Rebirth: Rise of the Slave Master

Chapter Five: Grinding All Day

SHIK! SHIK!

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Theo’s spear forcefully pierced the body of the low-level monster. Each attack hit squarely in the same spot, and arrived with an uncanny promptness. There wasn’t a moment of wasted time between the strikes, and if anyone were around to see it, they might have thought they were watching a machine rather than a man. After only a few of these attacks had landed...

BuZzBuZz! THWIP!

Theo had already taken a step back, escaping the range of the monster’s attack before it collided with the empty air. A successful dodge! The word MISS appeared over Theo’s head.

[Lunge]

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Theo activated his basic Polearm skill and calmly charged into attacking range once more, dealing a fair amount of damage and immediately resuming his mechanical-like assault.

The monster in question, [Big Bee] was the standard level 1 monster that could be found around the outskirts of Oasis.

Although Theo could have easily dispatched a stronger monster, there was an unfortunate wall standing in his way. His [Beginner Polearm Mastery] wouldn’t function as well against monsters and NPCs that were a higher level, causing a high likelihood of a system-automated MISS even when the blow landed successfully. He would have to wait for his skill proficiency to upgrade before he could forcefully break through this level barrier.

These basic enemies were usually more than enough for the average beginner, and were designed to be fought by multiple level 1 players at once. The [Big Bee] in particular could easily demolish a small group of newbies if they didn’t know what they were doing. It’s [Poison Sting] did low damage, but had a high chance of inflicting a Poison status on the target. Once poisoned, a small percentage of their health would deplete every few seconds. Since there was no healing magic to be found, and no money to buy antidotes from alchemists, one could image how frustrating it got.

Many monsters had dangerous or debilitating special abilities, but the [Big Bee] still topped the list of sinister baddies. Among the early residents of Oasis, it had garnered a certain nickname: Reset Bug! Tens of thousands would reset their characters in a new city because of this oversized insect!

Of course, all of this only applied if the monster was able to land a blow.

Dodging in Dream World Online was a complicated affair behind the scenes, but essentially boiled down to correct timing. If you moved too early, the monster would auto-navigate to your player model and the attack would hit. Too late, and you wouldn’t be out of the way in time. Only when you aligned the short invincibility period gained from dodging to the moment when the attack would have hit, would it result in something like the automatic MISS.

Early game monsters like the [Big Bee] only attacked once every few seconds, and the wind-up for their attacks was fairly telegraphed by the monster’s movements. In other words, they were easy to dodge for even an average player. Later monsters would attack rapidly, randomly, and with almost no telegraphing. The damage they dished out could be huge, and some attacks dealt damage even when you initiated a perfect dodge!

After about half a minute of machine vs insect, the [Big Bee] finally collapsed to the ground and Theo looted the corpse.

“Oh! Lucky!” he blurted out happily.

[Lesser Wind Essence] x1 - An essence of a weak monster aligned to the Wind element. A refreshing breeze seems to waft from this roughly formed gem.

[Poison Stinger] x1 - A stinger from a large insect, it can be used to craft weapons with poisonous properties.

Essences were the most common drop in Dream World Online, being the primary ingredient of pretty much every recipe in the game. Each monster would usually have a dominant element, such as Wind, Water, Fire, or Earth, and would drop an appropriate tier and number of these items depending on its difficulty level.

The [Poison Stinger] was a rare drop from the [Big Bee] and was an ingredient in a few of the early weapon recipes that blacksmith players could learn. While it wouldn’t be anything valuable in the future, they could be traded for a decent amount of money in the early game.

Theo had already killed at least twenty of these pests, and this was the first [Poison Stinger] he had obtained so far. Even if the weapons it made weren’t particularly good, the players still needed to craft piles of them in order to increase the proficiency of their skill.

Speaking of skill grinding, Theo figured it was about time to check his own progress on that front. He opened his character information tab.

Character Information Name: Theo (1) HP: 150/150 Race: Human MP: 100/100 Class: Novice Attack: 24~36 Alignment: Good Defense: 0 (0%) Attributes and Runes Strength: 5 (+0) Head Rune: Empty Agility: 5 (+0) Heart Rune: Empty Intelligence: 5 (+0) Core Rune: Novice Core Rune Constitution: 5 (+0) Rune Locked Empty Willpower: 5 (+0) Rune Locked Empty Charisma: 5 (+0) Rune Locked Empty Luck: 5 (+0) Rune Locked Empty Skill List Skill Name Level Exp. to Next Lv. Tag Beginner Conditioning Lv. 1 0%/100% Beginner Meditation Lv. 1 1%/100% Beginner Persuasion Lv. 1 7%/100% * Beginner Polearm Mastery Lv. 1 12%/100% * Beginner Rune Mastery Lv. 1 7%/100% * Dodge Lv. 1 5%/100% Lunge Lv. 1 2%/100% Perception Lv. 1 0%/100% Stealth Lv. 1 0%/100%

As a player, Theo could open a semi-opaque window at any time to inspect his character. It would display basic information such as his name, level, class, and alignment, as well as his attributes and various skill proficiencies.

