Chapter 5

~ The First Day in Dragonis ~

SW/SW/SW

He gawked at the scenery that greeted him.

He was standing in a city square with stalls surrounded it. Many people wearing strange clothes or armors, who Ace assumed was adventurers, were walking to and fro. Looking behind, he saw a huge circular-shaped mirror being held by an equally huge dragon statue. The inside of the mirror was swirling around and around, making him dizzy.

Ace looked up to read the name. It was called {Dragonis Portal}.

Far behind the portal, there was a richly decorated fountain surrounded by adventurers like him. Behind the fountain, through the flower-flanked road, was a three-story building. It was all white, except the red banners that were hanging on the second floor wall.

Everything was so real he could die from shock. He pinched his cheek, but felt nothing. Yep, the manual didn’t lie. The latest visor could only stimulate sight and hearing.

It was a pity, though, but at least everything was awesome.

{{That is the Guild Hall, if you’re wondering.}}

Ace jumped out of surprise. Ignoring the weird look the passerby gave him, he searched for the source of sound, but found nothing.

{{This is me, Alice. Remember?}} the sound came again.

“Ah,” he finally remembered. The guide lady. For a split second, he thought that he was hearing things.

{{Currently, I’m using private chat to talk to you. Here, I’ll add you to my chat list so that we can talk in private. You just need to voice the words in your mind to respond, by the way.}}

Ping! A notice window appeared in front of him.

[Alice 146 wants to add you in their private chat list. Confirm?]

Then two window boxes appeared, each read Yes and No. Of course he pushed the Yes box.

{{Great! Then I’ll brief you on this place. This town is Dragonis, the starting town for beginner. That white building with red banners is the Guild Hall. That is where you can create a new guild. However, to create a new one, you will need more than six members and have to pay weekly rent for the room. It sucks, I tell you.}}

Then Alice instructed him to go back to the marketplace near the portal.

{{Good job, you find it. The market is the perfect place to buy potions at a discounted price. Unlike the Potion Shops, these market stalls don’t have great variety of items, but it’s the cheap price that makes you coming back. If you’ve got Negotitaion skill, the price will be cheaper.}}

Ace approached one stall and looked at the potion being displayed. He’d never played any virtual games before, but he knew his way in RPG games. This game was just another RPG games to him.

The amazing stuff happened when he laid his eyes upon a potion. Suddenly a label appeared above it, read {Red Potion}.

“Huh? That’s weird...” Ace lifted the potion closer as if to check whether his eyes were working properly. They were.

The potion was named {Red Potion}.

{{Ah, sorry! I forgot to give you the basic items knowledge. You see, any items you may encounter are not identified and you won’t know their properties until you test them yourself. There! All done! Now the potion will have a name. Please open your main menu. Tap the air in front of you and it will appear.}}

Before Ace opened the menu, he gave one last look to the potion. It was now identified as {Minor Healing Potion}.

Tapping the air, Ace found a circular shaped window with his name, HP and MP, job, and level. There were other circular but smaller windows, each connected with a line to the first window. These smaller windows must be the sub menus.

{{Great job! The bigger window is your basic status screen and the smaller windows around it are the sub menus.}}

Yep, he guessed it right. There were seven sub menus, namely Status, Equipment, Items, Personal Data, Guild Information, Item Appraised, and Option.

{{Next, open up the Item Appraised menu. Here you will see what kind of item you’ve had discovered. You can search for any specific item you’ve had appraised by typing the keywords in the search box located on the above right of the window.}}

Ace tapped the Item Appraised sub menu. The display disappeared altogether and was replaced by a rectangular window.

The interface was shaped like a notebook. There were two sections, which were Identified Items and Unidentified Items. He immediately noticed several list had already been filled. There was a search button on the upper right of the window, as well as a question mark icon below it.

His item lists in Identified Items page were...

Red Potion Minor Healing Potion Blue Swirling Potion Minor Mana Potion Snazzy-looking Scroll Scroll of Identify Old book Book of Firebolt Glittery Book Book of Protection A Strange Stone Low-level Summon Beast Stone Yellowish Scrolls Scroll of Return

It didn’t discourage him how abysmal his list was. In time, it would evolve into a bigger, more complete list.

{{What’s this Summon Beast Stone?}} he asked.

{{It’s an item to get a Summon Beast, the heart of a Summoner. There are several ways to get one, such as defeating a boss raid, as a reward from the arena battle, and even from a chest within a dungeon.}}

{{What is a boss raid?}} he asked.

