I was seriously reaching the limit for my daily playtime at this point, but it couldn't be helped, it was launch day! The only thing was that screaming voice inside of my head telling me that with half the office on leave for the week, greedy bastards, I could really use the rest before going to work, but I still had at least six hours till then. I'm sure that four hours was enough sleep.

Needless to say, I had already leveled up once during the long march here. My status at this point was:

Name: Qualexis Race: Wildkin Gender: Male Level: 2 Experience: 625/2000 HP: 23 MP: 28 Rage: 0/100 Stamina: 100/100 HPregeneration: 0.06/sec MPregeneration: 0.1/sec - STregeneration: 10/sec Strength: 8 Dexterity: 12 Agility: 12 Constitution: 6 Intelligence: 9 Wisdom: 10 - - Physical attack: 22 (25) Magical Attack: 19 Physical defense: 18 Magical defense: 38 Critical chance: +2% Critical damage: -2% Speed: +2% Reputations: Elves: Favorable, Fey: Favorable EXP%: 1x, +0.2x bonus for hunter related skills. Skills: Talents: Natural camouflage Lv3 - Feral senses Lv3 - Elementalism Lv3 Summon minor elemental, Inscribe Lv2 Minor P.Att rune, Dagger Mastery Lv2 Stab, Backstab Sneak Lv2 Outdated Stonemanship Lv1 Toughness Lv1 Cloth armor mastery Lv1 Combination Points: 1

Regarding the skill point awarded, it seems you can't hoard those, so naturally, I spent it on camouflage, where else?

And yes, I kept trying to sneak and camo my way out, but it never worked due to the stupid aura, at least the system didn't seem to care so they leveled up. Toughness was granted after I took a few hits, too easy to get, but it was a crappy skill after all, the only thing it did was adding a whopping 1 hp, as for Patt, I finally remembered to check it out, the dagger granted just 2, but the minor inscribe buffed that up to 5. Cloth armor mastery gave me 1% more defense using cloth armor, but 1% of 0 was still 0. And while Mdef seemed high, with my usual 20 points of mana missing due to the upkeep of my spells, more or less, that meant that it was usually 20 points down. Finally, I did spend my one stat point from the level up towards intelligence, more mana in the future will mean more elementals after all, but I was still hesitating to spend my combination point, at least until that whole Wargod curse was done with.

And since now I'm in a village, and hopefully, I will pick up some more skills, maybe I'll get more options on what to spend it on, although the plan of somehow inscribing my elementals is still in the lead.

Standing up, with the safety of now being inside the village, and with the Wargod's blessing gone, I could finally relax and take in the view... or the lack of one. The outskirts of the village were really just grass planes, a few clumps of rocks were spewed almost randomly, just so as to break the monotony of the green, knee high, blades of grass.

From time to time, white furballs would appear jumping up, but almost instantly they would get surrounded by parties of people hacking and slashing their way to victory. Although how useful was to use a full party to kill a single rabbit was more than questionable.

Regardless, the presence of actual people, after seeing no one in the forest, was actually refreshing, and if nothing else, the players WERE the most colorful thing on the planes, almost disturbingly so. Leaving alone the armors, which followed the usual fashion sense of adventurers, which was strapping every piece of equipment on you regardless how weird it all looked together, alongside stuff like bright purple hair, pink skin, and yellow and red tattoos, the amount of different races when put in such a perspective was indeed staggering.

What confused me even more was that for some reason, there were even more people inside the village compared to outside. And if those were crafters, or merchants, or people moving around and actually doing stuff, then it would be ok. But no, there were droves of people just lazying around, sitting in the shade of the plain village huts, using the white plastered walls to lean upon.

I hope this was what happened when we actually logged out, because if people became so quickly bored, not even leaving the starting village, then the future of the game wasn't looking so bright.

Regardless, before finding the answers for this thing, there was this slight issue of me moving at 10% moving speed and still having no way to actually get anything out of my well deserved spoils of war.

