I woke up in the morning bleary eyed, and slowly wandered around my room to the door, opening it with a yawn. My room wasn’t anything special, just a bed, desk with a computer on it, and a bunch of gaming posters adorning the walls. While I may use my headset for most of my internet needs, I still had a monitor hooked into my computer, unlike most people who’d completely gotten rid of them with the advent of true VR headsets. I stumbled my way out the the kitchen, and put my electric kettle on to boil while I fished out some tea and my bowl sized mug, adding a bit of sugar before grabbing a bowl and pouring out some cereal and milk for breakfast. When I’d finished my meal, I headed to the bathroom to freshen up.

Showered, and my breath now smelling slightly minty, I idly poured out the close to boiling water into my mug, and carried it along with me to my room to go read up on any news related Sanity Online before hopping back into the game. I sat down and started pulling up a few different gaming forums to see if anything interesting had come up. A lot of the popular posts were quite amusing to me, people complaining about the lack of skills, or people saying that magic was too hard, with people not able to just shout the skill name to activate it. There had been other games with similar systems, but those tended to be more fringe games, none of them from one of the massive tech conglomerates the more popular titles were from.

Sanity online was actually an exception. Lost Dreams wasn’t one of those massive companies, having seemed to appear overnight, but their demo had gotten such traction from the internet that their popularity had exploded, leading to Sanity Online being one of the fastest selling titles of all time, and only seemed to pick up more traction as it went on. The top post however, was a video.

A man with a spear and shield stood surrounded by what seemed to be thirty or so wargs. The standoff seemed to last for a few seconds, until one of the wargs standing behind him started to rush in. Seeming like had eyes on the back of his head, he hopped slightly to the right, stabbing down through its sinuous neck and pulling it out in one smooth motion. The attack seemed to start the entire horde charging at him, but no matter what happened, the man would simply take a few steps in one direction or simply lean back or forwards, and he always seemed to have his shield between the wargs in front of him and his own body. His spear danced, seeming to move like just another limb of his, piercing here, slicing there, and after almost every hit, a warg seemed to collapse, their neck head or vital organs having been pierced.

I watched, breathless, as he slowly continued his spree of murder, not seeming in the least fazed about the numbers he was facing. While I was certain he would be a higher level than me, he probably got more level ups in that fight alone than I did with all my orb hunting so far. I shook my head, thinking about that fight. While he did seem to be faster and stronger than me, likely four or five levels above me, the thing that really stood out was his outstanding skill.

Seeing it had made me start to think that maybe I should see if I could get a spearhead attached to my staff for some extra damage. I wouldn’t be able to use a shield as it had been awkward to write the runes with the arm holding my staff, even with me being ambidextrous. I’d clearly been having issues when the enemies got close to me, and hopefully a spear would be able to fix that a little while possibly retaining the benefits of the staff. I sighed, I could always get a couple teammates to cover for me, but for now at least, I intended to go at it solo until I was a bit more comfortable with the game systems, not that there seemed to be any systems at all in place. I got up and put on my headset, excited to get back into the game.

I continued to browse the forums after, until I finished my tea, but didn’t see anything else particularly of note, though people had started to post the runes online, but I figured at least half of them were trolls just hoping someone would try them and explode, so I wasn’t going to trust them blindly. I’d try to get a proper spellbook filled with runes when I got in game.

Logging in was as abrupt as always, simply being plunged into my game avatar without any fanfare. This time, I was aware enough that I didn’t fall, but I did stumble a bit. After getting my bearings, I exited the temple through the main exit rather than the two which had lead to the training grounds, checking my backpack to see what I had lost. Luckily, I hadn’t lost anything I could notice, so I pulled up the wiki to check the death penalties. Turns out that there is no item drop, but you lose 50% of any gold you have on you, leading it being far smarter to spend all the money I could before heading out, my spending spree having had a positive outcome at least.

