The system message blinked in front of my eyes as it did a thousand times in the past

“.... initiating full body scan….”

“…. welcome back Oren Berman, please enter your password.”

I felt a pang, but gritted my teeth and said: “I’m the awesomest mage in the world.” What a joke. I had to change the password ASAP.

“....password accepted. Logging you in, in 5… 4… 3…”

During the countdown, as usual, the game’s legal disclaimer popped up. “...blah ...blah ...blah ...the company won’t be held responsible for any in-game occurrences... blah... blah... including but not limited to item or gold theft... blah... blah ...aggressive behavior from other players…” etc.

I must have read those few lines hundreds of times. You could make the countdown stop if you wanted to read everything carefully, but at this point, the words were seared into my brain. The company displayed them every time you logged into NEO. Apparently, they wanted to emphasize to players that they play the game on their own peril, releasing the company from any liability. Excluding game bugs or technical glitches.

As the countdown reached 1, the cerebral connection with my brain was established and my vision was replaced with darkness. You always started with your eyes closed; it had something to do with reducing the stress from your mind while trying to cope with a sudden change in perspectives.

I opened my eyes and looked around me.

I was back at the short tunnel leading to the cemetery, in the goblin cave.

I held up my arms in front of my eyes and watched them intently. Brown-green, slightly furry arms, similar to most goblins I’ve ever encountered. I made waving motions, and watched them arc through the air, at the exact normal speed I intended them to move. Was I really moving 12 times faster? I wondered. After all, I didn’t feel any different. Well… maybe a small general sense of tightening around my forehead, but nothing I couldn’t easily ignore. I shook my head. It doesn’t make any sense! When I’ll meet a player, would I be 12 times faster than he? Would I be like the Flash in the superhero comics? But that’s ridiculous… All monsters I’ve encountered in the past moved at their relative normal speed. I shrugged as I came to a simple conclusion. I guess time will tell.

Well, I knew what I was supposed to do now. I had the basic outline of my strategy laid out:

Establishing myself with the Drippers clan Once my position is secured, start grinding my skills and levels Gather resources and concentrate on crafting better equipment for myself

The first step should be easy. Bogan the chieftain wanted me to prove myself to the clan, and I had a good hunch that finding Tika the huntress for the head cook was the first required step for the job. So, let’s go find our huntress!

I started walking toward the main cave. Once there, I spotted the exit, a big jagged asymmetrical opening on the opposite side of me. I started walking toward it, using Analyze on every goblin I saw along the way.

I suddenly began to realize how fortunate I was to be able to use my skills with thoughts alone, something I learned to take for granted over the years. Walking through the cave yelling ‘Analyze!’ to the face of every goblin I encountered was bound to land me in troubles…

That last one stood right in my way, blocking it. I automatically analyzed it along with the rest.

This goblin was different, on its head it wore a headdress adorned with white dirty feathers. Around his waist was what can only be described as a kilt, also made from whitish feathers. In his hand he held a gnarled wooden staff with a small goblin skull on top of it, adorned with two additional feathers. Aside from those 3 items he wore nothing else. He stood bare-chested. His face was scarred, probably from old partially healed burns, and he was missing several teeth. Overall, he seems an unpleasant fella. As he stood blocking my way, I started getting an uneasy feeling. And, sure enough…

“You!” he barked at me. “What were you doing in the tunnel leading to our holy ancestral burial ground?”

I looked at him, wondering how to react. Well... they seemed to respond to force so… “What I did was my own business! Now let me pass.” And I shoved right through him. Or, at least, I tried to. As soon as my shoulder connected with his body to shove it aside, the goblin raised its staff and knocked me over the head with it. Hard. I immediately lost 8 hp and fell down to the ground dazed.

“Impudent!” the goblin barked, while the eye sockets of his staff’s skull started to glow with yellow light. “I heard you carry a sacred sacrificial dagger! It does not belong in the hands of a low-life such as you, hand it over!”

I struggled to rise, feeling outraged. I had enough bullying in the last day to last me a lifetime., I’ll be damned if I let myself be robbed by a stupid low-level goblin “No! That’s mine.” I snarled back at him.

