How was this supposed to work? In the beta, the npcs with quests had had an exclamation point over their head. I hadn't seen any, so I assumed the format was different. I hoped there were quests, at least. Seeing as how there were millions of players in every city.
"Hello, my Liege." So npcs could recognize me as their king. That was nice. "Did you have a desire for something?" a memory of Ryne telling me that I could have kids flashed through my mind, but I ignored it. I was level one. That was no time to be having kids with the npcs.
There were no dropdown menus for me to choose my responses from. That I was expecting, but the npcs usually opened with their quest lines. "No." maybe it was different because I was the king. If my king came around, I might be a bit squeamish about asking him for something. "Was there anything you needed? Or anyone you know who needs something? Oh, and how can you learn magic and stuff like that?" that should cover my bases. Nobody wanted an ignorant king, after all.
"My sister, Asha, is in Melasia and her husband just died. She needs to come home, could you bring her back here for me?" I tried to pull out my map and found it empty. The mental backpack was set up the same, so where was the map? No map. None of the transparent tabs had a map option. Or a journal. Had I accepted the quest? I didn't have a way of knowing. So I would need to find a single Dark Elf in Melasia without any sort of map aid or being completely sure I'd get the credit for completing the quest. Awesome. "I'd be extremely grateful, my Liege. And we learn magic one spell at a time. Not many have the focus for it."
"I'll see what I can do. One more thing, is there a map function? I tried accessing it the way I'm used to just now and came up empty." This game would become extremely difficult without a map. She smiled and pointed to my shoulder. Was that the answer? My shoulder?
"Just tell it to become visible. It's always waiting to be used." Tell what to become visible? I nodded my thanks and turned away. I looked hard at Hell and saw that there was nothing on his shoulder. He was level one, so he didn't even have pauldrons. I touched my own shoulder and felt a little claw there. I almost jumped.
Just tell it to become visible. "Become visible." Hell and Lethe gasped. Then they repeated what I'd said and turned to look at the imp that had appeared on their shoulders. I turned to look at mine. It was sitting on my shoulder like a parrot. It was slightly bigger, though. About the size of a capuchin. A very ugly capuchin. Impossibly skinny, pug-like face, and had a pair of short horns growing out of their foreheads. His skin was completely black and wrinkled as if he was a million years old. "Can I have my map?" the imp grinned at me, showing black fangs that proved the imp was Ryne's idea. They looked just like hers. His clawed hand reached down and dropped a scroll into my hand. I opened it to see the street plan of Zezhria. "Zoom out?" and Zezhria was just a dot on it. The whole thing was blank with the dot of Zezhria in the middle. "Zoom out." And there were other dots. Melasia was there, it was the closest city to Zezhria. Just to the north. To the south was Foothills, the Orc city. One of the smaller ones. Weird, I remembered it being far to the east of Zezhria. And Melasia was to the west of Zezhria. "Show poles." A compass appeared in the corner that affirmed that the map I knew was completely wrong. "Zoom all the way out." And I could see all of the dots. It wasn't a circle anymore. I hadn't bothered looking all that much when Ryne was there to talk to, but now I noticed that the land was completely different. Even if I could only see the dots that represented cities, it was still plenty of information to know the world was very different. In the center of the other continent was Capitol, the capital of the Alliance. All of the alliance was concentrated there. South of them were all of the Human cities forming a pair of legs and a westward arm with the rebel goblin city, Rargovan. To the north were three of the elf cities, giving it a head. To the east were Faeville, capital of the fairies, and the outcast orc capital, Delta.
