A bright light began to surround me.
I closed my eyes and opened them to find myself in an unfamiliar place, instead of the white space I had gotten used to. The buildings around him looked like something out of a movie or a novel, with an old-fashioned medieval feel. Sung-hoon kept his upper body slightly bowed, ready to draw and swing his sword at a moment's notice. His stomach felt a little bloated from the meal, but he didn't mind.
Jerry's last words flashed through my mind.
"Now, before we begin The Mission in earnest, let me give you one piece of advice.
"Save your life.
I shoveled softened food down my throat to satisfy my hunger, but kept my ears open.
'I know this situation follows the format of a game, but it's not a real game. You can't be brought back to life as many times as you die in a game. Only one resurrection is allowed in The Mission. A piece of advice and a rule that will stand the test of time. Save your life.
You've already killed three people since the beginning. He knew nothing about the world of The Mission.
Maybe it would be a tournament, like the first one, with a few people crammed into a room and repeated until there was only one left, and maybe there would be beings among the people he would meet again who would not hesitate to thrust their weapons into people like him. But fortunately, if you're in a place like the city, where the skies are open and you can see in all directions, you can at least see the silver, like yesterday....
Woof!
"What, what?!"
"Gahhhhhhh!"
"You bastards, please let me out!"
Bright lights appeared and disappeared here and there, and at the same time, people began to appear. They all looked different, but one thing was the same. The man was wearing a green shirt and pants, and the woman was wearing a blue shirt and skirt. These are the beginner's outfits they received after completing the tutorial.
However, some of them are carrying short swords and some are carrying bows. Some of them, like Sung-hoon, were wary of their surroundings, while others just cursed and used evil words, and some just sat down and burst into tears. But after a while, nothing else happened.
No quest windows appeared, no monsters appeared.
Suddenly, as if struck by lightning, Sung-hoon realized something.
"Shit. This is not the time to be killing.
Jerry said that the world of The Mission was about to begin, and while I was cringing at the thought, he also said that the first city was the starting point. Tutorial quests, rewards, what's next?
Jerry was right, it was the beginning.
It didn't matter how the game was structured, the important thing was to get moving.
"It's a game, but it's not really a game." On the contrary, it's more or less a game. There might be quests that reward the first person to move. It's not the time to be stupid and waste time.
Sung-hoon jumped up and began to run away.
He could see people looking at him with wide eyes, and others with their backs to him as if they were allies, but he had no time for such things. The city was certainly aptly named.
It didn't take long for him to find his target.
A building with an old-fashioned sign with the word Mission on it. As if he was being followed, Sung Hoon entered the building like lightning.
The building was deserted. The only person in the building was himself, who had just kicked in the door. After taking a quick look around, Sung-hoon coughed and started to approach the desk.
"Thank you for being the first to come to the First City Mission. Player!"
"Ah, yes."
"How may I help you?"
"Uh, nothing that...."
I shoved the thought of a "first time..." title or some other little special for first-time users into the back of my mind.
"Can you tell me what this place does?"
"Yes. The mission station assigns quests to players."
"Quests."
Mission stations give out quests. I rolled that thought into my head and said.
"I'm sorry, but there's still a lot I don't know. Can't I get a map of this first city?"
"Maps can be purchased at the General Store."
"Okay... I see. Hahaha. Now, while I'm at it, can you tell me where the hunting is?"
If you know where the hunting grounds are, you'll be way ahead of everyone else. At least you have a solid base of equipment and skills now, right? At this point, Ms. Counsellor smiled brightly and began to pull something out from underneath.
"You want hunting quests? Since you're a beginner, you can get quests like clearing out rats or killing sparrows. If that's a bit too much for you, how about hunting with dogs?"
"That's fine, I just need to know where the hunting grounds are. I'm not looking for quests yet."
"You have to get a quest to hunt?"
"What? What do you mean?"
At Sung-hoon's confused expression, the agent smiled and replied.
"Monsters don't exist inside the first city."
"So you have to go outside the city to hunt, right?"
"There is nothing outside the city, to be precise, you can't go outside the city, the city is everything in this world. If you want to earn guilds, you take quests and fulfill missions."
