The port pad didn't seem any different to me. I stepped in and wondered if I had to name the port pad Ryne had unlocked. She'd never told me the name. As I entered the circle, though, it lit up. The ground shimmered and became a map of the world. Then it zoomed way in until there was just Zezhria and one glowing dot. No label. So it was an unnamed port pad. I pulled out my map and noticed that it was a glowing dot on there too. Twice as far from Zezhria as we'd gone. What a benevolent goddess. Hail Ryne. I was about to start trying to figure out how to activate the other port pad when someone ran into me.
"You can't port out yet." I climbed back to my feet and looked at the bone-thin Dark Elf in front of me. He was beyond skinny. He clambered to his feet and grinned at me. "Name's Blitz." I'd noticed. He was a Shadow. Why was he visible? "I was watching you all through the last half of the beta. Got to level sixty and got bored, so I started watching the weaklings. Then I noticed one weakling running around with way too much gold for his level. Turned out it happened all the time. Took forever to find you in this new game, though." He was still level one. Too busy being a stalker to even try for experience? "Couldn't find you, so I just hung around here waiting for you to use the port pad. Knew you'd have to use it eventually." He had never left Zezhria? Seriously? And he'd gotten to level sixty in the beta? "Anyway, can I join your guild? Badass sigil, by the way. Oh, it's your face. Skull version. Sick." He'd been watching me for a while? Most of my characters had this exact set of features. Generally I was wearing a helmet, but still. He'd seen me running around with too much money, which meant I was still in the potion stage of my plan. I wouldn't have had a helmet then. "I'll just follow you around. I won't even exit stealth if you don't want me to." ….but…why?
"What use could I possibly have for a perpetually invisible and silent guild member? And haven't you noticed that you're still level one? Why would I want you with me anyway?" if he'd actually gotten to level sixty he'd know that the first thirty levels were easy to come by. It was almost too easy to get to level fifty. The rest was the hard part.
He waved one hand and snorted in derision. "Thirty levels? Seriously. You know better than me that thirty levels one way or another don't really matter. Not on the time scale that we're stuck here forever, anyway." so he was in the beta, or he was just a gamer. There were still holes in his story. "Besides, you need new gear. No level thirty should be wearing broken armor. Specially not the king. Whatever that means."
"How'd you know I'm the king?" did it show up on my cursor somewhere? Was running around in this useless armor pointless? Then again…I wasn't trying to hide from players and the npc had recognized me immediately. Damn. Guess it was pointless either way.
"Your guild sigil has a crown. Your buddies are just skulls. No crowns." He was just seeing that I was the Guild Master, not the Emperor of the Dark Elves. I'd need a way to hide from the npcs. Eventually. "And seeing as how there's a giant sigil over the city instead of a sun, I'd say the Guild Master is the king of Zezhria. Not sure how that happens, but whatever. Just makes you that much more important. Makes me that much smarter for wanting to join your crew. So, please, can I join? Please? Please? Please? Please?'' He was smart, I'd give him that. He didn't know what it meant to be the Emperor, but he knew what I was. I wasn't ready for the spotlight just yet. I tossed him a sigil item. He caught it with a huge grin on his face.
"When we get out there, tell your imp to collect grass as fast as possible. And eat all the carcasses my pets don't claim." He cocked his head. Apparently gaining stats from what you eat wasn't a system from the beta. I'd figured, but it was always good to check. So long as it wasn't in the beta it wouldn't be let out by some White Knight tester. "When you eat grass, you constitution goes up. When you eat meat, your strength goes up. I can train you in thirteen different classes. What do you want?" Best to get all of his loyalty to max as fast as possible.
"All the mage ones. And a Knight." A good combination. Knights were really hard to kill. Mages were too easy to kill. I glanced down at the map just to make sure none of my pets were still in Zezhria before I turned my attention back to the port pad. He'd get his classes when we were less exposed.
How to make it work? I reached down and touched the shining dot. "Destination accepted." Ryne's mocking recording sniggered. I felt the three of them grab on to me as it felt like my stomach was being pulled out. I gasped and dropped. It wasn't as absurd a reaction as Lethe's gagging or Hell rolling on the ground cussing. "Happy hunting." I gasped as I stood back up, it was definitely a different feeling now that it was a reality. Would all teleportation feel like g forces from every direction simultanously?
Well, Blitz wasn't getting any younger. I linked with him and added the classes. I was getting faster. I taught him all thirteen in as many seconds. He definitely didn't appreciate the experience, screaming and thrashing like he was on fire. Even Lethe couldn't help the disdain in her eyes.
