been made yet, and that he would discuss with everyone present before the final decision is made. He then went inside the room to find nurse Sandra sitting beside the patient''s bed. She was actually one of the nurses who treated John when he first arrived 9 years ago along with Dr. Richard. An elderly woman, about 50 years old, she considered John as her adopted son and would almost always be found sitting near his bed during breaks, speaking to him or reading him a book with a kind expression on her face. After informing her of what transpired, Dr Richard and nurse Sandra both fell silent and looked at the unconscious patient in front of them. Now 17 years old, John still had his pale skin and a thin body, though not anywhere as thin as when he first arrived. Though fully clothed right now, both Richard and Sandra knew that his entire body was covered with scars showing all that he had went through. Looking at the peaceful face of John, Dr. Richard turned and left with a firm expression and vowed to help him no matter what it took! Over the next two days, after many discussions, debates and arguments, it was finally decided to give this experimental treatment a try. Leonard Hodges was informed of the decision, and 3 days later room 306 was filled with 2 nurses, Dr. Richard, Leonard Hodges, 3 technicians, a custom-made pod by Cyber Illusions and of course, a 17 year-old young man on the patient''s bed. After experiencing so many hardships, all Dr. Richard hoped was that with this John would finally be able to experience some form of kindness that humans are capable of. ----- Author''s note: Are the chapters too short/too long? I somehow think I am rushing through and not providing a decent enough back-story. If this is the case please do let me know. Next chapter we will finally go to John''s perspective and enter the game world. Thanks for reading! Any feedback is always welcome! Chapter Four: Please dont hurt me! The tension in the air could easily be cut through with a knife. Everyone in room 306 held their breath as they watched the three technicians carefully installing the custom-made pod. After what felt like hours of sweating and fidgeting, the technicians signaled that they had finished their work. Everyone thought that the time had come for John to finally be able to put on the headset which will allow him to play the game; however, Leonard quickly stepped forward and put on the headset on his own head instead. "I''m going to personally test this to make sure everything is fine. This headset is designed specially to take extra care about the wearer''s mental and physical health. It monitors brainwaves every second 24 hours a day, and anytime when it detects an abnormality it will immediately shut down to avoid any damage to the wearer. Although it has already been tried and tested numerous times, I''m going to give it another little test just to make sure." Informed Leonard while fixing the headset on and calmly sitting down on the sofa beside John''s bed. He then closed his eyes and pushed a button on the headset, turning it on. Dr. Richard and nurse Sandra glanced at each other nervously before turning their attention back towards Leonard, while the three technicians took out tablets and started tinkering with them discussing something with each other in low voices. After about 10 minutes Leonard opened up his eyes with a smile on his face, before quickly turning serious again and asking the three technicians, "So, what''s the verdict?" For the next 3 or so minutes a conversation between Leonard and the three technicians took place which was impossible to follow for Dr. Richard and the two nurses. It felt like they were speaking their own language and Dr. Richard wished that the universal language software was operating right now. Seeing their lost expressions, Leonard chuckled and said. "There''s no need to worry at all. Everything seems to be going perfectly. Now, shall we put it on John?" Leonard was practically bouncing with excitement as he asked the last question. Dr. Richard nodded and the atmosphere became tense and excited again. Meanwhile, the technicians had set up a TV on the right side of John''s bed, explaining that the video feed of whatever John does while in the game will be shown here. Leonard then took a different headset that a technician handed to him, explaining that he will be personally going into a space created specifically for John, where he will explain to him about the game and answer any questions he may have. A technician also handed a headset to Dr. Richard while Leonard added, "Dr. Richard, if you could also join us please so that you can answer any questions that John may have about his health and his past." Dr. Richard readily agreed and both Leonard and him put on their headsets. A technician pushed on a button on Dr. Richard''s headset and asked him to close his eyes. A bright light enveloped him and he found himself to be in decent-sized room, with a comfortable looking single bed, a couch on the left side and a desk on the right, with a laptop on top. Even though Richard knew that he was in a virtual world, he was completely surprised by how real everything looked! He even touched the walls and the bed and it really did feel as if he were touching the real thing. Seeing his amazed expression, Leonard wore a satisfied smile while explaining, "This is an area we designed specifically for John. He can come here whenever he is tired of the game, or when he dies in-game. He can rest here and that laptop, although virtual, is just like any other laptop so John will be able to easily surf the internet for extra information on the game, or be able to read books or watch movies to pass his time." Richard felt happy hearing this and nodded in a satisfied manner, while Leonard spoke up again, "And now, for the guest of honor!" Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. A bright light appeared suddenly and then slowly started receding, taking the shape of a person. Slowly, the light disappeared, revealing John standing right in front of them. Dr. Richard smiled and opened his mouth to introduce himself when suddenly John fell backwards and started moving away from them, a frightened expression on his face. "Wh...What do you want? Please don''t hurt me! I didn''t do anything wrong!" John shouted, with tears in his eyes. Both Leonard and Dr. Richard were at a complete loss on what just happened... John''s POV: It''s been far too long in here. This endless darkness has enveloped me for week? months? years? decades? centuries?... I have no idea. It feels like an eternity. I can''t even do anything, I tried to feel if I had a body with which I could move around but after a long time trying to feel something, I ended up with nothing. It must just be my soul in here I guess. As far as I can tell, there''s only me in here. I have never seen another person or heard someone. Sometimes I do hear distant voices, but when I shout out to them I get no response. I''m not even sure if the voices are real, or if they are just whispers I hear inside my mind. I hope it''s just inside my head, because even though I''m tired of being alone, it''s still better then being here with someone else. If someone else were here I would just get beaten as usual. Humans are bad. At first I thought it was just my parents, because surely not everyone in the world would be like them. But I found out the truth. Over the years watching from the windows of my house, I saw so many people getting in fights, doing drugs and stealing things, and then they would laugh among themselves. It''s better I''m alone here, even though it has been extremely boring with nothing to do, at least I''m safe. I no longer have to go through my parent''s ''experiments'' as they called them, or try to run away from them when they would get drunk and start beating me for no reason. Being alone is much better. Wait... what is that? Is that light?! Yes! Light is slowly pushing away this darkness! I can now see something in the light... Looks like a room... WAIT! Is that a person?? NOOOO! Are my parents forcing me to come out of my safe place?? I don''t want to go! I struggled with all my strength but as usual I was too weak. The light kept growing and I kept going close to the person. There''s two of them now! It must be my parents! Please! I didn''t do anything wrong! I kept advancing slowly despite my struggles, before finally appearing in front of the people inside the room. It wasn''t my parents, but two men I had never seen before. ''Good! It''s not my parents, hopefully I won''t get hurt now?'' But the man on the right suddenly smiled and came forward slightly. I know what happens next! Father always used to smile before coming closer and then started to hit me! This man is the same! I tried stepping back but fell down. Backing away I shouted, "Wh...what do you want? Please don''t hurt me! I didn''t do anything wrong!" Why did I even bother with the shout? It''s not like anyone ever listens to me.... ------ Author''s note: Sorry, short chapter again. I wanted to start the game world in this chapter but that would end up being far too long, so I decided I would cut it here and advance the story into the game world in the next chapter. As always, any feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading! Chapter Five: This seems too good to be true. Both Dr. Richard and Leonard were completely baffled by the young man cowering in front of them with tears in his eyes. Then Dr. Richard sighed and felt angry at himself for not considering that this could happen. John had only faced hardships from people, so his reaction should have been expected and some precautions made. Still angry at himself for not realizing it, Dr. Richard shook his head and said in a calm voice, "Please don''t be afraid. We are not going to hurt you, we are only here to help you." He then grabbed Leonard by his shoulder and pulled him backwards, and the two of them slowly backed away from John giving him some much needed space. "He...help? What do you mean?" Asked John still cowering in fear. "Yes, help. I am Dr. Richard and this here in Leonard Hodges. There''s no reason for you to be afraid. Please sit down comfortably on the couch behind you and I will explain everything to you." Answered Dr. Richard in a calm and soothing tone. After a few moments of silence, John looked behind him and spotted the couch. He slowly got up and backed away, keeping a sharp eye on the two, before finally sitting down on the couch. Still standing on the other side of the room, Dr. Richard slowly and calmly explained everything to John. From how he is a doctor, and how John had arrived after suffering through a car accident with his parents. At the mention of his parents, John''s eyes filled with fear again and quickly looked around while asking, "My parents.... Are they here too?" After answering him that his parents were locked away for good in a prison, with no chance of getting out anytime soon, John visibly relaxed a lot and his eyes finally lost their fear, giving way to curiosity. "So, I am in a hospital now? How long have I been here?" "Ah... yes... you arrived at the hospital in the year 2023, and it''s 2032 right now. It''s been 9 years since you had that accident...." Dr. Richard was clearly uncomfortable while giving this answer, as he thought that John would become sad finding out that he had lost 9 years of his life. However... "Wow! 9 years! I must have been badly hurt for it to take 9 years to get me to wake up hehe... But I feel fine now!" Exclaimed John while patting his chest. His eyes then suddenly narrowed and he looked down at his body. He widened his eyes in shock and suddenly jumped up while shouting, "OH MY GOD! How am I so tall?! When did I grow so big?!" He then looked around, spotted the mirror on top of the desk and ran towards it while excitedly observing his reflection. He kept touching himself while saying, "Wow! I have grown up to be so big now!" Both Leonard and Richard smiled at the child-like reactions coming from the 17-year old. They were glad that John had seemingly calmed down. After some more running around and exclaiming, John finally calmed down enough to go and sit back at the couch. Dr. Richard then went on to explain what injuries John had, and how he had been in a coma for the last 9 years. He tried to explain in a simple manner that John was still in a coma and although he was in the hospital, this place wasn''t actually the hospital. But Dr. Richard could see that John clearly had no idea what he was going on about. With a sigh, he looked towards Leonard to see if he could help out. Noticing the look, Leonard hastily spoke up, "Hey, do you know what video games are?" Surprised at the sudden question, John thought a bit before answering, "Umm... I think they are games you play on TV?" "Close enough!" said Leonard with a smile. He then walked over to the laptop, switched it on while beckoning John to come closer. "Please take a look at this." he opened up a video and handed the laptop over to John to let him see what it was. It was a trailer that Cyber Illusions had released of their game Conqueror, showing warriors, mages, archers, monks and many, many monsters. It also showed a large group battle at the end with the words ''become the one and only: Conqueror!'' John''s eyes were popping out of his head and he seemed to be thoroughly engrossed in the trailer. When it ended he gave a small gasp and looked towards Leonard with shining eyes. "This is the game that the company I work for has made, and the game that you will be playing." Leonard said with a pleasant smile on his face. "WHAT?! Really? I can play this game??" John jumped up and down while asking excitedly just like a child would. Laughing at the reaction he got, Leonard answered, "Yes, in fact, would you like to start now?" "YES!" shouted John with eyes as bright as diamonds. Chuckling to himself, Leonard said, "Alright. Just to be safe, we will be monitoring you while you will play. We will will be able to see whatever you do in the game and if there are any problems we can intervene." Noticing that John''s expression, which was excited just a few seconds ago, looked worried again, Leonard immediately asked, "Is something wrong?" "Yes! I don''t want anyone to watch me! If someone is watching then I won''t be able to enjoy. If you want to monitor me playing then I don''t want to play at all!" exclaimed John with a firm expression on his face. "Oh, don''t worry. If you don''t want us to monitor you we won''t." "Promise?" "Yes, I promise" replied Leonard with a slight smile. "Now, shall I send you away to play the game?" "Yes!" John was back to being full of excitement. "Alright then, here you go!" And with that, John was enveloped by a bright light and entered the game. After John had left the room, Dr. Richard came forward and asked, "Why didn''t you explain all the circumstances to him? I''m sure he isn''t aware that his body wasn''t actually real." "Although he looks like he is 17, in reality he is just an 8 year old boy in the body of someone who is 17. He won''t be able to understand right now, and even if he did, why make him confused and depressed after working so hard on getting him excited?" answered Leonard calmly. "Hmmm... I guess you are right. We can wait a bit to tell him the whole truth." Both Leonard and Richard looked at the spot where John had vanished, wondering what the future holds for the young boy. John''s POV: The last few minutes have been so crazy. I went from being afraid, to being relieved, to being confused and then to being excited all in the space of some 15 minutes or so. It''s crazy I have been unconscious for the last nine years! The doctor said it was called a coma, he explained the reasons too but I couldn''t understand anything. Seems like my parents are far away! It''s good, I feel much better knowing they can''t get to me. But it still seems like they will find a way somehow... I will have to keep an eye out for them. I have to get strong! If I am stronger then them, they won''t be able to hurt me! Yes, I shall find a way to get strong! It''s good that I am so tall now, I hated being short and weak. It''s great that I am so tall now! And I must say I look quite handsome now hehehe... Anyways... It was really confusing trying to understand what the doctor was saying, something about me being in the hospital but me not being there at the same time? How can someone be in two places at once? Weird. The video game was cool! I can''t believe they are letting me play!! There was magic, and monsters, and warriors, and wars! It looked awesome! The most worrying thing was what they were saying about keeping an eye on me... Why would they want to see me play? There had to be some other reason... But I made them promise not to monitor me! I don''t know... I thought I would never be able to talk to some other person normally... But Dr. Richard and Mr. Leonard were somehow... different. They didn''t have that look in their eyes that my mother and father always had. They didn''t look at me like they wanted to hurt me. I felt like I could somehow trust them...? If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Still, they are both humans. And humans are bad. I will have to be careful around them... I think I got a little too excited with the game and forgot to keep an eye on them. The game! It was so cool! When Mr. Leonard asked me if I wanted to play right now, I immediately said yes! Why wait?! He then said "here you go!" and suddenly I was enveloped in white light again. When the light faded, I looked around and saw that I was in an empty hall. It looked real... is this the game or is this a real hall? Then there was another flash of light and Mr. Leonard appeared before me again. He smiled and said, "Welcome to Conqueror! I came here myself to walk you through the tutorial. Now first thing, which race do you want to select?" I was just processing what he said when suddenly a few more flashes of light occurred and there were numerous new faces in the hall! The one directly opposite me looked vaguely familiar.... Dark brown eyes, a height of about 5 feet 10 inches, short spiky black hair, pale white skin, a short nose and slightly larger then average lips... looked like I had just seen this guy recently. Hmmm... Wait a minute! Isn''t that me?!? It looks just like the face I saw in the mirror! With a laugh, Mr. Leonard said, "These are your choices, and how you will look like if you choose each race. You have a choice from humans, the guy in front of you, dwarves, the short bearded guy, elves, the pointy-eared tall, thin guy, and an orc, the huge muscly guy that looks like a monster. We faced a lot of criticism on selecting only 4 starting races, and that too the four classic MMORPG races that are now considered boring. But we thought why not mix up the latest technology with a classic theme? Too many races and it gets complicated, and many gamers don''t want that you see. Ahem... Anyways, which race do you want to choose?" It took some time for me to process all this new information. I didn''t know what I wanted to choose. Human race is obviously out, humans are bad. The dwarf race looked like they had good muscles! But they were short... I just got tall! I don''t want to go back to being short again! The elf race looked good, tall with pointy ears, it looked like the race was very smart. But they looked too thin... hmmm... I don''t think they will be too strong... and I want to get strong! Now the orc race was cool! Huge with bulging muscles, fierce eyes and a snarling mouth with long pointy teeth coming out! Yeah! They looked like they could be strong! But they did look like monsters... I wonder if people would think badly of me if I chose to become a monster? This is confusing, I think the orc race would be best but I wonder if somehow I can make it less monster-ly? Perhaps Mr. Leonard saw my confused expression, because he asked, "Why don''t you just tell me how you want to play the game and I can recommend the race most suitable for you?" This sounded good! I already knew how I wanted to play, so I said, "I want to do everything! I want to do magic, I want to fight, I want to get strong, I want to work... everything!" "Well then your choice is most obviously the human race. Even though it is the most average race, it''s also the most versatile. You can do anything you want if you choose human as your race." said Mr. Leonard. My heart sank... human race? Really? I had to make sure so I asked details about the other races. Mr. Leonard then started explaining, "Humans are average, so they get no strengths nor weaknesses. Dwarves are strong, they can be used as warriors but their main strength lies with their crafting prowess. Their weakness is that it takes 4 times more effort and resources to learn magic of any kind. Elves are the opposite, weak physically but extremely strong with learning magic. They are usually used as mages or archers. Orcs are the most strong among the races, their physical strength is unmatched and they are perfect for close-range fighting, but they cannot learn any type of magic whatsoever. So there you have it, what would you like to choose?" My choice was clear: the human race. I wanted to perform magic as well as fight and make stuff, but why the human race? It could have been anything but the human race... Perhaps seeing my hesitation, Mr. Leonard added, "This is only the beta test so you can just try out the human race for now. If you don''t like it you can start with a new race when the game officially begins." I guess this sounds good... I still don''t know what this beta test means but I''m afraid to ask as I have learned asking basic questions can get you hurt. It sounds like something temporary I guess...? Reluctantly, I said, "I choose the human race." And immediately all the races in front me vanished except for the human-me. "Would you like to change your appearance in any manner? You can change anything you like." Mr. Leonard then said. I was already disheartened with the fact that I had to choose the human race, so I halfheartedly said, "No it''s fine." And the human-me also vanished then. "As it''s the beta test, there''s only one starting village so you don''t need to choose a starting location. Last thing, what do you want to name your character?" asked Mr. Leonard. My mind suddenly went blank. A name? I never had a name. Or maybe I did? I don''t remember any name though... What should I name myself? I only know 4 names... Will, Mary, Richard and Leonard.... I''m never naming myself after my parents, and I don''t know if it''s okay for me to take Mr. Richard''s or Mr. Leonard''s name. "I... I don''t know what to name myself..." I said with a small voice. Mr. Leonard smiled kindly and said, "You know when someone doesn''t have a name we call them John Doe? It''s a name too... Why don''t you keep this as your name for now and whenever you think of something good to name yourself you can change it then?" This sounded like a good idea... John Doe. Seems fine enough, I''ll think of a good name afterwards! I nodded and Mr. Leonard smiled again and then said, "Alright everything is set. No need for a tutorial right now as the Beta itself is one big tutorial! Good luck! Off you go!" Before I could even ask what a tutorial is light engulfed me yet again and I found myself in completely different place. Blinking rapidly and looking around, I realized where I was... I WAS OUTSIDE! No longer in a house, or a room, but outside! The smell of fresh grass hit me and the cool wind blowing against my face was very comfortable indeed! Seems like I am somewhere in the middle of a field and I could see rabbits hopping about and squirrels darting away in the trees in the distant forest! I immediately started laughing and running around. This was the first time I felt this free! I could run about without anyone stopping me! Is this what freedom feels like? If it is, then it''s AWESOME! I''ve never felt this good in my life! I couldn''t even stop laughing while I continued to run around the field. This feeling... It''s almost too good to be true! ------- Author''s note: I hope this length of the chapter is better? Three things I would like to clarify: 1) Only 4 races? I always wanted to keep my game-world simple in terms of races and only diversify in terms of classes. I hope you guys don''t mind my decision too much. 2) Why the human race? Firstly, I want the MC to get over his fear of humans gradually, and what better way then to stay as a human himself? Secondly, the human race was absolutely necessary for what I have planned for the story and the MC''s class. The reason will reveal itself later on down the road... Not anytime soon though. 