John got out of the game and did some exercises. After long periods of being stationary, the exercises refreshed his sore muscles. Corwin went to the washroom and took care of business. Finally, he sat down to a nice meal while he browsed the Eternity’s Wake statistics on his tablet.

He ate a simple cold cut sandwich and checked out the levelling boards. Beowulf was level 11, so Corwin was no longer the highest level character in the game. This was quite surprising as the top standard at this point in the game in John’s past life had been level 7. Something strange was going on. Fortunately, Beowulf remained a far off problem for now. John was happy to see Kyo in 3rd place at level 9. There were a few level 8 characters, including the Sorrow’s guild leader in Verdure, and a non-guild player in Orleans. Corwin suspected the player in Orleans was the silver-tier equipped player who challenged him in the trial.

John then looked at the patch notes for the upcoming daily patch. There were a variety of uses coming out for magic crystals: the magic crystal auction house, the battle simulator, and the tower of champions. The magic crystal auction house conducted auctions in magic crystals instead of gold coins. Auctions still occurred on a Kingdom wide scale. The battle simulator enabled one to fight against a simulated enemy that mirrored your stats, skills and techniques. This enabled one to hone one’s battle skills in a way that wasn’t possible against regular enemies. It was especially useful for pushing one to the limits when one was working to unlock a technique. Lastly, the tower of champions was another way to unlock additional techniques. Each floor contained challenges escalating in difficulty. The reward for passing each floor was a technique table for your class. The 5th and 10th floors even offered basic techniques. Even higher techniques were possible on later floors. Best of all if one died in the tower, they’d be reduced to 1 HP instead, so no death penalties occurred. The tower cost 1 magic crystal per attempt. The tower had 99 floors and an eastern theme emphasizing the importance of 9 as heaven. The tower’s difficulty was not scaled to level, so there was a powerful incentive to get strong quickly. John knew that in later patches the tower would be expanded to 999, and 9999 floors as the tower grew in difficulty. Fortunately, one could resume the challenge on the last floor they past so one didn’t have to fight many challenges consecutively. Lastly, the tower had a leaderboard and the top 100 players would win daily rewards. Access to all the new buildings was possible in any city in any kingdom.

John checked in with Edward and told him about the level 10 gear he had for him, including the gold-tier amulet he planned to pass off soon. Edward told him about getting the first clear for hell mode solo of the Verdure kingdom dungeon and receiving the unique passive “Fire Specialist”. The Verdure kingdom’s special abilities were elemental specialties. John hoped he could still arrive at the Verdure Kingdom in time to get the ‘Lightning Specialist’, which was found in a tier 2 divine trial. He was close now as he had most of the gear he wanted and had saved up enough money to teleport.

Both Edward and John hadn’t had this much fun playing the game the first time around. Knowing all these secrets and becoming among the most successful players in the game was a huge rush. The question was whether their skills would be equal to holding these positions as they advanced. John thought he could, and was optimistic about Edward, whom he thought was more talented than him the first time around. He thought about Edward’s bitter conflict with a specific person in the guild of sorrows that led to his exile, and it renewed his hatred for them. He thought about his own exile and that hatred grew to a new level. He was more than ready to teach them a lesson.