“Warning! The program detected an illegal code. Starting to clear the data…” A beep resounded on Shi Hao’s mind after he used the lottery ticket.

Shi Hao sat down weak and limp. He said while feeling confused, “I’m done for! My account will be gone in a second. Everyone could only have one account, so I won’t be able to play the game anymore. Su Xiao, please forgive me.”

The more Shi Hao thought about it, the more sorrowful he became. But then, he realized that he wasn’t kicked out of the game even though some time had passed. Shi Hao checked his inventory again out of curiosity.

“S***! I’m being played by my feelings just now. This game is toxic.” Shi Hao found out that the three lottery tickets in his inventory were all gone, and his money hasn’t increased either. Only an advanced-looking skill book was left in it. 

The agitated Shi Hao didn’t think too much about it. He simply clicked on the details about the book.

“Er…” Seeing this, Shi Hao was at a loss. “There must be a bug with this system. Why are all the details mostly filled with question marks? It’s just the same as not explaining anything.”   

Shi Hao angrily clicked the ‘x button’ on the top of the description page, thinking of closing this annoying page of description. What remained unseen was deemed to be clean.  

“Skill book learning has been confirmed. Congratulations, you’ve received a SS Grade Skill: Soul of the Warrior.” Suddenly, a beep resounded on Shi Hao’s mind again.

Shi Hao was surprised.

The skills in «Kingdom» were divided into six levels, which were D, C, B, A, S, and SS. Among them, SS grade skills were the rarest. There won’t be two persons who had the same SS grade skill. Besides, there were only three SS grade skills up until now, neither more nor less. And these SS grade skills would only appear in the later stage of the game. Even if someone has a Diamond VIP lottery ticket, it was less likely for them to draw out a SS grade skill at the beginning of the game.

Right after that, a full-scale broadcast of an announcement by the system could be heard!

“Congratulations to player XX in Divine Flower Continent to become the first person to learn a skill in «Kingdom». It is hereby notified that the above player XX will be rewarded with one level 1 iron sword.”

The announcement was being repeated three times, and Shi Hao was startled three times, too. Could it be that the announcement is talking about him?

Shi Hao hurriedly checked his inventory. Sure enough, there was a level 1 iron sword in it. Iron sword was the most average standard weapon in «Kingdom». It was also commonly known as staple goods. This weapon has ten levels in total. Each level will make it more powerful. Even though level 1 is the lowest, just now, the blacksmith charged the players 1000 copper coins for it. That was all the money Shi Hao currently had.

Even though things were getting really strange, Shi Hao didn’t care much about it. In any case, he had gotten the weapon conveniently. Now that he got a free weapon and a SS grade skill, what else did he need to care about? There’s no way he would just return all of these to the system.  

Shi Hao equipped the iron sword happily, then checked his character panel again.

Everything broadcasted in the announcement was true. Shi Hao’s character attribute had certainly increased. His attack has changed from 3 to 13. The attack of the level 1 iron sword was exactly 10.  

Shi Hao excitedly clicked on the skill explanation again. He can’t help it, it was a SS grade skill, after all.

The skills in «Kingdom» were usually restricted by different weapons. So essentially, there won’t be an unreasonable situation where a character used close-combat skills while holding a bow and arrow.  

The skills in «Kingdom» were divided into ten levels. After learning the skill, it’ll be on the basic level 1. In order to increase the skill’s level and strengthen its power, the player had to constantly use the skill ‘effectively’ so as to increase its mastery. The system was extremely strict when it came to determining the effectiveness of the skills. For instance, no matter how many times a fighter used the attacking skill against the air, it won’t increase the skill’s mastery. Furthermore, if a fool tried to find an ‘actor’ to create a PK with them in order to earn a skill’s mastery using an ill will, these fools would be considered guilty by the game’s system based on the severity of the circumstances. In less severe cases, the player will be put in detention for at least one month according to the game’s time. In extreme cases, the characters will immediately be killed and erased clean.

As for the SS grade skill Shi Hao had just obtained, it was obviously a supplementary skill. Wanting to get the skill determined as effective was neither easy nor hard. As long as he could form a team with someone else and engage in a fight effectively with them while using his skill, he’d be able to get (his skill) determined as effective without needing to do much and obtain lots of mastery to level up. On the contrary, he won’t be able to get determined by the system if he fought the monsters by himself, and he won’t get the reward of mastery, either.     

“A team, I had to request for a team!” Shi Hao closed the skill’s explanation interface and promptly opened the chatting window and sent a message: “I’m a level 1 fighter. I have my own iron sword, which would make a great contribution to the team.” 

What Shi Hao said was true. Any attribute addition of the game’s system was counted as a bonus first before multiplying. If there were more than one addition of the same type, it’ll be accumulated first before being combined, then it’ll be counted again. Take Shi Hao’s current situation as an example. The additional status of the iron sword was to increase Attack by ten points. This was what was called a bonus. The additional status of the first-class Soul of the Warrior was a 10% boost to Attack, Defense and Vitality. This was multiplication. According to the counting method, Shi Hao’s Attack should be (3+10)*1.1, which would be 14.3. His Defense should be 3*1.1, which was 3.3. Similarly, the Vitality would become 5.5 after the bonus.

These small improvements mustn’t be underestimated. The range of his skill could be said to be infinite. Its radius was five million meters! Moreover, it was a passive skill so it could be used continuously. As long as Shi Hao was in the team, the more people there were, the overall combat effectiveness of the team would also become more terrifying than ever.

“Hmph! He’s a fighter, yet he didn’t buy armor for himself, hanging around with an iron sword in his hand for who knows what. Fighters are such sloppy people, they only want to hinder their team’s progress. A stupid-looking people like you should just throw yourself into the street.” There were a lot of people passing by Shi Hao, all of them ridiculed his look.

