Chapter 2

Dave began to appreciate his surroundings. Looking at the town where he stood, the dimly lit skies and the dark atmosphere. This place was unlike anywhere he had been too before. The buildings had a medieval theme to them. There was an interface that he had access too, it was at the side of his vision if he would focus clearly he could see many different icons.

Map.

The first thing that interested him was to know where he is. Looking at the map from a third person point of view Dave understood that he was actually in the rims of the eastern kingdom, yet not in a populated place. This city or town was named Moria. It was an old town and was very small, there was even the number of population, about 300 people lived here without taking account the players.

Still, it was strange that there were no players around. Dave began to think that this town was too far away from the main cities and not many players would want to venture this far, or at the very least that this place was of no interest to everyone else thus the lack of other players.

Right after he verified his location, he “zoomed” his view on the map to look at the town where he was.

Three major things caught his attention here; the teleportation gate, the church, the training center.

The teleportation circle is a gateway that can teleport a player from city to city. So that they do not waste time going from place to place. The church was where he could take the simplest and easiest to acquire class, a paladin. And the training center where he could train his character to learn the basic skills that every class has.

“Should I start first by doing gathering quest, or should I head to the church to start the paladin questline?” asked Dave himself.

“Well, let's start by going to the training center, at least I could get a basic weapon and shield and start training if I remember correctly I would need to reach level 10 before starting the basic paladin questline.” Said, Dave, as he moved towards the training center ignoring the man with the question mark on his head.

Once he arrived at the training center he saw, many NPCs doing various move sets and attacking dummies.

There was a large buffed man, who was leaning on a pole and watching the NPCs. That man must be the instructor as he had a yellow Question mark on his head.

“Hey sir,” said Dave to the man.

The gruff looking man made an inspecting look at Dave and said

“Oh, fresh blood, you must be one of those Adventurers right? I have seen many of you. Truth be told I am envious of your ability to revive even after you die, still, that does not make you invincible. Ahh, I guess you want to learn the basic skills and train right?” said the man

Dave was a bit stunned, not at the man but the way he spoke and the expressions on his face. Though he was but an artificial character, he displayed remorse and envy and gave advice to Dave. This was for him a first, how can a fictional character display human emotion? Dave could only praise the work behind such a game. Perhaps this is a reason why people are hooked on the game.

“Ah, Yes, I was hoping to learn some basic skills, others have said that they will be useful to train later on. Would you be kind to teach me?” asked Dave.

“I have no qualms with that, but first you must do me a favor. I have been looking over these grunts for the past few hours and I am feeling a bit hungry. Take this and go to the bakery, my wife works there. Bring me my lunch I forgot to get it.” said The man

You have obtained a new Quest.

Bring us some food

Xp +200.

Bring The instructor Juda his lunch. Even an idiot can do this.

Quest difficulty: NIL

Dave squinted his eyes at how rude the notification had been but didn’t voice he complains. He took a small stamp that had the name Juda on it and went to where he was supposed to go. A new location was now clinging to his map and he understood that that was the bakery.

It took him a couple of minutes to get there. Once he was there a woman who had an exclamation mark on her head was there. She was the bakery’s shop owner.

“My lady, Mr. Juda had asked me to bring him his food,” said Dave and brought forward the stamp.

“Oh, that idiot had forgotten to take his lunch… here you go give it to him while it is still hot.”

Quest update.

Bring back the food to the instructor Juda.

You have 3 minutes time limit or else the food will turn cold and your quest will fail.

Are you going to fail this, are you?

Again with the rude notification… sigh.

Dave took the food and it was instantly placed in his inventory. It was a small looking pouch that said.

Hot food.

Simple.

Once Dave got the food he went straight towards the instructor. It didn’t even take 30 seconds before he was there and gave the Instructor the item he wanted

“Oh, very well, it is still hot too. Thank you lad!”

Quest cleared.

+200Xp

Time spent 33 seconds.

Bonus reward +50 XP

Only then, Dave fully understood the meaning behind this idiotic quest. Any character that has an exclamation mark can give quests. The quests have scored on them, and the better one manages their time and quests under the conditions of the quests the more can one earn by doing them. This was a simple quest that many must have done to familiarize themselves with the system. Dave was no exception.

Looking at Dave’s gauge bar he understood that he just got a quarter of the needed XP to level up.

Juda the instructor soon disappeared and after a minute or so, he appeared again.

