I woke up in the morning quite unhappy. I’d chosen a different bed this time, yet still a window managed to have its light shine directly at my face. Glaring at it, certain that it was somehow the same window as last time, I got up and stretched. Today was going to be a hunting day. I grabbed my backpack from the side of the bed, and headed off to the alchemist’s shop. I was planning on hunting as long as I could, so I could hopefully afford that book on alchemy today, so I needed a lot more potions.

As I walked, I pulled up the forums, seeing if there was anything interesting. I was engrossed in watching a video of a party play, two warriors standing in front with large shields, a few treants beating on them, a mage in the background, throwing out flame spells which would light up the treants like a bonfire when they hit, along with an archer whose arrows seemed to be attracted to the center of the treants, hitting with uncanny accuracy. The party seemed to work as one person, the warriors always between the enemies and the backline, the backline always focusing on a target if it was starting to threaten one of the warriors. The only truly exceptional one was the archer, but all of them seemed to have perfect teamwork, and as the treant body count continued to climb, I started to wonder how people were managing to find so many enemies in one place. The most wargs I had seen in one place had been four, yet the spearman from the other video had been surrounded by far more than that, and this group managed to find over a dozen treants.

My musings were interrupted when I felt an impact on my chest, and looked down to see a girl on the ground, rubbing her head. I tilted my head to the side. I wasn’t wearing any armor, it couldn’t have been that bad to hit me. Wondering why she seemed to be so hurt, she turned her face upwards. She was cute, with soft brown eyes, short brown hair, and a small nose. Her cute looks were marred however, by the massive scowl she was wearing as she looked at me.

“Watch where you’re going next time asshole!” She growled at me. I stepped back, taken aback at how mismatched her looks were with her reaction.

“Sorry about that, are you ok?” I questioned her, not willing to get in an argument with a girl a full foot shorter than me.

“No thanks to you dick.”

I shrugged. I was starting to get annoyed with how rude she was being, but I’d dealt with worse, and figured she was just having a bad day. I started ignoring her and walked off, I had plans, and I wasn’t going to let something like that get under my skin.

“Try not to run anyone else over fuckface!” She shouted at me as I left. I shook my head, she would have been quite cute if only she’d kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t long until I arrived at Alva’s alchemy shop. I greeted her, and talked a bit, learning that the reason Orbs, Wargs, and many other monsters don’t need to eat the nonexistent animals is that they were part of the Invaders, being which had come to this dimension from another, and fed off the mana which existed here.

The local wildlife had been mostly exterminated by them, except for larger predators, who had actually exploded in population due to the abundant food source the invaders provided. I purchased as many potions as I could, thirteen of them, and headed over to the gates to hunt. First things first, I slaughtered enough orbs to fulfill the quota for them, practicing my spear on them rather than simply blasting them with spells, which at this point, was all too easy.

I found out that if I managed to pierce my spear through one of their eyes, not an easy task on a moving target, I could one shot them, even though my strength wasn’t high at all. I figured it must be some sort of critical system, or considering the realism of the game, a hit to the brain or heart would kill regardless of health. I then headed into the forest, planning to hunt some treants and wargs. Along with the twenty three skins I already had, it was laughably easy, I’d just freeze them and throw force bolts at them until they died.

I even hunted pairs of them a couple times, needing to use one of my health potions after one particularly nasty battle though, which had left me with some long scratches all down my back. I was gathering an herb when I heard the sound of a branch cracking behind me. I threw myself to the side, expecting to see either a warg or treant vine go flying by, but what I saw instead was a sword, cleaving down where I had been. I opened my eyes wide. I’d known there would be pkers, but why on earth would they target some noob like me? Regardless, I stood up and got into my combat stance, asking a question as I prepared for my first fight against another player.

“What are you attacking me for?”

“Miss Lily said that you have to die, so die you will” The man replied in an outrageously noble tone of voice. My confusion was complete at this point, but regardless, I stepped back, trying to get out of range to where I could get off a spell. He simply watched me step back, a righteous look on his face as he continued to lecture me.

