Return to Level 0

Chapter 4 Waypoint

As players clamored about in the starting town, they began to fill the streets as they rushed over to the once unpopular location of the capital’s junkyard. 

Their minds rang out with one thing. They wanted to see it, the source of the grand golden light that descended from the heavens as if this virtual world's digital god had descended. The more intuitive players guessed that the person that had caused the third world announcement of the day must have been the Creationist player.

Turning a corner, one of these players saw the junkyard within sight. As he approached, he heard the clamor of people arguing and interrogating each other about if they were one the who caused the world announcement to trigger.

Eventually, everyone settled and realized that the person might be hiding. One of the random players began to dig and sort through the junkyard in hopes of finding the Creationist. Fueled by crowd mentality, players began to follow along.

The junkyard was massive as it should be for an in game community large enough to be called a capital city. While it seemed fruitless, the players nevertheless searched. In their overly excited state of mind, they were all unaware to even check the new feature that had been added to the map.

*****

“Hiyah, Hup, ha”

Luck swung his sword thrice at the three blue blurs that scurried across his view. Like in all games, the programmers built in a feature that allowed for the selection of a beginning set of equipment.

Since the [Age of Expansion] was set at the [Age of Kingdoms] upon his entry, Luck had the options of a few basic medieval weapons.

In his rush to log in, he had set his setting to the default preset and had foregone any changes to his equipment. Which meant that he had a basic set of clothes as armor and a simple sword as his primary weapon.

As his blade glinted three times, Luck slew the trio of enemies with ease as if he had done so hundreds of times before. The monsters fell to the ground and collapsed into puddles of blue viscous liquid.

These were the stereotypical monsters of most fantasy games, a simple slime. The slayed monsters then disintegrated into particles of light and what remained from them was a single purple crystal the size of a peanut.

Examining the small crystal with his class skill, [Eye of the Creator], Luck smiled in delight as he knew that he was in the right place.

[Magic Crystal (Small)]

Rarity: Uncommon

Description: The puny heart of the weakest monster, the blue slime. It contains magic energies and can be used in alchemy to create numerous potions of a variety of effects. This can only be dropped by magically inclined creatures.

Luck marveled at how useful his class skill was. Usually, the lore or use of items were never given but had to instead be tested and discovered by those willing to put in the time. While Luck had a wealth of information in his head, this skill ensured that he was always informed of what he could do with his loot.

The skill had also confirmed one of the many early suspicions in his future memories. In them, he remembered how magic crystals were only considered as pretty stones at first and could be sold for a small sum with the default npc merchants.

It was later found that these purple crystals could actually be used to craft new items in the later [Age of Expansion] updates, but a problem pervades the acquisition of this item. They seemingly dropped at random and had no rhyme or reason of which monster could drop this sought after item.

The mystery was cracked years later, but for now not many people knew the truth and could not make full use of this item that would come to be vital in the late game. 

The truth was that all monsters had a chance to drop the item, but was determined by the level of mana in the monster.

With his [Eye of the Creator], Luck was able to not only examine items but monsters as well. He could see their health which helped in battle, but seeing the level of mana helped him locate the more lucrative monsters who had a higher chance of dropping the magic crystals.

After an hour of constant fighting, Luck surveyed his surroundings and collected the dropped items in a rush. He then hurriedly opened his menu, tapping the icon that looked like a compass he brought up the map. 

According to his menu, he was in the Northern forests a few kilometers out from the capital city of Primera. 

By foot, it would have taken him days to get here, but thanks to the new feature added from the world announcement and his mind’s massive vault of knowledge, he was able to travel the enormous distance in but an instant.

With the world announcement indicating the addition of magic into the world, the game had updated in real time and opened up the new feature of waypoints.

This feature allowed all players to travel instantly via magic to points of interest such as landmarks or key cities and villages.

While this seemed easy to abuse since players would assume that all the key locations they had been to would be documented and be usable as waypoints, this was not the case.

