As I walked down the street towards the barracks, I heard a strange pinging noise and cocked my head to one side and looked around as I tried to figure out where the noise was coming from.

“Katy what was that noise?” I asked hoping that she could still hear me when she was in the tutorial.

“Hmm? Oh, that was the messaging system, you just got a message from outside the game,” Katy replied quickly.

“Oh, I thought I recognised the sound,” I said feeling like slapping myself. Of course, that’s what it was. Quickly I brought up the menu and opened the messaging system to read the message that I had been sent.

Message from Julian Howard

Hey shorty! How are things going? Got a funny call from Gransoft Entertainment earlier asking about you.

Oh, so Julian was one of the people that they got in contact with, that made sense. Back when I was a noob Julian and his then girlfriend Sarah were two veteran players that decided to let me join their party. We spent a lot of time playing together back then, during which they taught me everything that I know about playing games. A couple of years later they got married and stopped playing together quite so much, but we still stayed in contact. Katy had really picked a winner when she had pointed Gransoft in his direction, not that she had that many other options.

Writing a reply letting him know the situation as I walked was easy enough and a few minutes later (thanks to the time dilation that I experienced in-game) I was looking at another message as I stood outside the barracks.

Message from Julian Howard

Damn, that’s one hell of a good deal for you isn’t it?

Anyway, if you get the job Sarah and I have been offered a copy of the game so that we can join you and maybe become Rangers ourselves! Now if you somehow don’t get the position, we still might start playing the game anyway so don’t worry too much about it. But we’re confident that you’ll do just fine.

Good luck and we both hope to see you soon kiddo.

I nodded as I read the message. Neither Julian nor Sarah were really the sort of people who enjoyed working in the cramped confines of an office so becoming a full-time Ranger was a big plus for them and a huge coup for Gransoft as well. If there were two players that were perfect for what Rangers had to do, then it was the extremely skilled Julian and Sarah.

With a firmed resolve I stepped through the gate to the courtyard where I found what must’ve been most of the guards in Ponson waiting for me in full kit, which depending on the guard was anything from simple robes to full plate armour.

“Ah, you’re here good,” Harmon said as he turned towards me. “As this is your first training session do you have any requests for the type of training that you want to do?”

Special Action!

Due to your position as a Ranger Initiate you have been offered a chance to train with the Ponson guards.

You may pick from the following training types.

Strength, Dexterity, Agility Constitution or Intelligence.

I considered both Harmon’s question and the new screen that had appeared in front of me for a few moments as I tried to decide the Stat that I most needed to increase was, noting that the option to train my Charisma was absent as I did so. I already had higher HP and SP than most players who weren’t specialising in either Constitution or Intelligence which meant that I wasn’t too worried about increasing either right now. That left the other two for me to pick from which was difficult because they were both Stats that were central to my fighting style; either Dexterity or Agility.

“How about Agility training?” I asked to a chorus of groans from the guards and I wide grin from Harmon that sent a shiver down my back.

Soon I had figured out why the guards had reacted so badly when I had suggested that we do Agility training. Immediately after I had suggested it Harmon had handed out large packs that from what I could tell were full of sand and told us to deactivate our Soul Cores before we started running. That had been an hour ago and now even the guards had stopped their cursing and were just running as fast as they can so that Harmon didn’t hit them with the staff that he was carrying. At first, I had been jealous of the guards who had the energy to curse as they ran, even the ones in armour. But by now it was all I could do to keep moving. It was now more obvious than ever how much further ahead the average guard was in terms of Stats as even the ones in full armour were still running faster than me. Luckily for my hide Harmon was aware of this so didn’t hit me with his staff unless I actually stopped running.

Another hour later Harmon finally called for a halt and everyone other than me all but collapsed in relief. Me? Oh, I just collapsed to the ground in a panting heap.

“Well done everyone!” Harmon shouted. “Come on and get some water and a towel to wipe your sweat off!”

Groaning I cracked an eye open to see a new notification floating in front of me.

Special Action Completed!

You have completed your training session with the Ponson guards!

+1 Agility for barely completing the training!

“Well at least I got a Stat increase out of my suffering,” I deadpanned giving the notification a glare for the shot it seemed to be taking at me. It also seemed to be suggesting that I could’ve increased my Agility by more than one point if I had done better. But I found myself not caring too much about that and simply being thankful that the training was over as I struggled upright and staggered over to where Harmon and the other guards were waiting for me on trembling legs.

“Jeez, why did you have to pick Agility Zeke?” Jameson asked as the big man wiped sweat from his forehead with an already soaked towel. I honestly felt sorry for him, he was stuck in his plate armour and he still had to carry one of the bags on his back while he ran around the courtyard. Meanwhile I was basically wearing normal clothes.

“Was there an option that wouldn’t have ended with us dripping with sweat or covered in bruises?” I asked wryly as I took a towel of my own from the basket.

“Only Intelligence,” he admitted. “That just requires us to meditate for a couple of hours.”