3) I tried to keep the behavior of John childish. With his getting distracted easily, or his child-like thoughts in his POV etc. I hope it worked... Let me know if it doesn''t seem to work out. Hope you guys enjoy the chapter! As always, any criticism or feedback is welcome! Now for some much needed sleep... goodnight! Chapter Six: I have to learn! John''s POV: This is so amazing! I''m completely out of breathe but I just can''t stop laughing and running around! I got a couple of square blue thingies in my vision sometime ago... I don''t know what they said though... But who cares about that right now! Running is so much fun! Hah...ah...hah¡­ Can''t run anymore... hah¡­ I finally had to stop and sit down to catch my breath. But I thought why not lie down in the grass? I lied down and the sky was so beautiful! I had never seen the sky so completely before! It stretched out in all directions as far as I could see, there was no end to it! Birds were also flying around, I wish I could fly, it looks fun! I don''t think I have ever been so happy! If only the little blue square thingies would stop flashing in the upper right corner of my vision. I tried to get them away but as soon as I touched them they expanded and covered my entire sight! Congratulations! Due to constantly pushing your body to the limits you have gained: +1 Stamina There were some words written on the blue square... But I don''t know what it said. I wish I could read.... There were two of these squares but I didn''t know what they meant! I tried to understand some words but I have never seen a book before... This is starting to get annoying! I angrily swiped my hand trying to push the squares away and it worked! Both the squares vanished! I then noticed that I could see strange things. In the upper left corner of my vision there was a red bar and a blue one, with some letters on top of each but I couldn¡¯t even understand that! I don¡¯t know if these squares and these letters on top of bars are important¡­ they must be. But I have no idea on how to understand them. Maybe I could ask someone? No! These must be basic things, and asking questions about basic things gets you hurt. But I really need to understand these things¡­ I should learn how to read! Yes! Oh no¡­ But I don¡¯t know how to learn? I will have to ask someone to help me¡­ But no one has ever helped me¡­ Why would anyone start helping me now? I guess I can just go on without learning how to read¡­ But then I remembered how I didn¡¯t know the meaning of so many words that Mr. Leonard and Dr. Richard said¡­ And I also have to pick a name for myself! I don¡¯t know many names, without learning how to read how can I pick a good name? That¡¯s it! No more time wasting, I have to get stronger and to get stronger I must first get knowledge about all the basic things so that I don¡¯t make any mistakes! I have to learn to get stronger! Having made up my mind, I got up and turned to look towards the houses and buildings I had stayed away from so far¡­ *Shudder* Am I really going to go and ask for help from a person? It¡¯s too scary¡­ But no! I have to do it no matter what! I am tall now and I can also run, if someone starts to hurt me I¡¯ll just run away! With my heart beating trying to jump out of my chest, I walked slowly towards the houses¡­. slowly¡­ don¡¯t make any noise¡­ don¡¯t let people know you are here¡­ someone¡¯s coming! Hide! I tried to find somewhere to hide but I was right in the middle of the field! No trees, no bushes¡­ nothing to hide behind! Before I could start running, a voice called out to me, ¡°Hey there young lad! Mind giving this old lady a hand?¡± Is someone talking to me?! I cautiously turned towards the voice and saw a very,very old woman with a walking cane on one hand and a bag on the other. Her hair was completely white, a face covered with wrinkles and she was also wearing glasses to help her see better I guess? Walking cane¡­ If she tries to hurt me I can simply run away! Ok¡­ I think this lady is safe enough¡­ and what did she say? She needs my help? Maybe if I help her she won¡¯t do anything bad to me¡­? ¡°What are you staring at boy? Are you going to help me or not?¡± the old woman suddenly said. There was suddenly a DING! sound and another blue square appeared! But this time it didn¡¯t stay on the right side flashing but automatically came up right in front of me! Quest: Help Margaret Help the old woman Margaret carry her heavy bag to her house. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Quest difficulty: F Quest Rewards: 10 copper I didn¡¯t know what it said so I tried to ignore it and just answered the old woman, ¡°Yes¡­ yes I¡¯ll help you!¡± There was another DING! sound and the blue square vanished! Wonder what happened to it¡­? But there was no time to think, I slowly walked up to the woman, keeping a sharp eye on her in case she would hit me¡­ I slowly reached her and she handed me her bag saying, ¡°Thanks, lad.¡± Wow! The bag is heavy! ¡°My name is Margaret, what¡¯s yours boy?¡± the old woman then asked. Name? I don¡¯t¡­ Ah yes! I do have a name for now, ¡°John is my name. Pleased to meet you.¡± I hope I was polite enough, I don¡¯t think I will be able to run fast enough with this heavy bag if she tries to hit me! ¡°My what a polite lad. Come this way John, my house is just over there.¡± Old lady Margaret then said. I followed her silently while keeping a bit of a distance, I had planned to throw down the bag and then run for it if there was a need for it! The bag really was heavy, it was hard walking with it. Poor old lady had to carry all this by herself. I then noticed another small blue square on the right side of my vision, but ignored it for now. No use trying to see it when I can¡¯t understand it. We slowly walked in silence, and after about 5 minutes we finally reached her house. Luckily it was right on the edge of the fields so I didn¡¯t have to go through the congested streets of the village. Lucky me! She fiddled around with a key and then opened the door of her house and said, ¡°Thank you for the help dear boy. Why don¡¯t you put the bag over at the table there and I¡¯ll give you your rewards.¡± I have to go inside? No¡­ that sounds dangerous¡­ But I don¡¯t think she wants to hurt me¡­ Ah I¡¯ll just quickly put the bag and run away outside again! I quickly went towards the table and tried to put the bag down quickly, but a book fell down out of the bag! Oh no! I now have to spend more time picking up the book and¡­ wait¡­ a book? ¡°What¡¯s the problem John? You like the book?¡± asked Margaret. ¡°No¡­. Umm¡­ that is¡­ do you know how to read?¡± I asked hesitatingly ¡°Know how to read? Hahahaha! What are you talking about boy? I love to read! I have been reading books since I was a wee little las! That whole bag is filled with the latest books I just got from the library!¡± said Margaret with a proud smile on her face. ¡°Now, enough chit chat, thank you for your help once again! Here come I will give you your reward.¡± Library? What¡¯s that? Eh¡­ another basic thing I probably don¡¯t know. That¡¯s it! That¡¯s too many things I don¡¯t know! I have to learn quickly! This old woman seems a bit crazy but I don¡¯t know she doesn¡¯t seem harmful. I can always run away! And what¡¯s this about rewards she keeps saying? Something in return for my help? Ooh! I have an idea! ¡°Miss Margaret, could you please teach me how to read as a reward?¡± I asked with a firm heart. This old lady might be the best chance for me to learn safely. ¡°Huh? Teach you how to read? Young man don¡¯t say you don¡¯t even know how to read at your age?¡± I lowered my head down in shame. What could I say? I really was ashamed at how much I didn¡¯t know. Before I knew it my eyes started to cloud over with tears¡­ ¡°Ah.. don¡¯t worry child. I was just surprised that¡¯s all. No need to be ashamed about anything. I¡¯ll teach you everything I know!¡± Margaret said with a kind smile on her face. This is great! I wiped away my tears and asked excitedly, ¡°Really? You promise?¡± Laughing, Margaret said, ¡°Yes yes sweet boy, I promise to teach you how to read.¡± There was suddenly another DING! sound and my vision was once again covered by a blue square. Quest update: Help Margaret You have completed this quest! I hurriedly swiped my hand to push the blue square away and excitedly turned to Margaret. Finally I will be able to start learning how to read! This is great! ¡°That¡¯s the spirit! You remind of my younger days when I used to be so eager to read. Come over boy, I¡¯ll start you off by teaching you the alphabet, do you know what that is?¡± asked Margaret. ¡°Ummm¡­ no?¡± Another basic thing I don¡¯t know¡­ When will I start to be able to understand things! I¡¯m more determined then ever now! Learning is a must for me! ¡°No worries, I¡¯ll start you off right from the start then. But it will take a long time so you must not get tired no matter what, understand?¡± I nodded, yes, no shortcuts while learning! Margaret beckoned me to come over to the table and I advanced firmly, ¡®I don¡¯t care how scared I am of being indoors, I have to push away my fears. I must learn!¡¯ -------- Author''s note: Sorry I have been unable to respond to some of the previous comments on the earlier chapters, I''ll get to it soon. Hope you enjoy reading this chapter, I''m still having a hard time deciding on a specific length for a chapter... I wrote this in a hurry so if there are any mistakes please do let me know so I can correct them. Thanks for reading! Edit: Corrected some mistakes I spotted. Also, I think the previous font was a bit better...? Chapter Seven: I really hope this works Dr. Richard¡¯s POV: It was such a pleasant change seeing John actually standing up on his own two feet, even if it wasn¡¯t his real body. The eyes that had always been completely lifeless, were now shining with a variety of emotions. It was so sweet seeing his child-like behaviour. Perhaps it¡¯s for the best that he isn¡¯t mature enough to know what kind of a terrible life he has spent so far. I can only imagine what he might feel when he learns the truth. His reaction on seeing how he had grown was the most adorable thing I had ever seen! It¡¯s funny, I never thought for even a second how weird it was for a 17 year old to have such a child-like behaviour. It must have been because I knew his background¡­ let¡¯s not think about that terrible past right now. As a doctor, I was always trained to keep my emotions in check while dealing with patients. But somehow, as soon as I lay my eyes on the little boy 9 years ago I had been unable to think logically. I even punched that asshole of a father right in the face! Ah¡­ that punch really did feel good! It always brings a smile to my face remembering that poor excuse of a human getting hurt for once. John Doe¡­ It had now become such a special name for me. It¡¯s up to a point where it feels bad giving that name to another unknown person that arrives in this hospital. I still remember about 6 years ago when a number of nurses and doctors gathered around for a meeting just to decide whether to continue using this name for the patient in room 306 or to change it and choose a better one. ¡°We can¡¯t just choose a name for someone who doesn¡¯t even know we exist! Instead we should strive to cure him so that he can one day wake up and choose his own name!¡± This short speech spoken by nurse Sandra was what finally decided the outcome of that meeting. We all left that day with a renewed desire to somehow wake John up. We all also unconsciously started referring to him simply as ¡®John¡¯ instead of ¡®John Doe¡¯, just to differentiate him somehow. It¡¯s amazing how much John has been able to affect my life. After learning of his circumstances, I became fiercely determined to advance through the ranks to somehow gain some power so that I may be able to even slightly help others in similar position to John¡¯s. Although I have yet to find any other person in as terrible a state as John, I did find a lot of unfortunate souls that I tried my hardest to help. I¡¯m not sure whether it¡¯s good or bad that I haven¡¯t found someone in as poor a state as John¡­ It may mean that no one else out there is suffering as much as John did, or it may mean that I just haven¡¯t been able to find them yet. I really hope it¡¯s the former. Looking at John getting so excited about playing the game did make my heart warm. I originally thought I would get a slight pang of jealousy seeing him getting to play in the elusive Beta test, but thankfully all I felt was happiness at seeing his excitement. I don¡¯t know what I would have thought of myself if I got jealous at the first good thing to happen to the poor boy in his life. When John finally left to play the game, I discussed with Leonard about whether it was the right thing to do about keeping John in the dark about so much, but his answer seemed to make sense. Why not let the boy enjoy the game without any worry for a bit? As me and Leonard logged out and returned to room 306, we were immediately bombarded with questions. With a slight amused glance towards Leonard, I began explaining what happened inside to the two nurses, while Leonard started talking with his technicians. Their expressions while retelling the story were hilarious, horrified at how John screamed with fright at the start, relieved when he calmed down, laughing when he found out how he had grown and finally crying while smiling when I told them how excited he was to play the game. Poor nurse Sandra was practically bawling by the end! I left nurse Sandra in the arms of the other nurse, still bawling, and left the room, only to be surrounded by what seemed like every single nurse on the floor, demanding to know what all went down. Really, their fierce expressions made me take a step back before I had to remind myself that all they wanted was information, not my life! I retold the story again, with many stops in between as people kept asking me to repeat myself when they couldn¡¯t hear me properly. I ended up standing on top of a chair in the center surrounded by eager nurses on all sides, I even spotted a few doctors and other staff in between. By the end, everyone was practically in tears again and ended up in each other¡¯s arms. I gave them a good 5 minutes to cry themselves out before reminding them that there still are plenty of other patients that need our care. They all laughed and dispersed slowly, still wiping away their tears. It really was such a warm sight and I realized I had tears slowly rolling down my cheeks too. I wiped them away and continued towards my office with a smile. Today was really a good day. All I hope is that this experimental treatment somehow works and John gets cured! Nurse Sandra¡¯s POV: I really am getting too old for this¡­ If it weren¡¯t for John I would have retired long ago. He¡¯s the only thing that keeps me going through the long hours of constant work without much gratitude. I count myself so lucky that I was one of the few people who have been with John ever since he arrived all those years ago. Taking care of him all these years while he grows up from a young boy to a handsome young man has been one of the greatest joys of my life! I can¡¯t even imagine what those animals were thinking when they made dear John go through hell. I felt bad when I shouted at my own children with anger, and they didn¡¯t even bat an eye while they did horrific things to their own flesh and blood! Yes, I checked it 3 times myself to make sure, John really is their child. How someone could mistreat their own child in such an extreme manner I have absolutely no idea! I sometimes feel bad that I wasn¡¯t there earlier to save John from their evil hands. I feel like if only I had put just a bit of an effort into looking at what people were doing, I would have been able to find John somehow. It won¡¯t have been too hard, for I only live a block away from where John suffered. That¡¯s my greatest shame, to even be slightly associated with those animals. It¡¯s also my greatest fear, I shudder to think what my colleagues would think of me if they found out how close I was to John for all his life and yet was unable to do anything. They would probably think I¡¯m a monster too. I immediately started looking for a new house, and after convincing my husband and children with great difficulty, we were able to move away from that terrible neighborhood about 2 months after John first arrived. By that time, both his parents had already been sentenced to 20 years without parole. I have kept a sharp eye on any news regarding them, but so far I¡¯m glad to know that there are no signs of them being released early. I¡¯m not really a supporter of the death penalty, but let¡¯s just say I know two people who would look very nice sitting on a certain electric chair¡­. Anyway¡­. I tried to to compensate for not doing anything while being so close to John all those years. I talked to him as much as I could, shared with him stories about my daughter and my two boys, read him books and massaged him as much as possible to stop his muscles from completely deteriorating from lack of use. It obviously wasn¡¯t enough, but it really is the least I could do. Although it first started off as me compensating, it soon turned to something much deeper. I actually started thinking of John as my own son, though I have no idea when this started. When I learned of how some unknown game company wants to run an experiment on little John, I became so scared. I knew I didn¡¯t hold any power to stop them from coming and performing their experiments, I really felt helpless. But Dr. Richard calmed me down and explained to me how it was all going to be fine. He really is a fine young man. When they started wiring all sorts of God knows what in John¡¯s room, I really couldn¡¯t stop shaking and had to hold onto nurse Joy for support, lucky she was there with me in the room. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. When the man called Leonard and Dr. Richard put on some kind of headgear and closed their eyes, the entire room fell silent. I thought the TV they had connected would show us the entire meeting but apparently Leonard asked the technicians not to show the meeting live¡­ I had a feeling I wasn¡¯t going to like the Leonard guy much! I had never felt such a tense silence before in my life! If it weren¡¯t for the constant beeping of the machines, I felt as if the absolute silence would have suffocated us all! After what felt like an eternity, Dr. Richard and Leonard finally arrived back to Earth! I immediately went to Dr. Richard and demanded he tell me all about what happened at once! My heart broke when I heard about how John had first reacted, I should have known something like this would have happened! But then Dr. Richard said he calmed down soon after, thank God! It was so nice to hear about how surprised he was with his bigger body. I had to laugh when Dr. Richard told me how John said, ¡°OH MY GOD! ! How am I so tall? When did I grow so big?" Such a precious child he is, it¡¯s so refreshing to hear about his sweet reactions. