Return to Level 0

Chapter 7 An Interesting Day

While Luck was off doing his slime hunt, Queen Flamerath was looking over Level 0’s game forums for any info related to the topics of the player Luck, the world announcements, and even the Creationist class.

She had found from a few popular videos made by pro players, that the monsters in the world had started to act differently and some would have different attack patterns.

Reports came in and she learned that some monsters could now even use magic which was irksome as she would have to strategize a new method of fighting with her top officials and commanders. As Queen of the Kingdom of Primera, she was always at the head of all advancements that had to do with her community.

And right now, her community was in an uproar as some had gone off on a tangent and began digging through the junkyard of her capital.

She deduced that they were looking for the source of the golden light but she had bigger fish to fry.

Through the grapevine of her intelligence network, she found clues of a possible conflict with a neighboring kingdom who likely wanted to absorb her kingdom into their own to get at the Creationist player as they were likely a new player that had spawned in her domain.

For the first time in a while, Queen Flamerath cracked a ferocious smirk and made a provocative statement.

“Bring it on, you damn old man…. “ She paused for a moment and was surprised by her sudden flare of emotion. “Huh? I guess I’ve been really bored these days. I better calm down or else I might start going on one of my rampages again.”

Getting her attention off herself, Queen Flamerath began to scroll through Flinch.tv to take her mind off things. Finding a somewhat boring fellow fighting off a few slimes, she calmed down.

The streamer she was watching kept their name private but she didn’t mind. 

Personal security in the present day was highly valued and many safeguards were in place to ensure that if a person did not want to be known, then it was made so.

While this did little with her investigation of finding Luck, or the Creationist, or to deal with the future political conflict, she shrugged it off as she truly needed a break today.

3 world announcements in one day meant a lot of work for her in the future, so for now, she would sit back and relax before getting into the thick of her work.

As the stream progressed, Queen Flamerath was intrigued by the fighting skill of the player. His black ponytail made him look somewhat majestic but what caught her attention was his use of the sword.

Swordsmanship was something that was eventually picked up by all players who endeavored to fight monsters in close combat, but this player’s gear made him look like a beginner and she was impressed by how practiced the player was in the way of the sword. 

She thought that he likely had the [swordsman] class and thought to recruit him as an instructor for her fledgling players.

Her desire to recruit him was furthered as she saw him fight a King Slime one on one. While she thought he was an idiot and that he was going to die with absolute certainty, she could not deny that his tactical thinking was impressive from a beginner's point of view. 

But when she saw him attempt to finish off the King Slime in a quick manner, she jumped up from her throne and began cheering him on. The player was in a pinch and was jumping on the chance with a do or die attitude to grasp victory. 

His visage as he used the rage skill made him seem kind of hot, but she couldn’t blame herself since the black ponytail and literal red aura that surrounded him made her somewhat blush in excitement.

After the battle ended, Queen Flamerath let out a cheer of joy at the player’s victory but before she could begin clapping, she noticed the looks of her guards inside the throne room. While they were NPCs, their stares felt real and she quickly settled down before she embarrassed herself.

Feeling a bit better, she gave the player a tip on his stream and decided to get back to work.

Meanwhile, as Luck logged off, he noticed how empty his stomach felt. He had skipped lunch as he was so engrossed in his game. He had a lot of work he needed to do so he got a bit carried away on his first day back into it.

When he went to see if mom made any dinner, he could already tell that dinner would not be happening tonight as neither parent was home yet.

Thinking to order some take out, he called out to his sister Chancy.

“Hey Chancy! What do you want for dinner?! It will be my treat tonight!”

Yelling back from her room, Chancy made her recommendation.

“CAN WE DO PIZZA?! I’M FINE IF IT’S JUST CHEESE.”

“Sure! Give me a sec!”

Opening up a holographic screen from his wristwatch, Luck looked up a cheap pizza place and put in the order. He begrudged the fact that he and his family had so little money that he could not even afford a pizza with toppings with his meager allowance.

Reminded of his issue with money, he checks his streaming account to see if he got anything as a tip. His brows rose in surprise as an anonymous person had tipped him 100 Credits. He did a double take to make sure that they weren’t D-Credits and low and behold, they were the real deal. 

This amount of money was the equivalent of 10 plain cheese pizzas and he wondered just who in the heck would give him so much real life money for fighting a bunch of boring slimes.

But, satisfying his hunger came first so he splurged a bit on tonight's dinner. When Chancy came down from her room, she was surprised to see that the dining room had 3 pizzas and all of them had toppings that she had never eaten in a long while.

“Bro? How did you afford all this?”

Puffing out his chest, Luck boasted his achievement. “I got popular on my stream today and a nice person gave me a large tip.” Luck then got a plate and piled it up with slices of assorted kinds of pizza. He promptly handed it to his sister with a cheeky smile.

“But that doesn’t matter. Let’s just enjoy dinner first. Mom and Dad should be home soon, so let's eat as much as we can before they get a chance.” Luck gave his sister a grin as if he was getting her involved in a prank and she returned it with a mischievous smile of her own.

“You're the best, Big Bro. I love you.”

Chancy glomped Luck with a big hug and they both chuckled at the childish exchange they were having. After eating through two whole pizzas, Luck and Chancy were stuffed and were amused by the defeated expressions of their parents as they realized that they missed out on their impromptu pizza night.

*****

The next day, Luck started his day like usual and had breakfast with his family before seeing them off. He had no part time job and did not have to go to school as he already had his associates degree in business.

He could go out to find a job but he had his sights set on something higher. Putting on his gaming rig, he logged back into Level 0 and reviewed what he needed to do as the program loaded in.

“Alright! With all the RP I have left I should be fine on potions for a while. This was going to take longer since I planned to take a week, but I’m glad I got this class. I guess this means I’ll be able to take on a dungeon today.”

Luck let out a chuckle as the sheer impossibility of his situation was quite exacerbating to his common sense of this game.

Dungeons were dangerous places where hundreds of monsters roamed. It was not something a player, who on his second day, would dive into on his own. 

To pile on how difficult a dungeon was, these were done in parties that ranged from as small as 6 man teams or as large as a 24 manned raiding party.  

The one Luck had in mind was in the middle when it came to recommended party sizes and he thought that he was going too fast with his progression, but before he could second guess himself was reminded of Chancy’s hug last night.

“I don’t have much time. I need a lot of money and I can’t just sit back and take it slow. I need to jump at the chance.”

Pumping himself up, he slapped his cheeks with his hands and let the rig put him into a sleep-like state to enter the game.

Spawning into the Kingdom of Primera’s log in area, which was the common entry point for all players, Luck immediately opened his map and used the waypoint feature to move to the dungeon he wanted to conquer.

The nearby players watched in awe as Luck teleported as it was a rare occurrence for any player to have a waypoint since it had only been a day when this feature had been implemented.

As Luck descended from the sky in the form of a line of blue light, he found himself in an expansive wasteland while standing at the entrance of a pit that seemed to go to the center of the earth,

[Welcome to the Pit of the Dead]

[Would you like to enter the Dungeon?]

[Yes/No]

With a flighty finger, Luck tapped yes and an invisible red barrier appeared in front of him. A small hole formed directly in front of his path and expanded as he approached. Passing through the opening, it closed on him when he got a certain distance into the dungeon. 

“This place gives me the chills no matter how many times I come here. Whoever designed this place was quite the colorful character.”

His remark was not unnoticed, as the many tombstone and grave sites began to rumble and shake. Boney hands began to emerge from the ground and Luck readied himself.