To the East of the star was a shape that reminded me of the Americas. Two wide areas connected by a thin stretch. I couldn't tell if the geography actually matched or just the alignment of the cities, but Zezhria was the bridge. To the north of Zezhria were the rest of the elven cities and three of the pixy cities. To the South were the orc cities and the rest of the pixies. "Show underground." That was a simpler map. Just the dwarves to the west and the goblins to the east. There would be caves and tunnels going everywhere, but I hadn't explored any of it, so it was all blank. They both had six cities. That didn't make sense. The dwarves didn't have a city on the surface. "Show seventh dwarven city." And there it was. On a different map. This one was a cylinder of blanked out space instead of a mat of blanked out space. At the top of a long spiral that ended in the Spire of Agony was the lone dwarven city. The monster cities were shown as dim lights, with no description apart from the name. I could only tell it was a spiral because the map was 3D and most of the cities were invisible looking at it from a perfect vertical angle. The last dwarf city was in Hell? Did that mean there was a non-monster city in Heaven? "Show Heaven." That was set up the same way as Hell, except it was a stairway instead of a long pit. I wondered if there would ever be a day when a player stood on the hallowed stones of the Tower of Justice or in the deepest pits of Hell looking up at the Spire of Agony. I doubted it. With cities aligned that perfectly it was probably just a single set of stairs as wide as a city. The armies would have to sack every city on the way up. Then again…the ruler of the game was a demon. Maybe Hell would overrun the whole game. The demons would take the Tower of Justice for themselves. I sniggered at the idea. "Show current location." And I was back to looking at Zezhria. I handed the map back to my shoulder-imp. "It's weird that I can go through my inventory in my head now that it's a being."
"More of a familiar than a being. It can't attack or defend. One bonus, though, is that you can send it to a shop to sell all the shit you don't want without needing to run back to town. Or buy gear in any city you're allowed in." Hell knew this? How? "I played another game that was similar. I was getting kind of sick of the backpack system anyway. Especially now that we can't quick-travel anywhere." That was true. Running all the way back to town whenever the inventory filled up was a total pain. This game wasn't as bad as some others I'd heard about, but that was only because there were teleport pads spread across the world. And every city started out explored. I could teleport right to the Tower of Justice if I felt like it. I'd be dead within seconds, but I could do it. "Let's go kill some shit!" I grinned at him as I wondered what I would use. I could use any type of weapon thanks to my gratuitous class selection. I shuffled through my inventory and realized I was already carrying thirty six weapons, not including my crown gear. As well as thirty six sets of gear. I pulled out the heaviest gear I had, the armor that came from starting a Crusader had two more armor than the rest of them, and yanked out two of my two-handed axes and a shield.
"Sell." I commanded, identifying the rest of the starter gear. The imp vanished from my shoulder to reappear a second later. With gold. "Automatically place all gold in bank upon reaching one thousand multiplied by my current level." The imp nodded and I realized I could have him go get gold just as easily. This was amazing! I loved the inventory imp! How much could it carry, though? And could they be intercepted?
"Why do you have two heavy weapons?" Lethe asked. She was carrying a pair of daggers, perfect weapons for a Shadow. They couldn't sneak attack as hard as Assassins but they had more persistent stealth so they didn't benefit from having non-sneak weapons. "You can only wield one."
I glanced around to make sure there weren't any other players around. I didn't want this getting out. "There's a glitch in the character creation that was intentional. I got to buy all of the classes. One of them is a Shifter. When you get to level ten your class power unlocks, the Shifter can change appearance at will. That includes becoming a different race. Every race has classes that are especially effective for them, the humans are the best Barbarians and Knights. Their race bonus is that they can dual wield heavy weapons as a Barbarian or wield a heavy weapon and a shield as a Knight. When we hit level twenty I'll be able to teach the two of you thirteen classes. Don't ask me how I know." They already knew, they'd seen the creator of this game/reality and just didn't know it. They were both looking at me with their jaws wide open. "I know. Cool, right?" Hell nodded, eyes almost vacant with awe. I turned and started walking toward the teleport pad. Might as well get right to finding Asha.
Teleportation circles were circles of massive stones. Not quite at the scale of Stonehenge, but pretty close in the big cities. Zezhria being home to a smaller species the horizontal blocks were only ten feet over the ground. Other cities had bigger teleport pads, especially the orcs and humans. The orcs had theirs over thirty feet tall. But they didn't have that Dark Elf flair, like this pad. The black blocks of purple-veined marble followed the design of the city by having no hard corners, only spikes. The orcs just had granite squares while the humans ornamented theirs, but Dark Elves were the best. I stepped to the middle and found that it wasn't working. I could feel the power beneath my feet, but no city names popped into my head. I tried thinking of Melasia and nothing happened. Damn. More functional differences between the game and reality.
"Teleport to Melasia." Nothing. How did this thing work? "Port Melasia? Melasia?" how was this thing supposed to work? It was nothing like the beta. "Port me to Melasia!"