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn¡¯t hold back my tears while Dr. Richard was telling us about how excited John was to play the game where he could run around or do anything he likes! It must have been so wonderful for him to be able to walk again, even though it wasn¡¯t really his real body. How I wish I could have been there inside that room too to greet John. I feel so jealous of Dr. Richard and that Leonard fellow! I really don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to like him much¡­ I wish I could have seen John standing, hear his voice and look into his bright eyes. I can¡¯t wait any longer to speak to him! That¡¯s it, next time I am going inside that room no matter what! As I cried my eyes out on the shoulders of nurse joy, all I kept thinking was, ¡®I pray to God that this treatment works!¡¯ Leonard¡¯s POV: I remember how I used to think how unlucky I was when I was younger. My family never had much money. We lived in a small apartment and barely got by. I remember how I used to blame my parents for their inability to provide a better lifestyle. It was obviously their laziness that was to blame. If someone works hard enough, they should be able to get plenty of money. With that in mind, I worked extremely hard my entire life and climbed up to be the CEO of a gigantic global business at the mere age of 24. I remember how proud I felt then and how I had moved my parents to a grand house showing them how easy it is for me to get money. I remember how the looked at me that time. And I remember how I didn¡¯t care at all what they thought about me. That all changed 16 weeks ago. It started by someone discovering how our game could somehow be used to treat patients with mental illnesses. It originally was only meant to be restricted to people with social problems, to help them grow more confident while interacting with people inside the game. However, soon enough it spread out to a seriously wide expanse of diseases which could potentially be cured. From letting blind, deaf and dumb people see, hear and speak for the first time, albeit in a virtual world. To helping patients with movement disorders by allowing them to move about freely in the virtual world. It finally ended up by people claiming that they could even wake people up from a coma with this game! I remember thinking how wonderful all these new aspects were, even if we didn¡¯t cure people we would at least be able to help them with enjoying their life again. But before we started getting too excited, one of the directors pointed out that these were all just baseless theories, and we needed solid proof of if we can actually do what we are thinking about. He then ordered us to find someone, preferably unconscious for a long period of time, not too old not too young and not have many family or relatives that could be troublesome. 3 weeks later, we had found the perfect subject. A 17 year old young boy had been in a coma for the last 9 years, with no family/relatives around. It was all that we were looking for! No one really cared about why the boy had been in a coma, all everyone cared about was how it could result in even more profits if their device somehow managed to cure such a serious illness! I was the same, but curiosity got the better of me and I went to see for myself what the young boy looked like by finding out from the staff where exactly he was staying. A short flight later, I arrived at the Cleveland Clinic and went towards room 306, where I had been informed the boy was situated. I calmly slipped into the room and saw the boy, and had barely taken a step forward before the door burst open with two nurses in front and three at the back, fierce expressions on their faces. ¡°And what exactly do you think you are doing in here?¡± The elderly nurse in front asked me. Gulping, I made an excuse of ¡°Sorry, wrong room¡± and hastily fled out of the room at top speed for fear of my life! I was thankful that I had worn a hat that hid my face otherwise who knows what would have happened if they recognized me! After escaping, I immediately ordered some staff to collect the information while I fled away to the safety of my office. After a few more days of waiting I finally got the details of the boy¡¯s story. It really was heartbreaking! How could someone treat their own child this way? I couldn¡¯t even imagine it¡­ Suddenly I remembered how my parents had taken care of me. How they fed me till I was full while only eating a little themselves. How they had always let me have the most comfortable bed while themselves sleeping on the almost broken one. And how had I repaid them after all the love they showed me¡­.? I am a horrible human being! I thought they were terrible parents for not having enough money to support me, but now I knew what terrible parents really are like! I immediately bolted towards my parent¡¯s house and bowed in front of them while begging them to forgive me. We all hugged and cried a lot that day. This John Doe had unknowingly allowed me to see reality and ended up bringing me closer to my family. I vowed that day to not let John down, and to help him no matter what. Everyone was surprised by how much I personally started to get involved with John, while giving my duties towards the upcoming Beta test second priority, but no one said anything to the me, after all I am the CEO here. I personally double and triple checked everything before finally going towards the hospital, this time without hiding my face, to ask them permission. I kept a really close eye all the way through the day where John finally took his first steps into the game world. It was lucky I remembered to ask the technicians not to show the meeting live on the TV, as I feared the nurses would do something terrible to me if I made even the slightest mistake! It was really refreshing to meet John in person, and I felt extremely privileged to have been one of the first people to have met this gem. I promised John not to show his game on the TV and I fully intend to keep his promise! He wants his privacy and he will get it! Obviously we have to keep monitoring his brain waves and health, and we have access to all stats of all players, including John, but I won¡¯t allow anyone to get ahead of this! As I left the hospital to go back to my office that night after seeing John off to play the game, all I could think was, ¡®I really hope this experiment works and is able to help John.¡¯ --------- Author''s note: I decided to add a little backstory to the other 3 main characters that have been introduced so far, as there wasn''t much known about them yet. Next chapter will be back to John and the game-world. As always any and all feedback is welcome. Let me know if you spot any mistakes. P.S.: Nurse Joy.... Yes, that had to be done! I might even bring in Ash, Brock and Misty... who knows? Chapter Eight: Hard work pays off Leonard¡¯s POV: It¡¯s already been 7 days since John entered the game, and I can¡¯t help but feel extremely stupid. In my excitement, I completely forgot to tell him ANYTHING about how to play the game! I don¡¯t know why I assumed he would be just like everyone else and be able to figure everything out easily¡­ Yeah I know¡­ Stupid me! Time passes by 4 times quicker in our game, so 7 days means 28 days during which John has been inside the game. Yes, 28 days straight he has stayed inside the game! Why? Because I don¡¯t think he even knows how to logout!! He doesn¡¯t know anything at all about the game, and what did I do? Pushed him into the game without even batting an eye! Yup¡­ Stupid me! I realized he didn¡¯t know anything about the game too late. It had been about 27 real-world hours since John entered the game when we started to get worried about why he hadn¡¯t logged out yet. Unlike other players who would log out and return to the real world, John would come into the specially designed room where me and Dr. Richard first met John. But does John know this¡­ nope! I know... I know¡­ *sigh* By the time John had been inside for 30 straight hours I couldn¡¯t help but worry what he was doing so I started digging around his account logs to see what he had been up to. The logs showed basically everything apart from the video of the game being played, and John¡¯s account logs were surprising to say the least. They showed that he gained 2 stamina points just a few minutes after starting the game. Then he started his first quest, a simple quest in which all he had to do was help a woman carry her bag to her house and he gained a point in strength during the quest, perhaps by carrying the bag? But after the quest ended was when things started to get weird. Instead of going forward with the game, John stayed in the same place the quest ended for a long time, only venturing out a few times during the day then quickly returning back to the old lady¡¯s house. This was weird enough, why would anyone want to stay so near the starting point? But that wasn¡¯t all! As he stayed near the old woman¡¯s house, he started gaining stats like crazy! First he gained many points in intelligence, followed by a few in wisdom. He then went on to start gaining stat points in dexterity, strength, stamina and also had a small gain in luck! He also managed to create a new stat: charm! To top off all the weirdness, he started gaining skills rapidly! Fast reader, quick learner, wood cutting proficiency, herb-gathering, bow-mastery, Axe-mastery, cooking and tailoring. And he was still at level one!!! Just what is he doing?!? Unable to make sense of anything, I gave in to my curiosity and opened up the video logs of his account and started off from the start. It showed how he ran about while laughing his head off in the field as soon as he started. With a smile I thought, ¡®well at least I did one thing right by starting him off on the other side of the village away from all other beta players. Otherwise they would have definitely made fun of him¡­¡¯ John then stopped running and met the old lady soon after, finished the quest but then he went inside the old lady¡¯s house and didn¡¯t come out for a long time! I re-winded back to just before John finished his quest and enabled the sound, and I heard how John if the old lady could teach him how to read¡­ Oh my God! What have I done?? I sent John into the game when he didn¡¯t even know how to read?! After I realized what I had done, I immediately stopped the video logs and made a decision. As soon as the Beta test is over and John comes out of the game, I will personally see to it that he can get any information he wants when he wants it! It¡¯s already been 28 game days since the beta test started, and it was only scheduled to run for 30 days in-game. It¡¯s not long before John will be forced to logout, and I will be waiting for him in his virtual room to answer any and all questions that he may have! I just hope that the third floor nurses don¡¯t find out about how I sent John in without him knowing anything¡­ Because if they find out¡­ *shudder*... Let¡¯s not think about that¡­ I asked my secretary to not disturb me at all while I put on the custom headset and waited with my eyes on the clock. As soon as there are 10 minutes remaining in the beta test, I will start my headset and wait for John to come! John¡¯s POV: I know how to read now! Not just that, I can now do so many other things too! It¡¯s been almost a month since I asked Miss Margaret to teach me, and she has been so kind to me all this time¡­ It¡¯s like she isn¡¯t an actual human being! Or maybe she is just a rare nice human¡­.? I don¡¯t know¡­ Anyways, she started to teach me how to read and it was so difficult! I really had to work so hard at the beginning, but I never gave up! Miss Margaret also offered to let me stay at her house while I studied under her. At first I was scared¡­ Maybe she wanted to tie me up and start hurting me while I slept like my parents did¡­? I saw the room she offered me and it had a window! First thing I did as soon as Miss Margaret went away was to jump out of the window to see if I could escape through there if there was a need to¡­ And it was a success! With my escape route decided, I agreed to stay in her house, but I always made sure to block the door from the inside with chairs so that if someone opened it during the night I would be able to hear it and jump out and start running¡­. After staying with Miss Margaret a few days and making little progress with learning how to read, I started feeling bad that I was taking so long. It was also bad that she had to keep feeding me and providing me with a place to stay while I did nothing for her. I made a decision and asked her if there was anything at all that I could do to help her around the house. With a smile she asked me if I could bring in water from the well outside and of course I agreed! I brought a bucket full of water back from the well¡­ It was so heavy! Then she asked me if I could dust up and clean the house a bit, and I was very happy to help her for a change! After a few hours of cleaning and scrubbing though I was regretting it, my arms were sore all over! But then she made me a nice warm soup and it was so delicious that all the pain in my arms seemed to vanish! During the next few days I helped her with everything I could and I found out how multi-talented Miss Margaret really is! She knows how to read, how to cook, how to gather herbs, how to make clothes, how to clean clothes, how to collect firewood and she could use a bow to hunt animals! It was like she was super-woman!! I begged her to teach me everything else too apart from reading, and after some convincing she gave in. Yayyy! I learned so much it was amazing! At first, it was really difficult for me to understand, but I noticed there was a DING! sound somewhere and after that sound it became really easy for me to learn everything! I still ignored the tiny blue squares that kept flashing in the corner of my vision because I couldn¡¯t read yet. I just concentrated on learning everything I could! Over the next few days, I used to get up early in the morning, get water from the well and collect firewood which I had to then chop up into little pieces with an axe that Miss Margaret gave to me. Then I helped a little with Miss Margaret in cooking breakfast, after which was the morning reading session. After a couple hours of reading, me and Miss Margaret would go outside where she would teach me archery. I didn¡¯t like hurting the little bunnies or the squirrels, so I only practiced on wooden targets. After archery lessons, we would go gather up some herbs to use in cooking. Miss Margaret taught me which herbs are supposed to be eaten and which ones are supposed to be avoided. After herbs had been collected we went back to the house where I helped her make lunch. After lunch, she usually took a nap while I tried to read some more. When she woke up from her nap, she would help me some more with my reading till dinner time. I again helped her with the cooking and after we had eaten, she would teach me how to sew clothes. She even made me a couple of shirts and new pants to wear! It was the first time I got new clothes in my life! This was my daily routine and I got better and better with everything, especially reading! I can now read fast and can even understand most of the big, difficult words! Today, after almost a month of learning so much, I am sitting on my bed excitedly. It¡¯s night-time, and I have decided to finally open up all the blue squares and see what they mean, because now I will be able to understand them! Holding my breath, I touched the first square¡­ Congratulations! Due to constantly understanding new information you have gained a bonus. +1 Intelligence Wow! I got more intelligent! And there were many of these squares! I counted and I had gained 39 points of intelligence! I am so smart! Hehe¡­ I then opened up the next square¡­ Congratulations! Due to constantly making smart decisions you have gained a bonus. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.+1 Wisdom Oooh! I am wise too now! This is great! I counted and there were only 6 points I got in Wisdom, not as much as intelligence but it is still good! I decided to open up all the rest of the windows because I just couldn¡¯t wait anymore! Congratulations! Due to constantly pushing your body to the limits you have gained a bonus. +1 Stamina Congratulations! Due to repeatedly doing hard physical work you have gained a bonus. +1 Strength Congratulations! For using your hands to perform different tasks you have gained a bonus. +1 Dexterity Congratulations! Due to finding so many useful things at one place, you have gained a bonus. +5 Luck Congratulations! By managing to convince Margaret to teach you so many different things you have gained a bonus. New stat: Charm! +20 Charm Congratulations! By constantly reading you have gained a new skill: Fast Reader (Beginner lvl5: 68%) You will now be able to read books much faster. Passive Congratulations! By always trying to learn new things you have gained a new skill: Quick Learner (Beginner lvl3: 47%) You will now be able to learn skills and improve them much faster. Passive Congratulations! By repeatedly cutting wood you have gained a new skill: Woodcutting proficiency (Beginner lvl3: 84%) You will now be able to cut wood faster and with more finesse. Active Congratulations! By constantly using an axe you have gained a new skill: Axe Mastery (Beginner lvl2: 93%) Using an axe will provide you with a damage increase. +2% damage when using an axe Passive Congratulations! By using the bow repeatedly you have gained a new skill: Bow Mastery (Beginner lvl1: 98%) Using a bow will give you more more attack speed and damage. +0.5% attack speed and +0.5% damage when using a bow. Passive Congratulations! By gathering herbs repeatedly you have gained a new skill: Herb-Gathering (Beginner lvl4: 09%) You will now be able to tell different types of herbs just by sight. Active Congratulations! By helping to cook meals daily you have gained a new skill: Cooking (Beginner lvl1: 72%) You can now cook a small variety of dishes with a decent taste. Active Congratulations! By learning how to sew you have gained a new skill: Tailoring (Beginner lvl2: 17%) You can now make basic clothes out of basic materials. Active Wow! I am completely speechless! I had to calm down before starting to read the barrage of squares in front of me. I read them one by one and got more and more astonished after each one! All in all, I gained 27 points in stamina, 19 in strength and 33 in dexterity! I also got 5 luck and 20 charm! I have no idea what most of this means but I do now that I am much stronger now! I also gained so many skills! And this quick learner skill must have been the reason why it got easier for me to learn new things as time went on¡­ I really have to thank Miss Margaret for helping me so much during this past month! I hope I can repay her someday¡­ I have to figure out how all of this will help me in the future as I still don¡¯t understand a lot of it, all I can say is that hard work really does pay off! ------- Author''s note: Okay, I''m having trouble adding tables here, can anyone help me? I added this without proof-reading first so please let me know if there are any mistakes. Thanks for reading! :) Chapter Nine: This is so unfair! John¡¯s POV: I just couldn¡¯t wipe the grin off my face! This is all so wonderful! It¡¯s only been a month and I have gotten so much work done and have gotten so much stronger that it¡¯s crazy! It¡¯s all thanks to Miss Margaret, I really owe her a lot! I wonder if I should give her something as a gift¡­? Oooh I could make something for her! But no¡­ I¡¯m not that good in anything yet¡­ I should wait till I get better before making her a gift! With that decided, I started looking through the blue squares again. I didn¡¯t understand some of the things like the ¡®Beginner lvl¡¯ that was showing on so many things, perhaps it shows that I¡¯m just an amateur right now and it will tell me when I practice more and get better¡­? I think that¡¯s it¡­ It¡¯s strange, I sometimes get the feeling that something or someone is helping me when I perform tasks¡­ like my hand would somehow be guided at the exact point on where to strike the wood I¡¯m cutting to cut it in one swing. Or how my hands would automatically start sewing properly when I used to do some tailoring. It¡¯s really weird¡­ I wonder what it is that helps me¡­? Anyway¡­ This ¡®quick learner¡¯ skill is the best I think. This must be why Miss Margaret always said how she has never seen anyone else learn as fast as I did. If this is the reason why I picked up so many things so quickly then I¡¯m very thankful for it! This will enable me to learn quickly and get stronger faster! Still with a grin on my face, I fell into a comfortable sleep dreaming about getting stronger. It felt like I had barely gone to sleep when a loud DING! sound woke me up! I opened my eyes and my whole vision was filled with a flashing blue square! System Notice! Attention all players, the beta test will end shortly. Please make sure to finish up all your tasks and log out, otherwise you will be forcefully logged out when the beta test ends. Thank you for participating in our beta test and helping to make this game better with your valuable feedback! Time remaining in beta test: 20 minutes. Huh¡­? What¡­? I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, still half asleep, while I tried to understand what this thing that woke me up was saying¡­ The beta test! I had completely forgotten that this was something that Mr. Leonard said all those days ago! I still don¡¯t know what it meant¡­ Logout¡­ What does that meant¡­? ¡®This game¡­¡¯ That¡¯s right! I had completely forgotten that this is all a game! It feels so real! The more I thought about how this was all a game, the more stupid I felt. The blue square thingies now made sense and how my hands somehow felt guided to perform tasks also made sense¡­ this must all be related to this game! Wow¡­ It took a blue square to remind me that this is all a game¡­ Idiot John! Wait a minute¡­ It¡¯s been almost a month and I haven¡¯t had a need to go to the bathroom all this time even though I have been eating and drinking¡­ Even with this weird fact staring at me I failed to remember that I was in a game¡­ Yeah, I must be a special kind of idiot! Still scolding myself, I suddenly remembered¡­ Miss Margaret! Is she a real person? Or just some kind of game system too¡­? I had always thought of her as a real person¡­ But no, this makes more sense! Obviously she isn¡¯t a real human, she¡¯s too nice to be real! I should have realized this sooner too! Oddly enough, I didn¡¯t feel sad at realizing she wasn¡¯t someone ¡®real¡¯. She was real enough for me and I don¡¯t care what any blue square says, she is my teacher and a wonderful person! I glanced at the blue square firmly and was about to swipe the thing away when I noticed the time.. 20 minutes! Does this mean that I will have to leave this place after 20 minutes¡­? But¡­ I don¡¯t want to leave! I don¡¯t want to leave Miss Margaret! Oh no¡­ I didn¡¯t even make her a present! And now there isn¡¯t enough time! I am such a terrible person! I don¡¯t have enough time to be sad now! I have to go and see Miss Margaret! Otherwise I will be forced to leave without even saying goodbye! Angrily swiping the blue square away, I barely noticed the sunlight streaming in from the window signalling that the day had started, as I pushed away all the chairs from the door and ran downstairs toward Miss Margaret. I found her in the kitchen getting ready to prepare breakfast, she noticed me and said, ¡°Good morning young¡­ What is it? Is something wrong??