It was already 9. He didn't feel tired at all after two hours in-game. There was even excitement in his eyes as he thought of what more he could achieve.

After a haste dinner. Peter went back to his cabin and logged in to the game.

Welcome back, Peter.

He noticed that he had a friend request. It was from Sicily.

Budding Rose sent you a friend request.

'Nice name.'

He accepted the friend request and went to check out the runestone that was still in his inventory.

Runestone

Would you like to activate your runestone?

"Yes"

Teleporting you to the nearest available town.

The area around him dimmed again and soon he was in a black void. A voice similar to the system interface was audible.

Welcome back, Peter.

We hope the experience with our latest system was pleasant. If you found anything uncomfortable please let us know.

Congratulations on completing the beginning Village tutorial.

We would once again welcome you to the world of Almost Heaven. Before we proceed to the new realm map, we need to sort some things out.

First, let us pick your most suitable profession. We have gone through the user data and analysed that you are most suited to be a swordsman. If you would like to change it, please do so. This will be your primary job and basic combat class.

You may pick one of the following secondary classes for gathering. Mining, Woodcutting and Foraging.

Please choose one. You can learn any class as you progress through the realm.

"Mining"

That's all for now.

Then please pick a starting location.

Port Blair

Oceanside port island city. Suitable for long fishing and vacations. Constant ferry available to the mainland.

The most popular trading hub in and out of the country.

Hedgesnow

Mountain Town with a verity of job possibilities. Most suitable for mining. Beautiful mountain peaks make the Town an interesting winter destination.

Summerbrook

A beautiful forest settlement. Has almost all required essentials but lacks in large mines. Most suitable for wood cutting and foraging professions.

Peter decided on Hedgesnow. It was most suitable since he picked the mining profession.

Again the world darkened and a new light spread out.

A cutscene showing the mountain town of Hedgesnow played as Peter was slowly introduced into the world. This map was much more detailed than the Village 212 map.

As soon as he spawned, a new interface popped up asking to set up the stats. All of peters stats were set to 0.

The new world was much more populated. Being a smaller town it was unbelievable how many people were in the place. The Hedgesnow map had at least a million players on it.

Peter placed the stats this time giving more points to Vitality.

Peter spawned in the middle of a street. His pouch had 1 gold and a few silver.

Before anything else, Peter went looking for a new weapon and armour set to wear.

Since Peter was now a swordsman he was forced to buy related armour.

Also, his armour was of lower stats than before. Besides now he had enough money.

Soon he reached a place that looked like a market. At one of the shops, Peter was able to find a full set of armour suitable for a swordsman.

With that, his defence went through the roof reaching 560.

Walking around the town, Peter felt it well organized. All the merchants were in one avenue while the crafters and gatherers were all in another.

He had to go meet an instructor as he was new to mining. The miners guild was quite busy since it was the most renowned one in the town.

As he approached the instructor's office he had already seen all the ores that could be mined in the immediate area as well as the difficulty level of the profession.

A very well built man was waiting for him inside.

"You must be the new miner, welcome to Hedgesnow. As you can see the town is busy with mining activities. Most of the necessary ores can be mined from the area. Sorry let me introduce myself, I'm Kite the master miner in charge here."

"Good to meet you, Mr Kite."

"If you are looking for more help ask Gia at the front desk. She most probably has some decent equipment you could use."

Unlike the old games, in AM, each profession is one on its own. A person could focus entirely on crafting or gathering. But if one needs to get their stuff then they would have to venture out. Without a good combat level, it's impossible to get to good spots.

With the small introduction, it was all done and now Peter just had to meet Gia to get a new pickaxe.

"Hi, we only have a medium quality pickaxe. You will need to ask a crafter to make you a new one if you need better quality."

"I will take medium for now."

With that, he proceeded to move towards the swordsman guild.

The swordsman instructor was a master swordsman, Kilu. Without much effort, he was able to get a good new sword although of normal quality and proceeded to go explore the map.

There were a few good quests available at the town centre but this time peter felt like he needed to explore a bit. When he reached the end of the map, a few notifications came up including one with the death penalty. You can't go below level 10 as it was the starting level outside the beginner village.

Almost Heaven. It was impossible to find good stuff by just going along doing quests. Most of the better items were often obtained from higher level or hidden monsters.

Finding them is easy. One might even encounter one while on a casual stroll after an evening tea break. Killing one was although another story.

Soon he was on a stroll right outside the town. The more he walked the more he felt like the mountain town deserved its name. The town was located on the edge between the snow and grass.

