"Have you heard Common health potions appeared in Red Leaf Town."

"Yeah, one of my friends from school is semi-pro and managed to get one health potion and one mana potion."

"There's even mana potions!?"

"Yo, I'm going to Red Leaf Town."

"Me too, it seems that it's the best rank up village. Even a rare item appeared there."

While the forums in game were blowing up and countless players in the vicinity flocked into Red Leaf Town. Alex was basking in the glory of making bank. If Alex claimed to be the second richest solo player, nobody would claim to be the first. Gaining a total of 8 gold from the first batch of potions.

Even though 8 gold wasn't a lot of money all around, it was quite the sum early game.

After restocking on materials and paying off a total of 3 gold to Ashlyn as profits were meant to be split per agreement. Alex left the selling and preparing of potions to Ashlyn.

It was time for Alex to get to LvL 10.

He had already spent more than enough time gaining status and money that he had already falling behind the player base that purely grinded. Although for Alex he didn't necessarily care wether he was first to reach the Cities. He did in fact have a plan if he could follow through with obtaining first.

That plan being to sell information regarding the cities to guilds via the forums.

What are the forums you might ask? Well there basically a platform that players use to post, share and comment on topics relating to the game. Many people are professional players so the forum is a place that mainly holds the common players that worship their favourite idols from big guilds.

The guilds then use the forums to gain publicity and following. You can see why the forums are a major part to the game as well as the real world. This being because you don't have to be logged in to access the forums. In fact you can see the forums from today's top of the line smart watches if you have the money.

Anyways back to levelling up. Alex had many farming spots close and in around Red Leaf Town but he gathered that these places would most likely already be in use from major guilds and higher level mercenary teams.

The only place that came to mind for Alex to exploit was the Rocky Mountains.

The Rocky Mountains was a newbie village an hour away from Red Leaf Town. In and around the village where huge mountains which many occupational and farming groups would mine at to earn money through ores and so forth. However, the was one spot that was plagued with danger close to this newbie village which was were Alex planned to level up. The iron mine.

This was a lvl 15, 5 player max dungeon. Of course right now nobody would even go near this place but Alex was different.

.

.

-Rocky Mountain Village-

After journeying over, Alex finally arrived at the newbie village and first thing he planned to do was prepare. Every village gave out quests that allowed players to level up and the dungeon was the same.

Entering a timber building the size of a bungalow, Alex was greeted from the village chief.

"Hello adventurer, what brings you here?"

"Chief, I've heard of your problem down at the iron mine and I thought I'd be of assistance."

"Oh.. well to be honest, those dam creatures are causing us quite the nuisance. If you can help, of course there will be rewards."

[You have be tasked with the extermination of the monsters plaguing Rocky Mountains Iron mine.]

[Quest difficultly: B rank. Req LvL 12-15.]

[Quest rewards: 8000 xp, 1 random reward from village chief.]

[Do you wish to accept: yes or no.]

Alex immediately accepted the quest and bid farewell to the village chief. After walking through town some more Alex made his way to a stall near the exit to the hunting grounds where they were selling the essential products for adventurers. Normally players tended to ignore this stuff unless they were potions as players preferred to only care about there skills and levels.

However, for Alex this stall held the very thing that would allow him to cross 10+ levels.

Smoke bombs.

After purchasing a golds worth of smoke bombs. Alex gained close to 200 smoke bombs that would last for 30 seconds each.

Alex was prepared. All that was left was to get into position. Heading through a clearing of woods and rocky terrain. Alex was greeted with a view of a open planned quarry that had been deserted not too long ago. To the side of this quarry was a large cave opening that was quite clearly the iron mine.

Why? There were two massively sized creatures on all fours. They looked like some type of demon/wolf crossbreed.

[kolbolt, LvL 12. HP 1000/1000]

"They really are ugly. Oh well, not that I'll have too see much of them."

Alex safely and stealthy walked up to just outside of 30 yards from the kolbots. Anything outside this distance and they wouldn't lick up on it. Kolbots were creatures which were very near sighted and Alex new this from countless hours of farming them in his previous life.

Throwing the first smoke bomb down it easily landed and covered the kolbolts in full.

Panicked screams of anger cried out but Alex just ignored as he had already entered the danger zone.

"I have roughly 30 seconds leave big damage numbers and get out. Otherwise if I don't time it right and the smoke bomb vanishes and I'm within 30 yards, I'm done for."

His plan was simple yet tedious. Throw a smoke, enter, deal damage, leave the 30 yard zone, repeat.

Simple yet effective.

Inside the smoke, Alex was manoeuvring around the squirming kolbolt. Circling to the back of the kolbolt Alex slashed down hard with every strike. Since he didn't have to care about stamina since he would be exiting the fight half way through, he put in his all. The same went for activation of his skills.

Using the newly learned [Backslash] it was quickly rising in skill proficiency. Dealing the most damage went it slash the back of the kolbots neck. As for his skill [Chop]. Alex spread it out to be using one after another in between each other's cool down. That way the kolbolts health fell steadily.

Not too mention every time [Bleed] ended it was immediately re casted on the next strike.

Just like that after repeating the process twice.

[You have killed LvL 12 Kolbot.]