"Teleport pad Melasia unfound." The voice was Ryne's. Recorded. She'd shut down teleportation! Until we discovered the pads, anyway. I glared at the ground and found that it was a different symbol than before. It was a pentacle with three sets of circles around it filled with script of some kind. I tried reading the script filling the rings, but it was in a language I didn't know. I didn't even recognize a single character. Damn her! Wait…was that what she wanted? Was she exiled from Hell and made this place to get back there easier? Nah. She was too powerful to need something like that. Hail Ryne! She can damn herself if she wants, but I wouldn't want her to go anywhere she doesn't want to. I'd need to keep track of my piety a little better. Who knew how often she was listening in on my thoughts?
I lifted my hand and the imp responded to the mental command, dropping my map into my open palm. I scanned the map quickly to see if I could find a central location. One that would have a quest board. The best match I could find was the square right in front of the bank. There were certainly a ton of players milling around the area.
Knowing it was probably pointless, I still rushed back to the bank. I needed to accept all of the quests before the rest of the players caught up. By the time I got to the square and found the board, it was empty. As expected. Couldn't win them all, though. I was king, and that was good enough for now. Ten other players were idling around the board, waiting for quests to appear. Damn.
"Looks like we get to walk to Melasia." Hell shrugged and Lethe grinned as she vanished. Not having a cooldown was a pretty awesome class perk. I thought about activating my own stealth…but why would a king need to hide in his own kingdom? I turned and headed for the gate. It was going to be a long day.
The initial reviews had speculated that over twenty billion players would enter for the launch. With the last minute promise of a launch bonus, that number probably went up by at least ten percent, and that was a massive level of downplaying. As I glanced around, I noticed that there were players everywhere. They'd caught up. There were undoubtedly millions that had chosen Zezhria as their home. The odds of ever finding a quest were low. In a couple of hours, max, they'd figure out that not every quest was on the board but I didn't have time to question every npc. They would. If there were any unclaimed quests tomorrow, I'd be surprised. Not as bad as a human city, though. Those would have gotten tens of millions of players. Human was the basic choice, after all.
It might have been coincidence, but all of the least popular surface-dweller cities were on this continent. Lore-wise, at least. Players could have all the opinions of any subject. From a basic perspective, though, Dark Elves were a bad choice because they were physically weaker than almost any other race and they were known as evil. Even fewer would like to be pixies because the girls noticed how evil the pixies looked and it was a rare boy that liked being a parasitic fairy. Orcs were just too brutish-looking. It was really hard to make them attractive, so not many people liked them. They had plenty of players that liked the brutish appearance, but they couldn't match the usual elves or humans in popularity. The fact that the humans had the same base stats didn't help the orc population. The elven cities would have high populations, though. Nowhere near the population of the central continent, though. The fairy city alone would have a larger population of players than all six pixy cities combined. If the beta was anything to go by.
As we walked I noticed a potion shop. They were all locked because there weren't any high level characters yet, but I was king. I shrugged and headed to the level sixty potion shop. At least the shop system was intuitive in this world. A big sign was hanging over the door with a flask that was smoking so much the tendrils formed a sixty. I opened the door and the proprietor moved forward anxiously. "My Liege, you shouldn't be in here." So he would tell me to leave, but he wouldn't boot me. Good. I moved to the far wall as the fussy old Dark Elf booted Hell and Lethe. I moved to the back wall and found the exp boost potions. They were useless when you hit level sixty. To a level one, though, they were divine. I didn't usually bother with them because it was more fun to kill powerful monsters with overpowered gear than drink dozens of potions. I touched the potion. "I'll take as many of these as I can hold." The imp rushed forward and grabbed the potion, pulling on it like it was really heavy. Then I felt the weight. As well as twenty one trillion gold leaving my account. But I had seven hundred thousand potions. I walked out. "Let's get going. We should be fine for now." I started jogging, feeling the weight. It felt easier than when I'd run to the city, but I was carrying more weight than I had been then and I wasn't pushing myself. In addition, my running skill had increased. Just like the beta, you could level up any physical skill through practice.
"Care to tell us what you're planning? You lead us in circles for a bit and then raid a potion store. What's your plan?" Hell was getting impatient. I wasn't sure he'd ever gone this long in a game without killing something.