¡± She hurriedly asked. She must have noticed my face full of tears I guess. I ran towards her and hugged her tightly, not wanting to leave her side. I felt silly at how afraid I was of her when we first met, and I felt bad that I didn¡¯t trust her enough to stop blocking my door after all she has done. I couldn¡¯t even make any words come out as I sobbed uncontrollably in her embrace. She seemed shocked at first but then she gently started patting my head without saying a word. She is so nice! I finally managed to croak out, ¡°I¡¯m so sorry Miss Margaret. I have to leave soon¡­ I don¡¯t know when I will be back¡­¡± ¡°There there child, that¡¯s no reason to worry! Do you think your leaving will change anything? You are my son, and no matter where you go or how far you are I will always be here and you can come find me whenever you like¡± A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. I couldn¡¯t even come up with any reply as the tears kept falling, and I could see Miss Margaret also tearing up a little while she had a very kind smile on her face. I kept hugging her tightly without wanting to let go for a long, long time. Before I knew it there was another DING! sound and white light started engulfing me¡­ I knew I was going to leave now no matter what I did. This is so unfair, I really don¡¯t want to leave! Before the light could engulf me completely, I managed to say, ¡°Thank you for everything Miss Margaret, I will never forget you. I promise to come and meet you as soon as I can.¡± The white light then completely enveloped me, and all I could hope was that she heard my promise¡­. End of POV. --------- Meanwhile, in a certain specially designed virtual room, a young man named Leonard Hodges was impatiently waiting for John to arrive. As soon as the notice for the end of the beta test had been released Leonard had immediately put on his headset and arrived in this virtual room, with his heart set on providing John with all information that he would want to know. He was also going to explain about how he was still in a coma, and he didn¡¯t even inform the hospital that he was going to share this information with John. ¡®I will no longer let John be in a position where he is forced to learn everything himself without any prior knowledge¡¯ he thought. A few minutes later, white light flashed and John appeared in the room. However, something was wrong. John¡¯s face was covered in tears and he immediately fell on his knees crying uncontrollably. ¡°John! What¡¯s the matter?!¡± asked Leonard in alarm while hurrying over to John and trying to comfort him. It took a long time for John to calm down and realize where he was and that Leonard was in the room with him. ¡°Mr. Leonard, when will I be able to go back to see Miss Margaret again¡­?¡± he simply asked with eyes full of tears. Puzzled, Leonard looked at John¡¯s face with no idea on who John was referring to. It took a while for him to remember the title of his first quest ¡®Help Margaret¡¯ and he remembered that John had been staying with the old woman all this time. He had no idea on what to say¡­ Truth was that the village in the beta test wasn¡¯t going to be present when the game actually opened, so that beta testers wouldn¡¯t have a huge advantage over others. Furthermore, after the beta test, any NPCs would have their memories wiped so that beta testers won¡¯t be able to capitalize on their existing relationships and get preferential treatment. But he didn¡¯t have the heart to say all of this to John in such a state, so all he managed to say was, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, as soon as the game starts you can meet her again.¡± At this, John visibly cheered up and started wiping away his tears. Looking for some kind of distraction to take away the attention of John, Leonard spotted the laptop on the desk and an idea came to him. ¡°John,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m sorry that I forgot to inform you about the basics of the game. It was all my fault for thinking that you would know everything. Please forgive me. I came here today to help guide you through the basics of the game. Come here, I will teach you how to use this laptop so you can learn anything you want!¡± ¡°Oh wow, really? But I don¡¯t think I should use it¡­ what if I spoil it?¡± Asked John timidly. ¡°No worries, I will teach you how to properly use it so that there won¡¯t be any chance of you spoiling it!¡± said Leonard with a kind smile on his face. ¡°Awesome!¡± Exclaimed John while jumping up and running towards the laptop with eyes shining like diamonds. Chuckling at the enthusiastic boy, Leonard switched the laptop on and started teaching John all the basics. How to switch the laptop on, how to operate it, how to connect to the internet etc¡­ Leonard was surprised at how quickly John was picking up things, it took him no time at all to get the hang of the basics. Then Leonard started teaching John about how to browse the internet and how to search for stuff. He showed him the official website for Conqueror and opened up the basic guide which listed all basic things related to the game like what stats mean and what classes there are etc. Leaving John to read the guide, Leonard backed away deep in thought. He had decided to yet again postpone telling him about his condition and the outside world. He would ask John to stay in here and keep him occupied with the laptop. He decided that it would be best if Dr. Richard or one of the nurses were to inform him about the specifics, as they would be able to explain much better. Little did Leonard know, at this time almost all the staff of Cleveland Clinic had tears in their eyes. The doctors and nurses of floor 3 and the ones close to John were especially distraught¡­ As one of their own had just passed away from this world¡­ Unknown to John, one of the very few people in this world that actually considered John as family had just died¡­ ------- Author''s note: Had a busy day so didn''t have time to finish this quicker... Please do let me know what you guys think of my work so far, whether it be through comments, private messages or reviews. Thanks a lot to all the comments on my previous chapters! Hope you all enjoy reading this chapter and thanks once again for reading! :) Chapter Ten: Revelations John¡¯s POV: I was still a bit sad over not being able to see Miss Margaret, but Mr. Leonard assured me that I would be able to see her as soon as the game starts. The game is scheduled to be released in 3 months time, and I am determined to find out everything I can about it during this time. The laptop that Mr Leonard gave to me was a huge help! After some time trying to learn the basics of using it, Mr. Leonard opened up a guide that contained all basic knowledge of the game and I started studying it diligently. After some time I came across something I didn¡¯t understand and turned around to ask Mr. Leonard, but he was already gone. I wonder when he left? Shrugging, I made a mental note to ask him the next time he comes around and went back to studying the guide. Over the next few days, I went through the guide many times and asked questions to Mr. Leonard constantly. He also showed me some forums and blogs where people discussed games, and I was able to get some more insight from there. Basically, the game was the first of its kind as it boasted 99% realism¡­ I have no idea which 1% wasn¡¯t real¡­ Maybe the fact that no one has to go to the toilet in the game¡­.? Anyway¡­ The main goal of the game was to rule over lands. If you could become powerful enough, you could come into control of a village, a city, a territory containing a few cities, a kingdom, a continent or one could even come into control over all the continents and in turn control the whole game. Thus, the game was named ¡°Conqueror.¡± I asked Mr. Leonard, ¡°Wouldn¡¯t it become incredibly boring for everyone if one person could control the entire game?¡± but he just laughed and informed me that it would be incredibly difficult for a person to conquer a city, let alone all the continents, as the NPC armies had been designed to be much stronger then the players. NPC- Non Player Characters. I found out that these are programmed ¡®people¡¯ that are residents inside the game¡­ or something like that. Basically they are there to help players through quests or information. Miss Margaret was also one of them. It must be why she was so nice¡­ I think I will be able to interact with NPCs without getting hurt¡­ It¡¯s the other players that I have to be careful of. Mr. Leonard also told me that it would take around 2 years in game for someone to become strong enough to take over a city with their guild. I was confused when he mentioned the words ¡®in game¡¯, and he informed me that time moves 4 times faster in the game world as compared to the real one. That was shocking to say the least, 1 day in the real world means 4 days in the game! It also meant that if I were to stay in the game as I did during the beta test, I would be able to ¡®live¡¯ 4 times longer then the other average humans¡­ hehe¡­ But I don¡¯t think that would be too healthy¡­ Next thing I learned was players could form ¡®guilds¡¯. Basically it¡¯s an organization made entirely out of players. The minimum requirement to join a guild is level 50, while the minimum requirement for creating a guild is to reach level 75. It also costs 50 gold to create a guild. Levels¡­ this was something so basic that the basic guide barely had any information about it! I had to resort to asking Mr. Leonard about this as he firmly told me to ask him any questions without any concern for how basic the question was. He told me that players can gain ¡®experience¡¯ from killing monsters, doing quests or participating in events. When the experience bar reaches 100% the player levels up and the experience bar returns to 0%. Higher level players have a lot of advantages apart from creating/joining guilds. They will be able to get better quests, better equipment and each level up awards 10 stat points to strengthen up characters, so higher level players are generally stronger then lower level ones, though this is not an absolute rule. The game currency is divided into three coins: Copper coins, silver coins and gold coins. 100 Coppers = 1 silver and 100 silvers = 1 gold. As for stats, every player starts off with 6 basic stats and 2 special ones, which are: Basic stats: Strength - It affects physical strength, higher strength basically means higher physical damage. Each point in strength also increases base health by 10. Agility - It affects movement speed and evasion rate. Stamina - It affects how long you can move for without getting tired. It also affects Health regeneration, each point in stamina raises health regeneration by 0.01/second. Intelligence - It affects magical damage and each point in intelligence also increases base mana by 10. Wisdom - It affects the efficiency of magic spells i.e. higher wisdom lessens cast time for spells and also increases the range of magical attacks. Mana regeneration is also affected, each point in wisdom raises mana regeneration by 0.01/second. Dexterity - It affects crafting skills and critical hit rate. Higher dexterity also benefits long-ranged non-magical based classes like archers or knife-throwers etc. Special Stats: Fame - Increases when you do good and decreases when you do bad eg: If you save the life of someone, your fame will increase. Similarly, if you take the life of someone fame will decrease. Higher fame gets you benefits like access to higher tiered quests or getting favourable treatment from NPCs etc. Luck - As the name suggests, it affects your luck. The higher your luck stat the higher the chances of something ¡®lucky¡¯ happening to you. Incidentally, the ¡®Charm¡¯ stat I gained is also a special stat, but it¡¯s effects were not listed in the guide. I also didn¡¯t quite understand the explanation Mr. Leonard gave me when I asked him about it¡­ Something about how I may have a higher chance of getting NPCs to agree with me¡­ It sounded a lot like the fame stat but Mr. Leonard assured me it was different. I guess I will find out more when I start playing the game¡­ Anyways, special stats cannot have stat points distributed to them. You have to achieve specific circumstances in order to increase them, whereas the 10 stat points a player gets from each level up can be freely distributed among the 6 basic stats in any way a player wants to. The ¡®Status screen¡¯ of a new player starting out in the game would look like this: Status Screen: Name: New player Class: Wanderer Level: 1 Title(s): None Race: (Player Race) Gender: (Player Gender) Health: 100 Mana: 100 Health Regeneration: 0.1/second Mana Regeneration: 0.1/second Strength: 10 Intelligence: 10 Stamina: 10 Wisdom: 10 Dexterity: 10 Agility: 10 Fame: 0 Luck: 0 I was curious about my own status after I ended the beta test. I asked Mr. Leonard if I could see it. I was expecting Mr. Leonard to not show it to me or offer some resistance at least, but on the contrary he immediately showed me my status screen. Status Screen: Name: John Class: Wanderer Level: 1 Title(s): None Race: Human Gender: Male Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Health: 300 Mana: 490 Health Regeneration: 0.39/second Mana Regeneration: 0.16/second Strength: 30 Intelligence: 49 Stamina: 39 Wisdom: 16 Dexterity: 43 Agility: 10 Fame: 0 Luck: 5 Charm: 20 I have to say I was very pleased with myself, all that hard work I did really shone through on my status screen. All my stats apart from agility were higher than a normal player, with a huge difference in stats like dexterity, stamina and intelligence! I also had an extra stat - charm, and also gained 5 points in luck! Truly incredible! Similarly to the ¡®status screen¡¯, there¡¯s also a ¡®skills screen¡¯ where all the skills are listed. But Mr. Leonard informed me that new players had no skills and beta testers would only be allowed to take one skill if they wished to keep their account when the game started. That skill would also be lowered back down to beginner level 1(0%). I immediately knew which skill I would take with me when the game started, so I didn¡¯t bother looking at my ¡®skills screen¡¯. Skills incidentally also had experience bars similar to players, and the skill becomes progressively stronger as its level increases. Each skill has three stages: Beginner, Intermediate and Master, with 10 levels in each stage. So once a skill reaches beginner level 10 (100%), it will change into Intermediate level 1 (0%). Passing each stage of the skill unlocks new potential for the skill in question. Classes are basically the way in which a player wants to play. If someone wants to be a magician, he/she may choose a class like mage or warlock. Similarly if one wants to be a front-line tank, he/she may choose one of the high-defense classes like monks or knights. The wanderer class basically means the same thing as having no class. Players can choose which class they want to play as once they reach level 10. There are numerous basic classes which a player can choose, from swordsman to archer to mage to monk etc. But one player can only have one class and changing classes costs 100 gold! So it¡¯s better to choose your class wisely¡­ In addition to basic classes, there are also hidden and unique classes. A hidden class, as the name suggests, is not readily available and one has to either search for it or complete specific circumstances in order to get the class. Unique classes are basically hidden classes except for the fact that there can only be one player with a specific unique class in the entire game. I didn¡¯t really like the sound of any of the basic classes mentioned in the guide, so I decided to either play as a wanderer my whole time or if I get lucky enough, gain an opportunity for a hidden or even a unique class! There was also a system in place for every player which helped players perform tasks or skills. I realized it was the reason why my hand somehow felt ¡®guided¡¯ when I did certain tasks like chopping wood or how the edible herbs glowed a bit when I went herb collecting. This system was in place as obviously if a player wants to play as an archer for example, he/she would have to practice for countless weeks or even months learning archery before being able to be effective in it. With the system help in place, all this was done by the system so there was no need for the players to go through all that trouble. As I was thinking about how I was ¡®guided¡¯ during the beta test, I realized something which shocked me! I hadn¡¯t felt the need to go to the bathroom all these past few days! Just like in the game! Am I still in a virtual world?! More importantly, why do I only realize this fact when thinking about bathrooms¡­?! Anyway¡­ I asked Mr. Leonard if I was still in a virtual world and if I was, why was I in here? He fidgeted, clearly nervous, as he mumbled something about ¡°It would be better if Dr. Richard explained¡­¡± But I was adamant to know it right now! If it was another one of those experiments that humans always seemed to do to me¡­. I don¡¯t know what I would do¡­ Mr. Leonard was still hesitant, but he must have seen my determined expression because he then started explaining readily¡­ It turned out, it really is an experiment¡­ of sorts¡­ Apparently, I was in a coma. I had been in a coma for 9 years! My body was in a room at some hospital and I was only able to move about in this virtual world because of some kind of custom made headset that somehow allowed me to play the game and stay in this virtual room. They had tried almost everything to wake me up, but nothing had worked so far. Mr. Leonard¡¯s game company had then discovered that it was possible to help people in my situation using their game and their virtual world, and they had decided to experiment it on me. Lucky me¡­ I honestly didn¡¯t know what to feel about all this¡­ I mean it isn¡¯t exactly a small thing to discover you are practically dead and your only chance to live is to play a game¡­ I know I should have been seriously angry and afraid at being experimented again, but somehow it didn¡¯t affect me as much as I thought it would have¡­ The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. The eternity of darkness now made sense, the fact that I was able to stay in a virtual game for a month non-stop made sense and even the first conversation I had with Dr. Richard made some sense now¡­He did say something like this at that time, but I couldn¡¯t understand any of it. I felt a bit disturbed by something though¡­ How was I not affected by all this crazy news? Wasn¡¯t my reaction a bit too¡­ normal¡­? It then hit me! It was because of all the things I had read in the game! All the stories, all the facts, all the things Miss Margaret told me somehow made me able enough to understand all this! I suddenly realized how much I had no changed, how I could understand so much now, how I knew so many different things now, how I had somehow grown a bit more¡­ older?... mature? And it¡¯s all due to the one month I spent in the game! Then¡­ doesn¡¯t this mean that the game is helping me¡­? That somehow this experiment is working¡­? Maybe this experiment is one of the good ones¡­? The more I thought about all this, the more I felt that this ¡®experimental treatment¡¯ is good for me. Even if I wouldn¡¯t get cured, I would still be able to play the game! I would still be able to¡­ live! And I understood all of this because of the knowledge I had gained in the game too. It¡¯s decided then, I don¡¯t care if this is an experiment or not, the game allows me to stay away from the eternal darkness and that¡¯s good enough for me! Realizing something else, I suddenly asked Mr. Leonard, ¡°Is there a way to turn off the ¡®guidance system¡¯ in the game?