"Haaaaaah" Night sighed as he looked into his hands, he was covered in sweat and black sludge-like substance which most likely were impurities.
"Just had to happen, didn't it? well, at least I don't need to worry about anything else other than leveling for a while."
Once he looked up, he saw that he was surrounded by almost half of the creatures in the forest, however, what he found amiss was the fact that every being around him was kneeling down and shivering. They all clearly maintained some distance and kept away from Night for some reason and Shade looked at Night with even more admiration than usual.
"My lord, congratulations" Shade said while slightly bowing down with his hand to his heart.
"Congratulations? for what? anyway let's kill some monsters, I need to get stronger quickly" Night said without realizing that Shade could feel a different aura coming from him.
"Ah yes of course," Shade said, he wanted to praise his lord more as he was under the impression that Night was just acting humble and didn't want to show off his new power, little did he know that Night actually had no idea about his new aura.
It's been more than a month since the game launched and Night was still level 50, whereas the other players, were now nearing level 80, Kira was second rank for a while but soon he took back the place from Mocha, of course, there was a chance that there are still unregistered players who are higher level than both of them.
All the major families and people who invested a lot of time and money into the game were constantly looking at the leaderboards, some families even hired people to keep track of the leaderboards to see if Night suddenly starts leveling up but unfortunately for the past week Night didn't move a single level, In fact, he didn't even get any XP.
Soon heirs of rich families and some of the rankers had gotten complacent, some of them even criticized Night as a fake and someone who just wants to show off, whereas some called him a weakling who took advantage of his peers or just a spoilt rich brat that used up all his families resources.
// // //
Nate finally managed to clear the first floor of the Academy. But by the time he had done it, only a handful of players and NPC's were left on the first floor, it was mainly due to the fact that Nate wasn't a specialty Mage, and being a specialty Mage helps you clear the test quicker. But he was stubborn in training all the elements available at the same pace.
[Congratulations you have passed the first floor! All stats +20]
"Finally..."
"So this is the second floor huh? Woah this way better than I expected... how does the floor even fit inside the building? perhaps some kind of spatial magic? I wonder who made the building? was there anyone who crossed this floor? the first floor's test was pretty easy, it required us to cast a high damage spell but it took me a while since I use all the elements, I wonder if this floor's test is similar?" all sorts of questions raced through his mind as he looked at the second floor.
It was almost twice the size and assuming ancient spatial magic was used is a very fair assumption. It wasn't a normal building's floor, it had grass that covered the entire floor and multiple magic circles were present that would teleport one to a different space that acted as a pocket dimension to train, however, these were only available to players that were level 50 and above.
There were many scholars and guides present who sometimes may advise players depending on the affinity, so almost every NPC was surrounded by players trying to win them over.
"Haah, this is going to be painful...." he sighed.