I glanced at him to see that he wasn't mad, just curious. He trusted me. "The potions are exp boosts. When you get to level sixty, they're pretty much useless because all they do is give you double exp for ten thousand points. And then when you stack them you go up by one multiplier and five thousand pool to a max of ten times for fifty thousand points. Since the exp required to get to level sixty one is in the hundreds of millions, the potion is useless. And way too pricey. But for a level one, we only need ten points to get to level two. The ten thousand should get us to level fifteen or so. But I got plenty so we should get to level fifty or so before they run out." We'd be swimming in levels soon enough. And I needed levels if I was going to start making enough money to keep my title. Owning everything in Zezhria would make me a lot of money, but not in that time frame.
At least, we'd be swimming in levels after we got out of the forest, anyway. It would take an hour to run through the forest. And that was if we were going in a straight line. And assuming I was wrong about everything being way bigger than in the beta. "Imp, can we drink potions as we run?" it moved its face into my peripheral vision and nodded. "Give Hell and Lethe as many potions as they can carry. Start giving me the remainder and keep me topped up." I felt fluid start filling my mouth as Hell told his imp to feed him as he ran too. Swallowing between breaths as I ran was quite a trick. "You two run as fast as you can maintain. I'll keep up." Hell passed me and I assumed Lethe did too. "If you start to fall behind, Lethe, become visible. We can't hear you when you're stealthed. And remember that this is a game world, so your stamina is a stat and not a chemical process. Also, a skill. We'll be able to go faster the more we run." Way beyond human standards. It would take forever, but my Cultist had been able to run at two miles per second. It took him ten miles to accelerate to that rate and he had nowhere near the agility to avoid trees or walls, but he could still get there. Approximately. Hell knew how it worked even if he wasn't used to feeling the exhaustion. His Warlord could definitely go faster by the time the beta ended. As we ran I tried to remember all of the spells I'd ever learned. Eventually I gave up and pulled out my spell book and found all of the starter spells. Definitely one problem with having so many classes.
As we sprinted past the gates Hell stopped. I caught up in a second and noticed a Berserker standing in our way. We all stopped. "Ho, there, friends." he paused like he'd made a joke. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?" what was his deal? None of us answered. "Silent type, then? That's cool. I was just going to warn you that you shouldn't attack any monsters in the dead forest surrounding the city. They'll rip you to shreds. Not pretty, believe me. Once you see grass, then you can attack whatever you want. Good luck!" so he was a helpful one, but there was a horror in his eyes. Maybe he'd seen a couple idiots attack a panther. Maybe some friends who he realized afterwards didn't respawn.
He stepped out of the way and we resumed our headlong rush. We were starting to pass the players that had taken quests. They watched us run by with smug grins on their faces. Assholes. Maybe I could make them pay a toll to enter the city. I had to have that sort of power as a king.
Putting smug morons out of my mind, I pointed at a tree and thought of the spell I wanted. A circle of red light appeared at the tip of my finger with no arcane circles or central amplification symbols. A fireball blasted it, but the fire didn't catch. There was no residue whatsoever of my spell on the bark of the tree. It was a weak spell and the trees here were built to survive battles over level sixty. When I got powerful, my spells would all have layers and layers of arcane circles. One simple fireball would blast walls to rubble, but maybe these trees would survive. Mages were great at doing a whole lot of damage to a large group of enemies, some more than others, and I had all of them. Melee could pound a boss into the ground, though. It was good to have a varied group. I pointed at my own chest and thought of a healing spell, the circle was white this time. I stopped it before the spell fully formed so none of the passing players would know I was anything special.
I shuffled through my other spells to make sure I knew how to cast them all. I just had to think of the spell name and mentally target something. Easy enough. I shuffled through the rogue and melee skills and realized that I didn't know how to use half of them. Having so much power could take some getting used to. And that was just with a level one character. How many skills would I have when I reached level two hundred fifty? Five hundred? Just the thought of so much power and so many skills almost had me running back to Zezhria to stick my head in the sand and wait out the game in fear. It also made me want to speed past Hell and kill stuff as fast as possible.
Lethe appeared at my shoulder. She didn't look winded or tired. She seemed to be keeping pace easily. Why had she appeared? "Who was that demon to you? Your conversation with her looked…intimate."
