Lux opened his eyes, staring at the cold blue sky.
"Where am I".
Lux looked around him.
He lied in a plain of red grass with snowy terrain all around him. Did he get kidnapped?
Lux was confused as this place was unlike anywhere he had ever seen.
He got up and saw a book right next to him, with slight hesitation he grabbed the book and flipped to the first page.
It read:
Welcome dear reader, you may be very confused about where you are but that's okay.
You've been chosen to become one of the Monarch of Play's successors!
Different perks will be granted to you during your quest to become a god but right now we need you to be calm and patient and read this guide on how to survive God's Mercy, a world was specifically chosen for you to inhabit for your quest to become a god.
You won't be given the entire guide but small portions for you to accomplish until you reach the next step.
You shall now begin:
Step one- Gather some firewood and set camp somewhere
…
Lux stared at the page with a complicated look on his face.
"What is this bullshit?" Lux flipped through the other pages but they were blank.
Lux's mind raced with hundreds of thoughts, how did he get here? Who wrote this book? Why was he here? What's the Monarch of Play?
Lux then thought of the message he got before he passed out.
"Ok let's go with what I know here," Lux said to himself.
"I'm stuck on another world and was supposedly sent here to become one of the successors of this god called the Monarch of Play and I'm competing with others to become one?".
"This place is called God's Mercy and I have to survive here until I become a god?" This was entirely too random, of all the people of the 44 trillion people alive, why did they pick him?
There were many questions Lux wanted answers to but he just couldn't think of a plausible answer without speculating.
A roar was heard in the distance, Lux turned in the direction it was heard from. There were indeed going to be creatures that wanted to kill him here and he was forced to follow the survival guide.
Sighing in frustration, he stuffed the book into his coat and ran in the opposite direction of where the sound was made.
Now, Lux wasn't any stupid man. He knew this wasn't any ordinary world and that he wasn't invincible here, after all, he was the only one candidate out of god knows how many people there are competing like him.
Lux wasn't interested in becoming a god but found it interesting to live in such an environment. So once he is satisfied he could just call quits and go back to living his normal lifestyle.
Lux ran toward a snowy forest and saw in the distance a stone tower, Lux felt a dark force that made his hairs raise up. He didn't dare going even near the tower.
There was no way of knowing so he wasn't going to risk it.
"Monarch of Play huh? It said I would get some perks from being his successor but I don't feel anything different" Lux was a bit disappointed and doubted that this Monarch of Play was even legit.
Then suddenly a window appeared in front of his face with the top corner saying inventory. Lux smirked and looked at the window.
It was a 6 by 12 grid of empty slots, 72 possible things fit in his inventory.
There were other tabs as listed- Crafting, Stats, Skill Tree, Runes, Pets, Equipment, Crafting Recipes, and Evolution Tree.
"Hehehe, this is really like a game" Lux scratched his chin.
He couldn't see go to most tabs but he could access the Stats tab.
It read as followed:
Name: Lux Grey
Age: 24
Level: 1
Experience Points until next level: 10
Levels until next evolution: 50
Lux nodded to himself, the Monarch of Play was actually knowledgeable to know his last name which even his personally close friends didn't know. This made Lux belive more into what he proclaimed to be.
He walked to a stream of water and inspected it.
There was a chance the water was poisonous so there was no way he could drink it just yet. He grabbed some rocks and started sharpening them, then grabbed some reeds growing against a tree and cut them into strings of fiber.
He tied them up into a rope and tied the stick against a piece of bark and started spinning it with ease, fire sparked.
He remembered this information from a hiking guide he read back long ago.
With the rope and sharpened rock, Lux tied them together to make a knife.
Ding!
Lux turned around and looked deep into the forest wondering where that noise came from. He checked his inventory and saw a red exclamation mark on the crafting recipes tab. He tapped onto it and saw that he could craft a loose stone knife.
"Oh that cool, I guess it automates it once I learned how to make it" Lux was soon starting to understand his perks as the successor of the Monarch of Play.
They were based on grindy games, although Lux didn't play that many grindy games he was used to grinding on PVP games to get the best gear and stats. That's what separated him from everyone else, he rigorously researched everything about that certain subject from experimenting to using mathematics to find out every small advantage he could get against his opponent which all added up to a much bigger strength than just grinding.
Lux figured that if he just followed the survival guide he would find answers to everything, and set up camp next to the river.
He checked the survival guide and saw that there was a new step:
Step two- Gather some water and hunt Scaled Carp for your first experience points.
Lux now started gaining an understanding of his power, if he killed monsters he gained experience points to level up to become more powerful.
He also knew that the water wasn't poisonous since the guide told him it was okay to collect some of it.
With his stone knife, Lux set out to hunt some Scaled Carp by the river stream. The Carp there shined in the clear cold water, Lux waited patiently for it to jump out of the water so he could grab it. Since he was outstanding in PVP, his reaction speed was much faster than a normal person but his movement wasn't.
When the fish sprung out, Lux jabbed it as fast as he could and just barely managed to stab the tail of it.
Holding it by the tail, Lux grabbed the face of the fish and killed it.
He looked at his stats but it didn't give him any XP.
