Alex’s POV:

Alpha Wolf: Level 20 (Boss)HP: 800/800

As I saw the Alpha wolf, I couldn’t help but feel excited about my first boss fight! I calmly walked towards it, confident in my own abilities. As I drew nearer, it noticed me and turned to look towards me with menacing eyes.

Growl!

Its growl was immensely loud and for a moment I hesitated, filled with fear. But I quickly overcame the fear and moved ahead, filled with confidence once again.

The alpha crouched down and I knew it was going to initiate its attack. I readied myself for the usual wolf attack of jumping with their mouth open, and the alpha didn’t disappoint me one bit as it jumped in the exact same manner. There was one difference though…

Too fast!

It came at me way too fast! It’s huge body moved deceptively quick as it shortened the distance between us in a breath and bit me!

-120!

AARRRGH!!

That hurt!

Barely a second passed before the alpha attacked me again, this time it was a claw attack.

-149!

The pain was unbearable! Wasn’t this game supposed to only have 15% level of pain?!?

I had no time to think. I swung my dagger desperately at the wolf, and it hit!

-68.

WHAT IN THE WORLD?!?

My bewilderment wasn’t only because of the low damage number, it was because the dagger broke! I realized too late that there’s a thing called durability in this game!

I didn’t even have time to curse at myself, because the alpha’s claws flashed again, and my surroundings turned black.

I had died.

Then, a notification window appeared before me…

You have died!Please choose one of the following death penalties:1) Time Penalty.

2) Level Penalty.

Ah yes. I had completely forgotten to set my ‘death penalty’. In Conqueror, there are two kinds of death penalties:

You will be forcefully logged out and will be unable to return to the game for 24 hours in the real world, meaning 4 days in the game world. This is called the ‘time penalty’.

You will lose levels and the corresponding stats when you die, but you will be able to revive within 10 minutes of dying. Below level 50, players lose 5 levels and 50 stat points, between level 51-100, players lose 4 levels and 40 stat points and after level 101 players would lose 3 levels and 30 stat points. This is called the ‘level penalty’.

As to why the number of levels lost became lower the higher level a player was, it was simple. It takes a lot more experience to level up a single level the higher levelled one was. Putting it simply, losing 3 levels at level 110 is much much harsher then losing 5 levels at level 40.

Both death penalties in the game were harsh, one made you lose 4 days of valuable game time while the other lost you your hard earned experience. Naturally, I had no care in the world for levels, so I immediately chose to go for the level penalty.

Even though I would lose 50 stat points with the level penalty, they would only be decreased from the unallocated points therefore it would make no difference for me. I couldn’t, however, be careless and keep on dying, as once I reach level 1 then even my self-generated stats would start decreasing the more I died. The only way the level penalty won’t affect me is when I reached level 1 and all my stats had been decreased to 1, and I had no intention of reaching that stage.

As the timer went down, I started thinking about my latest fight… Or rather my latest failure. The major reason for the fiasco was my overconfidence. I became too relaxed with killing off the weaker wolves with one slash, and had not even thought about the possibility of there being a stronger opponent then me out there.

Apart from the stupidity of not caring for my dagger, I realized exactly how weak I was. Sure, I could kill wolves with one hit, but these were counted as the weakest monsters in the game.

I also realized how painfully slow I was. The Alpha moved so fast that it was barely a blur to me. My only stat which hadn’t risen since the start of the beta test was agility, and the last fight showed me just how important it is to raise my agility.

I also needed to learn how to fight. How to move properly while in a fight. My movements so far had been haphazardly slashing at wolves, counting on my inflated stats to do the work for me. I had no idea on how to actually move when facing an opponent.

The last thing I needed to increase was my toughness. The first bite from the alpha had been extremely painful, even though it had only been 15% compared to if I had actually been bitten in real life. And I had completely frozen because of the pain. I also had no defense at all, which is why the wolf had been able to take me out without even using any of its stronger attacks.

04:33 minutes remaining till you are able to revive.

4 minutes left. The 10 minute wait is simply so that players can’t keep on fighting for unlimited periods of time. It also served as the time during which the player’s opponent could pick up any dropped loot and move away, giving the opponent time to escape. Of Course, this only applied to PK (Player Killing) situations.

As I watched the timer decrease, I planned on what to do next. First order of business would be to try and find a weapon. But because of the lack of money I had and lack of any weapons dropping from these low levelled monsters, it would take a lot of time for me to find a new weapon.

It then hit me! There was no need for a weapon! My body was completely lacking in training, and this was a perfect opportunity for me to train my body! It’s decided then!

00: 43 minutes remaining till you are able revive.

00:37...36...35...34

The timer finally came to an end! I revived and looked around me. The Alpha was calmly laying down in the center of the clearing, watching me with a smug expression. I wanted to fight again but I knew it would be hopeless.

Instead, it’s time to train!

With that, I cautiously back away, picking up the 3 copper and the piece of rye bread I had dropped. RYE BREAD! This is my last piece!