Oh ho, I thought to myself, that’s not good. Hatred in the game meant you’re perceived as an enemy, and would usually be attacked on sight.

I quickly drew on my magic to cast a Mana Arrow. A pure bright blue arrow materialized in front of me and in a split second launched toward the goblin’s ugly head. To my chagrin, the yellow light shot out from the staff’s skull, creating a bright golden sphere which completely surrounded his body. My arrow struck the sphere with a muffled ‘bang’ and then vanished, without causing any discernible damage. That’s not good, I thought in dismay. Before I could think of any other action, the skull’s eyes glowed again and 2 bolts of yellow light shot out, striking my body. I was immediately seized by immense pain and then everything turned black.

A moment later I respawned at the goblin cemetery again, barely 20 meters from where I just died. Damn! He’s a tough bastard! I now regretted my decision to mostly ignore the hands-on combat aspect of the game. I bet most players knew what to expect from a goblin Totem. Well, I guess I should try to avoid him for now, he’s just too strong, I realized in dismay.

I slowly made my way back to the tunnel leading out of the cemetery chamber, and silently trekked the short distance toward the main cave. When I passed the last bend of the tunnel, I peeped from the edge and searched for DurDur.

There he was, the bastard, I thought as I made him out. He went directly to another tunnel leading, from what I gathered, to the Chieftain’s chamber. I used that opportunity and run through the cave toward the opening I saw earlier, which led to the outside world. Finally! Tika is still waiting to be found!

I emerged out of the cave which was faced to the south, startling 2 goblins sentries carrying crude spears, a quick Analyze showed:

I wonder why some goblin has names and some are simply labeled as goblin workers or warriors, I thought to myself. Maybe the unnamed ones were a simple mob and the named ones could act as an intelligent NPC?

I turned to the one on the left, Chob, and asked politely “Hi there, have you perhaps seen Tika, the huntress?”

The goblin stared at me stupidly, “Tika goed that way in mornings,” he pointed farther west the cave.

I turned my head, following his finger, and immediately saw a vast and dense forest before me. There was a small cleared space, about 10 meters in length between the cave at the hillside and the trees. Beyond that I couldn’t see a thing, the trees were simply too dense.

“Thanks,” I said to the guard and walked toward the tree line. I took out the knife in my left hand, and channeled some mana into my right hand, preparing a mana arrow for immediate casting. As I stepped into the forest it was discernibly darker. The canopy was so dense it almost completely blocked the sunlight. I immediately found a narrow path of crushed plants. Apparently, it was a well-used road, which made wading through the thicket somewhat easier.

I followed the path deeper and deeper into the forest, while the light turned darker and darker. The path ended after about a 100 meters, and I stood at the edge of a small clearing. My attention was immediately drawn to a small sized creature. It looked like an armadillo, but one that was armored with silver skin. They probably added them after I started playing, I thought. Since I was used to be a high-level player, I didn’t bother to visit any of the low-level areas anymore, which explained why I just saw a creature I never encountered before. Which also meant, I might encounter some more unknown creatures. I need to be careful here, I realized. Unknown usually was synonymous to dangerous.

The weird Armadillo thing was happily chewing on a corpse of a rabbit, which was hanging half way of a spring wire trap. I guessed that was Tika’s trap. Maybe that armadillo thing scared her away? I speculated. Well, it was a golden opportunity to test my new combat abilities and gain some XP.

The Armadillo was busy, so I used it’s distraction to analyze it:

Though the creature was small, about the size of a medium dog, I was due to a tough fight. Compared to my Goblin character it looks pretty large, it was a higher level than me, and it had a fair amount of hp…

I checked my Mana Arrow skill, it currently did 5-10 damage, so I’ll need to hit it at least 3 or 4 times. Each casting of the spell used 5 mana. I had a mana pool of 25, enough for exactly 5 castings. However, I had an ace up my sleeve...

I felt better now. Once I had the chance to concentrate on a single problem and design the best approach to handle it, my fear evaporated and the situation simply became a puzzle to solve. It was just a matter of finding the optimal solution for it.

I slowly backed away, increasing the distance between me and the Armadillo, toward the edge of the clearing, where I partially hid behind a tree.