What? That was her question? "She was the one who made it so we can't get back to the real world. She made it real. She also added a few glitches that I found and took advantage of. She was interested, so she seems to like explaining how the world works to me. I don't know what she is to me, a mentor maybe?" my goddess. Hail Ryne. "Why?"
Her answer was to vanish again. Well…that was interesting. And confusing. What had been the purpose of that question? "What was that all about?" Hell asked. I shrugged. His guess was a good as mine. "Maybe she's jealous." Hell guffawed at his own joke. Jealous of Ryne? Sure her power was amazing, I was jealous too, but Hell made it sound like Lethe was jealous of her personally.
Did she think Ryne's demon body was hotter than her elf one? If so, she was crazy. Ryne was gorgeous in a "please don't kill me" sort of way, but fear had a way of killing boners. She'd done a good job on this build. Worlds better than her stock one she used in the beta. Besides…just the idea of kissing that split jaw was horrifying. Hail Ryne. And with her personality…I would never be sure she wasn't coming in to eat my head. Hail Ryne. Her cheek horns would gouge me before I got in that close anyway. Unless…maybe they were like pincers she could move out of the way? That would look cool, but then there was the idea that the pincers would close on my face. And the jaw thing. And the fear that she wanted to eat me. And the blades sticking out of her all over the place. And the tail and wings that, I assumed, would make laying down difficult. And, again, the fear that she had more interest in how my blood tasted than my affection. Hail Ryne. Ryne was definitely not my type. The rest of her body was gorgeous, if the idea of fucking a living pool of blood was your thing, but there were too many problems with her face. Hail Ryne.
"That demon girl sure looked like she had a thing for you too. Dude, how do you do it? No girls ever fall for me." I shook my head. The idea that Lethe or Ryne were interested in me was ridiculous, let alone both of them at the same time. It was good to be the king, but one didn't think of me as a king and the other was a goddess so kings were in equal standing to bugs. Hail Ryne.
"Not a chance, man. As badass as I am, my personality is repugnant to females." Though I was talking about a demon. Maybe she liked how morbid I was. Lethe was a human, though. No way she liked me. Not that she'd seen much more than a rich teacher-person at this point, but still. "Ryne is way out of my league, and Lethe isn't the kind I could bribe to ignore my faults."
"Still right here, boys." Lethe's voice was dry. She didn't like this conversation. I wasn't surprised. "Just because I'm invisible doesn't mean you should talk like I'm somewhere else."
"I thought the point of being invisible was to be ignored. Silly me." I chuckled at the rage that flashed across her face. Luckily I could see her despite her stealth. Even reading her face was possible. Thinking she was invisible just amplified her real reaction, and, just like any other girl, she didn't like it when you used reason on them. "So…what would you like to talk about?" it was a weird feeling. We were so used to running that we could talk just fine while running. At this point it didn't even feel like I should be winded. I checked the skill and we were already level two.
Even drinking while running felt natural by the time I finished filling my pool. Maybe drinking potions didn't use the same faculty as it had when we were only human. Maybe we had a mouth on the backs of our neck or we could absorb the potions through our skin. That would be cool. It felt more like some sort of teleportation between the potion flask and my stomach, though. Maybe I didn't even need to drink them in the first place. I gave a mental order to the imp to give me my potions without sticking them in my mouth.
Lethe glared at me without saying anything. I waited patiently for her to respond. She just kept on glaring. I smiled at her and she vanished. I was about to laugh when I felt her shoulder ram me in the gut. We flew into the forest. I pointed directly up and used another fireball to create plenty of light as the leaves lit up. My spell might be weak, but it was strong enough to burn the leaves of the cracked, dry, dead trees that surrounded us. The bark was ancient and almost impossible to burn, but the leaves were perfectly flammable. Then I stealthed and pulled out one of my two handed axes. I used the first Necromancer spell to add a poisonous edge to my blade as I watched Lethe stalk around looking for me. Rookie mistake. While she wasn't fully invisible and I could see through her stealth anyway, moving made her wispy form more apparent. She eventually got frustrated and rammed her knife into the ground where I'd vanished. I summoned ten fireballs. I was holding an ax instead of a staff, so they were pretty weak. Lethe still got blasted into a tree, her hp down to less than ten percent.
