Jay woke up the next morning after a full night’s rest. He ate an early lunch and spent a little bit of time walking around the campus to get some exercise. He eventually made his way back to the VR labs and swiped himself into the building using his student ID.

When he arrived in the lobby he noticed that Zoey and Sophia were sitting on the sofa finishing up their lunch. He greeted them as he walked past and entered the back room. The remainder of the girls were also there and greeted him as he entered. Cassie and Arden seemed to be discussing their revised plan of action based on the information Jay had provided them the night before.

Arden paused her conversation for a moment and spoke to Jay.

“Hey Jay, I checked to make sure it's all setup and you should be good to use that capsule over there.”

She pointed at the capsule in the back left corner of the room.

“Thanks. I’ll go check it out.”

“I’m sure you’re fine, but let me know if you need help with anything.”

She then turned back to Cassie and continued their conversation.

Jay went up to the machine and inserted his account card. Origin Entertainment offered a number of options for their players to store their accounts. Most people opted to keep their account information stored digitally, however when you purchased a private Capsule, it came with an account card. All your setting data and character info would be stored on it and it offered a more secure way to save settings and character data across different machines.

Jay climbed into the Capsule after inserting his card and began to adjust the settings. After 10 years more experience with the game, there were many convenience settings that had not been introduced yet. In addition, Jay was much more familiar with the controls of the game now than he was when he played during this time originally .

After configuring everything just right, Jay launched Listonia Online and the opening cinematic played. He was nostalgic as he remembered the cinematic that was playing in front of him. After it finished playing he was met with a countdown timer which currently sat at 14:47 and was counting down 1 second at a time.

Less than 15 minutes left…

He browsed through the forum to kill time until eventually the timer ticked all the way down.

3...2...1

Jay instantly tapped on the > button that appeared in the air in front of him

Contrary to what one might think, there was no cute AI avatar to greet the player when they started, just some menu options and a blank character slot. Since he already had a Beta character, Jay was given a different option compared to those who were starting for the first time.

Would you like to use previous character information to start?

> >

Jay immediately tapped on the “No” button and started with a completely new character. He had already made his plans on what character type he would start with.

Please select which race you will play.

This was the first major choice that a player would have when entering the game. There were an incredible amount of choices. Although it wasn’t available at the start of the game, Jay knew that in the future there would be a major patch to the game and with it came the introduction of monster races.

Luckily I don’t have to wait for that

Jay typed in the search field to quickly get to the race he was eyeing. Eventually he found what he was looking for and tapped on the option.

>

Truthfully he just needed a humanoid, but there was a very specific objective that he had set for himself in the early game. He had spent the entire night verifying his information before finally deciding on this start.

The Wood Elf starting locations are the most favorable for my plan

He quickly did some basic adjustments on the appearance of his avatar and tapped the button to finish. Upon finishing, he took a moment to look over everything.

His avatar was a wood lf that was about 5’6” in height with longer hair that reached just below his pointed ears. He selected a green bandana with a red skull on it that held back his bangs and was wearing a set of light green pants with a normal brown shirt. He had a slightly tinted bluish skin color and a set of piercing brown eyes.

Please Select your Character’s name.

Jay entered the character name he always used on his personal accounts

“Gii”

After confirming his selection, he was wrapped up by an extremely bright white light and suddenly felt like he was falling slowly.

Eventually his feet touched the ground and before his eyes, pixels of multicolored light seemed to stick to the air around him and quickly form different shapes. More and more of the light gathered and filled out everything as far as his vision could see. What unfolded before him was a bustling town with him standing in the center of an open square.

Suddenly he felt a gust of wind on his face and the smell of a cooking stall not too far away entered his nose. Merchants were hawking their wares as people passed by and Gii could already see a number of different looking Elves all wearing very similar simple shirts and pants of various colors.

As he took in the sights around him, Gii sighed in amazement.

They always went overboard with introductions

As he looked around to get his bearings, he noticed that just behind him was a massive archway with intricate arcane runes inscribed on it.This was the Gate system that was in every starting town and other major location. As he was admiring he watched as a few more players materialized out of the gate and stood in amazement.

Gii quickly headed out of the town center as his first order of business was to grab as many of the easy starter quests as he could remember. He had relayed this information to the girls when he went over it with them the night before, but up until level 10 it was fastest to level using the various quests in the towns as opposed to fighting monsters.