As I walked along, I noticed a couple of buildings along with the other shops in this part of town having a force bolt symbol inscribed in their signs. I figured those would be spell shops, and I would probably visit one after I sold my stuff. After getting to the adventurers guild, I decided to head inside to see if I could figure out what was going on with the quests, as I had completely forgotten to bother with them last time. After waiting a bit, I got up to the counter, with Sable, the same person as last time there.

“Hi, I was wondering how the quest system works here, do I just sign up for it or what?”

“Well for hunting and herb gathering quests just take a tag off of the bottom of the sheet and turn it in when you bring back the materials of what you’ve hunted. For escort missions, you’ll have to sign up here then meet up with the client at a specified location.” She politely explained to me wearing her tired businesswoman smile.

I thanked her, and went over to the quest board. There was a request to hunt 30 orbs, with a reward of one silver and figuring that I had enough for that, I grabbed one of the tags beneath it. I then noticed there were quests to collect 10 of any of the beginner herbs, so I grabbed that as well for when I managed to get together enough to be useful. I noticed a similar quest for hunting 30 wargs, and grabbed that as well, determined to get my revenge. Putting the warg and herbs on in the side bag of my backpack, I headed out to sell my loot. All in all, it came to nine silver five copper, one gold five copper with the reward from the quest. The large orb fur, even damaged, got me five copper, and the large orb stone sold for ten silver. After handing me the money, he took my guild tag, and waved it over a small plate engraved with massive amounts of runes I couldn’t recognize, probably something related to how I’d completed one quest. Deciding to hold onto the warg skin until I could hunt more, I went inside to grab another of the orb quests then headed out to do more shopping before I attempted to go get revenge on the wargs.

My first stop was heading over to alva’s potion shop, picking up another potion while learning that the old woman behind the counter was indeed Alva, then I headed off to the weapons shop I visited last time to see if they even sold a spear that would keep the spell damage increase I had on my staff, not that I would be able to afford it.

Once I arrived, I looked around for a while before heading up to what had to be a dwarf and asked my question.

“I was wondering if you had any weapons for mages that actually have something with a pointy end on them rather than just a staff.”

The man looked up at me, giving me an inquiring look before smiling and replying. “You’re looking to be a spellsword then, not a bad choice. Most mages tend to deem melee combat to be beneath them. Feeling all high and mighty before something gets through the soldiers and treats them as a chew toy. Yeah, we carry spears, swords, whatever your preferred weapon choice, though they tend to have lower bonuses than pure staves. The only weapons not like that are ones made of mithril, but those are outrageously expensive, even if they can carry enchantments that will outclass even staves. We have a couple spellsword items here though, what were you looking for?”

“I was preferably looking to get a spear, I probably can’t afford one now, but I was hoping that I could see one and maybe get an idea of the price range”

“Well, we have a few.” He brought out a few spears of varying lengths, ranging from four feet to what seemed to be nearly 8 feet, with different spear tips, some having a long blade, others having the more familiar spear shape, but all of them having copper tips. I took a particular liking to one that was about six feet long and had a blade of about a foot long.

“How much for this one? And do you not have any spellsword blades made of anything but copper?” I asked, pointing at the spear that had been my favorite.

“Well that’ll run you about 20 gold, but it increases your spell output by fifty percent, and as for the blade, they’re bronze, not copper, and steel tends to inhibit spell output rather than enhancing it. It’s why you won’t see mages running around in anything except for leathers, though some opt for robes with enchantments woven into them, those can get a lot stronger enchantments than placing them on top of leather equipment.”

“Well why can’t you just wear both?”

“Hah, I forgot how clueless you travelers are, wearing enchantments on top of each other cause them to interact, and that tends to have rather explosive results. It’s why you’ll only see people wearing enchanted rings on three of their fingers.”

“How much would it be for a spear without the enchantment then?” It would suck to lose the extra 10% spell damage enchantment on my spear, but it wasn’t going to be particularly much of issue I didn’t think, and it would allow me to properly fight at close range rather than treat my staff like a baseball bat. The poor staff was already looking worn out from the abuse I had put it through.