Seeing this, Shi Hao couldn’t care less about them. He simply sent another message instead: “Shake the Heaven, a man who wants to become the king. Those who have nerves of steel could follow after me.”

Shi Hao created a team of his own and became the leader.

“F***! This boy is so arrogant. He’s even more clamorous than me.” A player called ‘Heroic Overlord Under Heaven’ noticed something odd from Shi Hao. 

This Heroic Overlord Under Heaven guy was probably a VIP rank player, yet he actually chose commander as his profession. He probably relied on the lottery to get some rewards so that he could appear with the complete set of gears on his body. He held an iron sword in his hand, wore armor on his body and a blue cloak on his back. What a majestic look he has.

“Hey! How could you be so arrogant and dare to become the leader and even declared that you’d become a king with that iron sword of yours, and in front of our boss!?” Some of Heroic Overlord Under Heaven’s little brothers rushed forward from his back and surrounded Shi Hao. Their gears were all ordinary in contrast, and they looked like the typical ordinary players.

“What are you doing? This is West Flower’s Novice Village. You’re not allowed to beat anyone here. Unless, you want to be put in detention or even get your character erased.” Shi Hao has nothing to fear. What’s there for him to fear in the first place? He was a man who possessed a SS grade skill. If he won’t become the king, then he was rejecting the law. Besides, he was still in Novice Village. Since he had the skill, that meant he could take action. Bring it on!

“Boss, we really can’t do any beatings here. Let’s look after him at the gate. No one will form a team with stupid-looking people like him anyway. It won’t be long before he leaves.” One of the little brothers turned towards Heroic Overlord Under Heaven and told him that. 

“Alright!” Heroic Overlord Under Heaven took the group of little brothers to West Flower’s Novice Village gate to watch over Shi Hao.

Shi Hao knitted his brows. He didn’t dare to go out of the village for now, so he simply waited patiently for someone else to look for him and form a team together. 

According to the death penalty in «Kingdom», the player’s rank will be lowered by one level after their death (if they were level 0, it won’t be lowered), and their experience will be reset. They’ll be put in prison for three days (game time) and their items will immediately be taken off from the player. Going through punishment will make them fall behind others right at the initial stage. How would they be able to ‘turn over’ again when the time comes?

What!? Some people said that Shi Hao should reveal his skill so that he could attract more people to form a team with him. But Shi Hao certainly wouldn’t reveal it to others. Otherwise, he wouldn’t know how much trouble he’d draw. At least, that Heroic Overlord Under Heaven from before will definitely trouble Shi Hao a lot as much as he did in real life.

Heroic Overlord Under Heaven was no one but Wu Batian!

Just like Shi Hao, after considering things, Wu Batian chose the West Flower region of Divine Flower Continent as his starting point. Wu Batian was quite lucky, so not only he drew a life-changing treasure, he also got a lot of copper coins as soon as he showed up in the game. Wu Batian bought the necessary items from the three stores in Novice Village. He spent the rest of the copper coins to attract people and made a large team, then planning to go to the wild and defeat some boss-level monsters. After killing some of the monsters, the Village Building Order will surely appear.

The Village Building Order was very valuable. It was a crucial method to become the king of the world. If Village Building Order didn’t exist, the players would have to attack the existing villages in order to get a base area. That won’t be called playing games anymore, it was more like a revolt!  

There existed a powerful force even at the early stage of «Kingdom», in which they reigned over the whole world. This force was called ‘Divine and Mighty Alliance’. Once the Divine and Mighty Alliance found out that someone was trying to revolt, they’ll promptly mobilize its armed force to annihilate that player. No one in the game would be able to fight against Divine and Mighty Alliance in the early stage of the game, not even the legendary historical NPCs.

Therefore, Village Building Order was the only way for the players to get the base area for now. Wu Batian must have done any means to get it.

Wu Batian waited for a long time, yet the fool Shake the Heaven hasn’t appeared. Wu Batian was shouldering great responsibilities, thus it would be inconvenient for him to stay too long. He instructed three of his trusted aides to take care of the matter, then left the place with the large team he bribed with his copper money.

“S***! He’s finally gone.” Shi Hao who was hiding on the side finally breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing his rival leaving.

But Shi Hao was still all alone. He had given up because of being ridiculed by people.

Everyone said that he was indulging in fantasy, that he was a ‘foolish fighter’. How could a fighter who hid behind like him become a leader? If he wanted to become a leader, then he shouldn’t have chosen to become a fighter in the first place. The leader must cast a great amount of skills behind everyone in order to help them improve their combat effectiveness. Thus, the leader needed to have more Energy than the rest, and more skill slots. Being a commander was a standard pattern to become a leader. On the contrary, a fighter only has a skill slot at the beginning. They didn’t have much Energy, either.

To this end, Shi Hao even tried to delete the uninteresting skill. Some offensive skills would be much more useful in direct close-combat than this skill. A D grade skill would be more practical to use with his level right now. However, Shi Hao discovered that the system wouldn’t allow him to delete the skill, because it was a unique SS grade skill.

Now, Shi Hao wouldn’t waste more time. No one would form a team with him, except Feng Tianhao. But Feng Tianhao’s whereabouts was still unknown. He was probably getting really excited after entering the game and immediately ran out to kill monsters. Shi Hao had looked for Feng Tianhao three times in the village, yet he still hadn’t caught the sight of him.

After thinking for a moment, Shi Hao decided to run back and spent the 1000 copper coins to buy a set of armor.

Shi Hao had calculated it. After he put on the armor, his Defense should become 16.5 after adding up with the bonus. Even though it wasn’t being shown in the character panel, his prediction was right.

After that, Shi Hao walked out of Novice Village.