Ayden closed his eyes and opened them again as he stared at his target. In truth, he was kind of excited. While he has fought against humans, fighting a monster was different, and he wondered just how well he would do. Although he did have to admit that the current height difference would make things slightly difficult, he still needed to train to get used to such things. "Let's do this!"
After trying to hype himself up, Ayden rushed forward. The Tree Digger raised its ugly head. It was like a kind of squished faced miniature rhino with a single long horn and digital glowing patterns all over its body that they would normally use to dig into trees, but it was also used in self defense as well. "Grawlh~!" The Tree Digger let out a strange growl in warning, but Ayden did not stop his charge. He readied himself to attack, but just as he swung his fist to hit the Tree Digger, it turned its stocky body quickly and rammed its long point horn into Ayden's gut. Ayden had no time to evade before he found himself sitting at the spawn point near the forest entrance. Luckily there was one near the forest and not in the city which he came from, or he might have run into the three idiots again.
Ayden checked his inventory over to see if he had lost anything. After checking it a few times, he let out a sigh of relief. "It seems that monsters do not make you drop your gear, only players do. I do wonder if there is a way to safeguard your items…."
Once again, Ayden hit the cybernet and began searching up things on the game. What he found was that there was a thing called player housing in which one could get a small apartment for free. It was nothing but a single room and nothing else, but it came with a storage box that he could store items in. If he wanted anything bigger and fancy, he would need to pay a price. As such, he ignored the rest of the information once he saw he had to pay for it. Being poor was one thing, but he was trying to live a frugal life in game in order to make as much money as possible.
He looked at the clock on his hud and saw that he had only been playing for one hour real world time. This kind of surprised him because it felt like he had been playing for quite a while, but when he matched up the seconds ticking by on the in game clock compared to the real world clock, he saw that time was much faster in game giving off the illusion that many hours have passed already.
"Let's try this again!" Ayden stood up and dusted off his shorts before running towards the Tree Digger he had just died to. His second bout with the tree Digger did not last any longer than before. The Tree Digger quickly evaded Ayden's strike before stabbing him through the chest once more. The fifth and sixth time, he finally lasted for almost a minute, but he realized the Tree Digger was quickly learning his attack patterns causing him to frown.
As he sat next to the respawn point for hit eighth time, Ayden began paying back in his mind all the mistakes he had made up to this point. "I need to learn to counter and fake. If I throw a fake with my left and the hook with my right before it can stab me, I should be able to hit its weak point. Because just punching it normally has done no damage…. Its heavily metal armored body is making my punches do one damage, but then again, it could also be the level difference added in."
Ayden let out a sigh as he stood up once more and returned to the Tree Digger. This time he charged forward, coming at it from the left, which seemed to throw it off because before, he kept directly attacking its right. So when Ayden got close while swinging his left towards the Tree Digger, the Tree Digger readied its attack to the left, never expecting Ayden to suddenly pivot and swing his body around into a side step and send a right hook at its weak point.
[600 Critical hit!]
The Tree Digger turned into 0s and 1s, leaving behind a lot of monster parts that could be used for crafting things. Ayden quickly picked up the chips and other things that fell on the ground before rushing forward.
---
Meanwhile, outside the gates, three people were not looking very good. "Where is that bastard!?"
"He should still be around here. He looked to be only level 1, and he shouldn't be able to fight anything higher level than him at this time. Even we have issues with level three monsters unless we fight together. They are just too hard and smart." Earwax replied to Trasheaters rage filled roar.
"What if he is a higher level? He may even be an NPC." Redtail was not sure why these two thought the person they targeted was a player or not.
"How could he not be a player!? We watched him use player motions while accepting what should have been a quest! Not to mention he was still wearing newbie gear!" Trasheater was not hearing it. As far as he knew, the way the kid acted was like a player. He had played many VRMMOs where you couldn't tell who was who. But the actions of a player would always be much different from an NPC, so he was sure the little bastard was a player. "Spread out and search for him. When you find him, send a message over team chat. We need to make that bastard pay and force him to cough up his items."
Redtail and Earwax looked at each other and let out a sigh before running off in different directions to search for Ayden. They would never think the person they were looking for was currently defeating level three and more monsters at only level two.
As Ayden came to the small open area in the forest, he frowned when he felt something was off about this place. But even still, he could see his target in front of him. "I just need to snag it and get out."
But sadly, things never go as planned. As soon as his entire body was pushed into the light, a red light encircled the area, blocking him from leaving as alarms began going off. The ground shook in front of him and began to break apart….