The damage of Theo’s attacks would fall somewhere between the values presented next to his Attack score, depending on what part of the weapon hit the enemy. For instance, piercing with the tip of his spear would do more damage than bludgeoning with the haft.

His HP (Health Points) was a representation of how much damage he could sustain before death, with each attack he received reducing it by a certain amount. The Defense attribute would decrease this damage by a set percentage depending on how high it was.

MP (Mana Points) was a resource required to activate certain skills, like [Lunge], as well as magical spells. MP was a universal attribute that all characters had, regardless of their class.

HP and MP would slowly recover in combat depending on the runes you had equipped. This regeneration rate would increase rapidly outside of combat, and even more so if the player was sitting or lying down.

Strength, Agility, and Intelligence were offensive attributes usually tied to damage output. Strength and Agility would increase melee and ranged weapon damage respectively, while both would increase your attack speed, movement speed, and the chance to get a Critical Hit for extra damage. Intelligence served that role for magic damage, spell casting speed, and magic critical hit chance.

Constitution and Willpower were defensive attributes that would increase HP and MP respectively. Constitution would also provide resistance to physical status effects like Stun and Poison, while Willpower would grant resistance to things such as Confusion and Charm.

Charisma affected most classes differently. Like in the case of the Necromancer, it would determine how many undead they could command at one time. It would also increase the character’s general likeability when meeting new NPCs.

Luck affected almost everything in the game, but by such a small amount that it was hardly noticeable. Few professional players would ever invest in this.

When a player leveled up, they would receive a number of points to invest in these attributes however they wished. The starting attributes for Humans were all set to 5, but for other races, they would be slightly different. Beastmen had more Strength but less Intelligence, Dwarves had more Constitution but less Charisma, Elves had more Agility but less Constitution, and so on.

In order to level up, a player would have to increase their skill proficiencies. This was where Theo’s knowledge from the future really came in handy. Killing monsters and completing quests from the NPCs would distribute a certain amount of experience equally across any ‘tagged’ skills the player had. What’s more, repeatedly using said skill would also raise proficiency by a small amount.

Because the game tagged all of the basic skills by default, most players would have a very slow time leveling them up through hunting. For instance, a hulking warrior character might end up dumping a portion of his experience into the proficiency of his unused [Stealth] skill without even knowing it.

The game developers did this so that new players would be more likely to uncover all of the different classes when they reached level 9, even if it slowed down their progress. After all, it required levels in [Stealth] to become a Thief, or [Beginner Persuasion] to learn merchant skills.

Since Theo knew what his focus would be at later levels, he could ignore this “newbie tax,” as players would come to call it.

As for his skills…

[Beginner Conditioning] improved his HP regeneration while resting outside of combat, and [Beginner Meditation] did the same for MP.

[Beginner Polearm Mastery] determined Theo’s ‘accuracy’ with polearm-type weapons, and [Beginner Rune Mastery] limited what tier of runes he could equip, as well as multiplied their bonuses slightly.

[Beginner Persuasion], provided it was used correctly, could unlock special events with NPCs as well as entirely new conversation skills down the line.

[Perception] would let him see the basic statistics of most monsters and NPCs, and also countered [Stealth], which helped him avoid detection. [Dodge] increased the amount of time Theo would be invulnerable during a dodge, and all three of these skills would unlock new skills at higher levels.

[Lunge] was his only active skill. Leveling it up would boost its damage and let Theo use it more often, but it would also raise the MP consumption.

Since Theo spent all of this time fighting, his tagged skills had gone up with every monster slain, while his untagged skills were left unaffected. The skills he used often, like [Lunge] and [Dodge], went up all on their own even without the investment from killing monsters.

Just by looking at the amount of experience gained, it was obvious what skills Theo was focused on raising.

[Beginner Polearm Mastery] was needed to actually fight monsters above his character level, and [Beginner Rune Mastery] was a must for every character, since it was required to equip more powerful Runes. [Beginner Persuasion], on the other hand, was hard to raise on its own and was necessary for his class quest later.

For most players, the first skill to level up would be [Beginner Conditioning], followed by [Beginner Meditation]. This was because a lot of players would have to sit and recover their HP and MP after every fight. It was a natural progression, allowing the new users to fight more often and thereby gain more experience. Since Theo never got hit, however, and even went so far as to untag the skills, they had hardly budged an inch.

After a certain number of skills leveled up, his player level would increase as well.

This was the cycle of gameplay in Dream World Online. Fight monsters, complete quests, raise your skill proficiencies, and level up. It was an arduous but rewarding process known as grinding.