¡± Mr Leonard, who had been silently staring at me all this time, seemed shocked by my question. It took him a few seconds to answer, ¡°Yes, a player can go to the settings and turn off the guidance system. Why do you ask?¡± I simply answered, ¡°No reason¡­¡± while I turned back towards the laptop. I had decided to play the game to be as close to reality as possible. I would gain knowledge and learn plenty of things from it and I would do it on my own without the system¡¯s help. Determined, I started searching on the internet for something specific. This time, I wasn¡¯t searching for information about the game, rather I was searching for my new name! I had decided to no longer be called ¡®John Doe¡¯! End of POV. --------- As John was learning plenty of things in the virtual world, his body in the real world was surrounded by plenty of people. There were nurses, doctors, long-time patients and other hospital staff present. There were so many people who wanted to see John for some reason that his room was jam-packed without an inch of free space. The crowd of people extended all the way outside the room and filled up the third floor hall of Cleveland Clinic. Apart from the obvious number, there was also another weird thing about the mass of people. They were all silent. Despite the huge number of people present, no one spoke a word. No one moved. No sound came out from them apart from the occasional ¡®sniff¡¯ or blowing of the nose. It would have seemed an eerie scene out of a horror movie if not for the fact that all of them had tears in their eyes and no one looked at John with any malice, rather there was only sadness. Sadness due to the fact that John had lost someone close to him. Sadness due to the fact that the people present had lost someone close to them. Sadness due to the fact that John wasn¡¯t even aware that he had lost something he never had: A kind mother. Sadness due to the fact that John would probably never get to experience one of the most wonderful things in this world: the love of a mother. Sadness due to the fact that John and a certain someone would never be able to meet now. Sadness due to the fact that nurse Sandra had passed away from this world... ---------- Author''s note: Sorry for the delay but I had some things irl that I had to take care of. I hope you enjoy this chapter. 90% of this chapter is boring basic information but I was urged by my family and some friends to add in a chapter explaining major things about the game in case some readers didn''t understand the game jargon. I apologize if this may seem boring to most of you... I was also hoping if it was possible to get a few reviews...? They don''t have to be advanced reviews, I just want to know what you guys think of my work. Let me know of any mistakes in the chapter... As always, thanks a lot for reading! :) Edit: Crap! I don''t know what happened to the status tables... I''ll try to fix them ASAP! Edit 2: Temporarily fixed the tables to be at least somewhat presentable... Although they still look terrible. I''ll learn how to do a better job before next chapter! Status Tables New player''s Status Screen:
Name:New PlayerClass:Wanderer
Level:1Title(s):None
Race:Player RaceGender:Player Gender
Health:100Mana:100
Health Regenration:0.1/secondMana regeneration:0.1/second
Strength:10Intelligence:10
Stamina:10Wisdom:10
Dexterity:10Agility:10
Fame:0Luck:0
John''s Status Screen:
Name:JohnClass:Wanderer
Level:1Title(s):None
Race:HumanGender:Male
Health:300Mana:490
Health Regenration:0.39/secondMana regeneration:0.16/second
Strength:30Intelligence:49
Stamina:39Wisdom:16
Dexterity:43Agility:10
Fame:0Luck:5
Charm:20
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Edit: Finally managed to add these tables properly. Thanks a lot to AnarchyDev for the help! :) Chapter Eleven: New Name, New Life Dr. Richard¡¯s POV: I still have a hard time believing it. As a doctor, I am constantly surrounded with death and I am more then used to it. But this¡­ it¡¯s somehow different. We have had deaths among staff members before, and an acquaintance of mine passed away a few years ago too, but I had just shrugged away these deaths rather quickly. I have no idea why I am feeling so strongly right now¡­ Nurse Sandra¡­ Why is your death so hard to deal with? I still remember all those years ago, when I was just starting off in this hospital¡­ the time when I resented her. It was for such a petty reason, I just couldn¡¯t accept the fact that a lowly nurse would know more about dealing with patients then I, a qualified doctor, knew. It was a really simple thing: experience. Nurse Sandra, who had been working in the hospital for well over 15 years when I started, obviously had much more experience then the fresh-out-of-med-school me. She kept pointing out the mistakes I made, which made me furious! I thought she was just bragging about how she knew so much more then me, but I later found out that all she was doing was helping me and helping the patients. Helping the patients as obviously if I did the treatment correctly they would benefit. Helping me so that I won¡¯t get in trouble with my seniors. She did this for everyone, it was in her nature to help. But I couldn¡¯t see this at that time and went about hating her for ¡®helping¡¯ me. It was John who ended up being the reason for us to get closer. The day when we both treated John was the day my hate of nurse Sandra vanished. After I had punched that asshole of a father (which felt REALLY good by the way) I was in a very weird place mentally. I¡¯m still unsure of what I did after the punch, but what I do know is nurse Sandra was the one who pulled me out of that disturbed place. She didn¡¯t do much, she simply hugged me while repeating, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s going to be okay.¡± but somehow that hug felt as if my own mother were hugging me. I felt as if all of my worries and all of my problems were transferred over to her during the hug. She then reminded me of a certain young boy who still needed medical care while pulling me gently back towards where John was. She calmly helped me throughout the process of treating John and didn¡¯t once comment about how terrible of a job I was doing. I was amazed at how unaffected she was by all of the things we had heard that John had been through. But the truth I found out later was her care for John far outweighed her disgust for what those parents had done. It was like the most important thing in the whole world for her was to take care of the child no matter what. Even after we had done all we could for John and were awaiting some test results, she stayed behind to comfort me even though her shift was over. She helped me throughout that long night shift, without ever letting me know how tired she was. After that day all my hate for nurse Sandra had been replaced by respect. We became increasingly closer during the next few weeks as we worked closely and diligently to treat John in any way possible. We also became extremely overprotective of John and seldom let anyone else close to him. I still remember how it was the running joke during those days that we were the new parents of John. But we didn¡¯t care, mostly because all we cared about was getting John better, but also as the joke wasn¡¯t said as a way to make fun of us, rather people used to say it with respect. I still feel as if I didn¡¯t deserve the respect that they showed me. It¡¯s not as if I didn¡¯t care about John, but to put me in the same status as nurse Sandra was unfair towards her. It wasn¡¯t even possible for me to even come close to show the same amount of love and care that she showed towards John. Which is why I will never be able to forgive myself for what I did. I know how special John was for nurse Sandra, and I am the reason why the two of them would never be able to meet again. I still remember how she had pleaded to be let in when we first met John in the virtual world, how she had almost begged me to let her see John even for a moment. And I had said no. My reason was John might be overwhelmed by meeting so many new people at once. For such a stupid reason, for such an extremely stupid reason, I had made it impossible for a mother to meet her child. I shook my head, trying to get rid of such thoughts but it didn¡¯t work. I then got up and decided to go for a walk, thinking that might be able to help me out. I guess my feet automatically took me towards floor three, where I snapped out of my daze. I saw all the nurses around the floor with a dead look in their eyes. Some still had red eyes, clearly they had been crying. I even spotted the male nurse Tom, who always made a big deal about how he was a ¡®real man¡¯ or some nonsense like that, walking while looking around with a lost expression on his face. All around the floor I saw similar expressions. Expressions which showed sadness. Expressions which showed that the people had no idea what to do. The usual active environment of the nurses running around treating patients was nowhere to be found. It¡¯s like someone had switched off all of the third floor staff. I was suddenly reminded of the fact that I wasn¡¯t the only one who nurse Sandra took under her wing. In fact, almost everyone here had been mentored by nurse Sandra at one point in their careers. Many regarded her as a parent figure and she held an immense amount of respect in this floor. I also remembered how nurse Sandra helped me when I myself was in such a daze back when John first came to the hospital. How she had said, ¡°The only important thing is the fact that the patient in front of you needs help, and you are the only one who can help. Put everything else aside, and focus on helping the patient in front of you and I guarantee both you and the patient will feel better before you know it!¡± It had felt so silly at the time that I almost laughed, but those silly words had become a sort of mantra for me nowadays. As I saw the dazed nurses and staff members lingering about, I knew nurse Sandra would have never allowed this to continue. She would have put the patient¡¯s pain in front of her own no matter what. Making up my mind, I jumped on top of the nurses station, alarming all the nurses, and spoke, ¡°What are you are doing? Are you really feeling sorry for yourself while you are surrounded by so many suffering patients? Will you allow your feelings to get in the way of treating the patients? Is that what she taught you? Would she have allowed you all to go about neglecting your duties? Would she be happy if she saw this sight? The answer is no! Miss Sandra was a woman who firmly believed in putting the patients in front of everything else. If you really want to remember her, remember how she used to take care of everyone. If you would like to honour her, do your job well and she will be happy.¡± I glared around at everyone¡¯s shocked faces, before getting off the nurses station and slowly walked away. Pushing away the thought of how dramatic this all was, I sincerely hoped that nurse Sandra, wherever she might be, would be proud of me. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. And I really do hope that she forgives me, in time¡­ End of POV After that speech, the whole third floor was silent. It took a while for someone to move, and it was like that single person¡¯s movement caused all the tension to break away. Everyone looked around before they began working feverishly. The third floor suddenly erupted with activity as all the staff moved about with renewed vigour. Over the next few weeks, the third floor gained a reputation as the most hard working floor in the entire hospital. Most people were puzzled as to what could possibly bring about such a drastic change. While the few who knew smiled as they saw the legacy of nurse Sandra being reflected all around them. ------- Meanwhile, in a certain virtual room, a young boy was walking around impatiently. Oblivious to all that was going around in the real world around his body, John was just a few minutes away from starting a new life. For the game Conqueror was scheduled to be started in just 10 minutes time. John¡¯s POV: Hurry up! Hurry up hurry up hurry up! Why won¡¯t the game start already?? Haven¡¯t I waited enough? Although these past few weeks have been extremely informative, they have also been pretty boring. Confined to a single room with nothing to do except find something to do on a single laptop. I mean, how much can a person really do on one laptop?? Waiting¡­ Waiting¡­. Waiting¡­.. Still waiting¡­. ¡°COME ON ALREADY!¡± My extremely loud shout did absolutely nothing. Okay¡­ Okay¡­ calm down calm down. It¡¯s only a few more minutes¡­ Surely I can wait just a few minutes. After about 8 lifetimes and non-stop twitching, white light FINALLY surrounded me and I left the room! Whoopie! I had asked Mr. Leonard to automatically transfer me into the game as soon as the game servers went online, so as not to waste precious seconds staring at a log-in screen. As the white light left me, I found myself in the same hall that I was before the beta test, but there was no Mr. Leonard this time. Instead a professional sounding female voice suddenly spoke out of nowhere, ¡°Welcome to Conqueror. Your information states that you participated in the beta test, would you like to keep the old account or start with a new one?¡± Searching around for where the voice was coming from, I immediately answered, ¡°I¡¯ll keep the same account but I want to change the name!¡± I know I was almost dead-set on changing accounts after the beta test ended, but there were a couple of reasons I didn¡¯t change. Firstly, even though all beta tester¡¯s accounts would be reset to level 1 along with the stats, the self-generated stats won¡¯t be affected at all! Only the 10 stats per level would be deducted, and because I gained stats through hard work and not levels, my stats won¡¯t be affected! Secondly, I gained those stats with the help of Miss Margaret. She tirelessly and selflessly helped me, and there was no way I would erase all her hard work in an instant. Plus if I did change my race or appearance, Miss Margaret won¡¯t even recognize me!! ¡°Very well, what would you like your name to be?¡± ¡°Alexander Davis, with Alex as the nickname please.¡± This was the name I had decided on. I had spent hours and hours on the internet searching for a good name, with no result. It wasn¡¯t that I didn¡¯t find any good names, it¡¯s that there were simply too many choices I ended up searching ¡®how to name someone¡¯ out of frustration and I found the answer to my worries. It as written that most parents name their kids with some influence from famous historical figures or some influence from the names of their ancestors or loved ones. I immediately thought of Miss Margaret. Naturally, she was the only person I considered as a ¡®loved one¡¯. I remembered her teaching me about famous people of the past, and how her favourite historical figure was a person called ¡®Alexander the Great¡¯. I immediately decided Alexander was going to be my name. As for the last name, that was really simple. Miss Margaret¡¯s last name was Davis. Thus I decided to name myself Alexander Davis. I don¡¯t know if this is a good name in the eyes of others, but frankly I don¡¯t care. To me, this is a very special name, and it¡¯s the name I will be called as. ¡°As you wish, Alex. As you are a beta tester, you are also allowed to take one skill with you in your new account; however, this skill will be reset to beginner level 1 with 0% experience. Which skill would you like to take?¡± The female ghost? asked. ¡°The cooking skill please.¡± I answered. This was a very recent decision of mine. Originally I had intended to take the ¡®quick learner¡¯ skill with me as it would have helped me learn skills quicker. But after I realized how much the beta test had changed me, I changed my mind. I had decided to completely turn off the system guidance for the entire time I played. In order for me to get stronger in the real world, I had to actually work hard to get stronger in the virtual one. If some day I woke up from my coma, I intended to have some sort of platform ready so I won¡¯t be as helpless as I had remained all my life. Even though I knew my physical body would be weak, I would at least know how to perform tasks mentally and be able to somehow be in a bit of a better position. If I don¡¯t ever wake up, well, at least I will get to live as ¡®real¡¯ a life as possible in the virtual world. I decided to take the cooking skill because I thought that it would be the most useful one for me. I intended to be able to rely on myself as much as possible and cooking was a good start to live a life of self-sufficiency. ¡°You have selected the cooking skill. Beta testers aren¡¯t allowed to choose their starting locations to keep it fair for everyone else. You will now be transported to a random starting location. Good luck and have fun!¡± With that, the female phantom? sent me off to my new life! ------- Author''s note: John finally has a new name to call his own, opinions? I hope you enjoy the chapter. Thank you very much for reading! :) Chapter Twelve: First day Alex(John¡¯s) POV: As the white light surrounded me, I couldn¡¯t help but feel excited about seeing the fields again, smell the fresh air again, look at the beautiful sky again and most of all, I couldn¡¯t wait to see Miss Margaret again! Even though I knew I wasn¡¯t going to be anywhere close to her right now, I would definitely go to her direction as soon as possible. Oooh the white light is diminishing! I can hear a few voices, let¡¯s hope it¡¯s only NPCs¡­ The light disappeared and the sight in front of me was unbelievable! Instead of beautiful fields with cute bunnies and squirrels, I was surrounded by people! A huge mass of people! Everywhere I turned to all I could see were more and more people! This is a nightmare! Furthermore, every second would bring about another person near me with a flash of light! ¡°Anyone want to join me in a party? Let¡¯ start hunting already!¡± ¡°Looking for party members!¡± ¡°Level 1 here, everyone is level 1 so it doesn¡¯t really matter does it? Let¡¯s party up!¡± I could hear such voices from all around me. Party, a collection of 2-6 players who hunt together. It then hit me, these people are all players!! Everyone was wearing the same clothes, more or less, a pair of khaki pants and a black T-shirt¡­ In other words: basic beginner gear! All around me were new players just starting off the game! I was completely jammed between bodies, constantly being pushed or pulled, and it was frightening! I have to get out of here! Without regard to anyone else, I started pushing my way through, my increased strength helping me make a path for myself. I had no idea where I was moving to, but anywhere is better then this hell! Some people may have noticed that I had more strength because immediately I heard voices, ¡°Hey how is that guy so strong?¡± ¡°He must be a Beta-tester! Hey man, want to join up in a party with me?¡± ¡°Get off noob, sir why don¡¯t you join up with me instead of this newbie?¡± I started being pulled from all directions! People were constantly asking me to party with them! This was getting completely out of control!! I thought about just logging out, but that won¡¯t be any good. The game has just started, and with its popularity this endless sea of new players would continue on for a few weeks, if not longer. I decided that I would be fine if I was just able to reach the fields or enter the forest that is bound to be somewhere near this hellhole. At the very least I would be able to get to an area with less players. I then started running. Throwing caution to the wind, I used the strength I had to push my way through and started bolting towards the direction I thought would be the edge of this village. I heard shouts and screams from the players I pushed away, but I paid no mind to them. I had one goal only: to get as far away from here as possible! I continued to run and push players away, and after a while I started to notice that the players had started to thin out just a little bit. There were still too many of them, so I didn¡¯t stop running, I did slow down a bit though. Soon, I reached the fields. But instead of reaching salvation, the fields were surrounded by players too! Some were partying while some were hunting solo. As soon as a rabbit or fox appeared there would be chaos, as players would scramble crazily in order to kill the poor creature. I finally halted in a somewhat secluded corner and tried to get my nerves together. A few minutes of deep breathing later I had somewhat regained my mind. I then carefully looked around and noticed something disturbing, players were continuing to come to the fields! Soon this place would be as swamped as anywhere else! I looked over to fields, trying to see a way out. I then noticed it! At the other end of the people-infested fields, there was a forest! And as far as I could see, there were no players near to it at all! Having made up my mind, I opened up my inventory. I already knew what would be inside, all beginners had the same inventory. 10 pieces of rye bread, 10 copper coins, a canteen of water and a dagger. Pulling out the only thing I would need right now, the dagger, I looked over it¡¯s stats briefly.