We definitely weren't in Zezhria anymore. The massive stone construction really did feel like a location in a game. Absolutely nothing in any direction but boars, dogs, and grass. The flattest plain possible. We were back in the pasture. Good and bad at the same time. I wanted to show off a bit, but now I knew that all of our walking hadn't even gotten us across half of the initial starting area. Awe inspiring and dread inducing simultaneously. If the pasture was so large…how big were mountains?
"Time to make some corpses. I'll show you what a weak mage can do with this staff, if he knows how to use it." I stepped out of the port pad's area and started building a massive array of spells. I depleted my mp with every other spell, so it took a while to build up the massive electrical storm I was going for. This time, the spell circles didn't stay around my staff. They were area of effect spells, so the arcane circles appeared over their target area. I built the storm to cover a good amount of area and then I started amplifying the spells. I kept at it until each spell had five rings. Something was off, though. My mp was regenerating way too fast. It should have taken me a week to make this powerful of a spell. I was finished in under an hour. Even with my ridiculous regeneration, this was…over powered as fuck.
"Are you ever going to attack, or are you just going to paint the sky a pretty blue color?" Blitz sniggered. For a mage of equal caliber to me, he had a distinctive lack of respect for his element. He, of all people, should be in awe of the spell I was about to unleash.
Looking at him quizzically, I released the spell. Arching lightning blasted the ground a million times a second for miles as the electrical storm destroyed the peaceful landscape. Bolts ripped through boars in the thousands. Tens of thousands. I couldn't count them properly, but I guessed there were probably a hundred thousand or more boars caught in my storm. The added rings made the storm last longer, just for effect. The boars, being level one, had been massacred in the first few seconds, but now I was just destroying everything completely. The thunder was continuous. I actually noticed Blitz's health going down from the volume of the sound alone. He had his hands over his ears, but his eyes were wide. And probably blind. The lightning didn't hurt my eyes because I'd cast the spell, but it was continuous lightning strikes over a very large area of ground. It had to be blinding. It was a good feeling, unleashing my pent up rage at Ryne upon these monsters. In the most glorious of ways. Hail Ryne, and long live War World Online!
I grinned as I felt the massive wave of boars becoming my servants. This particular feedback had been weakened so much at this point that the number didn't even produce pain, let alone agony. Every boar that had been damaged by the sound of the storm joined my army. Even some that had just seen the spell decided it was better to be on my team than alone. Fifty thousand of them, in total. I'd probably jumped the gun, but it was good to know that feedback actually got weaker over iteration.
Many of the boars were almost dead, the tried and true method of taming beasts. I built a healing spell for the boars that had joined me. It didn't take as long since I just used the basic healing spell multiplied. It was getting easier for me to make bigger spells. I checked through my skills and found that casting speed and overcasting were both skills. I had both at level ten. Awesome! I built a massive healing spell out of tiny ones, almost fifty thousand, and watched my cast speed jump to level eleven while overcasting went right to twelve. Simultaneous casting was awesome for leveling up cast speed, apparently, as well as holding spells was good for overcasting. I laughed as I realized how each skill probably had some cheap way to make it level up faster than it should.
"Boars, consume the corpses I just made, along with all the grass of the burnt area. Imp, grab all the boar pieces that the boars haven't eaten until my strength is maxed out for my level." I watched my strength rocket up to the maximum. Apparently making the imp count slowed it down a lot. "Now grass." The blades vanished around me for a hundred feet, only to grow back to their exact length a second later. So that was how much I could eat for one level. Interesting. It would be impossible to run out of grass. Good. I heard Blitz echo me. He was only a level one, though. His stats would max out real fast. "Boars one hundred one through two hundred serve Lethe. Boars two hundred one through three hundred serve Hell. Boars three hundred one through four hundred serve Blitz."
This time all three of them were screaming on the ground. I'd gotten so used to it that I didn't consider the ramifications of adding all hundred at once. It wasn't as bad as when I enslaved the panthers, but I was also much more resilient than they were. I was actually a bit worried about Blitz breaking, but that could also be good for my understanding of what it took to break someone. I'd need to break a soul eventually, starting with a suspicious level one wasn't a bad idea.