It took me a moment to digest this, but it didn't take long for me to understand what the agent meant.
"Can I get a quest to clean up rats?"
"Yes, you can."
A rat sweep.
-Grade: E
-The warehouse is plagued by an infestation of rats. Dispose of the rats in the warehouse.
-Requirements.
1.Rat Catcher: Catch five rats (0/5)
2.hunter: catch twenty rats (0/20)
3.slaughterer: catch a hundred rats (0/100)
-Base Reward: 500 Guilds, +1 Reputation (Rewards will be added based on achievement conditions.)
-Bonus for first clear on Slaughterer difficulty: +1 bonus stat point
The reward was unremarkable.
However, the first thing that caught my eye was the First Clear Bonus next to it.
-You've received a quest for the Rat Swarm. Go to the mission location.
Woof, woof, woof!
"Damn. Is this the only way to travel?"
He closed his eyes and opened them to realize that he was being transported to a huge building he had never seen before. Realizing where he was in an instant, Sung-hoon let out a small sigh and hesitantly sat back in his seat.
At first, he thought it was an open-world world, but that wasn't the case. As the agent had said, the first city is a city you can't escape.
And the only way to earn guilds or become stronger was to take quests.
"So, if what Jerry said is true, there are transcendent beings watching the players, and they're going to decide who will be their successor based on how they perform these missions and how powerful they are?
"Anyway, we don't have time to be spread out like this."
I remember the words "first clear bonus" in the rewards section. Even if he was wrong about everything else, Sung-hoon's prediction that there would at least be some sort of reward for moving fast was correct. This was a very unfriendly game with no levels and no advice on how to increase stats.
The only way to increase stats I could find in such a game.
Monopolize as many stat points as you can, as fast as you can.
'I can't be the only one whose head is spinning,' I thought, 'these simple quests are flying by. I need to move as fast as I can.
Taken?
"There!"
Without hesitation, Sung-hoon swung his sword toward the source of the sound, but the blade struck the ground at breakneck speed, ricocheting off pieces of stone. The rat that was a few feet away from the sword disappeared into the darkness in an instant.
Tsk!
"In there?!"
It wasn't long before Sung-hoon, who had been rampaging with his sword for so long, was standing with his sword as a cane. Even with the title bonus, his stamina is slightly lower than that of a normal person, and with that kind of stamina, swinging his sword around while bent over at the waist, he quickly became exhausted.
After several rounds of resting and moving, Sung-hoon wiped the sweat from his forehead and gritted his teeth.
"Damn, I shouldn't have made it look so easy."
He'd gotten used to killing in the room of beginnings. But that experience didn't help when it came to catching rats. Catching rats is usually considered the foundation of a game.
But in the real world, the difficulty of catching rats is enormous. It wasn't difficult to deal with enemies of a certain size, but trying to catch a tiny rat in this huge warehouse was a grueling quest.
A chill ran down my spine.
"Surely the quest requirements are...."
The lowest requirement is to catch five rats, but I doubt I'll be able to catch one, let alone five. I also didn't know how to stop the quest.
The fact that you can only get out of the warehouse by completing the quest is consistent with the fact that if you don't complete the quest, you'll be stuck in the warehouse forever.
Thank goodness I had food and water with me. If I made a mistake, I could have starved to death catching rats here. Feeling his throat go dry, Sung-hoon licked the corner of his mouth and suddenly opened his inventory.
Water and food occupy the inventory. Realizing that what he was looking for was not in his inventory, he began to search through his coat.
It was an expensive coat, costing a whopping 3,000 guilders. Its defense barely exceeds that of leather armor, but its pockets allow him to safely store items such as daggers and potions.
I fumbled in my pocket and found a potion that glistened with a clear liquid.
Lowest grade poison.
Rank: Normal.
Type: Potion.
-A poison made from a combination of the lowest-grade poisonous herbs. It reduces physical abilities and inflicts lasting damage. Its lethality is very low, but if the target is a small animal, you should be able to take it down without much trouble.
This is it.
I look around, just in case. There was no food in the warehouse. Just a bunch of unidentifiable junk. Feeling more confident in his plan, Sung-hoon finished the potion.