Beginner Dagger
A common dagger that is given to every beginner. Attack: 4-8 Durability: 20/20
I then charged forward towards the fields, my mind overpowered with the desire to get to somewhere without people! I pushed away the players as I did before, barreling my way through towards the forest. Ignoring all the shouts and screams from the players I pushed, I kept my eyes forward and my hand firmly grasped on my dagger, determined to not let anyone stop me! I was only about 30 meters away from the soothing start of the forest, when an unexpected thing appeared right in front of me, a fox! It had spawned right in front of me! I had no idea of what to do, so in the end I just kept moving forward. I absentmindedly slashed my dagger towards the fox when I reached it and kept on moving while pushing it aside. I barely heard a yelp! sound from the fox but I didn¡¯t turn to look behind. Just 10 meters away from the forest! There were no more players in front of me now! But there was another unexpected problem. A problem which forced me to come to a halt. Wolves! Wolves were prowling the edge of the forest. I knew it probably wasn¡¯t a smart idea to go absentmindedly inside a forest infested with wolves! I turned around to see a whole sea of players looking at me. Apparently all the commotion I caused got me the one thing I didn¡¯t want: attention. Most people were looking at me with curious eyes, while some were shocked and some were angry. Most probably the angry ones would be the ones I pushed¡­ I felt a shiver run down my spine. Turning back around I faced the wolves again. Wolves, or humans? One was a monster while the other was an animal. It¡¯s obvious, the animal it is! With that I moved towards the animal, the wolf. I moved slowly forward until I was about 3 meters away from the first wolf in front of me. I concentrated on it and was able to see some information floating above its head.
Wolf: Level 8
HP: 120/120
I moved a step forward and heard a low growl, while the wolf turned to look towards me with menacing eyes. Gulp! It ran towards me and jumped, mouth open showing a row of sharp pointed teeth! Its fangs were dripping with saliva while a putrid smell wafted over to me from its open mouth! It all felt so real! My body reacted on its own, as I was too scared to think properly. My hand holding the dagger shot forward while I took a step back. Somehow, my dagger ended up puncturing the wolf¡¯s eye, a critical hit! showed up where my dagger landed, and the wolf vanished in a shower of light! Huh¡­? What just happened? Umm¡­. Where did the wolf go¡­? I look around dumbly before a couple of windows flashed up in front.
You have levelled up! You have levelled up!
Huh¡­? I have levelled up¡­? How¡­? Then it hit me, the wolf had died! I had just killed it! Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. But how is that possible? The wolf was level 8, while I was level 1. No matter how critical the hit was, how did I manage to kill it off in one hit? It must have been some kind of a fluke. I shook my head and stepped forward, remembering my goal to reach the safety of the forest. I had almost reach the trees when another growl sounded and a wolf, this time from my right, ran towards me! I took a step forward and swung my dagger, there was a shower of light and this wolf vanished as well! And this time there was no critical hit icon either!
You have levelled up!
What in the world is going on?? Why are the wolves dying so easily? Surely this game isn¡¯t designed to be so easy! A normal level 1 player won¡¯t be able to kill off a wolf with a critical hit, let alone a normal slash attack with a beginner dagger! It was then I realized¡­ A normal level one player won¡¯t be able to¡­ But I wasn¡¯t normal was I? My inflated stats put me closer to being a level 15 or something player, if not higher! I felt a grin covering my face, while I thanked Miss Margaret in my heart yet again for all her help. Turning towards the inviting trees of the forest, I stepped forward calmly, no longer afraid of what the darkness inside the trees would hold. All through that day I kept moving forward, away from the people, deeper into the forest. I lost count of how many wolves I killed, I just wanted to get far away from the mob of monsters. I was also enjoying the forest. The birds chirping away, the occasional fluffy tail of a squirrel moving through the trees, the insects buzzing around, the sunlight streaming in from between the leaves¡­ it was all new to me. I had never been inside a forest before, and I have to say it all looked wonderful! As I kept pushing deeper into the forest, I came across a clearing. I stepped into it and saw a wolf which was much more different from all the others I had come across. For one, it was white in colour, not the usual grey/black. And it was also HUGE! Almost 3 times the size of any other wolf I had seen! I concentrated on it and saw the words floating on top of it.
Alpha Wolf: Level 20 (Boss)
HP: 800/800
This should be exciting! I took a look at my status screen while eating a piece of rye bread.
Name:AlexClass:Wanderer
Level:14Title(s):None
Race:HumanGender:Male
Health:300Mana:490
Health Regenration:0.39/secondMana regeneration:0.16/second
Strength:30Inteligence:49
Stamina:39Wisdom:16
Dexterity:43Agility:10
Fame:0Luck:5
Charm:20
Unallocated points:130
I decided to ignore all the un-allocated points. I had decided to play on my own strengths and not use any of the stat points from levelling up. I also switched off the guidance system, which I had forgotten to do till now because of the excitement. Satisfied, I stepped forward. It was time for my first ever boss fight! Brad¡¯s POV: Today is a good day. It is the day when conqueror will finally be released. The days since the beta test had ended had been quite busy. Why wouldn¡¯t they? After all I was famous. I was the highest levelled player when the beta test ended, and my achievements were second to none! My team and I were also the only ones who had successfully cleared a dungeon. Naturally, the dungeon had been cleared mainly due to my might. I was interviewed many times over the days after the beta test, and my exploits were also released in the trailer. As soon as the game started, I entered with the same account as before, as it was an account which would get me the most recognition. With my connections, I was allowed to enter the game 30 second before everyone else. It seemed small, but it allowed me to avoid the crowd and reach the field first. I had already killed off a couple of rabbits before the first few players started showing up. I was able to level up soon and with my expertise I could now kill off a rabbit easily with one or two hits. Soon, I added 4 random newbies to my party and started going for the foxes. The newbies were naturally excited to be partying with me, and why wouldn¡¯t they? After all I was the best player in the game. It took about a minute for us to hunt a fox. Foxes were level 5, while I was still only level 3, and my party was all level 1 noobs. Still, with my guidance, we could handle a fox easily enough. The fields started getting increasingly crowded, and it was a fiasco every time a fox or rabbit appeared as everyone would gather around trying to kill it. However, the area where I was with my noob party wasn¡¯t affected by this chaos. Naturally, my presence hindered anyone else to even think about stepping close to steal monsters from my area! I had levelled up to four and we had just finished off the latest fox, when I heard a commotion. Screams and shouts came from the left side. I looked up and saw a random kid running through the crowd pushing everyone away. Hmph! Crazy kid. I was going to turn around as I didn¡¯t care about the random noob, when I noticed a fox had appeared right in front of the kid! I smiled, eager to see the fox put the noob in his place. What happened next was completely beyond my expectations! Instead of stopping, the kid kept running towards the fox! He swung his dagger and killed the fox! In one hit! Just like that! I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, unsure of what I just saw. I looked around to find that the boy had reached close to the forest, was he going to go inside that high level forest alone?? The boy then turned around and everyone froze at the indifferent look in his eyes. It looked as if he was daring anyone to come close to him! He then turned around and stepped forward, towards a wolf! A level 8 wolf! The wolf ran towards the boy and leaped, clearly going for a kill. But the boy baffled me again! He expertly took a step back and stabbed the dagger right into the wolf¡¯s eye for a critical hit! What¡¯s more, the wolf had died! With just one hit! What the hell is going on?? The boy then stepped forward and took down another wolf with one hit! And this time without a critical hit! I looked around at everyone else and found shocked expressions from all over the field of players. At least everyone else was also seeing this¡­ I wasn¡¯t going crazy! I turned back towards the boy to find him calmly walking into the forest without a care in the world! Just who the fuck is this kid!!! ------- Author''s note: Hope you all life this chapter! Let me know of any mistakes/ errors. Thanks for reading! Chapter Thirteen: Training Alex¡¯s POV:
Alpha Wolf: Level 20 (Boss)
HP: 800/800
As I saw the Alpha wolf, I couldn¡¯t help but feel excited about my first boss fight! I calmly walked towards it, confident in my own abilities. As I drew nearer, it noticed me and turned to look towards me with menacing eyes. Growl! Its growl was immensely loud and for a moment I hesitated, filled with fear. But I quickly overcame the fear and moved ahead, filled with confidence once again. The alpha crouched down and I knew it was going to initiate its attack. I readied myself for the usual wolf attack of jumping with their mouth open, and the alpha didn¡¯t disappoint me one bit as it jumped in the exact same manner. There was one difference though¡­ Too fast! It came at me way too fast! It¡¯s huge body moved deceptively quick as it shortened the distance between us in a breath and bit me! -120! AARRRGH!! That hurt! Barely a second passed before the alpha attacked me again, this time it was a claw attack. -149! The pain was unbearable! Wasn¡¯t this game supposed to only have 15% level of pain?!? I had no time to think. I swung my dagger desperately at the wolf, and it hit! -68. WHAT IN THE WORLD?!? My bewilderment wasn¡¯t only because of the low damage number, it was because the dagger broke! I realized too late that there¡¯s a thing called durability in this game! I didn¡¯t even have time to curse at myself, because the alpha¡¯s claws flashed again, and my surroundings turned black. I had died. Then, a notification window appeared before me¡­
You have died!
Please choose one of the following death penalties:
1) Time Penalty. 2) Level Penalty.
Ah yes. I had completely forgotten to set my ¡®death penalty¡¯. In Conqueror, there are two kinds of death penalties:
  1. You will be forcefully logged out and will be unable to return to the game for 24 hours in the real world, meaning 4 days in the game world. This is called the ¡®time penalty¡¯.
  2. You will lose levels and the corresponding stats when you die, but you will be able to revive within 10 minutes of dying. Below level 50, players lose 5 levels and 50 stat points, between level 51-100, players lose 4 levels and 40 stat points and after level 101 players would lose 3 levels and 30 stat points. This is called the ¡®level penalty¡¯.
As to why the number of levels lost became lower the higher level a player was, it was simple. It takes a lot more experience to level up a single level the higher levelled one was. Putting it simply, losing 3 levels at level 110 is much much harsher then losing 5 levels at level 40. Both death penalties in the game were harsh, one made you lose 4 days of valuable game time while the other lost you your hard earned experience. Naturally, I had no care in the world for levels, so I immediately chose to go for the level penalty. Even though I would lose 50 stat points with the level penalty, they would only be decreased from the unallocated points therefore it would make no difference for me. I couldn¡¯t, however, be careless and keep on dying, as once I reach level 1 then even my self-generated stats would start decreasing the more I died. The only way the level penalty won¡¯t affect me is when I reached level 1 and all my stats had been decreased to 1, and I had no intention of reaching that stage. As the timer went down, I started thinking about my latest fight¡­ Or rather my latest failure. The major reason for the fiasco was my overconfidence. I became too relaxed with killing off the weaker wolves with one slash, and had not even thought about the possibility of there being a stronger opponent then me out there. Apart from the stupidity of not caring for my dagger, I realized exactly how weak I was. Sure, I could kill wolves with one hit, but these were counted as the weakest monsters in the game. I also realized how painfully slow I was. The Alpha moved so fast that it was barely a blur to me. My only stat which hadn¡¯t risen since the start of the beta test was agility, and the last fight showed me just how important it is to raise my agility. I also needed to learn how to fight. How to move properly while in a fight. My movements so far had been haphazardly slashing at wolves, counting on my inflated stats to do the work for me. I had no idea on how to actually move when facing an opponent. The last thing I needed to increase was my toughness. The first bite from the alpha had been extremely painful, even though it had only been 15% compared to if I had actually been bitten in real life. And I had completely frozen because of the pain. I also had no defense at all, which is why the wolf had been able to take me out without even using any of its stronger attacks. 04:33 minutes remaining till you are able to revive. 4 minutes left. The 10 minute wait is simply so that players can¡¯t keep on fighting for unlimited periods of time. It also served as the time during which the player¡¯s opponent could pick up any dropped loot and move away, giving the opponent time to escape. Of Course, this only applied to PK (Player Killing) situations. As I watched the timer decrease, I planned on what to do next. First order of business would be to try and find a weapon. But because of the lack of money I had and lack of any weapons dropping from these low levelled monsters, it would take a lot of time for me to find a new weapon. It then hit me! There was no need for a weapon! My body was completely lacking in training, and this was a perfect opportunity for me to train my body! It¡¯s decided then! 00: 43 minutes remaining till you are able revive. 00:37...36...35...34 The timer finally came to an end! I revived and looked around me. The Alpha was calmly laying down in the center of the clearing, watching me with a smug expression. I wanted to fight again but I knew it would be hopeless. Instead, it¡¯s time to train! With that, I cautiously back away, picking up the 3 copper and the piece of rye bread I had dropped. RYE BREAD! This is my last piece! Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I am running out of food too! First the weapon, and now I overlook my food situation! Cursing myself yet again for the carelessness, I opened up my settings menu and changed a few things. First thing I did was change the monster settings for my account. When a player starts, any monster he/she kills off disappears in a shower of light, giving off the feeling of a game. But a player can change this, making it so that fighting monsters becomes extremely real. They get injured as if they are real, they bleed, they smell and their corpses stay after they have been killed. Naturally, I made the setting to be as real as possible, as I wanted food and wolf meat might be good¡­ who knows¡­ Next I increased the pain setting to 20%. At first I thought about increasing it to 100% but I stopped myself. If I couldn¡¯t handle 15% right now, surely 100% would be too unbearable. I settled for 20%, deciding to gradually increase it over time as I get used to feeling pain. I also disabled any and all notifications except for system messages, as I didn¡¯t want anything to disturb me while I trained. With these things taken care of, I was finally ready to start my training! Over the next few days, I trained diligently. I started off with training my body to increase my stamina. I ran, climbed, jumped and did exercises that I looked up on the internet. I constantly pushed myself to my limits, only stopping at the point of complete exhaustion. Then, I faced off against wolves, not with the intention of fighting, but rather to train my body on how to move and how to dodge. At first, I kept on getting hit, but I didn¡¯t mind as that trained my body to withstand pain, but as time passed I found it easier and easier to dodge all attacks of a wolf. It reached a point where a wolf won¡¯t be able to touch me no matter how hard it tried. When I had reached this point I moved on to the next phase of my training: Getting hit. I stood still in front of a wolf as it attacked me with everything it had, while I kept a close eye on my health bar. When my health got dangerously low, I would start fighting with my bare hands. I found my increased strength helped me throw punches which stunned the wolves sometimes, really neat! I kept allowing wolves to attack me, resulting in me getting used to the pain somehow. I also managed to increase the pain threshold to 30%. I also kept getting better with my fighting skills, as I learned how to move my body through experience as well as by watching videos of martial artists on the internet. Obviously I was far, far away to be considered a martial artist, but I could at least hold my own against a wolf¡­ When I was satisfied with both getting hit and fighting, I started doing weight-lifting exercises by lifting logs, heavy rocks or anything else I got my hands on. I also started trying to run holding a heavy rock or dragging a log to further increase my stamina! After quite a few days of doing these exercises, I started my final phase of training. I would put a small rock some distance away and try to hit it with another rock. I gradually made the distance longer while making the target rock smaller. I was trying to improve my long-distance targeting and also increase my dexterity, but I had no idea if it was actually working, as my notifications were still turned off. With more then two weeks of training behind me, I was finally ready. It was a pity I couldn¡¯t raise my intelligence or wisdom during this time, but as I had no skills that used mana either way I wasn¡¯t too concerned. I would raise them all later¡­ The only time that I did stop my training was when I ate and when I logged out to sleep. During all my training time, two events happened. First, I found out that wolf meat tastes GOOD! Okay, maybe this isn¡¯t an event, but still¡­ It tastes GOOD! Nothing like the cooking of Miss Margaret¡¯s, but still quite excellent! Starting the fire manually to cook the meat was extremely hard, it took me ages of rubbing sticks together to start a flame. The flame was also extremely troublesome, as it kept going out and I had to learn how to keep it going through my most trusted source: the internet! The second event was in the form of a system notification:
System Announcement!
Congratulations to player: Brad! The first player to kill off a Boss Monster! Boss Monster killed: Aplha Wolf (Level 20)
It was surprising, to say the least. This message showed up about 6 days after I had first been killed off by the Alpha. At first I was angry at this Brad guy for stealing what I felt was my right! It was me after all who first found the boss! But I soon forgot all about it, it wasn¡¯t important. I was going after training my body, not to become the best player or anything like that¡­ Anyways, I looked at my status screen to confirm for the first time since the Alpha killed me. I needed to confirm whether or not I was ready to face off against the boss again or if I needed some more time.
