Kent crawled out of the underground space and looked up at the sky, only to see a pure white sun with stars floating beside it, countless stars falling to the ground. This was also why NPCs called players "Children of the Stars".
In an instant, hundreds of millions of players from around the world surged into the Immortal Continent. The Fourth Catastrophe had arrived!
[Me First: Wow~ Call me the King of Speed!]
[Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps: Damn! Does anyone know where the Shusu Mountains are? Why didn't I land in the newbie village!]
Two barrage messages appeared in front of Kent, making him ecstatic. He had kept his equipment without selling it, just for this moment!
As the system announcement sounded, the Exchange and Forum sections were unlocked! The global barrage messages disappeared because only the top 100 players would be given a global megaphone.
Instead of using the global megaphone to spam the chat, it was better to sell it to those big guilds and clubs in need, making a small profit, right?
[Backpack function unlocked. Detected that you already have internal space, both will be automatically overlapped, increasing your internal space by 3 cubic meters.]
The backpack system in *Immortal* was different from other games. The same item could not be stacked infinitely, and the total backpack space was only 3 cubic meters. If you wanted to expand your backpack, you had to collect space stones and spend in-game currency at NPCs to increase the capacity.
[Detected that you are a distinguished beta player. Please choose to retain your beta talent "Balanced Body (B-level)" or draw a new talent.]
*Immortal* was a closed beta, and the biggest advantage for beta players after the official launch was that they could retain their talents from the beta period.
Without hesitation, Kent chose to retain his talent. A B-level talent was already quite good, and who knew if drawing a new talent would end up with something bad?
[Congratulations on awakening the B-level talent "Balanced Body": You can assign any attribute value to any attribute, lasting for 3 seconds, with a cooldown of 5 seconds.]
This talent was not very strong for players because the difference between their attributes would not be too large. However, for beasts, especially specialized beasts like the Wildland Dragon Lizard, it could be considered a divine skill!
For example, Kent's highest attribute was physique. When he attacked an enemy, he could use the talent to temporarily increase his strength to match his physique for 3 seconds, thus increasing the damage of his normal attacks and skills. When he needed to chase or escape from enemies, he could temporarily increase his agility.
Kent looked at the new talent in the attribute panel with satisfaction. He tried it out and found that due to the large difference in attributes, he would be somewhat uncomfortable when using the talent, such as hitting a rock wall because of a sudden increase in speed.
After practicing for a long time, he finally got a little used to "Balanced Body". This kind of practice could only be done gradually; being too hasty was not advisable.
Thinking lazily, Kent opened the forum to see if there were any differences between the official server and the closed beta.
In the forum, posts were popping up like mushrooms. The most popular post was the map recruitment post of the gaming legend "Prophet".
No one knew who "Prophet" really was. Players only knew that he was most likely an organization rather than an individual because his footprint covered almost every game, collecting and publicly disclosing information about the games for free.
This map recruitment post was for players to share their map coordinates, which he would then use to create a large map.
The map system in *Immortal* would only display the places you had explored. To unlock areas outside your footprint, you needed to obtain map props from NPCs. So far, no continent map had appeared.
There were less than 100,000 beta players, and they had only explored a tiny corner of the Immortal Continent.
Now, Prophet relied on his powerful appeal to call on players to share map coordinates, in order to create a map of the Morriane Empire, not the continent.
All players in *Immortal* landed on the Immortal Continent, but depending on the geographical location of their countries on Blue Star, they landed in different places. The forums and exchanges were separated based on the countries on Blue Star.
Players in Country H would land in the southwestern part of the Morriane Empire in the Immortal Continent.
From the statistics of the posts, in just a few minutes, nearly 100 million players had registered in Country H. Among them, 40% were lifestyle players who would land in bustling towns and did not need to fight monsters. The remaining 50 million combat players were evenly distributed to newbie villages near the wilderness.
Fortunately, the Immortal Continent was vast, with the territory of the Morriane Empire alone being larger than all the continents of Blue Star combined.
According to current statistics, there were more than 100,000 newbie villages in the national server, each with several hundred players allocated to it, so there would be no overcrowding and difficulty finding monsters to level up.
Kent marveled at the popularity of *Immortal* for a moment before closing the post and continuing to browse the forum. The second most popular post was from an academic-type player, "Endless Learning," who had been somewhat famous during the beta period, answering a question from "Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps."
[Endless Learning: I call the situation where players do not land in the newbie village "encounters." This kind of situation is extremely rare. "Omoo the Great," who dominated the level rankings in the early stages of the beta, should have triggered such an encounter. Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps, you can look around your landing point, there's probably something good there.]
The top and highlighted reply in the post was from Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps.
[Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps: First of all, my name is Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps. Secondly, thank you, senior. There really is something good near me. As for what it is, I can only say that I've never had such a wonderful start. Please cheer for me!]
Kent's eyes lit up. This explained his equipment as well. He immediately threw his fine-grade weapon, the "Butcher's Double Axes," onto the Exchange, priced at 150 silver coins. It was 50 silver coins more expensive than what the NPC shop sold, but he wasn't afraid it wouldn't sell because at this stage, players couldn't buy fine-grade equipment in the shop.
[Weapon: Butcher's Double Axes (Fine Grade) Attributes: Attack Coefficient +5, Physical Penetration +50, Strength +1, Load Capacity +3].
[Description: Sharp double axes made of refined iron and crescent stone. The blood groove on the axe surface prevents blood from flowing onto the handle, suitable for melee professions.]
As expected, the fine-grade weapons in the Exchange caused a stir. Players recalled Turkey Flavored Rice Crisps' encounter and started posting to curse out "Turn Away," which was Kent's usual ID used in both games and communications.
The Butcher's Double Axes were not snapped up immediately because it took some time for the rich folks to gather enough coins. *Immortal* didn't have newbie gift packages; all players only had a starting capital of 1000 copper coins, equivalent to 1 silver coin.
The cheapest and most basic weapon in the NPC shop was the "Long Sword" of [Common] quality, priced at 200 copper coins, also known as the newbie sword.
[Weapon: Long Sword (Common) Attributes: Attack Coefficient +1, Physical Penetration +5, Load Capacity +1].
[Description: The apprentice's practice work from the blacksmith's shop, barely usable for chopping low-level beasts.]
The Long Sword, along with the cheapest equipment, the Cloth Armor and Grass Shoes, were collectively referred to as the "Newbie Three-piece Set," with a total price of 600 copper coins. The remaining money could just buy 2 bottles of beginner health potions, 1 bottle of beginner stamina potion, and 5 packs of instant dry rations.
In *Immortal*, being hungry or thirsty would cause your stamina to decrease faster, and your stamina limit would also decrease. Being too hungry or thirsty could even cause you to faint and be forcibly logged out, so it was necessary to buy dry rations. As for drinking water, it was everywhere in the wilderness.