The sight in front of Shesmu blurred as he disappeared from the character creation scene. After he reopened his eyes, Shesmu looked around to see himself standing in a big plaza. He looked around to find numerous players materializing next to him.

The place where he was teleported to is a beginner town under the jurisdiction of the Stal city, players are forced to stay here until level 10 where they can choose to go to the capital city.

Seeing that players are still spawning, Mark opened his menu to check the time.

“12.20, seems like not much time has passed, just 20 minutes…” Mark whispered.

He then checked his status to see his stats

Name Shesmu Race Human Class Swordsman Level 1(0/50 exp) Health Points 330/330 Stats Strength 25 Agility 24 Intelligence 20 Wisdom 19 Vitality 23 Skills Sword Mastery Tier 0 level 1 (Proficiency: 0%)

Shesmu was delighted to see his stats so high. Other level 1s’ stats were still hovering around 5 while he was already at 20. This gave him a massive edge, and the ability to go against high-level monsters from the get-go.

Mark already had a plan in mind. The towns under the capital city all had extraordinary quests. A type of unique quest these towns shared was one that dealt with the corruption of a high ranking member of society. Whether it be a captain, the mayor, a major businessman, a royalty. Each town had its villain and its story. Mark didn’t want to do these quests in the beta because they attract too much attention. He wanted to save those quests after the game goes live. As for the time being, he will show constraint.

Shesmu immediately went around town, trying to refresh his visual memory for the specifics of the minor hidden quests. He remembered a few, one for a merchant, and another for a blacksmith, tailor, and a guard. The pre-requisites for these hidden quests was to finish the normal quests they gave with a high perfection score. Fortunately, all the quests were killing ones as Shesmu didn’t want to deal with the more annoying type.

The types of monster he had to kill were wolves, foxes, deer, and boars. These monsters ranged from level 5 to level 9, foxes being level 5 and wolves were level 9. Normally, for level 2-3 players to kill foxes, they either need to be extremely skilled to dodge most of their damage, or hunt in a team. As for level 9 wolves, they might as well suicide as that would be easier. Not only was killing a level 9 wolf as a party of level 3s close to impossible, even running away was not an option. Wolves were a creature that specialized in agility, so there was no way for even a level 3 assassin to run away even if he dumped everything on agility. Shesmu also couldn’t fight against level 9 wolves. Not because of his skills or his stats, but because wolves lived in packs. One had to know that even if Shesmu certainly had the total stats of a level 17 player, he doesn’t have the effective power of one. Both Intelligence and Wisdom do close to nothing to a swordsman other than making him memorize faster, catch on mistakes and self-reflection. They are basically wasted stats. If one wanted to classify Shesmu properly, they need to drop out those two stats and look only at his 3 main ones. Quick mental calculations would tell you that he has the approximate stats of a level 10 player. Then again, a level 10 player wouldn’t have level 0 trash gray pieces of equipment, so it’s even less than that.

In his past life, even with this handicap, Shesmu would have definitely been able to easily fight a wolf pack of ten. The predictivity of the wolves’ attacks and his ability to react close to instantly would make the fight not even worth mentioning. However, when Shesmu time traveled, his mind came back but not his body. While his brain knows what to do, his body doesn’t and this creates this awkward situation where the body has to catch up with the mind.

This reason is precisely why Shesmu went for quests that involve fighting. It’s because he wants to bridge the game between what he wants to do, and what he actually does. And thus, in three days, Shesmu finished all the normal quests, and the hidden quest they unlocked, he also reached level 10 where he was given the right to go to the capital city, where he also did the same thing until he reached level 15.

To unlock the hidden quests, Shesmu had to kill at least 100 normal monsters to reach the score needed. The hidden quest would then activate after completing the normal one and would tell you to fight the elite version of the monsters. For the foxes it was a firefox elite, for the deer, it was nature deer, for the boar it was an overgrown version of the same species just with the tag elite added, and finally, for the wolves, it was a Silvermoon elite. After finishing the last hidden quest, a unique quest was activated where he needed to kill a level 25 Silvermoon Wolf king.

After transferring to the city, Shesmu repeated the same formula he used in the beginner town. He accepted normal combat quests, finished them with a perfect score and activated the hidden quest. At the end of the three days, he finally reached level 15.

Whilst strolling down the street, Shesmu still found no player in sight even when a day and a half passed after he reached level 10. It was until level the fourth day that Shesmu started finding some players strolling down the streets.

Noticing that players started to finally catch up, Shesmu went to the training center to boost the efficiency of training his skills. Training in the training center available in the capital city was 2 times more efficient for gathering proficiency points than just combat. Of course, the downside to this practice is that you get no exp points. However, it might take a week or even longer for someone to reach level 17 that he reached, so what Shesmu was least needed at this point was levels.

And so, Shesmu trained his weapon mastery skill, sword slash, and dash from the Tier 0 level 3, Tier 0 level 2 and Tier 0 level 2 respectively to Tier 1 level 1, Tier 0level 8 and Tier 0 level 7 respectively after a week of training.

After finishing his training, Shesmu went out to start dungeon diving with other players, since he expected that players should have caught up to him by now. However, he was surprised to find that most high tier players were still at around level 14-15, while only first-rate guild’s Guild Leaders and the most top-tier players reached level 16. However, due to his reputation in previous Vrmmorpg, it just came as a surprise but nothing much. Shesmu then spent his days dungeon diving and training. He also went out to hunt Field dungeons and fought in the arena against other players. He didn’t have anything else to do as unique quests that wouldn’t cause a sensation was a little bit rare. He already completed most of the quests who fit that criterion and were possible at his current level. As for hidden classes and legendary ones. He already knows from his past life experience how to get the best-hidden class available to swordsman in the game, but due to the absence of epic and above quests in the beta, Shesmu couldn’t do anything about it. He just rolled with a hidden rare class he got from the unique quest that told him to kill the Silvermoon Wolf king, called the Lunar Swordsman. By the end of the 3 months beta period, Shesmu regained most of the athletic abilities he had in his past life and reached level 72 in game. Most of the game population was still at level 40-50 while la cream de la cream reached around level 60. He ended up as the first in the leveling leaderboard and arena points which netted him two rewards that would hop over to the live game. The first one was 5 free stats and 1 gold, and the reward for the arena was a level 10 gold equipment of choice.

Shesmu was very happy with his performance in the beta and the rewards he gained from it. After the beta ended, there a 1 week waiting period before the live game was released. In that week, Shesmu received a VIP gaming capsule that came with top grade nutrient fluids.

October 3rd, 2175.

Ashes of Gods was released.