{{We have prepared many bosses in this game. They are of every monster type, ranging from goblin, lamia, and so on. These bosses are tough to handle alone, so it’s better to beat them together with your friends. This is what we call a raid boss, meaning that you storm a boss’ lair with friends and defeat it.}}

Ace made a mental note about it as he listened.

{{Back to the Beast Stone, the stone itself is basically a gatcha. Open it and you will get a random low-level Beast. Although, among the common ones, there are powerful Beasts with a drop rate lower than 2%. You’d be lucky if you get one!}}

At the mention of powerful, rare Beasts, his heart raced a little. Rare Beasts? They must’ve had better stats than the normal ones and it meant better protection! Besides, he wanted to be the center of attention. Walking around in town with a rare Beast in tow would surely raise jealousy among fellow Summoners...

{{Enough with the introduction! Let’s find ourselves a quest and explore the wilderness!}}

He didn’t reply, though. It was embarrassing. Ace didn’t miss that enthusiastic tone of voice. Was the person behind Alice 146 so energetic?

He walked further away from the marketplace to the city garden. As he roamed the streets, he kept an eye on quest boards. They were one of several ways for adventurers, or players, to get a quest.

Ace found them, finally, after walking around the town for fifteen minutes. The quest boards were located in the center of the town, near Item Shop and Equipment Shop.

He approached one that was empty and began searching. For a start, he should find a low level quest, probably a quest that had something to do with cleaning NPC’s cellar from rats, or looking for a certain herbs. They sounded easy enough.

Labor Quest

Level: Medium

Prereq: Smithing skill lv.6

Lucreota the Smith

The busy time finally comes again! I need someone skilled enough to smelt metal and create weapons! If you’re up to the task, I’ll be waiting in the Weapon Shop.

Rewards: 4300 Gold Coins and several ingots.

That was an impossible task for sure. He didn’t even have Smithing Skill. He checked another quest, hoping to find something suitable to his level.

Gathering Quest

Level: Easy

Prereq: None

Mishella the Trader

I sell Potions to adventurers, but I realized that I’ve ran out of the most important ingredient: Riselicium Herb.

Someone get five of them for me!

Rewards: 500 Coins and two Minor Healing Potions.

Ace whistled, “This one is nice.”

The quest sounded easy enough and the payment was okay. A bottle of Minor Healing Potion cost 150 Coins, while a bottle of Minor Mana Potion cost 200 Coins.

{{Have you found a quest?}} asked Alice. It freaked him out a little how she suddenly spoke out of nowhere, like a ghost.

{{Yeah. It’s a Gathering Quest. How do you accept one?}}

{{Just take the paper and the system will treat it as accepting the quest, or you can talk to the NPC directly, but that’s such a hassle. Once you get what the quest-giver wanted you to do, a guidance arrow will then point you to them. Give the item and done. You’ll get the rewards.}}

How simple. He had been thinking that virtual reality games were cheap, complicated, and time-consuming. In fact, it depends on the game. This GeaOnline was awesome.

{{But Gathering Quests don’t offer you EXP upon completion, though.}}

No, he took it back. Virtual reality games suck.

Ace prepared everything (reading the Book of Firebolt and Protection, buying more Mana Potions, and such). Currently, his inventory held:

Five Minor Healing Potions Six Minor Mana Potions Two Scrolls of Return (teleported him to Dragonis) Three Scrolls of Escape (teleported him out of a dungeon) Five bottles of mineral water Five bags of ration

Ace stared at the two items on his five and six item slots, but decided to ignore them for now.

The guards paid him no attention as he passed through the gate. It was grassland as far as his eyes could see. There was a patch of thick forest in the distance and a mountain in the west. None of them was his destination, though.

He followed the road to the right until a trail replaced the cobblestone. It led him to a forest near Dragonis. Alice said it was a nice training ground for a newbie. The enemies were common animals found in real life, such as rabbits, snails, hedgehogs, and even wild sheeps.

“Firebolt!” a small ball of fire flew at a rabbit and exploded, bringing its full HP to zero. The corpse didn’t disappear. Instead it stayed there, burned.

Ace tilted his head as he took several steps to the dead rabbit. As silly as he always been, he poked it with a stick to make sure it really was dead.

“Yep. It’s dead alright.”