“Well I didn’t know that,” I chuckled weakly. “But even if I did, I don’t need to increase my Intelligence right now so I probably wouldn’t have picked it anyway.”

“Well I suppose that’s a fair point,” Jameson sighed. “Still you did quite well for your first session, especially considering most guards have higher Stats than you when they join.”

“Thanks, I think,” I chuckled as I took a cup of water from one of the other guards who smirked at me slightly as he did so. Still I could see the respect in the man’s eyes. One of the easiest ways to earn the respect of people like these guards (even though they were NPC’s being controlled by AI’s) was to show them precisely what you were capable of and as I had been doing nothing but that over the past couple of days which meant that despite the fact that I wasn’t as capable as them when it came actual physical prowess I had both sweated and bled alongside them now and that had earned me more respect than even becoming a Ranger had.

After thanking the guard who had passed me the water, I walked over to Harmon who was also watching me with a slightly amused look on his face.

“How was your first training session?” the evil old man chuckled as I approached.

“We have a name for that type of training,” I replied dryly giving Harmon a dirty look. “It’s called spartan training and refers to an ancient group of warriors who were called some of the strongest in the world. However, their training was also known to be so hard it might as well have been torture.”

“Ha!” the old man laughed. “Well then it seems to me that these ‘Spartans’ knew that sort of training gets results then!”

“True enough,” I chuckled. “Well I suppose I’d better be heading off.”

Deciding to take my leave I waved goodbye to everyone and left in the direction of the town gates where I hoped Evie and Fern would be waiting for me. Opening the party chat, I selected both Evie and Fern before speaking.

“Hey, you two, just finished up at the barracks and will be there soon,” I said into the chat as soon as I was sure that they had realised that I was trying to contact them but even though I had thought this apparently Evie still hadn’t been expecting to hear my voice and I heard a yelp of surprise from her end.

“Hey boss,” Fern replied in her usual tired sounding voice. She was starting to speak a bit more now that she had decided to stick around but it was obvious that she preferred to stay silent. “We’ll meet you at the gate.”

“Jeez, don’t do that Zeke!” Evie gasped when she had recovered from her surprise. “So, how did the thing that you were doing go anyway?”

“Well as expected I got a Stat Point out of it,” I replied cheerfully and this time it was Fern’s turn to be surprised.

“You found a way to increase Stats outside of using Soul Cores?!”

“Two actually,” I replied reminding her that becoming a Ranger had increased my Stats as well. “But yeah training with the guards this morning increased my Agility by one. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re really keen on the idea though, it’s pretty tough.”

“How tough?” Fern asked cautiously.

“Well I had to run around the courtyard for two hours with a heavy bag on my back while a sadistic old man beat me whenever I slacked off,” I replied. “And before you ask, I’d estimate that the bags were about 30 kgs.”

“Crap, that’s harsh,” Fern said quietly. “I wonder what you have to do to train the other Stats.”

“Well, I’d go right ahead and assume the method for training Strength is obvious enough,” I replied with a snort. “But other than that, I only know that you can increase Intelligence by meditating and I expect that you have to meditate for a long time before you can increase Intelligence by even one.”

“Well that’s good to know at least,” Fern sighed as I was approaching the gates. “Oh, we can see you now.”

Waving at the two girls as I approached earned a couple of glares from some of the guys nearby who seemed to have been working up the courage to ask them to join their party, these glares only multiplied when they either realised who I was or saw how happy the two girls were to see me.

“Hey Zeke!” Evie exclaimed as I got closer. “Wow you look tired.”

“Yeah running for two hours straight with weights strapped to you will do that,” I replied wryly.

Once I reached them, I realised that I had forgotten to reequip my Soul Cores and quickly took a moment to do so. I’d already played that game once and it had almost gotten both me and Tylie killed (and had ended with me being killed) so I had no desire to play a second round.

“You ready,” Fern asked when I was finished.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “How did you two do before I got here by the way?

“Oh, we killed six rabbits,” Evie replied happily. “We started a bit later than you.”

“Ok, how many rabbit’s feet did you get?”

“Two each,” Fern replied as we walked out the gate. “Also, I Levelled Up and I’m close to Levelling my Soul Cores.”

“And I’m getting close to Levelling up as well!” Evie chimed in.

“Oh, good job you two,” I congratulated them. “Did you manage to get all of the stuff I asked you to?”

“Yeah that’s why we got here late,” explained Evie with a sigh. “We didn’t have enough money to buy any new equipment when we were done though.”

“Did you have to use anything before I got here?”

“Nah,” Fern replied shaking her head. “We played it pretty safe. I started teaching Evie how to kite by the way.”

“Oh, that was a good idea,” I told them cheerfully as we made our way past the few groups of other players. Kiting was a traditional method for a ranged attacker to fight where they would attack an enemy once or twice before making some distance between them and then attacking again. It was usually only really used when the player was alone but in a game like this sometimes the mobs were smart enough to attack the ranged attackers first so teaching the technique to Evie was definitely a good idea, especially since none of us had a taunting Skill. Looking around I noticed that there were less players sitting around than there had been yesterday, but I wasn’t sure whether they had given up or moved on.