That should give me enough room to maneuver, I mused, while starting to pour more mana into my hand, enlarging the Mana Arrow and making it glow more brightly. The nice thing about the mana discipline spells was that you could invest more mana into them, up to double its based cost, which made them more effective. In the case of a Mana Arrow, it made it a more damaging spell. The only short back was that it took a few seconds longer than a standard spell casting.

I charged the spell with additional 5 mana, the allowed maximum, effectively doubling its deadliness. Then I highlighted the armadillo with a single thought as the intended target and launched the arrow. It flew, covering the distance in an instant and hit the armadillo with a satisfying bang!

I just realized another aspect of my previous sheltered gameplay. As I rarely ventured out to the wild on my own, I had no idea spell damage could be affected by sneaking!

In one casting I took out about 75% of its hit points. The armadillo immediately locked its sights on me and charged, but I had a sufficient distance to immediately cast another Mana Arrow, regular one this time as I had no time to charge it up. It hit the armadillo for exactly 6 damage, felling it as it charged.

That was the power of a Mana Master! I thought smugly to myself

Damn! That Armadillo was a packing some nice XP! With a single kill, I was more than halfway toward level 2.

I checked its body and the loot inventory screen popped up. I found a chunk of meat, and metal. I never saw such a thing before, so curiously, I checked its description.

Type: crafting components

Description: Hardened metal shell, suitable for crafting standard level metal items>

That’s useful I thought to myself, if I can collect a few more, maybe I can make something useful out of them. I took both the carapace and the meat and placed them in my inventory.

I approached the sprung trap and saw a couple of half eaten rabbits, I checked them and collected additional 2 chunks of meat and 2 rabbit furs.

I couldn't see any other path to follow, so I started scanning the bushes around the clearing, and in a few moments I found a few wires that appear to have been thrown over, and some broken leaves that leaned deeper toward the forest.

Through careful observation of your environment, you learned how to find creatures tracks and follow them. The increase of the skill will allow for tracking in a more difficult terrain, and harsher conditions.

Current level 1 (0%): you can find obvious tracks and determine their heading>

Sweet! A new skill! And one that I never had before! That would make things easier.

It was now clear to me where I needed to head to next. Whoever passed here didn’t try to hide its tracks, and it’s been mere hours ago. The tracks were very fresh, the path of vegetation devastation was now obvious before my eyes, so I started following it.

To my joy, I found that my eyes were now easily drawn to the next signs of tracks, as I progressed through more broken bushes and twisted branches. After a few minutes, I started hearing disturbing sounds from further ahead, snarling and grunting, similar to the noises the armadillo I defeated earlier.

I approached more carefully, and as I peeked behind the cover of a large tree trunk, I saw 3 armadillos surrounding a tree, snarling and hissing, occasionally trying to climb the trunk, their sharp nails digging deep gashes in the bark. I looked up the tree and saw a small goblin female, looking terrified, peeking down from the branches. She held a small bow but apparently was out of arrows, which explained the dead body of a 4th armadillo a bit further down from its 3 buddies. The dead one’s body looked more like a pincushion with over a dozen arrows sticking out of it.

One of the 3 live armadilloes also had a couple of arrows sticking out of its hide. Apparently, it’s metal armor was tough enough to resist the arrows, which didn’t seem to cause much damage.

Right behind the tree I was hiding, I saw a heavy looking satchel that looked like it was hastily discarded. I checked its content - it was filled with raw meat...

You found Tika the huntress besieged by deadly monsters. Either save her or abandon her and bring the meat she gathered directly to Guba

Quest Type: normal, chain

Reward: improved reputation, 100xp, Guba’s special dish, Optional: improved reputation with Tika>

Well, even though I didn’t have much front-line combat experience, I’ve never been a one to run from a tough fight, and the potential gain of an ally in my new life was definitely worth the negligible danger of being killed. The worst that would happen was that I would respawn and then be forced to walk all the way back here again. Death penalties were not a concern, seeing as I was still a low-level character.

But how would I deal with the armadillos…? Luckily my mana just finished regenerating to full, but the armadillos combined had more hp then I was able to deal damage with my measly 25 mana pool…

Another puzzle to solve! I considered several possible plans, and decided to use the most straightforward one; The Armadillo seemed pretty enraged at Tika, and I at least knew that enraged beasts usually focused on the one who damaged them, so I figured it safe enough to reveal myself. I popped my head behind the tree and shouted, “HEY! TIKA!”