“You shouldn’t have offended miss lily, any who offend her will be met only with our steel”

Great, I was dealing with a role-playing knight character. I quickly drew up a spell pattern, and smiled as the guy started in surprise, starting his dash to me a bit too late. The frostbite spell hit him in his legs, making him fall down from the sudden immobility. I smiled, and commented as I stepped in and stabbed down towards his neck.

“Less talking more fighting next time Mr. White Knight”

The spear impacted much the same way it had on the orbs and wargs, and pulling it out with a schwick noise, I started to think about what the hell was going on. The only person I could’ve offended at all was that small girl from earlier, but it didn’t seem like nearly enough to bother trying to hunt me down. I shrugged as the white knight finished bleeding out, and smiled as a pop up showing I had leveled up appeared.

Turns out pvp was quite rewarding indeed. I put the point into vitality. I was gaining plenty of wisdom at this point from meditating, and I wasn’t planning on getting hit enough to raise my own vitality. I then looked down, and started. His shield had been left behind along with a small pile of copper coins, but I had thought that you only lost money on death. A quick search on the forums found people whining about it, but it turns out that initiating pvp outside of sanctioned duel arenas flags you to drop one of your equipment on death for an hour after. If you kill a player who hadn’t initiated combat with you first, you get flagged for two hours, and two more for every additional player you kill.

I grinned, and put the shield in my bag, adding the pitiful six copper he had dropped to my backpack as well. I got up, and spotted another two players in the distance heading over, likely having been messaged about my location from the first guy. I smiled, I was going to be the hunter this time. I slowly backed off before they could spot me, and climbed one of the trees nearby, waiting for them to get closer so I could confirm that they were indeed hunting for me. I sat there holding my breath as they arrived at where the white knight had died. As they got closer I saw one was a warrior wielding a sword and shield, the others staff showing him to be a mage.

“Well, this is where he died, nothing’s left, guess he’ll just have to grind up some orbs to buy a new one.” The guy laughed, seemingly happy at his misfortune.

“Well we need to find the guy that did it. Lily is pissed already, we don’t want here to get even more mad.” The man shuddered, making me wonder how one girl managed to coerce so many people to hunt for me. I shrugged my shoulders and dropped to the ground shouting at the two players as I did. They both started in surprise, and the mage quickly started drawing up a spell pattern while the warrior lagged in surprise. Right as the mage was about to release the spell pattern, I dodged to the side, sending it flying wide of me as I dashed towards him. The warrior got over his surprise quickly though, and stepped between the two of us.

I stepped back, the warriors lazy swing making me wonder how he even managed to hunt any orbs as it slowly went in front of me. I stabbed back at his face, and the man’s eyes widened in surprise. Pushing his shield up to deflect it, leaving him with a nasty scratch on his cheek. I was pulling my spear back when I a force bolt hit me, but seeing as it hadn’t knocked me back, just left what was sure to be a nasty bruise, I figured he hadn’t upgraded it to force bolt+ yet. I stepped back and so did the warrior, giving me enough space to cast a frostbite, drawing my spell pattern far faster than the mage who seemed to be using the grimoire guide.

Wondering at how incompetent the duo seemed, I finished my spell, encasing a good portion of the warrior in ice, and charged at the mage, who was still writing. He started as he saw me coming, looking up from his spell pattern, which was not a good idea as it promptly exploded, knocking him onto his back. I stepped up and stabbed downward, piercing him in the general area of the heart, then left him to hopefully bleed out as I went for the warrior. He’d just finished releasing himself of the ice when my force bolt exploded against the side of his head, knocking his shield wide, and I sent another four following the first, each one keeping him enough off balance to allow the next one to hit. With the fifth bolt, he collapsed, and I turned back to the mage only to see him running away, an empty potion bottle in his hands. I sent a few force bolts flying, but it was too far away, and with the trees between us I couldn’t hit him.