The players’ maps were filled out, but any use of waypoints was locked until the game’s AI had evaluated that the player had a clear enough mental image of the landmark or key city.

This was quite difficult for most players as they treated this game, as well, a game.

A player would in most cases not remember the details of a certain area of a game as they would be more engrossed in the combat or lore.

For now, most players had to travel by foot until the system AI deemed that they met the requirements which was a memory that Luck was glad that he didn’t have to relive.

Luck, Luckily, did not have to do the grueling work as the system AI acknowledged his future memories and knowledge. Evaluating that these met the system AI’s requirements, it had granted him all the waypoints he had from his future memories.

Of course, not all of them were available as future areas in the game were yet to be released.

But even without them, this would give him an edge in the game as he was able to travel faster than any other player for now. He would also be able to visit places that would have been a hassle to reach on his own. 

Milking the temporary advantage he had for all its worth, Luck quickly tapped on another location in the northern forest. Glowing blue for a moment, Luck was then turned into a line of blue light that shot up into the sky. 

This line of blue light then descended and landed in another location of the large and expansive northern forest.

Unsheathing his sword, he scanned around with his [Eye of the Creator] class skill and found his prey in abundance all around him. He had already cleared the previous area of all its blue slimes and was moving on at a hurried pace.

Before he went on his slimy killing spree, Luck made sure that his internet connection was stable as he was currently streaming his view to an online streaming site called Flinch.tv.

He had started the stream after he had arrived in the northern forest as to not out himself as that [Creationist] player as any additional attention from players would likely interfere with his plans.

For now, he would keep a low profile and use his current game rig to get started with his career as a progamer and start growing in popularity.

The rig had the high tech feature of also acting like a computer, phone, or tv. With it, he had all the creature comforts any shut-in would want.

“Alright! Time to get gathering!”

Pumping himself up, Luck then began to fight slime after slime. While what he was referring to would be construed as “gathering materials” this was also referring to the number of viewers he wanted to obtain.

His main goal right now was to make as much money as he could to pay for his sister’s future treatment for her terminal cancer. While this method would not work immediately, he needed to still at least get started. 

Even if it wasn’t much, he could still use whatever he earned to pay for the electricity he was using to play Level 0.

While the disheartening low number of viewers stayed in the single digits, he was at least glad that the number of mana rich slimes were quite high in this area.

This good fortune soon turned against him as he was overwhelmed in a matter of minutes. The aggro he had built up had gotten many other large groups of slimes to jump him from all sides. He weaved through the charging slimes, but took a few hits that he could not avoid with his low agility stat.

As he saw his health go down in the top left corner of his view, he gritted his teeth in annoyance and in a bit of pain. The sensation of taking damage was mild and felt as “pleasant” as getting hit in the stomach with a dodgeball.

While it didn’t hurt that much, those that were unaccustomed to conflict and minor amounts of physical trauma would be wholly surprised and taken off guard.

This was a fear he had gotten over in his earlier days as a player, but it still hurt and was annoying.

Jumping away, Luck tried to get some distance but the blue slimes began to wriggle together.

“Dammit! It looks like my luck’s run out today.”

Luck cursed in his mind and began to steel himself for a hard fight. Level 0 had many hidden features which extended to monsters and their behavior. In this case, enough blue slimes had been aggroed and it triggered them to begin combining into a much deadlier enemy.

Not giving it a chance to fully form, Luck charged headlong at the mass of blue slimes and slew as many as he could before they could merge.

He sliced one, then two with a horizontal strike. Then, another 2 were stopped as he stomped them in a hasty follow up attack. 

Not holding back, Luck put out as much physical might he could to exterminate the slimes with great impunity.

Yet, even with all his fervor he could not stop them all.

Pulling his blade out of a collapsing slime’s body, Luck saw the mass of blue slimes begin to flash blue and he ran for cover.

In the next moment, a loud KABOOM rang out and pressurized splashes of liquid began to shoot out. It peppered the trees and left gashes and cuts in the surface of the tree's trunk and the ground all around.