She immediately located the source of my voice and looked at my puzzled but suddenly hopeful, “Please! Help! I stuck on tree!”

I was right, the Armadillos, hearing Tika’s voice doubled their effort in trying to claw their way up the tree, completely ignoring me. Had they not, I planned on running and drawing them away from Tika.

“Don’t worry, I’m here to help,” I called in my best reassuring voice. “Listen, I have a plan. I’m going to draw those critters toward me, then you’ll quickly climb down, collect as many arrows as you can and climb back up, ok?” I wasn’t going to lose the XP if there was a viable way to defeat them, and I figured that between the two of us, we could use range attacks to safely do so.

Tika seemed frightened but still answered, “Ok!”

I searched and found a relatively easy way to climb the tree, and placed myself next to it, resting my right hand on the first step. With my left hand I cast Mana Arrow aiming directly at the wounded Armadillo.

A Hit! 7 damage and, as expected, all three armadilloes charged toward me.

I let them cover half the distance, making sure they’ll not return to siege Tika and then climbed hurriedly up the tree.

Unfortunately, I was not fast enough, and the leading beast lunged forward and sunk its front claws in my leg. It hurt! A lot! Much more than it should have. I clenched my teeth and with a burst of strength, managed to climb up the tree, evading the other incoming attacks. I found a wide leveled branch and settled on it.

The attack took away 8 HP, more than half of my maximum. Those beasts are dangerous! Once my position on the branch was secured, I glanced away toward Tika, she was already on the ground, hurriedly plucking arrows from the dead animal on the ground, the armadillos below me made to turn and charge at her, but I blasted them with another Mana Arrow, drawing their aggro back at me.

I timed my attacks to only to counter their attempt to leave my tree and turn on Tika, pacing my mana consumption. In less than a minute, Tika managed to retrieve 12 arrows and climb back onto her tree, finding a more secure spot this time. I had 10 mana left, and one more Mana Arrow downed the already wounded animal killing it.

Excellent! I quickly assigned the new point to Mental, increasing my max mana pool to 35, and increasing my regeneration rate to 2 points per minute.

Tika started shooting arrows on the armadillo, while I took my time. I analyzed the beast continuously and saw that each arrow she fired did 1-2 damage. I guess these creatures, with their metal armor, were especially resistant to physical damage, I was lucky that I specialized in magic.

After 7 of Tika’s arrows hit the same creature, I saw its health dropped to 5. My turn! I thought, a bit greedily. I targeted it with another Mana Arrow, finishing it off with that single casting and gaining the XP for landing the killing blow.

She’s just an NPC, she wouldn’t mind I thought to myself. Normally kill stealing was considered a very rude thing at the least, or more commonly treated as a blatant insult, one that most players wouldn’t take peacefully or quietly. But, due to our current circumstances, Tika didn’t seem to mind.

Only 1 armadillo left, so we continued the same tactic, Tika exhausted all her arrows while my mana slowly regenerated enough for me to cast 2 more Mana Arrows, finishing off the beast.

You found and rescued Tika, return with her and the meat back to Guba.

Optional: bring more meat than the minimum required. Current 13/20

Quest Type: normal, chain

Reward: improved reputation, 100€xp, Guba’s special dish>

Great! Another link to the chain! And one that should be fairly easy to complete.

We climbed down from our respective trees and turned over to search the bodies, I added 3 more chunks of meat and 3 Armadillo metal armor to my inventory, while Tika looted her own original kill.

I now had 6 chunks of raw meat in my inventory, and I guessed the package on the ground held 10 more, getting 4 extra should be a piece of cake.

Tika and I stood up and carefully inspected each other. She was actually quite cute, barely a meter tall, she had long black hair. The gaunt cheeks of her race that usually made them look hollow and emaciated, were softer in her case, making her face seems angular and exotic.

“I thank you for saving me, strange one,” she spoke, “I think the animal could kill me!”

her way of talking was quite simplistic, childlike even, but not as stupid sounding as some of the goblins I encountered. It was quite charming, actually.