"Jerk." She growled as she ran back to the road. Don't start fights you can't win, pretty girl who never actually got in a fight before. Wise advice she wouldn't listen to. Oh, well. She vanished before Hell saw her. I maintained my stealth. I'd forgotten something. Dark Elf Shadows could maintain stealth while they attacked as well as move four times as fast as normal. No wonder she wasn't falling behind. I moved to Hell and considered my carrying capacity. I doubted I could fit Hell into my inventory. And he was not a Shadow.
I rushed him and lifted him onto my shoulder. He was confused for a bit and thought I was Lethe for another couple seconds before I burst his bubble. He filled up almost all of my weight without entering the inventory. He was like a really heavy piece of armor, but my plan worked. I nodded as I realized I could maintain this sort of weight and sprinted for the edge of the forest. No reason to wait around. I'd spent too much time at the bank. I was falling behind the other players that were bent on staying on top. "This is really weird. Just wanted to let you know." Hell grumbled as he bounced on my shoulder. "No little guy should be able to carry a guy as big as me. At least…I hope it's Void. Lethe can't mimic your voice, can she? If Lethe is carrying me, I demand to be put down right now. I will not allow myself to be carried by a woman. Or a girl. Or a boy pretending to be a girl. Or whatever you actually are." I jumped and landed hard, he grunted. He dared to doubt me? As if she could pretend to be me! Rude! "Good to know. Are you in that much of a rush, man? People are looking at us weird." I didn't care. They'd recognize him, but I was close to invisible. Nobody would know I was weird. Apart from the black sphere being my class cursor. And recognizing my face because of my guild sigil. And if they happened to see any of the npcs interacting with me. And if I ever equipped my king gear or used too many spells or abilities at the same time…nevermind.
I was in a rush, though. Every beginning creature that died would reduce the value of their hides. Supply and demand worked even for auto-loot. In general, it wouldn't make a difference, but even half of one percent was a difference when you were on top. If I wanted to be on top without revealing that I had gear a max level character would kill for, that meant I'd need every advantage I could get. Every second mattered. I pushed harder, starting to sap my stamina below twenty percent. Even while knowing that breathing harder wouldn't have an effect, the exhaustion was making it hard to remember. That's when I broke through the forest into the plains. The change was sudden. Trees so thick running anywhere but the road was impossible switched to grass as far as the eye could see in a perfectly straight line.
Zezhria was the only place like that. The forest was a perfect circle surrounding the city, and no other trees grew anywhere remotely close. I glanced around and saw way more roaming creatures than I anticipated. Even as desperate for experience as I was, this was overkill. Finding stuff to kill was hard in the beta, especially when you were weak. This…this was not going to be a difficult hunt at all. I looked over the fields and saw that the plains were covered in boars. Thousands of them. Maybe even millions. That I could see. There were packs of dogs roaming through the scattered boars, their muzzles dripping saliva. I thought they looked like bigger versions of a bulldog. Compact beasts. Boars and dogs so densely populated that one group blended into the next. As far as the eye could see.
I dropped Hell and rushed a boar. It didn't even glance up as I decapitated it. It was so easy I couldn't help a little giggle escaping. I dropped stealth and turned to the next boar. Ten fireballs blasted it in the torso, ripping it in half and draining all of my mana. I turned to the next boar and felt a knife slide into my back. "You gave me a scar, asshole." Lethe whispered before she returned to stealth and started stalking boars.
Hell was laughing like a maniac as he bulldozed through a pack of wild dogs. Since the game was new, I guessed all creatures would be very plentiful. Maximum population. Once more players left the woods and started killing, though, we'd probably hit a level where the repopulation couldn't keep up. As time went on, though, weak monsters would become more rare.
Then I saw one boar topple to its side. Nobody hit it, there was no blood. Then I noticed all of the piglets marching out of it. It was like a river of pink flesh. And the piglets grew ridiculously fast. Before the stream had ended, there were adult boars grunting as they plowed their way free of the brood.…nevermind. The spawn rate was just ridiculous. So much for boars ever becoming rare. That one brood had to be at least a hundred of them. And from where I was standing, I could see five boar armies and another mother that just toppled to give birth to another one. Talk about birth rate. There were a lot of players, though. Maybe they'd be able to keep up. The ten groups of players I could see definitely weren't keeping up, though. One got gored as I watched, torn to pieces by the twelve boars he'd pulled all at once.