Name:AlexClass:Wanderer
Level:12Title(s):None
Race:HumanGender:Male
Health:680Mana:490
Health Regenration:0.83/secondMana regeneration:0.18/second
Strength:68Inteligence:49
Stamina:83Wisdom:18
Dexterity:75Agility:47
Fame:0Luck:5
Charm:20Endurance:24
Unallocated points:110
I was shocked! To say the least¡­ Wasn¡¯t this a little too much¡­.? Sure, I did train for more then 2 weeks non-stop but still... Not only had I managed to gain levels, my stats have gone through the roof! And how in the world did my wisdom gain 2 points?? And what''s with the new stat Endurance?? One thing was for certain though, I was definitely ready to face off against the boss again! -------- Author''s note: Hope you enjoy this chapter. Next one will feature the boss fight and a new character... Let me know of any mistakes, as there is no one to proof-read for me and I don''t have much time to do it myself... Any suggestions/ feedback? Please do let me know. Thanks for all the support you guys have shown me so far! :) Chapter Fourteen: Meeting Alex¡¯s POV: I was still having a hard time with my stats. The growth was just too much! This Endurance stat looks interesting too¡­ I searched among the numerous notification windows, ignoring the ones which indicated that I had gained stats, until I found the one I was looking for:
Congratulations!
By Constantly getting hit you have gained a new stat: Endurance!
You will now feel less pain from physical attacks!
Hmmm¡­ Interesting¡­ At first I was of the opinion that Endurance was a stat related to defense, but the window indicates that all endurance does is make me less prone to feel pain. It¡¯s still useful though, as my plan to increase the pain setting will be faster now with the help of this stat. I guess I will experiment with this stat later to learn more¡­ Going through the windows again, I spotted another window which wasn¡¯t related to stat point gains¡­
Congratulations!
By using your bare hands to fight repeatedly you have gained a new skill: Bare-handed Mastery! You will now gain a 5% bonus when attacking without weapons!
Beginner Level 2 (24%)Passive
Cool! This will definitely make the upcoming boss fight a bit better! The added damage will help me out greatly as I don¡¯t have a weapon yet¡­ I looked through the windows a last time, just to make sure there wasn¡¯t anything else I needed to see, but there wasn¡¯t anything so I dismissed all of them and started to make my way to the clearing with the Alpha. I had been practically living inside this forest all this time, so I knew which direction the clearing was. As I came closer to the clearing, I heard a loud howl! That must be the Alpha! I immediately slowed down and tried to remain as quiet as possible. But as I drew nearer, I heard shouts, growls and the sounds of metal clashing! And they were all clearly coming from the clearing with the Alpha! It sounded like some other players were fighting with the boss right now. I hesitated where I stood, a part of me wanted to go and watch the fight while another wanted me to stay away from the players! Finally, my curiosity won and I crept forward, inching slowly towards the clearing. What I saw was completely beyond my expectations! The clearing was full of wolves and people! The Alpha was towering above the rest, wreaking havoc wherever he moved! The wolves were fighting with the players, the players were fighting back while also trying to injure the Alpha. But the strange thing was, the players also kept trying to hurt each other! ¡°Concentrate! Don¡¯t let these shits steal our boss!¡± A guy with long-blonde hair said from one side of the clearing. ¡°Use the wolves to distract them and then kill them! The boss is ours no matter what!¡± said a tall and thin guy, with short brown hair from the other side of the clearing. The players kept fighting both wolves and each other at the same time, while the Alpha kept jumping around damaging the players. It looked like two parties wanted to hunt the boss at the same time, and neither side would let the other party go first. There were 12 people in total, 6 on each side. Ah, make that 5 on each side¡­ 2 players just got killed almost at the same time, one got clawed by an alpha while the other got struck by a fire attack from one of the mages. It all looked so interesting! Everyone was too engrossed in the craziness surrounding them to even notice me, so I happily watched from the sidelines. It was the first time I had seen other players fighting! I must admit it all looked amazing. I felt my haphazard style of just relying on my strength to be extremely amateurish in comparison. There were swords, axes and spears for the frontline combatants while the archers and mages stayed at the back. This was also the first time I had seen magic! Fire and ice magic was being shown to me in all their glory. The fire mage on the left side of the field was a thin looking guy wearing glasses, his appearance in complete contrast with the destructive and ferocious nature of his fire magic. The ice mage on the other side was the complete opposite. She was a tall and slim elf, her long silver hair coupled with her snow-white skin and cold, blue eyes made perfect harmony with the ice magic she was performing. And I say performing because her magic really looked like an art! But there was someone among the players who caught my attention even more then the ice mage. It was an assassin. Her looks were quite ordinary, black hair, dark brown eyes with fair skin and full lips, but her movements and skill were anything but ordinary! She moved with grace, swinging her twin daggers ferociously but somehow still maintaining a look of class. She kept disappearing into thin air, only to appear behind an unsuspecting wolf and taking its life with a perfectly executed backstab. I noticed that she was the only player in the entire clearing who solely focused on the wolves, not bothering to attack any player. Somehow I just couldn¡¯t take my eyes off her! A strange feeling crept up in my chest as I stayed mesmerized by her¡­ it felt both good and bad at the same time¡­ Wonder what it is? I hope I¡¯m not sick¡­ I kept my eyes on her when suddenly she stopped moving, looked around and with annoyance clearly showing on her face, she disappeared! I waited for her to come back again but a couple minutes passed and she didn¡¯t show up at all! I looked around trying to find her, and that¡¯s when I noticed. Most of the wolves and all of the players were now dead! The Alpha, breathing heavily, stood in the middle of the clearing surrounded by a few wolves, scanning the clearing for any signs of players still left in the area. I noticed that its HP was still full despite the battle, amazing how it managed to not even get a scratch on himself! If it had low HP left, I would have turned around and left as I wanted to face it when the Alpha was at 100%, but since it looked fine I can face it now! I waited for a bit to let the Alpha catch its breath, while trying to shake off the image of the assassin still on my mind¡­ After a while, the Alpha looked completely at 100% and I stepped from between the bushes into the clearing excitedly! The huge wolf turned to look at me again, this is it! Growl! Okay, despite all my training¡­. this guy is still extremely scary! All the 12-14 wolves remaining in the clearing dashed towards me, but I made quick work of them. After two weeks of training on these guys they weren¡¯t much of a bother. I then looked at the Alpha straight into his menacing eyes. Growl! Damn, that growl is still frightening! The Alpha then pounced! It was still extremely fast, I could barely keep up with it now with my increased agility! I managed to roll out of the way in the nick of time while I threw a punch straight into its flank! -93 Whew, seems like my new skill and increased strength at least enable me to pull off some decent damage! Still would be a lot better if I had some kind of a weapon... I was happily thinking such thoughts when the Alpha rudely interrupted me by biting my behind! OUCH! This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. -138 Probably shouldn¡¯t be distracted during a boss fight¡­ I leap back just in time as a huge paw misses me just by a hair! With my complete attention now on the huge wolf, I start going on the offensive. Punch, kick, sidestep, dodge, punch again! The battle was exhilarating! Most of my hits landed but some the wolf was able to dodge. Obviously, the Alpha wasn¡¯t just sitting about watching me dwindle his life, and I got hit quite a lot too! Despite my increased agility, the Alpha was just too fast! It swiped its left paw at me, which I barely dodge by jumping to my right! I quickly kicked out at its left flank, but was met at the same time with another paw attack! -87 -144 Obviously, the lower damage was done by me¡­ This was getting dangerous! I tried to focus even more on every little detail about the Alpha, while I kept dodging. I only watched and dodged, forgoing my attacks to see if I could pick up some tiny hint that could help me. This was easier said then done though¡­ A moment''s loss of concentration and I got bitten once again! -132 But this time the damage taken by me was not in vain! I lost concentration because I found something! I had been concentrating on the Alpha¡¯s muscles and I found out I was able to distinguish between the subtle differences of the way the muscles moved! I could now predict what kind of attack the Alpha was going to use next using its own muscles to help me! I kept a close eye on its muscles¡­ A right paw attack is coming! Using the split second advantage, I jumped towards my left and avoided the paw by a sizeable margin, and immediately punched its jaw! -92 Success! This method is great! I kept at it, dodging its attacks completely using the tell-tale signs of its muscles against it! Soon, its HP reached 10% and it started glowing red, it had entered the critical state! I am getting close! However, my glee over its declining health was short lived, as its paws suddenly started glowing bright red! What¡¯s this?! A SKILL! This guy has a skill?!? The Alpha attacked me again, fury in its eyes and his movements now even faster! Its bright red paws moved with renewed ferocity! I desperately tried to dodge but soon a paw hit me! -219! WHAT! This is too much! I knew I had to just get in one decent hit to win, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it! I barely sidestepped a furious red paw and jumped! I aimed straight at its face with a kick, the Alpha jerked his head back but I adjusted too and my kick connected with its lower jaw! -146! Critical! A critical hit! Yes! I landed just as the Alpha let out a last howl and vanished in a shower of light! A boss doesn¡¯t leave its corpse behind all the time, there¡¯s only a chance of it happening to make it harder to get high quality items like its fur and/or claws etc. Seems like I wasn¡¯t lucky this time¡­ Still I killed a boss all by myself! As if echoing my words, a window suddenly popped up!
Congratulations!
You are the first player to kill a boss solo! Would you like to let your name be known through a system announcement?
YesNo
NO! I immediately tapped no, I had no intention of making my name known and draw unwanted attention to myself! Another window then popped up¡­
You have levelled up! You have levelled up! You have levelled up!
Oh well¡­ who needs levels¡­ I dismissed the windows and looked around expectantly, the boss would have surely dropped better loot then the measly few copper coins I was getting so far from the wolves¡­ Yes! There it is! Looks like a few silver coins, a cloak and a dagger! A weapon! Woohoo! I finally will have a new weapon! I immediately ran over and picked everything up, and was about to look at the information but a glint in the corner of my vision caught my eye¡­ I put the boss loot away in my inventory and stepped closer to the glint to inspect what it was¡­ It was a sword! Huh¡­? Where did this come from¡­? Looking around the clearing I saw a few other things I hadn¡¯t noticed before! A robe, a piece of chest armor, gauntlets, countless coins and a staff! It then dawned on me, this is all the loot that the players from earlier dropped! JACKPOT! I was going to pick everything up with glee when I suddenly stopped myself¡­ I had no idea how long it had been since my fight with the boss started, it could have been more then 10 minutes for all I know¡­ meaning that players who chose the level death penalty could have revived and be nearby! I looked closely around but saw no one¡­ Just to make sure I decided to call out¡­ ¡°Hey! Anyone there? I saw you guys fighting earlier, you seem to have dropped your loot. Come pick it up!¡± I waited while keeping a close eye on my surroundings! A minute passed¡­ 2 minutes¡­ nothing happened. Still, I had to be sure¡­ ¡°Come on guys this is all your loot. I¡¯m not here to PK so don¡¯t worry and just take everything. If you don¡¯t come out soon I will have to take everything and leave¡­¡± I tensed up! Surely that would make anyone around come out! If there were too many of them I would immediately run away! I waited for someone to come and soon a beautiful, soft voice came from my right¡­ ¡°Thank you. I will be taking the loot my friends dropped, the rest is yours.¡± A figure materialized from the shadows of the trees! Black hair, brown eyes, twin daggers¡­ It was the female assassin from earlier! My heart thumped loudly as our eyes met and the feeling from earlier returned to my chest, much stronger this time! What is this feeling?? I think I really am getting sick¡­ Probably should talk to Dr. Richard... ------- Author''s note: New character entry! Hope you like the chapter, I had a lot of trouble with the boss fight and I have no idea if I did it justice... Next chapter will be the assassin''s POV... As always, please do let me know of any and all mistakes! Always looking forward to feedback, whether it be through reviews, ratings, comments or PMs... Thanks a lot for all the support so far and thanks for reading! :) Chapter Fifteen: Meeting (2) (Note: This chapter¡¯s timeline starts from the day the game officially launched) Emma¡¯s POV: ¡°What would you like your character name to be?¡± The cool, female voice asked in the empty hall. ¡°Emma¡± I answered, I wasn¡¯t going to change my name even though it was the norm for players to change their names in games. ¡°Emma it is. Please select your starting village.¡± ¡°Random.¡± Starting location doesn¡¯t matter much anyways¡­ I think... ¡°Very well. You will be started off at a random location inside the game. Enjoy!¡± With that, a flash of light covered me and I was dumped in the middle of an immense crowd of players! DAMMIT! So many bodies pressing against me! I can barely move! This is no way to treat a lady! I really should have paid more attention to picking out a secluded starting point! Wiggling, pushing, poking and prodding my way through the sea of bodies, I finally managed to enter an empty alley. Taking a moment to breath, I thought about what my first experience was in the game and I felt a smile coming to my face. Even though I had just been through what most girls would call as hell, going through all those bodies to get away didn¡¯t bother me much, because of a simple reason: I was ignored! No one had spared a second glance towards me, no one had made way for me, no one had looked at me with eyes full of greed, completely ignored! This is what I had wanted from the game after all! I was absolutely tired of people always treating me differently just because my father was a director of Cyber Illusions. All throughout my life people had always wanted to get close to me because of my money, and not because of who I am as a person. I know I have average looks, nothing that would make boys fall over me like they did with some other girls, yet despite this I was generally the girl that every guy was after. Not because of my looks or my personality, but just to get their grubby hands on my parent¡¯s wealth. The girls were no different, giving me fake compliments and laughing at my lame jokes like they were hilarious, just so I would help them with their monetary problems. Countless times I had been asked to ¡®gift¡¯ them make-up, jewelry, clothes etc. It was fine when I was younger, as young children don¡¯t really have much of an idea of the power of wealth, but during the later stages of middle-school it all started changing. People I had considered as best friends just kept asking me for more and more things. At first I gave it to them without much thought, but their demands just never ended, and when I finally started saying no, they insulted me for being stingy and stopped being my friends! By the time I got into High school, I had learned how to cope with all this greediness: Just don¡¯t talk to anyone! No matter who it was, sooner or later after learning how rich I was got the look in their eyes which I detested the most: greed. And so I became known as the ¡°Cold, heartless bitch¡± by everyone in my High school, whereas my parents knew me as a sweet, innocent child that was always smiling. It really felt that I had two different personalities¡­ When dad told me about how they were going to be launching a VR game with 99% realism, I was overjoyed! He also wanted me to participate in the Beta but I said no, Beta Testers always got attention and I wanted to do absolutely everything possible to stay away from the public eye and play the game normally. Finally I would be able to interact with others who knew nothing about me or my parent¡¯s wealth. Finally I would be able to meet some ¡®real¡¯ friends! This is the reason why I was so happy about being ignored instead of being treated specially. With a big grin on my face, I turned around and went away from the crowd of players deeper into the alley, hoping for some quests on the other side that others didn¡¯t know about yet. Soon enough, I found a simple quest about cleaning a storeroom from an old guy on the other side of the alley and I happily accepted. Anything for Exp! What surprised me the most was how real the NPCs were! I knew the game would be 99% realistic but never would I have imagined the AI system to be this advanced. It was so real that there was even an option to distinguish players from NPCs by displaying a cursor point over each player in sight. I naturally turned this option on to make it easier for me to distinguish between players and NPCSs. The next few days I stayed inside the starting village and kept doing quests, waiting for the immense crowd to thin out as players would soon leave the beginner area for higher-levelled areas. I also went around collecting information about the world inside the game. The village I started out in was called Albia, situated in the Kingdom of Modor. The kingdom was in the Treadean Continent, which was ruled over by three major powers: Modor in the center, Verith Empire to the East and the Dwarven Kingdom of Goldhan towards the West. Modor had a hostile relationship with Verith while the dwarves just kept to themselves deep inside the Western mountain ranges. The game world was known as Frion and just like Earth it had 5 oceans and 7 continents, although the world itself was twice the size of Earth! Making it impossible for players to explore everything quickly. After a few days of doing meager quests the crowd finally started to thin out as players started moving away from Albia. Excited to finally start my adventure, I finally left the confines of the village and went towards the fields. There, I started hunting the bunnies with the dagger everyone got. It was hard at first as the bunnies were quite quick, but after levelling up to 3 and putting most points into Agility I found it much easier to hunt them. I was just thinking about going up a step to try my luck against foxes when a couple approached me and said, ¡°Hello stranger. Would you like to party with us so we can hunt foxes?¡± I looked over at them and both seemed to be of Asian heritage, the girl had long, red hair with black eyes while the guy had blue hair that reached below his eyes and he had to constantly push them out of the way. They were both smiling politely and seemed like nice people despite the somewhat bizarre appearance. Thinking it was a good idea to party up, I said ¡°Sure. My name is Emma, pleased to meet you.¡± ¡°Pleasure is ours. I am James, and this is my sister Jessie.¡± said the guy with a bow which was immediately followed by the sister as she bowed low too. I was just thinking how nice these guys were when it hit me¡­ Jessie¡­ Long red hair¡­ James¡­ Blue hair that reached his eyes¡­ Oh God! Perhaps he noticed the look on my face, as James chuckled and said, ¡°We just thought it would be fun to play as these characters. Of Course we also need a pet cat to go with the whole image but that can wait for now.¡± I started laughing and immediately both the crazy brother and sister duo joined in too. This was going to be fun! The next few hours went by quickly, and I had a lot of fun with the siblings. They seemed like genuinely nice people, but they did have completely different personalities! James, who was going on with the whole character persona, always laughed maniacally whenever we defeated a rabbit or a fox. On the other hand, Jessie couldn¡¯t be further away from the cartoon character. She would always shield her eyes whenever we hunted bunnies, whispering ¡°I¡¯m so sorry poor poor bunnies.¡± It was hilarious! They were both from Japan, and were completely shocked to hear that I was living in the USA. Apparently they didn¡¯t know about the universal language system, and just thought that they were in the Japanese server and everyone around was speaking Japanese. They had a very impressed look when I explained the details to them. We soon outgrew the beginner fields and started off for the forest after having our gear repaired. The gear only consisted of 3 beginner daggers so it wasn¡¯t too expensive. As soon as we entered the forest, we were confronted with a wolf. It was really scary as it looked absolutely real! We had an extremely hard time coping up with the wolf¡¯s speed, but we managed somehow. Even Jessie started slashing with her dagger, although she was still hesitant and barely did any damage. After a few more hours of hunting wolves, we had each reached level 10 and decided to move towards the nearest city to get our class change. Curious as to which class they were going to select, I asked the siblings about their preferences. ¡°Obviously, I¡¯m going to be a swordsman! In the frontlines, fighting for my survival and wreaking havoc to all enemies! Muahahahahaha!¡± ¡°Umm¡­ I don¡¯t much like fighting so I thought I would be a healer.¡± Totally predictable, no need to even mention who said what! Then James asked which class I would choose and I immediately answered, ¡°Assassin!¡± That¡¯s right, hiding in the shadows, completely ignored by everyone until the last moment! That¡¯s why I had always put my stat points from levelling up into Agility and Dexterity. Which reminded me, I hadn¡¯t distributed the stat points after reaching level 10! I immediately opened up my status screen and did what needed to be done, then looked at it to see my progress.