“No problems” I replied with a grin.

“Guba sent me to look for you, I’m glad I got here in time to help.” I looked at the meat satchel, “I see you had a good hunt, but I’d like to surprise Guba with more meat than she was expecting, I just need 4 more pieces”.

She nodded and reached for her pack “here, I give you my meat, gift for you.”

I nodded back in thanks three more to go.

“Shell we head back to the clan?” I suggested

“But you are not my clan!” she protested. “They can kill you.”

“That’s ok,” I smiled at her, “I already talked to the chieftain, and I’m working on joining your clan.”

Her concerned face relaxed a bit. “Oh, that is good! Come! We go back now.”

She started leading the way back toward the cave. I followed.

When we reached the clearing I found earlier, she stopped and gathered the trap wires on the ground while adding in an apologetic tone, “beasts jumped me, I ran, and wire fell on the ground. Meat fell too, but after.”

I nodded. “That’s understandable, those critters were tough! But we beat them!” And it was actually pretty fun. I chuckled. She looked puzzled but laughed as well, more out of courtesy than any real humor, I guess.

After she gathered all the wires and began heading back toward the cave I put up my hand to stop her “Actually, I think I’ll remain here for a while longer, I’d like to try to hunt for some more meat, to make Guba extra happy. I will see you later at the cave, alright?”

She frowned at that but nodded, and walked away.

I sat down on a small rock and sighed as I relaxed. I was not used to so much combat, and though it was not a particularly large scale fight, it took the better part of an hour and was actually pretty exhausting. Also, a lot of things happened that affected my character, my very first level up no less! I opened my character sheet and examined my new stats:

Level: 2, (47%)

Race: Monster Race [Goblin]

Attributes: [0 points available]

Physical 1 Mental 2 Social -1

Skills:

Murphy’s Bitch 1 (40%) (mastery) Analyze 1 (90%) Mana Manipulation 1 (60%) Mana Arrow 1 (99%) Tracking 1 (20%)

Pools:

Hit Points: 20 (10P, 10M) Mana: 35 (20M, 5P, 10MM-skill).

Effects:

Goblinoid (+1 Physical, -1 Social) Experience modifier -20%>

Well, that was encouraging, I checked the internal clock, I’ve been playing for 2 hours game time, which apparently was only 10 minutes of real time, and already made some nice progress!

That was simply a staggering notion… The time differentiation ratio was insane. I felt a shiver for a moment remembering Tal’s warning… Experiencing the time acceleration in person made me realize how volatile my situation actually was. It seemed very reasonable that my mind might have difficulty keeping up the pace. But, weirdly enough, I felt just fine. Exactly the same as I always felt when I was playing at normal game setting. Well, it has only been 6 minutes, and I did give myself a full hour to explore the situation, I reminded myself.

I was surprised to see Murphy’s bitch skill gained some progress, when did that happen? Analyze has increased nicely, and was about to level up, and Mana Arrow was nearly level up already! Just then, 3 squirrels run by, crossing my path. I immediately targeted them with 3 rapid casting if Mana Arrow, catching the last one just as it was about to jump out of my field of view.

Right on schedule I happily thought.

Still, it wasn’t enough. Especially if I had to face that damn DurDur again. I guess I’ll have to avoid him for a while longer, at least until I’ll be strong enough and can take him down. I surmised.

I approached the fallen squirrels and grabbed exactly 3 pieces of raw meat from them, bringing the grand total to the required 20. That should make Guba happy I thought with satisfaction.

I made my way back east, through the forest path and toward the goblin’s cave. Chob and Zibles still stood there, guarding the cave entrance. I approached them, careful to make my presence known before emerging outside the forest and revealing it was just little ol’ me.

I stood outside the cave for a while, staring at it. Here in front of me lay my future game life. I would have never thought that would be my destiny, but that’s the hand fate has dealt me, and I will do my best with it.

I entered the cave and immediately run into DurDur. Oh, crap!

“You again?” He asked in a surprised tone, “I thought I killed you already.”

I frantically started to look for a way out of this mess. I turned toward the exit and made to escape when a system message popped up:

Oh, crap.