While it's true the various creatures in and around the towns were the lowest level, Listonia purposely did not keep the starting creatures to the rabbits and foxes that many expect from fantasy games. Instead the most common low level monster was a flightless bird known as a Tafu.

It was small and cute, only a few pounds in weight. However the birds were extremely aggressive and more importantly extremely fast! Their dexterity was close to 50! This was definitely not something a regular player could handle and in his past life they became famous for killing newbies who went out to hunt.

As Jay was reminiscing and feeling pity for the large number of players that would be learning about the Tafu the hard way, he was going around picking up every delivery quest he could remember from his previous life. There were many that were just delivering items around town, like Mrs sontak wanting someone to deliver her baked cookies to her son who was a guard on the other side of town. Another quest had him delivering boots to an old man heading out to go fishing.

After spending a few hours doing the tedious delivery quests around town, Gii was pleasantly surprised to see that his experience had grown by a decent amount when he looked at his character window.

Character Name: Gii

Level: 1

Race: Wood Elf

Title: None

Health Points(HP): 50

Skill Points: 1

Characteristic points: 0

Experience: 60%

Karma: -

Soul Energy: 100%

Vitality: -

Agility: -

Chance: -

Strength: -

Intelligence: -

Wisdom: -

As he closed out the character window to continue his questing, he was suddenly approached by a man in a blue uniform.

It’s here!

The moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived.

“Hey friend, I noticed you have been helping the town folk out by running all across town, your help is very much appreciated.”

As the man approached, Gii got a better look at his uniform and confirmed it contained the logo he was looking for in the shape of a small envelope that had a boot with wings over it.This was the symbol of the Sufokian courier services.

“Don’t mention it, as someone new to town I have to make sure I make a good impression.”

The man unabashedly smacked him on the back and laughed heartily.

“Thats the kind of spirit i’m looking for!”

Gii got a better look at the man and saw he was a middle aged wood-elf with some scruff around his chin. He was pretty burly for a wood elf and was a few inches taller than Gii.

The man stopped for a moment to look Gii up and down before nodding and then he seemed to have an idea and a smile came across his face.

“My name is Darrius by the way. I noticed you helping out around the town recently, would you be interested in a job?”

Gii smiled and then put on an act.

“Nice to meet you Darrius, I’m Gii. A job you say? I was actually looking for something that would pay well and be rewarding!”

“Hahaha! Perfect! I have this letter here, would you please deliver it to this address in the city of Amakna? I can give you a basic map so you won't get lost.”

As he spoke, Gii was prompted with a new quest window

A Courier’s Pride

You have been approached by a member of the Sufokia Courier service and asked to deliver a letter to the neighboring kingdom’s Capital city of Amakna. Are you up to the challenge?

Quest Reward:

1x Basic world map

Title: Courier

Courier Swift Boots

Ð5000

Quest Failure: Destruction of the letter or failure to deliver within 1 week

Accept?

> >

Gii tapped on the accept button without a second thought.

“That’s great! Here, take this map and this letter. You just need to head to the Courier branch in the Capital city of Amakna. If you leave right away you should be able to get there in about 3 or 4 days.”

With that Gii thanked him and they went their separate ways.

This is perfect, the reward is better than I thought it would be. I should be able to pick up quite a few gates including the one in the Capital.

The main reason Gii had accepted this quest was for the title and the boots he would receive. Truthfully The boots were pretty useless in combat, but they had a really great effect of increasing movement speed by 100% outside of combat!

In addition to that, the Courier title also allowed free passage between the different kingdoms. Many kingdoms collected tolls from the different travelers that would go around the kingdoms, it was one of the first changes brought on by the players a short time after the game started.

The main issue at this stage of the game was that it was incredibly tedious to completely go around the continent and pick up the gate locations. Many chose not to do it until they needed those locations much later down the line. However Gii knew this would save him trouble in the future and so decided he would be thorough and register with as many as he could.

Right now Gii was in the southernmost part of the continent in the elven Kingdom of Sufokia. Directly to the north of them was the largest human Kingdom of Amaknanta. There was also the smaller duchy of Asturb, which was an ideal hunting location for newbies. Further north than that was the Holy Union of Bontaria, which had the largest territory on the continent and was a kingdom which had a mix of many different races.

Right now Gii’s plan was to accept courier jobs and make his way north to Bontaria while registering every gate location he could remember along the way.

The sooner I get started, the sooner I can get to my real objective