After an hour they'd calmed down from screaming, and thrashing spastically in the case of Blitz, so it was time to proceed. Hell stopped screaming first, but Lethe was the first one to attain a full recovery. I shuffled through my massive mental inventory of pets until I found my panthers. I renamed some of them so they wouldn't know how many panthers I controlled. Lethe knew, but she was good about keeping her mouth shut. I tried using purely mental commands at first, giving Lethe panthers A, A plus, B plus, and B minus. After seeing it work, "Panther B serve Lethe. Panther C serve Hell. Panther D serve Blitz. That should do it. Tell your panthers to continue on current orders. Trust me on that." They nodded and repeated what I'd said. Good job. Nobody would know except the Black Hole Knights that the panthers were ours. "All boars without standing orders, eat all boars you encounter and enough grass to keep your constitution even with your strength, explore this zone." Now that I had so many, it felt like a waste to keep them all in the pasture. "And any areas surrounding Zezhria you can easily survive in. Do not fight npcs or players. Avoid all monsters more powerful than you. Go." The boars had finished with the charnel field. They spread out like a plague, ripping through their former brothers in a frenzy. "Well, Blitz, how does it feel to get the full benefits of being a member of my guild?" Lethe was staring at, presumably, her system interface with pure euphoria on her face and Hell was going full Thinker. Probably trying to think of the best way to use his boars without copying my command word for word.
"No wonder you're such a high level! How many pets do you have constantly giving you a share of their exp?" Blitz was bouncing like a flea. So exuberant it made his earlier pain look like a front. He'd repeated my instructions verbatim and was watching as his boars gained power with an expression of euphoria on his face.
I shrugged. The panthers were giving me way more exp than the boars. Or, they would when they stopped hunting boars and started killing other panthers. When that time came…I would become level ninety in a matter of hours. And now I didn't have to worry about my pets dying because they would respawn in the courtyard of the Keep. On that note I gave orders to all of my pets that when they died they were to stealthily try to resume their old orders. If they were unable, for whatever reason, they were to ask for further instructions. Now they were truly zero effort pets. They'd go back to their grisly task immediately after their death. I could sit back and grow more powerful faster than any other player in the game. Effortlessly.
That would wear off, eventually. Killing level ninety monsters would ensure my power grew to level ninety remarkably quick, but that was it. After I got to level…one hundred or so, panther deaths would mean next to nothing to my experience pool. It was fine, though. By that time, I'd have so many pets killing at the same time that I would still gain power much faster than I should. Assuming I didn't level up to stronger monsters killing in fields of higher leveled monsters.
"Why don't you have awesome armor? You've definitely killed enough monsters to have the money for better armor." Lethe's death-glare that pierced her stealth convinced me this was a major question she had as well. While it was true that I had plenty of money from the passive income from the city and all the boar killing, it would barely pay for a level ninety set. Lethe should have a sizeable chunk of money from the beta, as well. Probably more than me. Which brought up the question of why Blitz didn't have better armor. If he was a beta tester, he should have tons of cash. He couldn't get into the shops, but with this being a full world you could probably bribe an npc to go in for you.
Hell answered before I had the chance. "We're waiting for some more powerful monsters to show up." A very Hell answer. So long as he could punch things to death, why would he need a weapon? I didn't get any armor because I already had the best armor I could get. Lethe was a mystery. Maybe she just didn't want to get left behind by me and Hell, since we didn't stop for armor neither did she. "Once we find monsters more powerful than boars, we'll see what kind of armor we need. If we even need armor at that point. With so many classes, that kind of makes us stronger than an armored person of our level. Who knows how high of a level we'll be when that actually happens? No point wasting money on gear that won't ever be relevant."
Good enough of an explanation. I shrugged to Blitz's inquisitive stare. Our stats were high enough to make boars a joke. I doubted we'd level up much before we found the next area. We were already stretching the limits of a level one's ability to give us significant experience. It took millions of points to reach the next level. And I could almost feel the danger waiting ahead. Paranoia or justified, that remained to be seen. Even then, this wasn't a death-game anymore. The worst a trap could do would be destroy all of my crown gear. No need to worry about any of that, though. Those were worries for weeks in the future…when we eventually left this endless pasture. The map told me the direction, so I started walking.
Lethe appeared next to me. "Why do you still explore personally? Why not sit on your throne and watch yourself become a god?" she asked. As if she didn't know. Nobody played a video game to sit around and watch themselves gain power. They played to be the best. And so they could kill stuff. I did have the most tempting of beds, though.
"I might be the strongest in Zezhria, but who knows who else is out there? Did you wait to log in until there was a report of how many players started on the launch? How many people are playing right now? A billion? Ten billion? We have no idea. How many beta testers had the cash to buy a city? How many could buy a crown? Of those, how many spawned in an outcast racial capital? I could be only one of six Emperors. Each have the capability to grow more powerful than me. And their crowns were cheaper, too. I need to stay on top." That was true. Who knew what would happen if Ryne figured out I wasn't the strongest character in the game? Would she kill me? She definitely had enough power to kill me in the Keep. But there were also npcs strong enough to do the same. Even then, any druid with a high pain tolerance could accomplish the same thing I just did. They wouldn't even need a crown. The Darkwood was looking like a weaker wall as I gained strength. It was impervious now, but what about a year from now?