Heading out into the fields we spotted a group of three rabbits, only one of them was Level 2 and I couldn’t see any other groups that were close enough to notice us attacking so we decided that we would start with this group.

Evie attacked first, firing a bolt of blue energy that struck the largest rabbit in the side of the head, sending the critter tumbling cottontail over ears and alerting the two weaker rabbits to our presence. The loud shrieks the rabbits charged us only to be met by my Sweep attack which allowed Fern to deliver a stabbing attack with both of her daggers before leaping backwards as another magical bolt slammed into one of the rabbits just before the blade of my naginata passed clean through its neck.

Knowing that I would be needing it soon I then activated my Ward as Evie shouted a warning about the Level 2 rabbit and spun towards it as it charged at Fern. Quickly I ran towards her as she retreated in my direction allowing me to intercept the attack with my ward, deflecting the rabbit over my left shoulder towards a now prepared Fern. The rest of the fight went well enough, taking out one of our targets before the Level 2 rabbit arrived had made things much easier and it was obvious just how much Evie had improved since we had fought yesterday. In fact, she had improved much faster than anyone that I had ever met so I decided to ask her how she had managed it.

“Well when I Logged In this morning Fern was waiting for me with a list of things that I could improve on and tips on how to do so. She’s been drilling me on them since we got here as well,” Evie explained looking slightly embarrassed that I was calling her out on it.

“Oh?” I grunted before turning towards Fern who also looked somewhat embarrassed. “Well done to both of you then.”

That was one thing that I had noticed about Evie she was uncannily good at following instructions and paying attention to details. Which meant that she would likely become a very useful player to have around in the future, especially once people started to fight some of the more powerful Bosses. Players that could notice the small tells that a Boss made before launching a certain attack were extremely useful and made extremely good healers and leaders for parties.

Once we finished looting the rabbits’ corpses we moved on to the next group and attacked them. The next few fights went about the same as the first did but after we killed the eleventh rabbit, we not only had enough Rabbit’s Feet for one of us to complete the Quest and both Eve and Fern had Levelled Up. They had also managed to unlock a couple of new Skills each. Evie had unlocked a Skill called Perfect Focus that increased the power of her Magical Power by 20% for thirty seconds. With her Stats it wasn’t much of an increase at the moment, but it was still useful. Especially considering her basic wand attacks scaled off Magical Power like a spell or the Skills that my spellglove gave me. She also unlocked a new spell that could heal a restore a small amount of health to allies in area which would be very helpful. Fern on the other hand had unlocked the same Skill which was called Lacerate for both of her knives which allowed her to cause a bleeding debuff that dealt damage over time. These new abilities had made fighting the rabbits much easier, especially Fern’s new Skills.

Another thing that I was quite thankful for was none of us had ended up having to use any of the emergency supplies that Fern and Evie had bought this morning which meant that we were looking at quite a windfall, even despite the low quality of the loot so I hopeful that I would finally be able to get a magic Soul Core from my spellglove. I was now even more glad than ever that I had agreed to create a party, I wouldn’t have been able to kill as many rabbits by myself.

I was also getting close to Levelling Up my Soul Cores again, which would further increase our fighting capabilities. The training that I had done earlier was also paying off as I had noticed that I was indeed faster than Fern when we were fighting the rabbits, I wasn’t much that much faster but it was enough that both Fern and Claire had asked me to talk to Harmon about letting them join the next training session that I went to.

Once we had finished looting the latest group rabbits and started to move on to the next group when I felt a tingle run down the back of my neck and stopped suddenly with a frown on my face.

“What’s wrong?” Fern asked as her hands crept closer to her sheathed knives.

Spinning around I instinctively activated my Barrier Skill just in time to block an arrow which shattered against the shimmering wall of blue energy. A snarl appeared on my face as I spotted the person who had shot the arrow.

I glared through the blue barrier at the people who had decided to ambush us. I was guessing that they were players who had decided that it would be easier to attack players when they weren’t expecting so that they could steal their loot instead of completing the Quest the normal way. This wasn’t really unusual in these sorts of games, but it still pissed me off whenever it happened.

“Fern get the archer,” I said quickly as two of the players approached us and the third nocked another arrow. “Evie you provide cover, try not to heal either of us until we absolutely need it though. If they know we have a healer they’ll try to take you out first!”

The other two made noises of agreement as they prepared to fight once again, Fern looked irritated but mostly calm, which I expected from her, but Evie was pale faced as she pointed her wand at them with a trembling hand.

Conjuring a Ward as Fern I went to engage the players who were attacking us, I realised that this was probably the first time that Evie had been forced to deal with player killers, in this game at least.

Oh well not much I can do about that now, I guess we’ll see how this goes.