Meanwhile, anomalies like Theo could dump all of their experience points into a couple of skills and completely ignore the others to speed this process along.

“Oh well, back to grinding,” Theo, who coincidentally loved to grind, couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he set his sights on the nearest [Big Bee].

By the time the first players were wrapping up the tutorial quest and adventuring into the desert to inevitably get bullied by the bees, Theo had already raised his [Beginner Polearm Mastery] to level 2. His character level was still only at 1, but he confidently stalked off to find the level 2 monster, [Sand Lizard].

This scaly beast had a faster and stronger attack than the bee, but without the Poison effect. What the [Sand Lizard] boasted was the ability to dodge attacks, as opposed to the [Big Bee] which would just stand there and let itself be hit. What a nasty surprise this would be for the new players the first time it dove under their weapons and attacked from their flank.

Understandably, this low-level AI was nothing to Theo, who stuck to the [Sand Lizard]s like a venomous parasite, draining their HP with a constant barrage of attacks and [Lunge]s. In the meantime, his [Beginner Rune Mastery] and [Persuasion] skills also leveled up, and he became the mostly likely candidate for “first person in Dream World Online to reach Level 2.”

Theo received 10 attribute points, and without hesitation pumped all of them into Strength.Just in case the player had accidentally neglected a vital attribute for their new class, the system would automatically refund any points spent before level 10. For these puny little mobs that couldn’t even lay a finger on him, Theo only needed more damage to kill them off quicker.

“Heeheehee…” the crazed gamer’s once-infamous cackle echoed across the empty desert sands as he ruthlessly bullied the beginner mobs, “come here my precious experience points.”

This was a laugh that had struck terror into the hearts of even God-tier players, and if the monsters were sophisticated enough to know what fear was, they would no doubt run away as fast as their legs could carry them.

After polishing off a hearty chunk of the level 4 [Desert Coyote]’s, a monster that introduced the players to enemies that traveled in packs, Theo’s [Beginner Polearm Mastery] finally broke through and reached level 5. [Dodge] and [Lunge] had both reached level 2, and his character level also rose to level 3. All of his points once again went into Strength.

Bweep! Bweep! Bweep!

The bloodlust faded from Theo’s eyes almost as soon as the alarm sounded.

The alert function was built into the Lucid Lock, and could be set to whatever time was needed to remind players of their upcoming appointments. It was easy to lose track of time in a virtual space, after all.

Since knowing when to stop was one of the most important skills a gamer could have, Theo logged out of Dream World Online without a moment’s hesitation.

Six hours had already passed from the time the game launched, and many of the fresh players had retreated to the online forums to whine about the difficulty level of this newly released title. In most circumstances, new games would try their utmost to seem accessible to as many people as possible, but the creators of Dream World Online were so confident in the first ever virtual world that they didn’t bother with traditional ways of thinking.

They were betting on humanity's innately inquisitive nature to drag people back in no matter how difficult or obtuse the game’s design was. It was a huge gamble by the devs, but Rick knew it would eventually pay off for them. After the diehard players paved the way for the rest of the masses, the complaints would soon be drowned out by praise.

Players would always find a way!

This was the credo of the game developers behind Dream World Online, and so they kept silent about all of the initial backlash. Already, threads were starting to crop up on the forums with information about Weapon Masters and skill proficiencies. These would eventually be tidied up and packaged into starter guides for new players, and every video game journalist in the world was practically chomping at the bit to publish the first.

Rick could have easily led the rest of the players onto the proper path and even made himself a neat little sum of money while he was at it, but what sense would that make? Giving up his huge advantage for a bit of cash? Now that would really be putting the cart before the horse.

For about an hour, Rick allowed his thoughts to wander. He ate, exercised, and wrote down some notes about his current condition in a journal. Soon, he would have to return to the Lucid Lock and continue his mad dash for level 9. Just because the sky outside was now dark, the same couldn’t be said for his competitors overseas....

“Adrian… Elizabeth… I wonder if you’ve entered the game by now?”

Rick had only met Adrian after playing the game for two years or so, when Rick crashed a boss fight that the knight’s party had been failing at for days. Rick had helped turn the tide of the battle and earned quite a bit of respect from the other players, though he really only did it because of a quest. He wondered, was it as far back as then that Adrian began resenting him?

Elizabeth… Rick had actually met her early on in his original starting city. An unrivaled player even back then, she was like an avatar of death to the vicious rabbits and squirrels in the region. It had been this mysterious frontrunner who originally inspired Rick to aim for greater heights in Dream World Online, and eventually the two would end up competing in the same regional competitive leagues. After that...

“Pff… heeheehee…” Rick quickly dropped the temperature in his apartment by a few degrees with only a laugh, “I guess all you can do now is reach the top and wash your necks for me…”