He opened his item window and placed the animal inside, thinking that the roasted rabbit could somehow be sold. He kept his item window active and had it located at a comfortable place somewhere his right hand could reach. Just in case, the shortcut window full of potions was above the inventory.

Ace opened his status window and arched his brows. Only 299 EXP needed to the next level. How fast.

This game had the most unique EXP system. In RPG games, he’d earn EXP upon killing the enemies. In GeaOnline, EXP could be gained by doing skill-related action. Several examples were reading a spellbook, using a scroll, and casting a spell. Killing an enemy netted him the most EXP, though.

Right, he almost forgot what he was supposed to do. The quest-giver wanted him to collect five of whatever-Herb. It had a strange name, almost biological sounding, so it wasn’t a surprise that he had forgotten it. At any rates, it was a tier one Herb.

Although a little ignorant, Ace felt like he should check the quest again. It wasn’t fun when he brought back so many only to realize that he had picked the wrong herb.

Deliver five Riselicium Herb to Mishella.

Riselicium Herb gathered 0/5

So, the name was Riselicium. What a strange name. Since the genre of this game was fantasy, he had no right to judge.

He saw a strange plant in the distance, growing between a bush and a tree. As usual, a label appeared above it.

[Riselicium Herb]

“Aha!” Ace pointed a hand at the innocent herb and placed it inside his inventory. He spotted another one hiding behind a tree, which went straight into his inventory.

Ping! [Your Herbology Skill increased in level!]

He was shocked to see the notification. He was alone in a forest, and all of a sudden a sound was played and something appeared in front of him, as if the system wanted him to suffer from a heart attack.

For now he’d focus on the task at hand. Customization came later...

Ace had collected more than enough and was ready to head back, before he heard his stomach growling.

[You are hungry. Find something to eat!]

Confused, he couldn’t distinguish if the sound was coming from his avatar or his real self.

{{Relax. It’s your avatar who’s hungry. You will receive a small notification every hour being spent in the game, as well as the time in real life.}}

Ace exhaled in relief.

As he remembered it, there were food rations and several bottles of mineral water in his inventory, occupying two slots of total 50 items. He didn’t think of them as useful, but seeing that this was a virtual reality game, he now understood that hunger and thirst were implemented to make it more realistic.

He ate the ration and drank the water.

They were tasteless. Sad...

[You are satisfied! HP and MP regeneration increased by 10% for ten minutes.]

“Nice! So food also serves as a temporary buff, huh?” Ace exclaimed. This game had become more interesting the longer he played it.

{{Alright! Now that you’ve got yourself nice buffs, go get some EXP!}}

{{OO!}} this time, he replied as enthusiastically, lifting his fist in the air.

He didn’t mind staying a little bit longer in this world. After all, it had been a long time ago since he had come late to school. He missed standing in the hallway.

Yeah, real world sucked. GeaOnline was much more fun.

Spoiler: Status

AceKivras

EXP Chart*

Atk: 5

HP (150)

Level 1

287/586

Def: 3

MP (225)

Human

299 to lv. 2

M.Atk: 15

Eiredrahl the Impure*

Summoner

125 Coins

M. Def: 13

Independent

Minimum piety

ATTRIBUTES

POTENTIAL

Equipment

No perks or abilities*

STR

5

Worst

Head

Circlet

VIT

6

Bad

Neck

Amulet

DEX

7

Bad

Body

Robe

PER

8

Normal

Back

-

INT

16

Superb

Arm (main)

Staff

WIS

11

Best

Arm

-

WILL

11

Best

Waist

-

CHA

14

Superb

Legs

Pants

* (tap to see)

Feet

Shoes

(Help)

Skill

Description

Level

Healing

VIT

Lets you recover your HP over time

2.100

Staff

VIT

How proficient you are swinging your staff

2.000

Light Armor

DEX

How effectively you act while wearing Light Armor

4.956

Evasion

DEX

Helps you to evade attacks easily

5.023

Casting

INT

This skill helps you power up your spells

5.374

Meditation

INT

Gradually recovers your MP

5.000

Herbology

INT

Lets you identify any herb to its fullest potential

4.121

Control Magic

WIS

Prevents your ally to get hit by your spells

2.010

Memorization

WIS

This skill slows down the decay of your unused skills

3.031

Literacy

WIS

Allows you to read more difficult spellbooks

6.175

Control Beast

CHA

Lets you control higher-level Summon Beasts

6.000