I am running out of food too!

First the weapon, and now I overlook my food situation!

Cursing myself yet again for the carelessness, I opened up my settings menu and changed a few things.

First thing I did was change the monster settings for my account. When a player starts, any monster he/she kills off disappears in a shower of light, giving off the feeling of a game. But a player can change this, making it so that fighting monsters becomes extremely real.

They get injured as if they are real, they bleed, they smell and their corpses stay after they have been killed. Naturally, I made the setting to be as real as possible, as I wanted food and wolf meat might be good… who knows…

Next I increased the pain setting to 20%. At first I thought about increasing it to 100% but I stopped myself. If I couldn’t handle 15% right now, surely 100% would be too unbearable. I settled for 20%, deciding to gradually increase it over time as I get used to feeling pain.

I also disabled any and all notifications except for system messages, as I didn’t want anything to disturb me while I trained.

With these things taken care of, I was finally ready to start my training!

Over the next few days, I trained diligently.

I started off with training my body to increase my stamina. I ran, climbed, jumped and did exercises that I looked up on the internet. I constantly pushed myself to my limits, only stopping at the point of complete exhaustion.

Then, I faced off against wolves, not with the intention of fighting, but rather to train my body on how to move and how to dodge. At first, I kept on getting hit, but I didn’t mind as that trained my body to withstand pain, but as time passed I found it easier and easier to dodge all attacks of a wolf. It reached a point where a wolf won’t be able to touch me no matter how hard it tried. When I had reached this point I moved on to the next phase of my training: Getting hit.

I stood still in front of a wolf as it attacked me with everything it had, while I kept a close eye on my health bar. When my health got dangerously low, I would start fighting with my bare hands. I found my increased strength helped me throw punches which stunned the wolves sometimes, really neat!

I kept allowing wolves to attack me, resulting in me getting used to the pain somehow. I also managed to increase the pain threshold to 30%. I also kept getting better with my fighting skills, as I learned how to move my body through experience as well as by watching videos of martial artists on the internet. Obviously I was far, far away to be considered a martial artist, but I could at least hold my own against a wolf…

When I was satisfied with both getting hit and fighting, I started doing weight-lifting exercises by lifting logs, heavy rocks or anything else I got my hands on. I also started trying to run holding a heavy rock or dragging a log to further increase my stamina!

After quite a few days of doing these exercises, I started my final phase of training. I would put a small rock some distance away and try to hit it with another rock. I gradually made the distance longer while making the target rock smaller. I was trying to improve my long-distance targeting and also increase my dexterity, but I had no idea if it was actually working, as my notifications were still turned off.

With more then two weeks of training behind me, I was finally ready. It was a pity I couldn’t raise my intelligence or wisdom during this time, but as I had no skills that used mana either way I wasn’t too concerned. I would raise them all later…

The only time that I did stop my training was when I ate and when I logged out to sleep.

During all my training time, two events happened.

First, I found out that wolf meat tastes GOOD! Okay, maybe this isn’t an event, but still… It tastes GOOD! Nothing like the cooking of Miss Margaret’s, but still quite excellent! Starting the fire manually to cook the meat was extremely hard, it took me ages of rubbing sticks together to start a flame. The flame was also extremely troublesome, as it kept going out and I had to learn how to keep it going through my most trusted source: the internet!

The second event was in the form of a system notification:

System Announcement!Congratulations to player: Brad! The first player to kill off a Boss Monster!

Boss Monster killed: Aplha Wolf (Level 20)

It was surprising, to say the least. This message showed up about 6 days after I had first been killed off by the Alpha. At first I was angry at this Brad guy for stealing what I felt was my right! It was me after all who first found the boss! But I soon forgot all about it, it wasn’t important. I was going after training my body, not to become the best player or anything like that…

Anyways, I looked at my status screen to confirm for the first time since the Alpha killed me. I needed to confirm whether or not I was ready to face off against the boss again or if I needed some more time.

Name:AlexClass:WandererLevel:12Title(s):NoneRace:HumanGender:MaleHealth:680Mana:490Health Regenration:0.83/secondMana regeneration:0.18/secondStrength:68Inteligence:49Stamina:83Wisdom:18Dexterity:75Agility:47Fame:0Luck:5Charm:20Endurance:24Unallocated points:110

I was shocked! To say the least…

Wasn’t this a little too much….? Sure, I did train for more then 2 weeks non-stop but still...

Not only had I managed to gain levels, my stats have gone through the roof!

And how in the world did my wisdom gain 2 points??

And what's with the new stat Endurance??

One thing was for certain though, I was definitely ready to face off against the boss again!

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Author's note: Hope you enjoy this chapter. Next one will feature the boss fight and a new character...

Let me know of any mistakes, as there is no one to proof-read for me and I don't have much time to do it myself...

Any suggestions/ feedback? Please do let me know.

Thanks for all the support you guys have shown me so far! :)