I glanced inward to level up and noticed I had quite a few new spells. Perfect. I grabbed a fireball with eight of my fingers and used the other two to create the Necromancer poison augmentation. I launched the combined force of into the brood of new boars. The explosion destroyed most of them and the black mist it left behind finished off the rest. The power inside me felt like I was in the process of blowing up. I dived in as fast as I could, learning skills and adding stats as fast as I could to relieve the pressure. I'd guessed right. Baby boars were worth as much as adult ones. I was already level twelve. I pulled up my list of skills and started looking through them. So many skills it felt like overkill. I had more spells than I'd ever had as a level sixty. And I had just as many rogue and melee abilities. It would take forever to learn all of them! The melee abilities and spells weren't as bad because I was very familiar with them, having used each of the classes, but the rogue abilities were completely new.
A boar smashed into my shin. It didn't hurt. I barely noticed. I reached down and patted it on the head and it died. I could even see the dent in the skull that killed it. I watched, enthralled as the flesh was ripped off the carcass, leaving a skinned corpse behind. I glanced around and noticed that none of the corpses were vanishing. The brood I'd blown up was still scattered around in a circle of gore. I grabbed the corpse of the boar I'd just killed and lifted. It was quite the weight. Not quite as heavy as the crown breastplate, but close. Did my body require food? I'd never thought about it in a game. Did I need to eat, or was meat just a weak healing potion? I shrugged and put it in my inventory. And it vanished. There was no trace! I glanced through my inventory, but there was nothing boar, or even pig related inside. I glanced through my stats to make sure it hadn't just vanished into nothing.
I gasped as I felt the difference. It hadn't gone into my inventory. My inventory had eaten it. I checked through my stats and realized that it had worked, I was stronger. The difference was small, but there. I'd gained strength. By giving it to the inventory. That was crazy overpowered. I moved back to the first boar I'd killed. I leaned down and took a bite out of the hide. It tasted horrible. I swallowed and noticed my strength go up by less than a single percent of a single percent of one point. It was such a small raise that I would never have noticed it if I hadn't been watching. I grabbed the boar and handed it to the imp. More, but still negligible. I looked around until I found a pack of dogs. Maybe their meat would do something else. I used a Barbarian charge skill, launching myself at the dogs. My landing blasted them like I was a bomb. I watched like it was in slow motion as their bones slowly crunched into powder before their bodies burst, splashing me with blood. Weaklings. I grabbed the dog corpse and stashed it. Another tiny strength increment. So meat was strength. What else could I eat?
Another question was how powerful a level one could become just by eating all of the corpses left behind as players slaughtered the boars. As I thought that, another idea occurred to me. Slaves. When a Warlord or Conjurer made slaves, they didn't change unless they killed stuff and leveled up, but even then the experience was split between the master and the servant. What about meat. Could I send an army of slaves to kill boars and eat the meat and gain strength from it? Could I make an incredibly powerful boar servant? I was a Druid, so I could make any natural monster a slave. In the beta, that had referred to every species that wasn't angelic, demonic, or npc. In the beta, it had just been squirrels and other beasts that nobody bothered to kill because there was never a bounty on one. Now that there were actual monsters…could I turn these boars into slaves? I relived my memories as a Warlord to know how to make slaves, it had been a long time. The first one was always the hardest, so it was a good thing that we were surrounded by complete weaklings.
I moved over to a group of boars and glared at the first one. It was so comparatively weak that if I attacked at all, it would die. It attacked me. I swatted it aside and looked at the next one. It pawed the earth, hesitant, before charging me. I swatted it aside as well and destroyed the next boar I saw. The one after that bowed to me. I touched it on the head and a cord of green light burned from my wrist into its eyes. I could feel it opening up another tab in my inventory. It was labeled pets. "Eat the corpses I leave behind." That was an easy enough command. I started laying waste to the natural enemies that surrounded me. The boar ate them like I'd told it to. So there was no problem with cannibalism.