“That was very satisfying. Anyway, kid, you wanted to learn the basic skills right. You should know though, this is a training facility for warriors, if you want to learn magic you will need to go to the magic tower in this town.” Said the instructor as he pointed at a tower that was a bit far but still within the small town.

“No, I wish to learn the way of the sword.” Said, Dave

“Then you came to the right place, however, you need some strength before you can carry a weapon, you still lack strength. Let me tell you, you see those weights there, start by picking them up, once you gained at least 15 strength then you can start by training with the sword.” Said the instructor.

“Ah, so you can gain strength by lifting weights…” said Dave

“Well, what do you think? If there is another way to do that then please tell me!” said the man with a laugh. This actually made Dave sound like an idiot. These NPCs did not have the same view over the game as Dave did. They see weapons as weapons no matter the tier. They only gain strength and power by training.

“Ok, I will start then” Dave then went towards a corner of the courtyard where there was a lot of weight spread across the ground.

Starting with the 10-pound weights he grabbed each of them. Inspecting them gave Dave an idea about them.

Lifting Weights: 10pounds.

Training for 1 hour=+1 strength. Capped at +5 strength. (Limited Under 15 strength)

5 stamina/lift.

Oh, this was interesting.

Dave then looked at another one.

Lifting Weights: 20 pounds.

Training for 1 hour=+1 strength. Capped at +5 strength. (limited under 20 strength)

25 stamina/lift.

He then understood. There was a way to gain strength, but he will need to grind. Looking at the number of weights, he understood that he could train with all of them all the way to weights that had +500 pounds. Normally that would be difficult for anyone to carry but this was just a game.

Calculating the total amount of Strength he could gain he understood that once he trains with every tier of weights here in the courtyard he will gain +100 strength!

However, there was a problem with this. If he were to calculate the time needed for him to reach such strength, it would take him at least 5 hours training per tier. Looking at the 20 tiers of weights. He calculated that it would need him about 100 hours to train all the way to +100 strength, with 1 strength per hour. This will be an arduous task however, that was under typical circumstances.

Because not only would he be lifting weights, he will be spending a lot of stamina to use them. So he will need to grind up not only his strength but also his stamina. So it might take much longer than just 10 hours, especially at how much the stamina consumptions reach once he looked at the heavier weights.

The last weight needed at least 250 stamina/lift! Something that he didn’t even have. But thankfully Dave understood that there was a ratio where the game worked with. A basic Strength of stamina conversion.

The more strength one has, the lesser the needed stamina to do a job. Therefore, when Dave reaches higher levels of stamina, the Weight that now looks like it needs 250 stamina/lift would probably be about 100 stamina per lift. Still, that was too much, and it would take him a lot just to do so.

There was also the lifting animation, the character needs not to bother with manually lifting the weights, he could just let the animation do the job for him. It is capped under a certain amounts of lifts/hour.

“Mr. Instructor,” said, Dave, as he came back to ask the instructor about something that was bothering him.

“What is it?” asked the instructor.

“How does one train their stamina?” asked Dave.

“Stamina is easy to train, not only would Weight lifting increases our stamina. You can also try jogging around. It will help greatly with increasing your stamina.” Said the instructor.

“Oh, that is interesting…” said Dave.

So running and weight lifting can increase stamina… this sounds logical, but what if I do both then?

Dave then picked the lightest of weights and began lifting them. Indeed he entered an animation where he didn’t need to do anything but watch his character lifting the weights. Still, he willed himself to move and the animation was canceled. He then started to manually lift the weights.

Not only that, he also began to jog around the courtyard while lifting the small weights on both of his hands.

This was an experiment if the character was to gain strength while manually lifting and manually jogging it should be much simpler and time efficient than to train lifting weights for an hour then do some jogging afterward.

However, what Dave did not account for was the stamina consumption. Normal jogging would consume about 1 stamina per second. While weight lifting would consume 5 per second. In total, Dave was spending 6 stamina per second. In addition, in doing so he could only train continuously for about 16 seconds before his stamina is fully depleted, then he will have to wait for 10 seconds before he would proceed again. His stamina regen was 1/second.

Dave kept on doing this until an unexpected result showed up. It barely was 30 minutes before results were already apparent.

You have gained +1 Strength!

You have gained +1 stamina!

Surprisingly so, manual training was much faster than automatic lifting. This way Dave was sure that he could manage to finish the whole training in at least 50 hours instead of the 100 hours total that he calculated before.