Lux frowned. If killing it didn't give him XP, then maybe eating would?
Lux ran back and created another fire, and roasted the fish slowly on a stick. Once it was cooked, Lux started eating it. When he finished he looked at his stats:
Name: Lux Grey
Age: 24
Level: 1
Experience Points until next level: 3
Levels until next evolution: 50
Lux went ecstatic, he had gained XP from the fish just like a video game. Lux gained a feeling in him, the one he had been looking for all his life.
"Hell yeah!" Lux shouted.
Lux began hunting more and it became easier every time he leveled up. His speed had greatly increased as now he was level 4 from killing fish but it was now getting harder to level up.
"Well I can't kill fish anymore for XP since now I need 40 XP to level up," Lux said to himself.
He looked back at the survival guide to see what he needed to do next.
Step three: get to level ten and acquire a rune
Lux looked at the book in shock, he thought the first steps would be easy but he was wrong. Lux was actually hoping this would happen or everything he did would always be limited by what the book wanted him to do, now he was forced to find a way to get more XP faster and where he could get a rune.
Lux grabbed his tools and used his inventory for the first time to store his firewood and fish. He set out looking for more fish by the river stream and didn't dare go out and risk encountering a wild beast stronger than him.
Lux kept looking back at the stone tower but shook his head, not until he was sure he was strong enough to go there. While looking for stronger-looking fish Lux spotted another structure in the distance in a desert-looking biome. It was a castle, but next to it was a small village near the shoreline.
Lux wondered if he could go to the village, maybe the people there were humans. He crawled onto the side of one of the beach rocks and peered over the edge of it. There were guards walking around in square patterns like NPC's. Lux frowned, he wasn't sure yet if they were hostile, and hesitated for a moment.
In the end, Lux decided to enter the village and see if the guards were hostile. He walked up to one of them but they just did their normal walk around the village like a robot. Lux felt kind of disappointed but shrugged it off and entered the village. Lux felt safe that the guards were there, now any monsters wouldn't enter.
Lux soon realized he was wrong, it was a war zone in there. Black skeletons lurked around people's houses and sand golems terrorized the guards. Lux also wondered how he could gain experience from a skeleton that he couldn't eat from, Lux thought that maybe only some creatures give experience by eating them than others. Lux wanted to kill one of the black skeletons to test this theory, so he waited around in a bush and when one of the skeletons wasn't looking he jumped on it. He cut its head off but it flew back on, he saw a little black orb inside its head and figured that was what maintained its life.
But now the skeleton was aware of Lux and raised its sword at him. Lux doubted his ability to kill it and ran off into one of the houses. If he wanted to kill one of them, he would need to catch one by surprise. But now since he was in someone's house he would search around the place for anything that looked precious.
Lux didn't find much but a couple of cans of soup for food and an empty bucket. Lux took a deep breath and crawled out a window, he peered through the corner and spotted another skeleton harassing someone's house. He crept behind it and stabbed it in its head, the orb exploded into purple ash and the skeleton turned inanimate.
"Ha! It really worked" Lux checked his stats and saw he gained 25 XP from killing the skeleton meaning he did the right thing about running away. The skeletons were probably around level 5, while Lux was only level 4. Lux grabbed the skeleton's sword and put it into his inventory.
It was called a Coal Skeleton Machete.
Lux smiled and happily swapped his stone knife for it. Now with a proper weapon, Lux could kill the skeletons faster and safer. He still didn't risk it and crept behind another and killed it with ease. Lux reached level 5 instantly and felt like his muscles were more tense and stiff.
He felt like he could break a brick with his bare hands, Lux smiled happily and started hunting more coal skeletons. Once he finished he had completely killed every coal skeleton around the village and reached level 7 by that time.
"I wonder if killing a sand golem will give me more XP?" Lux questioned himself.
"Well, maybe it's the same level as the coal skeleton".
Lux found it harder to creep behind a sand golem than a coal skeleton because they didn't rely on their eyes to see and seemed to see everything around them. Lux was forced to fight one of them, he wasn't sure how to kill one but figured that it also had a black orb like the coal skeleton and just needed to find it.
The sand golem shot and rock at Lux but since his speed had increased due to leveling up he dodged it with ease. Lux was still surprised by the speed of the rock and wondered if it was higher than a level 5.
Lux shook his head and slashed at the head of the sand golem and cut cleanly like tofu. Sand went flying but there was no black orb in sight. The sand golem then punched Lux in the gut, Lux's instincts kicked in and he jumped back clenching his stomach in pain.
Holding back the pain, Lux slashed the sand golem in half then the black orb appeared in the side but quickly disappeared. Lux was shocked, the sand golem had the power to move its black orb around its body. Lux slashed again while the sand golem tried to regenerate and once again the black orb appeared but hid again.
Lux gritted his teeth and reached his hand into the sand golems chest trying to feel where the black orb was. He felt something and yanked it out of the sand golem.
It was the black orb.
Using his heightened grip strength, Lux crushed the orb into powder. The sand golem turned inanimate and turned entirely into the sand. Lux checked his stats and saw he got 35 XP the killing to the golem and realized it was probably level 6 or even 7.
Lux was now level 8.