"You made a pet boar? That's such a waste, man. Boars are useless." Hell grinned at me as he dropped the broken haft of his ax on the ground. "Let's go back to get some new weapons. Yours are all shot too." I hadn't noticed. Magic, especially in the quantity I could use, was a more effective weapon for killing such weak foes in such a large quantity. I didn't have a huge quantity of mana, but my regeneration was really fast. "Level one weapons shatter the second you touch something when you're level thirty." Man, time flew when you were having fun.
Lethe appeared to throw the broken handles and mangled blades of her old knives on the ground next to Hell's ax. "It's great that you can still fight, at least a little bit, without weapons. Anything stronger than boars and we'll need weapons. Plus, punching them is gross."
That much was true. As satisfying as it was to watch them explode, not all of the viscera went the other way. All three of us were absolutely drenched in gore. Lethe was the cleanest, but Hell was even coated in gore on his back. How he managed that was anyone's guess, but he'd managed.
"Time for you to teach us more classes, I think." Lethe growled. She was level thirty too. I nodded as I accepted that. I'd need to teach them more classes. If they could be beaten, my generals would become a laughing stock. If their power was unequaled except for me, then my guild would rise to the top. I nodded as I glanced around. The other players that had left the woods were gone. Whether they'd gotten killed or retreated, I didn't know. Or care. So long as I couldn't see any cursors, I was satisfied that we weren't being watched.
They were right about needing new gear and me teaching them, but I really didn't want to run all the way back. "Let's find a port pad first. I don't feel like running everywhere." I glanced around until I found my new pet boar. "Tusks, kill any boar that gets in our way. Eat every corpse you come across." It had eaten tons of corpses already. It should have strength equal to the average player. Level one player with maxed out gear, anyway. It immediately charged another boar. The foe barely squealed before it was ripped in half by my brawny boar. A good pig. The only problem was that I wasn't any stronger for all the meat it had eaten.
"Tusks?" Lethe was looking at me like I'd grown a tail on my forehead. She was trying really hard not to laugh. "You named it Tusks?"
I shrugged as I tried not to laugh myself. It wasn't like I was surprised she didn't like my naming skills, I wasn't very good at it. "It sounded better than Miss Piggy. Who knows, he might grow up into a monster to be reckoned with. I figured out that eating meat provides a bonus to strength. A permanent one, so far as I can tell. No timers or anything. Tusks is eating a lot of meat." Since we weren't moving, he was just charging down the first boar he saw. Even the destruction we'd caused wasn't significant. I'd killed thousands of the boars, but now that a couple of minutes had passed without active slaughter, the boar population was right back to where it had been. I was amazed we weren't swimming in them. Maybe the game had a maximum population for the natural beasts and monsters that didn't fit into any of the cities. That would make trading between cities without teleportation really expensive. Crazy expensive, forcing constant combat for every foot between cities. "So…any ideas as to where our closest port pad is? The map is different from the beta, so I have no idea. I'm not experienced enough in general gaming to get a feel for the way stuff gets laid out."
"Lots of games use random generators, so you can't find the port pads regularly, but this one is set. They wanted it as real as possible, which means an ancient stone formation is going to be in the same place for everyone no matter when they look for it. So that means all of the port pads are set, too…I'd guess north. We're heading to Melasia anyway, right? Might as well get closer to our goal. And the port pads are usually pretty hard to miss." That much was true. The port pads in nature were three times the size of the city ones. Especially in a flat plain like this one, they'd be like mountains. "Any objections?" he glanced at me and Lethe. We both shook our heads.
We turned north. "Which classes do you want to learn?" and how could I teach them? The classes were the basis for the skills menu…how could I give them access to mine? "You can learn thirteen. I'd suggest a Shifter because then you can access all of the racial bonuses. They're very useful."
"I'll take all of the rogue classes with Shifter and Necromancer added." Lethe didn't even hesitate. Seems like she'd been thinking a lot about this on the way here. It's what I would have been thinking about on the run, if I were her. "So how do we do this?"
"Beats me." I shrugged. She gaped at me. "I just know I can. I don't know how I can." Hell burst out laughing. Lethe punched him, but he didn't even falter. "Ryne told me I could teach classes, she never mentioned the mechanics of how to do it." Lethe glared at me before entering stealth. Her wisps were quite thin. Apparently she had a real talent for stealth. A boar to our left was suddenly ripped in two with no clear reason. The Dark Elf ability to fight without breaking stealth was an awesome power for Shadows.