I approached a bunny girl wearing leather armor, which put yet another issue to resolve, mainly WHY DIDN'T I SEE ANIMAL RACES IN THE SELECTION???, and decided it was finally time for me to let my social charisma and eloquence shine!

“Errm... hi?”

The bunny girl slowly turned her head from watching the people slaying her smaller sized kin in the fields towards me, and graciously snapped at me like I was some kind of villain.

“What?”

“Ehh... you see... do you know where I can learn dismantling or something like that?” I said apologetically as I pointed to the stuff tied behind me back.

And with her just raising her hand and pointing out a slightly bigger house down the road, my very first conversation on RealWorldIII was done.

“Thank you!” I shouted as I run towards the destination, well run is an overexagerration with my moving speed, but whatever.

The moment I passed through the open door, a deep stench assaulted me. The sweet, sweet scent of a tannery, the place where I could turn the ugly wolves into fabulous armor was found. No more rags for this hero!

There wasn't a lot in the small shop, a counter, and three big wooden tables, probably a place to lay on raw pelts. But my acute sense of smell, which truthfully was a real problem at this time, pointed out that most of the stench, and thereby actual tanning process, was done somewhere behind the door that the burly, human, tanner stood.

The moment his big, brown eyes fell on the carcasses of the wolves behind me, he shined me a bright smile, pushing his thick mustache upwards.

“Why, welcome friend! Can I assume that those animals are for sale?”

“Well... it depends. Do you only skin them yourself, or can you also teach me how to do that?”

The tanner looked a bit troubled, as he lifted his left hand to rub his head, right on his recessing hairline.

“Tell you what. You don't seem like a guy that will stick around for long, so it's not like I will lose a permanent customer. But! I will lose a good chunk of money either way if I teach you my art. I guess two silvers is a fair price to ask to teach you.”

Speaking of money, I just realized that the game had me starting with absolutely no money at all...

“That would be a slight problem dear Sir. I'm broke. Could I sell you some of those things and use this money instead?”

“I see, I see... Bring me twenty rabbits to somewhat alleviate the costs, and I'll teach you. How does that sound?”

Quest received: Leox the tanner wants you to bring him 20 rabbits.

Reward: Dismantling Lv1

I closed my eyes as I pictured the droves of players hunting the rabbits the second they spawn. Then I pictured myself running around like a chicken trying to somehow secure a whole seventeen of them. For some reason, my eye started twitching.

“So, look here Leox. You have how many people, fifty? more? bringing you rabbits. There should be a limit to how many of them you need. How about... I give you this sweet, sweet wolf corpse instead of the twenty rabbits?” I looked hopeful towards the tanner.

Before I finished the sentence, with agility that didn't match his age and build, Leox jumped over the counter and grabbed one of the wolves.

“Deal!”

Quest updated: You convinced(?) Leox to teach you Dismantling using a wolf corpse as payment

And for some reason I've been left feeling like I've somehow cheated myself...

Sighing, I looked at the tanner that was absorbed checking out the condition of the dead wolf's pelt.

“So? Will you teach me?”

“Hmm? Yes, yes, come here. Help me bring the wolf on the back. The first step is separating the skin from the bones, then you...”

It took about ten minutes for the tanner to completely strip the fur from the animal, which frankly I don't know if it's fast or slow, and then another ten or so to explain what else I would need to do in order to bleed it and separate the meat and the bones, but at the end, I was rewarded with another system screen telling me that I've learned Dismantling Lv1.

Fearing that it would take a good half an hour or even more just for one wolf, I immediately put the second one I was dragging around on the table, prayed, and used Dismantling. Thankfully, my prayers were answered, and almost instantly I found myself looking at a , a and two pieces of . Although I did feel cheated because there's no way there was only one good bone and only enough meat for like a day's worth of food in a whole wolf... But I'll take the instant disassembly over a few bones and meats any time of the day.

