Suddenly, Connor felt a sharp pain throughout his body, forcing him to clutch his head and drop on his knees.

“Sir! Are you okay?!” The clerk started shouting, drawing the attention of other people in the building.

Ñ̶̀͜W̵̧̺̚͝Ḯ̶̪̾ ̵̢̠͆S̸̳͗͝y̷͚̰̽̉n̶̪͐̐c̴͎̩̒̕ḫ̸̼͌͠ŕ̴̠͝o̷̎͜ń̷̪ì̴͜z̷͎̗͛̐á̴͕̠t̷͓̰͛ḭ̶̂͂o̵̮͚͌n̸̹͝ ̶̛̘̘Ỉ̶̳n̸͚͊̒ ̵͚̓́P̶̡̀r̴̫͒̃ọ̸͔͛̑g̷̙̈r̷̼͗è̶͚s̶̜̥̆̓s̵̻̔ ̸͇̕

NWI Sync…in...pro

‘Aaaaaaaaahhhhh!’ Connor was screaming internally, even surprised at himself for not screaming out loud, it was not because he did not want to scream, he physically could not. He could feel some things in his body, changing its structure or moving even, hurting. Hurting him a lot.

NWI Synchronization Complete

The pain immediately subsided.

“Must’ve lost someone.” One of the adventurers in the building thought and said out loud while looking at him, gaining a few nods of acceptance in return. While some did not pay any mind to Connor and him suddenly dropping or the clerk yelling.

A few adventurers rushed to help Connor get up.

“Sir, are you okay?” an old voice rang. It was Richard, the man who spoke with Connor barely an hour ago. Helping him get up and sit on the wooden chair.

“I-I-I am f-fine. Thank you.” Connor was able to say while breathing in heavily. Other than a few message shopping up in front of his peripheral, he had no idea what had just happened.

The pain he had just a few seconds ago completely vanished. His body felt full of energy as if nothing had happened in the first place.

“Sounds good. We’ll be on our way then.” The old man said to Richard and disappeared with his entourage once again. Everyone in the adventurer’s guild had a lot of things to do. Giving help to a stranger was not something everyone was keen on doing.

Unlocked: Skills

Unlocked: Quests

Unlocked: NWI Class System

Unlocked: Adventurer Ranking

WARNING: Rank promotion requirements have been adjusted.

Connor was again, bombarded with several messages letting him know that there were new features available for the system. As if he was already used to, he mentally said ‘Skills’ as a new menu popped up in front of him. There was only one entry in the menu that had opened.

Connor Ironheart’s Skills

????????????????? (????????)

???to??????n????????en?????o??????????֍֍֍y֍֍???s????l??????????

???pt??????o???o?֍֍֍֍֍m.??????????????????????????ste???????????i?g

?????????????????f???t?l?

‘What the… fuck? What is this supposed to be?’ Connor was bewildered. There was no skill icon nor description, it all looked like a mess. He was only able to pick a few characters out of the text that was there.

‘It doesn’t make any sense.’ he thought to himself. While he was able to understand a few characters, which was definitely the Latin alphabet, the other characters looked like glyphs. Undecipherable.

Connor just scratched his head mentally taking a note in his head to check this specific thing out later and said ‘Quests’ mentally.

No quests to list.

That was the only thing that the menu was saying. ‘No quests are accepted? How do I even see the available quests to accept?’ Connor was wondering. To no avail, there was nothing else on the screen no text or any buttons that Connor could mentally click to navigate.

Finally, to check out the other notifications, he mentally said NWI Class System and Adventurer Ranking but nothing came up. ‘So these are not menus, but features? Okay.’ Connor thought.

‘Rank adjustments…’ Connor said to himself while opening the character sheet. He noticed that some things had changed on his rank up tab.

Level: 1

Rank: Private

NWI Class: Adventurer

Adventurer Rank: F

Experience: 0/2500

‘So that NWI Class thing is added to here as well but 2500 experience? That’s quite high for a Level 1…’ in comparison to other games that he had played for many years, to ease the learning curve and help players catch up to the professionals and enjoy the endgame, levelling until level 20 or 30 was usually the easiest with minimal requirements.

Connor sighed once again at the uncertainty of the system and what it was making available for him. Being locked in a game world with nothing to do other than doing basic, go here, go there for more than a day now was pretty boring. With the technological advancements, he had hoped that maybe an AI system or a random developer could see that something was wrong with his account in just a few minutes, hours at best. But it definitely would not take this long. He was getting hungry in-game, no notifications prompted him that he was getting hungry in real life or have to go to the toilet. He was able to sleep and wake up in the game… The smell throughout the village, the way NPCs moved and talked, the way buildings actually felt… it was so realistic. He sighed once again. Trying to plan what he was going to do.

New Quest:

Type: Exploration

Rank: Tutorial

The Beginnings

- Explore the town.

Rewards: 1 silver, 50 XP

‘What?’ the absurdity of the quest and the timing shocked Connor. ‘Explore the town? Isn’t that a bit too vague?’ he thought to himself.

“Sir, your badge is ready.” A man came up to Connor as he was sitting and presented him with a glass piece. The glass piece was exactly as Connor had drawn down to every millimeter, so to speak.

Connor looked up towards the man and took the glass piece. “Thank you.” he said towards the man. The attendee smiled and bowed in response before he started instructing Connor. “Now that you have your badge, it officially represents that you are an adventurer. Your badge is specially reinforced with different tiers of magic that we cannot divulge, however, it will be pretty resistant to anything you throw at it.” The man spoke as he pointed out towards the exit. “In front of the building, there is a board where we put in requests registered with the Adventurer’s Guild. They are detailed well enough and specifies what requirements are needed for the request. As a starter, your rank as an adventurer will be F. As you complete requests you can go from F to E, E to D, D to C, C to B and finally from B to A. While it is good to have ambition to achieve Rank A, please don't endanger yourself.”

While adventurers up to C rank were very common, the number of adventurers holding the famed B and A rank were quite rare. As a small branch in the town of Sethra, the highest-ranked adventurer in the town was a mere C rank. While the total number of people holding the “A-Rank Adventurer” title numbered less than a hundred.

“Ah... I understand, thank you very much.” Connor thanked the man. In return, he received a courteous bow and words of good luck from the man before he left.

‘I guess its time to explore the town.’ Connor got up from the chair, putting his adventurer’s badge in his pocket.