He also went to the largest weight and confirmed that now that he gained +1 strength the total Stamina needed for him to carry the +500 pound weight was now only 240 stamina/lift.

It seems that the weight to stamina conversion was 1 strength can decrease the stamina consumption per 10.

However, there was no change to the needed stamina for lifting the smaller weights. Normally it should not cost anything to lift the 10-pound weight due to his increase in strength. However, it seems that there is a minimal stamina value that no matter how strong one is, they cannot help but spend stamina to lift.

So the more strength one has the easier it is to lift heavy weights, however for lightweights, there should be a minimum value that cannot be avoided.

Dave continued on with the routine. It was actually interesting first, for the few hours that Dave saw his Stamina and strength slowly climbing. However, after almost eight hours, Dave began to feel bored. Extremely so. A man cannot help but feel bored doing the same thing for hours to no end. Still, he kept on, why? Because he had a very slow start, many people started before him. And compared to them he is far behind. If he could manage to get his fundamentals high enough, he would be able to make a difference later on in the game.

Dave had logged out and did more research on this topic, then he understood something. Thankfully he didn’t level up to level 2 like many did before they understood that for every level you reach, the weightlifting training is decreased by half!

So for a level 1, if they do the full weightlifting training they can gain 100 strength by the end! But if one levels up to level 2, they will be capped at 50 strength! This was a huge setback.

Dave then understood that not only Strenght but even intelligence and wisdom can increase. He was not the first to discover this, there were many others that found out about this and did this. They trained for hours and hours and managed to get at least 100 in the element of their choice before they would try to level up. Once they had reached the cap for beginner training they would no longer be able to increase their stats by normal means. They will only be able to do so using equipment or stats from leveling up.

This was foundation building, if a player is not dedicated enough they will not be able to benefit from this small bonus.

Dave then made sure that after he takes his meal and a bath. He would continue on doing the training until he Capps the Strength Training level without leveling up!

Thanks to the time dilation between the game and reality, it was possible to spend three days in the game for only 1 day in real life. However, humans need food and sleep otherwise they will not be able to function properly.

Thus Dave could only dedicate 16 hours from his day to the game. 7 hours, for his sleep and 1 hour for his meals, spread out through the day.

Dave logged back in the game and continued with his grinding session.

It was boring, however, it had a great importance to him.

Dave discovered something when he was training. He could also train his agility!

By doing the weightlifting session, he was skipping trying to maximize his training and was met with a surprising result.

You have gained +1 agility!

It seems that training made him earn more agility, it was free stats so he didn’t bother and kept on doing his thing, mixing weightlifting with punches, and even doing squats.

You have gained+1 dexterity!

Amazingly so he could also train his dexterity.

Dave did not bother with these stats at first, his aim was to increase his strength and stamina, he wanted to become a paladin, and their basic stats were revolved around; strength, stamina, and intelligence!

However, dexterity and agility never hurt.

Dexterity would increase the reaction time of a person. They can even dodge attacks. While agility could increase their speed and attack speed.

Both of them are stats that are not harmful to any class, they might even be bonuses.

Thus, the training session that was going to waste 50 hours of Dave’s time now took much more!

Dave was a greedy person, he knew he only needed to train just his basic stats, but now that he had the ability to train more, he would not want to waste it lest that he would regret it in the future!

Therefore, the training session increased until he had spent more than 1-week game time!

Then and only then did he check on his status screen to see the improvement he brought to himself.

Level

1

Name

Death Stroke

Race

Human

Health

100

Mana

NA

Stamina

200

Rage/Focus

NA

Intelligence

10

Wisdom

10

Dexterity

110

Agility

110

Vitality

10

Strength

110

Magic Resist

0

Defense

0

HP Regen

0.1/sec

Mana Regen

NA

Stamina Regen

1/sec

Rage/Focus

Regen

NA

Title

NA

“Fantastic!” Said, Dave, as he admired his perseverance! It took him a lot of time to finally reach this point, he even ignored the instructor’s advice to come back to him after having 15 strength, now that Dave gained the bonus 100 stats that can be obtained at level 1, he felt rather proud of having achieved something of great value after being consistent and persevered through it.

“Now if I gained this much just by doing physical training… how can someone gain intelligence and wisdom?” said Dave to himself.

Then he went back to the instructor to ask him about it, after all, he was the only one who gave him tips about training his body.