There was a small stream flowing down from the snowy peaks into the great forest of Alderriver.

After a few minutes of roaming around the area, Peter decided to move a bit deeper into the forest.

Alderriver was a famous forest in the Baresian Empire. It was vast and contained some of the cruellest and vicious creatures to exist in the country. Most of them exist in the deepest parts of the forest which were extremely hard to traverse.

Peter, being only LVL 10, was nowhere near strong enough to get anywhere close to getting to those regions.

As he moved forward, he noticed a few players in a party moving around. Most were focused on killing the few monsters around.

Peter walked around a bit. Soon he reached an isolated area with no players around.

As he walked around, he felt like he missed out a lot. The forest was heaven for herbs.

'I should have picked a herbalist class.'

He slowly started regretting his decision on taking the miner class. Mostly the mines were located at the top of the mountains which had higher level monsters. It was impossible to reach there unless he was at least level 20.

With the pace the levelling was going, it will take a few days to hit that barrier.

It was easy to kill the little monsters that spawned in the area. A bunch of newly spawned wolves soon perished.

Moving forward, Peter thought of calling Sicily. They were supposed to meet up after but he still didn't receive any news yet.

'Maybe she is busy. She was planning to form a guild. I will call her after a few hours.'

You have levelled up

Peter went further ahead looking for good prey.

Soon he was at the bank of river Alder.

The realistic effects also meant getting wet so choosing to stay ashore was a better idea.

Looking around for something good to hunt Peter kept walking forward.

As he moved forward, he noticed a young little girl sitting and playing in the sand.

There was no name above her head just a bunch of question marks. But it was in green indicating friendly.

With a bit of caution, he approached the young girl.

"Hey, are you lost?"

The little one looked up into his eyes and smiled.

"No, I'm just playing here."

"In the forest?"

"Don't worry they are weaker than me so it's ok. Besides, if I ignore them they don't usually notice me."

Suddenly, her eyes went out of focus as if she was hallucinating. After that split second, she came back to normal.

'A quest?'

"Are you all right? See I'm an adventurer. You can call me Peter. If you need something just ask me ok. I can help."

"Thank you but I am worried that you aren't strong enough yet to help me, Mr Peter. Please call me Alder. If you meant it when you offered your help, please do come back after you become a little stronger. I could use your help."

"Ok Alder, how strong do you need me to be? It would help if I had an aim to work towards."

"True. I will give you this sword. I'd say you are strong if you can wield it effortlessly."

Alder took out a sword from thin air and threw it at him. Smiling she continued, "You are a swordsman after all. Maybe you will get stronger but do know that the sword is sealed and can only be used once I unseal it."

"Ok, that sounds like a good level to aim for".

Peter checked the details on the sword.

Sword of Reverance

Quest item. (Sealed)

Required: Level 20

'So I need to be level 20.'

'It doesn't look particularly strong.'

As if reading his mind, Alder said, "Not strong enough for you? It's sealed and even if you meet the requirement you still won't be able to wild it freely. That sword has its own will. Its strength carries to the wielder. Just go and become stronger. Then come meet me back here. If you still feel like helping me that is."

"Ok, I will be back later then." Peter turned around to leave when a passive quest was added to the list.

Quest received

Meeting the expectations.

Reach level 20.

Current level: 15/20.

'This does look like a good quest. I wonder what reward I will receive.

The little girl, Alder was back to playing around with the river sand.

As soon as Peter was out of sight, she stood up and looked in his direction, smiled and disappeared.

Peter slowly approached the gates of Hedgesnow. Now that he was 15, the lower level of the mountain was traversable. Most of the weapons and armours available right now were stock quality and only crafters could make better stuff.

The mountains were vast and the snow was thick. Most of the monsters present were either snow wolves or mountain goats.

As Peter started climbing he soon was able to find mineral deposits to mine.

From the luster and the shape of the ore deposit, it highly likely was copper. The miner levelling was one of the most mind-numbing and easiest to do. But it took its time. The hardest was running back and forth to the deposit box as soon as hitting a full inventory.

All gatherers and crafters could store the respective goods of their profession in the deposit boxes available at different safe locations across the maps. This was made so that people can lower the waste of time.

The deposit boxes take some time to reach the major centers, mostly towns and cities and as such only after two hours of placing the ore is one capable of withdrawing the ores from the centers.

To Peter, this was perfect as he repeated the process till he was too bored and tired to continue. The durability of the pick he had had already reached the minimum.

It was getting late and Peter had to work the next day. So he decided it was time to get to bed.