Dismantling the three rabbits, the last wolf and the boar in an instant, I finally had a normal looking inventory, with 12 pieces of , 2 pieces of , 1 piece of , 3 pieces of , 6 , and 2 , which basically were from the boar and were the size of my finger each. Best thing of all? I finally was again below the weight limit. Hooray for normal speed!

Now, one last thing.

“Hey, Le...ox...?”

The tanner that I've forgotten that was next to me, was just staring at the empty table where 6 bodies just disappeared, blinking at the spectacle.

“So, you're one of the lost souls as well? Damn thing keeps getting me no matter how many times I see it.” He sighed and continued. “You could have told me earlier, it would be much faster to teach you if I knew. Just keep in mind that even if it's faster, your way is way inefficient, but I've heard that lost souls of the past had found ways to bring out almost as good products, or even better, compared to manual skinning, so... keep trying I guess?”

Ahh yes, the lore is that we're not even born in this world. We spawned from soulwhatever like a monster and that's why we revive and get stronger faster. But old souls of the past? He can't possibly be talking about people from just those three or four hours. Well... whatever, there are much more pressing issues compared to Lore. Skills for one, and getting those dirty rags off me for second. And the best part, they are one and the same!

“So, Leox Sir, you don't happen to also teach leatherworking, do you?”

“Normally no. Normally I would have sent you to my brother, a proper craftsman. Heh, this little brother of mine is enough to make our whole family filled with pride over the quality of his work. But for a lost soul...? I'm enough. Usually, just a thorough description is enough for you guys to pick up the starting steps of a craft, and then on you should just practice it till you're good enough. Although, if you want more patterns than something really basic, you should really go to me brother's shop at the center of the village.”

“Ok, ok your brother rocks. But for now, the basic skill should be good enough.”

“...”

“...”

And here comes the awkward silence. I decided to be the one to break the staring contest as I pointed to my rags.

“So? When can you teach me? I'm dying to replace this crap!”

“Y-You... You really expected to be taught for free?!”

Crap, found out.

“What would it take?”

“Well, leatherworking is inherently much more difficult compared to simply dismantling. That's why I'm so proud of my brother. It's also much more time consuming. Even just describing and guiding you through the process of the simplest thing will take an hour. To top it all, I would also have to charge you for the initial designs, since you can't work on nothing after all. Normally, for teaching the skill and the designs for a basic leather chest and leggings I would charge a full gold coin, but seeing as you're broke... I'll take that boar pelt you got earlier.”

“You're joking, right? Right? That's my... my... Oh fuck it, you can have it.”

By the time the tanner was done with explaining, showing, stitching, and whatever else he was trying to show me, I was already using his baritone voice as a lullaby, barely holding my eyes open. Work will be hell tomorrow.

I didn't even bother reading the system screen when he finished. Just thought System options and scrolled down to log out.

It was greyed out...

IT'S A DEATH GAME!!!!! Or... not.

Through the history of VRMMOs, only one actually became a “death” game, about twenty five years ago, and it had a whooping 2 casualties.

But still, VRMMO's, even in this age, especially on beta's and launch often have synchronization errors, which usually disable the ability to log in and out of the game until resolved, for health and security reasons, or more simply, so as NOT to fry your brain. In fact, anything with less than 99.95% synchronization autamatically locks you in until it stabilizes.

Knowing that, it suddenly makes sense why there's so many people people half-bored to death inside the village, and only people going after rabbits even after so long after launch. While “permadeath” chance is practically impossible, getting stuck in a death screen, unable to move, act, and feel, until they fix their error, is actually quite a propable thing to happen. Not always, but often enough that people won't risk it.

The only weird thing is that usually there would be a system announcement the second they found out that something is wrong, and judging from the state of the half-asleep people outside, it's been going for quite some time, and no announcement. But I guess there will be a reason given later on.

Only thing I can do, is sleep here then... And pray that they delay enough the fix to actually cut on my working hours, since then I will be both playing the game, AND they will be forced to pay me the percentage of the wage that I've lost!

Now... let's find an inn that accepts fluffy pelts for rent!