Name:EmmaClass:Wanderer
Level:10Title(s):None
Race:HumanGender:Female
Health:210Mana:140
Health Regenration:0.14/secondMana regeneration:0.16/second
Strength:21Inteligence:14
Stamina:14Wisdom:16
Dexterity:41Agility:44
Fame:0Luck:0
Yup, looks good! High agility and dexterity, just a little into strength to boost my health and a bit of intelligence and Wisdom, totally the stats of an assassin! Dismissing the screen, I looked up to find James and Jessie both looking at me with curiosity. ¡°What?¡± I asked, puzzled. ¡°Why would you want to be an assassin of all things? And why did you say the class name with such an evil smile on your face?!¡± Asked Jessie with a bit of fear in her eyes. Oh God! They probably think I am some kind of mad girl with a murder fetish! Damn! ¡°It¡¯s not like that. I just think it would be fun to play as an assassin as they are very fast and umm¡­ I can¡¯t really move very fast in the real world.¡± ¡°Oh! I¡¯m so sorry! Don¡¯t worry, play as an assassin and run around and be free!¡± Jessie said, with a sad look in her eyes and then she ran up to me and hugged me! Wha¡­. What¡¯s going on? I looked at James and saw that he also had a sad look in his eyes. What? Something happened? I looked around but there was nothing sad at all¡­ Then it dawned on me¡­ CRAP! They probably think I¡¯m some kind of cripple in real life! That isn¡¯t the truth! I just said the lie about not being able to move fast to avoid saying my true reason! Crap crap crap crap! Jessie was still hugging me tightly! Dammit! Oh well¡­ damage is already done¡­ I¡¯ll just try to contain it¡­ ¡°Thank you very much for understanding. But please don¡¯t tell this to anyone else as it¡¯s my private life¡­¡± I felt bad lying to the sweet siblings, but it¡¯s better they don¡¯t know the truth about me or my wealth. I am going to enjoy being with the first friends I have made since middle school! The later they know about my wealth, the longer they will stay friends with me. As soon as they find out, it will only result in them looking at me as some kind of ATM card¡­ ¡°Yes yes! Don¡¯t worry, we won¡¯t tell anyone!¡± Jessie said while James nodded behind him. Well, at least they won¡¯t spread the fake tales of me being some kind of cripple or anything¡­ With that being done with, we once again set off for the nearby city: Yloria. We soon arrived and split up at the gate, agreeing to meet up again in an hour. Walking into the city alone, I had to take a moment to take in the sight. The village had all been small houses, with a single general store, blacksmith, tailor and a small inn. The city was the complete opposite! 15 foot high black stone walls surrounded it with the only entrance visible being the gate. Watch towers could be seen after every 30 or so feet with archers and mages barely visible on top of them. I turned around and faced towards the interior of the city, and it was covered with people! Fruit and vegetable stands, food stalls, merchant stalls and stores of every kind imaginable lined the streets, with people busily moving here and there. The noise was incredible too, shouts and calls came from all stalls while people loudly haggled over prices. The buildings were all made of stone and were huge compared with the tiny houses of the village. Neat, paved roads wide enough for 2 carriages to easily pass by each other were separating the lines of the buildings. All in all, the sheer size and grandeur of the city of Yloria took my breath away! I went ahead and asked a couple of NPCs for directions to the Assassin¡¯s guild and soon I was in front of a rather inconspicuous black building set at the Western corner of the city, completely away from sight. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I went in, somewhat scared, and immediately a black robed guy materialized out of nowhere in front of me! ¡°State your business.¡± He said in a cold, lifeless voice. Shivering just a bit with fear, I replied, ¡°I wanted to change my class to an assassin and was told that this was the assassins guild¡­.¡± The robed man nodded, waved his hand a bit and said, ¡°There you go. Now leave.¡± He then vanished into thin air again! I was going to try and see where he had disappeared off to when a bunch of system messages filled my vision.
Congratulations!
You now have the class: Assassin
Congratulations!
By aquiring your class, you have gained a new skill: Stealth You will now be able to move around like a shadow, completely invisible to others. As a class bonus, you can use this skill without the use of any mana.
Beginner level 1 (0%)Active
Congratulations!
By aquiring your class, you have gained a new skill: Backstab You will strike down enemies without them even knowing of your presence! 25% extra damage of weapon if used on unsuspecting enemies.
If use in conjuction with stealth, does a further 25% extra damage. As a class bonus, you can use this skill without the use of any mana.
Beginner level 1 (0%)Active
Congratulations!
By aquiring the class: Assassin, you have gained the class-specific skill: Dual-dagger wielding You can now equip daggers on both hands and do equal damage from both without any penalties.
Passive
Cool! I am an assassin now woohooo! And I even got the new skills! Stealth is what I was after all along! Now, I already have the beginner dagger, I need a new one to dual-wield. ¡°Why are you still here? Want to die?¡± A cold, lifeless voice said from thin air and I jumped about a foot! I had completely forgotten I was still inside the assassin¡¯s guild! Apologizing, I hastily turned around and ran out. That guy is scary! Shaking off the feeling of fear once I got back to the center of the city, I decided I needed to get a set of black clothes to match my assassin look! I went to a nearby tailor and looked around. My inventory had a balance of 1 silver, 43 copper. Needless to say it wasn¡¯t anywhere near enough to afford even the most basic of leather equipment. Smiling to myself at not being able to afford something for the first time in my life, I just bought a basic travelling set that had absolutely no stats at all and simply dyed it completely black and immediately put it on. I knew I had nowhere near enough money to buy a new dagger right now so I simply walked back towards the gate. I arrived at the gate but Jessie and James weren¡¯t there yet, so I started browsing the forums. It¡¯s so good that you can even access the internet from within the game! I browsed through the forums for some information about the assassin class, but didn¡¯t find anything that I didn¡¯t already know¡­. wait! What¡¯s this¡­? A forum post stated about the drops of the boss monster: Alpha Wolf. Among the drops stated was a dagger that sometimes dropped! This is it! I should be able to get my dagger from this boss! By the time I discovered the post, Jessie and James had returned. They seemed a bit impressed by my new black attire, but I was more then shocked to see them carrying a healer staff and a sword respectively! ¡°Where did you get those weapons?¡± ¡°What the sword and my staff? They are basic weapons given when you change your class, everyone gets them. Why? Didn¡¯t you get one?¡± asked Jessie with a puzzled look. ¡°No I did not get one!¡± I answered through gritted teeth. Why didn¡¯t that damn guy give me what he should have?! He basically just got rid of me! If only I wasn¡¯t so utterly terrified of him I swear I would have gone and have a word with him! Shaking my head to get rid of the anger, I told them quickly about how I was thinking of going after the Alpha Wolf which dropped a dagger so that I could dual-wield! Hearing Dual-wield, James immediately opened his mouth to speak. ¡°Ah that¡¯s right. Assassins can dual wield daggers! Here, take my beginner dagger. I obviously don¡¯t need it anymore and it¡¯s so worthless that no one would even buy it! You can at least dual-wield it till you get the one from the boss.¡± I immediately equipped the dagger while giving James a heartfelt thanks. These siblings really are good people¡­ Hope they stay friends with me¡­ ¡°Okay then, I think we should look for a few more players now, after all we just got out class and are still low levelled. No way will we be able to take on the boss wolf on our own.¡± Said James. I had to agree, we were still level 10 while the boss was level 20. Furthermore, we had just gotten our classes and were still inexperienced with them. We started searching and soon enough we had found 3 players who also wanted to hunt the boss. There was an African guy named Marcus, an archer, an Arab by the name of Ali who was a fire mage and an American by the name of Paul, who was also a swordsman. I have to say, it was quite wonderful meeting so many different people from all over the world. Where else would you find an opportunity such as this to interact with so many different cultures without any communication barriers whatsoever! Anyways, we quickly left the city and returned to the forest riddled with wolves. There, we all spread out a bit and started practising on the wolves to get familiar with our class. I kept using stealth and going behind the wolves to try and do a backstab on them. It worked wonderfully and soon enough I was able to get used to my class and I loved it! I kept using stealth even while we were simply walking, as the feeling of being invisible was just too wonderful for me! Lost in my own world, I barely even noticed when we reached a clearing and everyone ahead of me stopped. Stopping myself just in the nick of time from bumping into Jessie in front of me, I looked into the clearing and saw a huge wolf in the middle of the clearing. The words Alpha Wolf were clearly visible on top of his head. Wow, I never imagined this guy would be this scary! We all stepped into the clearing and the Alpha turned its huge head to look at us menacingly! I gulped, but before any of us could do anything a group of 6 players also entered the clearing from the other side. ¡°Oho! What do we have here? A bunch of noobs want to attack the boss and take it away from us? That won¡¯t happen now would it? We came here first, no get lost newbies if you know what¡¯s good for you!¡± an arrogant looking guy with blonde hair said while leading his party closer to the Alpha. James, hotheaded as always, was about to respond before the Alpha suddenly stood up. It looked at one party and then the next, clearly displeased about being disturbed. It then lifted his head and howled, loudly! We all immediately entered battle stances and got ready for whatever was coming. Soon we all heard a low rumbling sound, coupled with the sounds of leaves rustling and twigs snapping, and the sounds were coming from all around us! Panicking, I looked all around while activating stealth on instinct. The sound grew louder and louder until suddenly wolves jumped out from all around us into the clearing! About 60-70 wolves came crashing into the clearing and started attacking us! Everyone immediately retaliated, and I was no different. I started using stealth and backstab repeatedly, as it was the only thing I knew. I also relied on my agility stat to help me out but it was really difficult! I used stealth again after backstabbing a wolf and decided to take a bit of a breather and looked around me. IDIOTS! All 11 of the other players were going at each other instead of fighting the wolves and the Alpha! They should work together to get us out of this mess! The Boss respawns in just 20 minutes! There¡¯s no use to fighting! But alas, no one else seemed to have the slightest bit of logic in them as they continued battling each other and the wolves simultaneously. I gritted my teeth in anger and just kept on attacking the wolves. I was determined to at least get out of this alive and for that I had to get rid of as many wolves as possible! I kept fighting the wolves for another couple of minutes while ignoring the idiot players all around me. I looked up again after dealing yet another backstab to a wolf and found out that I was the only player left, everyone else had killed each other off! Utterly annoyed by everyone¡¯s behavior, I activated stealth and sneaked away past the few wolves that were remaining. I reached the edge of the clearing and looked towards it again. The Alpha was surveying its surroundings while panting, and the wolves around him kept a wary eye out too. I decided to wait here a bit till the wolves would disappear, and then I would somehow sneak in and get the gear that those idiot friends of mine had dropped when they got killed. I thought it was going to be a long wait, but barely 2 minutes had passed before a young guy calmly walked into the clearing. He was about 5 feet, ten inches tall, had short hair and dark brown eyes just like mine. But two things about his appearance were completely insane! One, he was still wearing his beginner gear. And two, he had no weapon! And yet he was calmly walking towards a boss monster surrounded by his minions! The wolves all bared their fangs and ran towards the guy, and I thought it was probably going to be over for this new player. But what happened next was completely mind-boggling! The guy suddenly started moving extremely fast! And threw punches killing the wolves with one hit each! In barely 30 seconds he had killed off all the wolves with his bare hands! Still in a daze, I saw as the Alpha now started attacking the guy. But even the Alpha wasn¡¯t able to hit him as he dodged its extremely fast movements and punched straight at the boss without even the slightest hint of fear! This is simply too crazy!! Apparently pleased with his punch landing, the guy stopped moving with a smile on his face, giving the Alpha plenty of time to turn and bite him straight in the ass! Instead of laughing, I just felt relieved. Whew, all that display earlier was probably just a fluke. No one can possibly go toe-to-toe against a boss without even a weapon! But my thoughts were quickly shattered by what transpired next. It seemed that it was just a lapse of judgement from the guy¡¯s part which enabled the Alpha to attack him. He turned into a blur again and started moving even faster then the Alpha! Dodging, observing, attacking, all with bare hands against a boss! After some time, the boss finally went into the critical state and its paws turned red! But the guy didn¡¯t seem too bothered with anything. Even when the Alpha got faster and managed to hit the guy, he simply responded by running straight at the Alpha while dodging a paw and jumping straight at it, kicking it right in the jaw! And just like that, the Alpha died! A player had just soloed a boss monster without any weapons! I was in such a daze that I barely registered the dagger that the Alpha dropped, but right now who cares about a stupid dagger?? All I was concentrating on was the guy in front of me. Just who is this handsome fellow¡­? Eh¡­ why did I add the handsome part?? I shook my head and concentrated back towards the boy, who had just seen all the loot lying about the clearing that had been dropped by the players. My heart sank, surely it would be the same again, greed will take over as it always does and this guy will happily take all the loot and leave¡­ But the guy surprised me yet again! ¡°Hey! Anyone there? I saw you guys fighting earlier, you seem to have dropped your loot. Come pick it up!¡± he asked, with a soft and calming voice. Did I hear that right¡­? Is someone giving up all this loot to its rightful owners¡­? Impossible! It must be a trick! ¡°Come on guys this is all your loot. I¡¯m not here to PK so don¡¯t worry and just take everything. If you don¡¯t come out soon I will have to take everything and leave¡­¡± the guy called out again. I was still of the belief that this was all a trick, but his eyes passed over where I was standing still with stealth on and when I saw into those dark brown eyes that had no hint of dishonesty in them, something stirred within me. Before I could even stop myself, I deactivated stealth and called out, ¡°Thank you. I will be taking the loot my friends dropped, the rest is yours.¡± I hope this isn¡¯t all a trick, and I hope me and this guy can become friends¡­ and perhaps something more¡­ I thought as my eyes met his and my heart started thumping madly¡­. -------- Author''s note: My apologies for the long delay. My classes schedule changed this week, and Monday-Wednesday I now get home at around 10pm, and I am too tired by then to write anything. Schedule of chapters will probably be affected as I won''t be able to write much during these 3 days each week. Anyways, hope you enjoy this chapter. I wrote it while half-asleep as I was determined to get a chapter out today, so if there are any mistakes please do let me know! My sleepiness also probably affected the sloppy tables I made... Also, thank you very much for all the support you guys have shown towards me so far! :) PS: Shout-out to baby Emma from F.R.I.E.N.D.S., my favorite Tv-series! Just imagine this as Emma all grown up :P PS(2): After Nurse joy, Team Rocket has now made its entry! :P Announcement Hi everyone! First of all let me apologize for the LOOONNNGG wait without any chapters. But there was a reason why I disappeared! I had the extremely bright idea of completely writing and finishing up my story and then uploading all chapters in a span of 1-2 weeks so that everyone can read all of the chapters in one go. I really do hate waiting for chapters myself which is why I decided I would do this... I was going along very well, if I do say so myself. I had written all the way to chapter 57! But that was when disaster struck! My laptop was on the floor and I stepped on it in the dark, and with my considerable weight on top of my tiny laptop... let''s just say things didn''t end well for my poor laptop. The screen was shattered obviously, but as it was upside down when I stepped on it so apparently I also managed to damage my hard disk. I tried going to various shops but they all said it''s not possible to retrieve anything from my hard disk. :( Can anyone here help me out? If you guys have any ideas or tricks to retrieve data from a damaged hard disk please do let me know, I will try ANYTHING! This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. I do have some bad news though, if even with your help I am unable to recover my chapters then I will have to put this project on a temporary hiatus. Reason being I am too disheartened to continue with this right now... Temporary Hiatus does really mean temporary though! I have no intention at all on leaving this project unfinished! I was thinking of trying to write a short story of well under 50 chapters here to get my mind refreshed and then coming back to this story... I do apologize for all this. I also have learned my lesson and will now be writing everything online to keep things safe. Also, when I do come back to this story, do you guys think I should just go with the norm here and release chapters as I write them or would it better to come back after I have completely finished the story? Let me know... Once again I do apologize for all this. You may abuse me and rip me to shreds as much as you like... :(