“That’ll be one gold, you looking for one similar to what you were looking at with the enchantments?”

“Yes please”

I handed over the one gold, and he brought out a spear for me, almost identical to the one with the enchantments. I took the spear in hand before getting ready to leave.

“Thanks for the tips, I’m Rayth, you?”

“I’m Golrag, pleasure to meet you. Hope to see you back when you can afford that spear”

“I’ll be back when I can, I’ll see you around.”

I left the weapons shop and headed out to the gates of the city, this time I was going to slaughter orbs until my backpack was properly full. With the first orb I ran into, I decided to try out my new spear rather than simply kill it with my runes. I slowly approached it from behind, and stabbed in as hard as I could. It turned around, nearly pulling the spear out of my grip as it did and started to lunge at me. I gripped the spear in my two hands, bashing towards it with the back of it, then stabbed out again, this time just barely scraping its side. It jumped again and I hopped to the right, trying to emulate the man I’d seen on the video.

Unfortunately, I misjudged the distance, getting the corner of my shoulder scraped by the teeth as it went by. As it went by, I decided I’d need to just learn how to use a spear properly before I attempted to fight even orbs with my spear alone. I instantly started preparing a spell bolt, and sent it flying at the orb. It impacted, and the orb seemed to collapse. I walked up and put my hand on it, collecting my loot. The rest of the fights proceeded pretty much the same way, but with me practicing with my spear every so often.

I slowly slaughtered my way back to the forest and started searching for either lone wargs or herbs. I managed to find a couple herbs, and finally spied a lone warg. This time, I was going to get the drop on it. I prepped a bolt and released the spell pattern, the bolt hitting the wargs head, and it turned and charged at me. This time, I kept my spear pointed at it, and it dodged to the left rather than attempt to try and take me head on. While it did so, I attempted a light stab, scraping its neck, before it went for one of my legs. Expecting this from how the other wargs had acted, I pulled my leg back, but not without getting light scratches on it regardless. I then stabbed at it with my spear, making it back off, and managed to prep a spell pattern and launch it at the warg. The warg got knocked back a bit, and I rushed forward, stabbing in with my spear at the largest target, the body. This time it impacted, and as I pulled it out with a ‘schwick’ noise, watching as the warg collapsed.

I decided not to take a potion this time, my health was mostly full, and the cuts on my legs were only mildly painful with the 70% pain reduction. I continued my foray through the forest, paying attention to every noise, and gathering enough herbs to fulfill the herb collection mission. After my fifth warg kill, I heard a noise behind me, and turned to see two wargs. I ran, running as far as I could out of the forest, the few players around me either laughing or shaking their heads as they saw me, likely thinking of how silly it was for anyone to be hunting alone when the wargs would often come in groups.

By the time I had escaped the forest, I had lost the wargs, and my stamina was completely empty. Pausing for a second, and starting to consider putting a point into endurance for running away if nothing else. I shrugged, I decided now was as good a time as any to head back into town, and went on my way, slaughtering orbs on the way. About halfway there, I leveled up, not surprising after the warg kills, and put the point into wisdom. While I was now starting to build a more hybrid character, I still wanted to primarily spellcast, I just needed some sort of CC skill to make hunting individual monsters much easier. After another 15 minutes of orb slaughter, I reached the road, and followed it to the towering gates of town. I went to the adventurers guild, turning in the orb skins for another seven silver and change, the quest to hunt 30 orbs giving me another silver, and the herb gathering quest for five silver, leaving me with a gold and three silver or so. I then headed out to get a proper meal.

I quickly found the same stall I had gotten the mystery meat skewers from, and this time decided to try out their meat buns. I got rid of all my copper for a full belly, and quite delicious way to get it. I then decided that I should probably head over to the warrior training hall by the temple to see if there was anyone there I could get some teaching from.