“You want to increase your intelligence? Why don’t you go to the library and read some books, I might look like a brute but I do know that reading books can make you smarter,” said the man with a laugh.

Hmm, so reading books…” thought Dave to himself as he looked at the map trying to find a library.

There was none to Dave’s dismay.

There was, however, another choice for him… the wizard’s tower. It is only logical; wizards would need to have a high level of Intelligence and Wisdom to cast their spells.

Dave then headed towards the wizard’s tower ignoring the instructor once again.

Dave did not want to proceed with Skill learning before he claimed all the bonus points that one can have.

Once at the wizard’s tower he met a beautiful woman that wore a wizard’s hat. She was at the front door with an exclamation mark on her head… this must be the magic instructor.

“My lady, can I please ask you on the ways to increase one’s intelligence.” Said Dave in a polite manner. Being courteous never hurt anyone, this was a moto Dave always abided with.

“Oh, such a young one seeks the wisdom of the sages. Your request must be related to the way of the arcane, indeed, one must be smart and wise before they would learn to cast spells. You may get inside the tower; if you wish to learn magic from me, I need you to have at least 15 intelligence before you could begin learning the most basic of skills.” She said in a manner that showed her elegance and with an attitude of superiority.

Once again, Dave was surprised at the game’s creator’s sense of ingenuity. They can make artificial characters behave like humans.

“Thank you for your kindness.” Said Dave and went inside the tower.

There were a lot of bookshelves and desks filled with various books.

Dave then picked a book related to the basics of magic and began to read.

Dave could not believe that all of these books were related to magic, if so how much time would, the AI must have spent to write the lore and theories of magic in this huge “Library”

Then again he was disappointed. The moment he opened the first book he understood that it only had two pages worth of words and the rest were empty.

The book he had on his hand related to the theory of mana and magic in the world, there were just bunch of words to make fantastical ideas look logical. However, once he finished reading the book he was met with a pleasant surprise.

You have gained +1 Intelligence!

You have gained +1 Wisdom!

It only took Dave one book to level up his stats, and both of them at the same time!

Without wasting time Dave then began reading another book.

However, he was not rewarded with anything until he read another one.

Then he understood that the more stats he gains, the harder it is to gain more. This was simple logic; one cannot fill a full cup. Once a person knows too much of the world he will find it hard to learn new things. Well, this was the theory and Dave had nothing to lose. So he started reading more and more books. It was not easy though, it took him about 20 hours of straight book reading to finish the whole books in this library, thankfully, each book had at most 2 pages worth of words, but by reading the last one of these books. Dave Was met with a pleasant surprise!

Not only had he managed to gain 100 intelligence and 100 wisdom, he gained a title!

You have gained a new title!

I know it all!

+5% towards all basic stats!

With this, Dave was surprised! A title that adds bonus stats! It might not be much right now. 5% stats is not a great deal at the moment, however, in the late game, this 5% can become monstrous!

In addition, this title only needed the person to do all the menial tasks and gain all the bonus attribute points before they reach level two.

Dave did not wait until he looked at his status screen and was amazed at what he saw.

Level

1

Name

Death Stroke

Race

Human

Health

100+(5)

Mana

1100 +(55)

Stamina

200 (10)

Rage/Focus

NA

Intelligence

110 +(5.5)

Wisdom

110 +(5.5)

Dexterity

110 +(5.5)

Agility

110 +(5.5)

Vitality

10 +(0.5)

Strength

110 +(5.5)

Magic Resist

0

Defense

0

HP Regen

0.1/sec +(0)

Mana Regen

1.1/sec +(0)

Stamina Regen

1/sec +(0.5)

Rage/Focus

Regen

NA

Title

I know it all!

Not only that! His Mana bar was unlocked and he did not even notice until he saw his status screen! In addition, the mana Regen. It was a nice amount, yet it was too low. Even if it was much higher than his Hp regen, it was still a measly 1.1/second, to fully fill his HP bar it would take him at least 1000 seconds! That is about 16 minutes. Which was a bit too much? However, he understood that the more wisdom one has the higher their mana capacity is, and the more Regen they will have.

The conversion rate is 1mana point/sec for every 1000 mana this was still too much, but Dave knew that there were many items that help with mana regen and there are classes that benefit from passive mana regen, also there are classes that have increased regen on stamina and Hp.

This past week was a good haul for Dave. Once he finished his reading, he headed back to Juda the Instructor. He was going to start learning his new basic skills!