Chapter 5: Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
I eventually changed my location and arrived at "Firstia", a small town which was supposed to be a hub for players who only recently started their adventure with ShangriLa Frontier.
It was your typical, run-of-the-mill fantasy town with no exceptional landmarks to speak of, specially enhanced by the server to be able to accommodate a huge number of new players, since it was the beginning of the Summer season and all that.
「Wow... You can understand that people are way higher in level here just from their equipment alone...」
「I'm sure that I've seen this emblem somewhere before as well...」
「That's the insignia of the Guild that only accepts players with level ninety or above into their ranks, and only after the admission test!」
「I wonder what such a high-level player is doing in the place for beginners? ... Hey, take a look at that!」
This guy had a fully plated armor covering his body, made out of platinum no less! He wore a cloak which housed this Guild's emblem, a symbol of the sword. Unlike the basic equipment of the new players, he had a huge sword hanging from the belt at his waist.
Needless to say, no newbie could ever look like that, even if they wanted to or no matter how much money they were willing to pay.
The other players, who I at first mistakenly took for an NPCs, were exchanging excited whispers while looking at the guy, following him with their gazes and taking screenshots just so that they could admire them later. It must have been hard for the guy to be dealing with this kind of treatment, but oh well. I had my own matters which I needed to attend to.
「Now this is quite the predicament... One that I wasn't able to anticipate at all...」
About two hours later I decided to organize my equipment after doing some more grinding. And since I was hunting for monsters at the edge of the nearby forest I decided to climb onto a tree before opening the menu, since there was always a possibility that the monsters could attack me while I was still on the ground.
It is then that I encountered two major problems.
The first one would be the weight of the equipment. It seems that whatever was too large for me to carry would be stored in my inventory, but when the weight of the inventory passed a certain amount, my movements would suffer a negative buff because of that.
So far I have collected twelve items, four of which were pieces of armor and others were basic goblin weapons. And when I was placing the ninth Goblin Hatchet in my inventory, I could already feel that my movements were starting to slow down.
In addition to Goblins, I encountered some other monsters as well, like for example the pig-headed Orcs taken straight out of a Dark Fantasy setting, some small local fauna like piglets or wolves, but there were also rarer monsters such as Vorpal Bunny, which was a larger, bipedal monster.
Vorpal Bunny proved itself to be a little more of a challenge from Goblins and Orcs, but at the end of the day it was just a rabbit: it may have critted more than other mobs, but once you got used to its attack patterns, it was a pretty easy opponent to deal with.
However, the weapon it drops, which apparently had a five percent chance of spawning upon its death, "Vorpal Chopper", was a rather solid weapon for the beginner zone.
Comparing it to my initial mercenary weapons, its stats were better all across the board and it held an additional effect of boosting one's critical damage a little bit. Overall, it suited my fighting style rather nicely.
Not to mention that my level also increased. It looks like Vorpal Bunny may be good prey for a while to focus my attention on.
PN: Sanraku
LV: 12
Job: Mercenary (Dual Wielding Swordsman)
9,000 Mani
HP: 30
MP: 10
STM: 25
STR: 10
DEX: 15
AGI: 25
TEC: 20
VIT: 1 (2)
LUC: 55
Skills:
? Spin Slash
? Skull Pierce
? Knuckle Rush
? Tap Step
? Flash Counter
Equipment:
Right Hand: Mercenary Blade
Left Hand: Mercenary Blade
Head: Mask of Bird's Eye (VIT + 2)
Torso: None
Waist: None
Feet: None
Accessory: None
In this game, you could allocate points to statistics every time you leveled up and as for weapons, you could use them to the point where they actually broke or shattered into pieces.
Getting up to level twelve scored me about fifty five points to allocate into my stats, but for the time being I chose to allocate half of that amount into my Luck.
My reason for that being that Luck must be responsible for increasing my chances of obtaining better drops from monsters and making it easier for me to score a critical hit during battles.
I also managed to learn some new battle skills, which were proving especially useful in battles against the Vorpal Bunnies, which made it easier to dispose of them quickly.
But aside from leveling up, it seems that there are also skills that can be obtained via satisfying some other unspecified conditions.
And when it comes to using skills in battle, even though I have never used them before in my life, I somehow instinctively knew that "This skill does this" and "That skill works like that".
In comparison, some older games were simply forcing the body of a player to execute certain actions, but it was so bad and archaic that it was eventually scratched and forgotten, disappearing from the mainstream for good.
The skills I had with me from the very beginning I was already getting really familiar with their use right about now. They may have been ineffective to use when it comes to the move set, but their DPS was relatively high.
Amongst the new skills I managed to learn is the one called "Skull Pierce", which was quick to generate and it was a powerful one hit attack.
The "Tap Step" was a passive skill which boosted my Evasion rate slightly, and "Flash Counter" was a passive skill which made parrying a little bit easier.
Objectively speaking, "Skull Pierce" seemed like the only really useful skill in my kit at the current moment. The starting skills you could literally do nothing about and the passive skills were more dependent on your own playstyle.
Seeing just how well-thought out this system was compared to some of the sh*tty games I have played during my career, it was bringing tears to my eyes.
Everything was working as it should, mobs were presenting moderate levels of challenge suitable for your level and there were no bugs to speak of at the current moment. It was really something else alright.
But back to the topic at hand.
Another problem is that my inventory space got quite full already... In that regard it would be impossible to add new items to it after a while, not to mention being able to organize all of the consumable items such as raw meat. That was the second problem.
「Blegh... I guess you really can't eat raw meat after all, huh?」
Apparently in this game raw ingredients couldn't be used as consumable items unless you processed or cooked them properly. Even if you tried, the only effect you would get would be that of a diminishing appetite.
The biggest problem for Sanraku right now is that I do not have any means of producing a fire.
And seeing that my MP was not getting any bigger since level one, I guess I won't be able to learn any kind of magic.
「At this rate, I might even be forced to respawn from starving to death...」
Doing that was even more shameful than being pummeled to death by basic mobs. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if that happened to me.
When I was busy agonizing over my current predicament, I heard the voices of some other players around me for the first time in a while now. They were discussing some... interesting stuff, to say the least.
「Basically, if you buy the "Flint Stone" from any store inside of the game, you can forget about your problems with starting a fire or cooking. Pretty handy in certain situations.」
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