I shrugged, and went over to the warrior who had dropped his sword this time, picking it up, thinking with that and the shield form before I could probably get a couple silver. It wasn’t until looking at the pile of coins that I grinned though, A pile of 4 silver and change was sitting there, a decent amount, the warrior was going to be hurting in his pockets for not having spent his money before he came, especially seeing as he’d probably had lots of trouble hunting even orbs alone. I was quite happy the the incompetence the hunters had shown, and if it kept going this way I may make a good amount of money from this alone. Even with that though, I ran off to the side, I wasn’t going to stay still where the people hunting me could find me.

The next few hours were a game of cat and mouse, me avoiding any group larger than two and them trying to surround me. I managed to fight a couple more loners and groups of two, all of them terribly incompetent, likely some pubbie guild from another game that hadn’t used anything but the system assist for skills in it.

I was getting confident as the hunt grew longer, having collected three swords, two shields, two staves from mages, and a gold and three silvers. I was looking for my next target when I saw a group of two warriors and decided that they would be it. I ran at them, and they quickly took up stances. I was a bit nervous as they seemed to have an idea what they were doing, unlike the previous people, but I wasn’t going to back down with my success so far.

I slowly approached in my almost crouch, holding my spear ready to thrust, and got in range, where we stared at each other, and nothing happened. All the other groups had attacked me on sight, and even with my new items giving me enough leeway on the finance side to buy a new spear, I’d grown attached to my current one and would prefer to not drop it. It wasn’t til I had backed away, stood up, and started to run that they began sprinting at me. I instantly turned, determined to earn some more money, and held my spear at a ready position.

Again we stared off at each other, but then one attacked, going in low with his sword to cut at my leg. I stepped back to avoid it, but wasn’t quite fast enough, and it caught the edge of my thigh, leaving a shallow cut. The other warrior started to circle behind me, and I stabbed out at him, prompting him to deflect it to the right with his spear and stabbing in towards my chest. I leaned to the side as fast as I could, another cut opening along my ribs, and then the other warrior stabbed in, I was enough off balance that he got a solid hit, dropping my spear as he pierced through my bicep. Leaving me to stumble from the pain. This hurt like crazy even with the reduction, but I grit my teeth and started preparing a spell pattern. Another slice into my one free arm stopped me, and the explosion knocked me back.

I grabbed my spear when I fell down, and held it up, my arms screaming at me in protest from the cuts in them as I pulled out a health potion to drink. Curiously, they let me, and I soon found out why. In the short time I had been fighting, far more people had arrived, and among them I spotted that terribly rude girl from this morning. She walked up to behind the two warriors who had trounced me before clearing her throat.

“You see, this is why you should watch where you’re going. You bumped into me, and then you had the audacity to kill those I sent after you. You simply don’t know what’s good for you do you?”

I was boggled. I bump into her once in the street, apologize, she send people to attack me, and I had the audacity to have fought back? What in the ever living fuck? I stood back up as she simply stated

“Remove him from my sight.” The warriors then started closing in, and I saw multiple mages preparing spells, some of whom were creating runes I didn’t recognize. I stabbed out with my spear towards one of the warriors in a last ditch effort to at least take one of them with me, but it was easily sidestepped, my speed lowering from the pain my arm was still in, even after the potion I had drunk. It wasn’t too long after that I died.

Staring at the screen stating I had seven hours, fifty-seven minutes and forty-four seconds real time before I could log back in, I fumed in silent rage. I was going to get my revenge one way or another, but I’d definitely need new training and spells. Not having a heavy damage spell was coming back to bite me. Force bolt+ was nice to get a target off balance, but it didn’t have much finishing power, only able to do the equivalent of chain stunning more clueless targets. I logged off, and went out to calm myself down. Taking off my helmet, I went to my computer and put on some music, it coming from speakers throughout the house for that very reason. I paced around as the music slowly soothed me, losing myself to the rhythm of the drums and bass. It wasn’t long until I was singing along, calmed down, but now trying to plot out my revenge.