10) Luck

The outside world had been a mess since the worldwide announcement. A few days had passed and no one had claimed responsibility for the act, therefore they disregarded it as terrorism. People were so invested in finding out the meaning behind the poem that countless discussions were taking place on the web.

On the first day, people assumed it was some kind of warning. They thought that it was warning them of the dangers of virtual reality but it was soon discredited because it said:

"As long as the eggs don't hatch,

Humanity will have a chance."

Which was clearly a reference to the pods. Every time someone figured something out everyone would feel dumb for not understanding it before.

Until the third day, only the last three lines of the poem had been solved. They concluded they would have to spend a lot of time in the Virtual World. It was not until someone was scrolling through the virtual reality games list that they stumbled on "Kingdom of Shadows". In this age there were thousands of different virtual games, Kingdom of Shadows was deemed a failure after people found out it was a strange type of RPG. Its reviews dragged the games through the mud and no one played it since then, only the VRCs who had people in every single virtual game in existence. From old to new.

On the fourth day, the downloads of "Kingdom of Shadows" soared through the skies. Ryker was oblivious to everything that was going on outside and he was currently shooting a mouse with marbled black and white butterfly wings from the sky.

After two days of farming by killing the horned rabbits, he decided to go to other newbie hunting grounds around Feywoods village. He was currently in the woods north of the village where these swallowtail mice lived. He had been avoiding the boss of this forest for the past two days.

After killing around ten mice a notification appeared.

[Congratulations! Bestiary entry acquired [Swallowtail mouse]]

[Level 3

Name: Swallowtail mouse

Affinities: Light, neutral

HP: 70

MP: 150

Stamina: 120

Strength: 15

Vitality: 7

Resistance: 0

Speed: 12

Intelligence: 15

Perception: 8

Spells: [Heal], [Flash], [Ilusion]]

The white variants were the easiest to deal with as they had more support-type spells. When he first arrived at the forest he only encountered these so he thought it would be a one-sided massacre on his part. His greed got the best of him tho.

After leveling up he started venturing deeper into the forest, there was where he met other types of swallowtail mice. He soon came to the understanding that the ones with red wings had a fire affinity, light blue meant ice, and the mixture of purple and green was poison.

If they were to be compared to people, the red one would be the warrior, the light blue would be a mage, the purple and green an assassin, and the white one supported. When all of them came together he had a difficult time dealing with them.

He had spent a lot of time hunting them on their own in order to acquire their bestiary entries. At least that way he knew of the spells they had at their disposal. On their own, they were not so much of a threat but due to their high intelligence, they soon realized what was going on in the forest and now it was impossible to find them traveling alone. Sometimes he would encounter a party with two or more of the same kind but he realized that they always had a white one.

It had been five days since he entered the game and he was actually in love with it. Every battle brought a thrill that no other game gave him. Maybe it was the fear of getting hurt and the fact that he could not recklessly attack or his visible improvement. He had leveled up three more times. His stats looked like this now.

[Level 7 (29%)

Name: Ryker

Affinities: Food, neutral

HP: 280

MP: 380

Stamina: 270

Strength: 29

Vitality: 28

Resistance: 0

Dexterity: 5

Speed: 22

Intelligence: 28

Wisdom: 10

Willpower: 0

Perception: 17

Charisma: 5

Luck: 25

Spells: [Power Shot], [Cherry Bombs]]

He didn't know what the rabbit level or stats was as he hadn't beaten it yet but he still replayed that battle in his mind. He was eager to go and kill that rabbit as soon as possible. But he knew he had to be cautious, that sense of superiority was what almost got him killed in the first place. If he truly wanted to beat the sh*t out of that furry he would have to be the bigger person.

His state of mind was also reflected in his actions. His biggest enemy was a giant rabbit in a video game. His goal was to kill said rabbit with food and to achieve that he had to kill flying mice. Honestly, he was slowly losing it because the more he thought about it, the more normal this situation seemed. He was really liking this game. One might say it was the effects of the Virtual World and others would say he was born for this.

Currently, he had just killed another group of mice when a notification that almost made him moan appeared.

[Tier 0 spell crystal acquired]

"FINALLY!"

Since day one he had assumed that monsters could drop more than gold coins, the mice had dropped either useless fur or wings which he thought were useful but he didn't know what for.

Once he took out the crystal it started changing shapes.

[Analyzing player's affinities… generating random spells…]

Soon after he was given three different spells to chose from again. This was actually a very convenient way of giving spells to people because if the mice were to drop a spell of their own, then there was the possibility that he could not learn it due to not having that elemental affinity. That would result in him having tons of useless crystals, after all, if the player wanted gold coins, they would have to literally kill for them.

Once the three options were displayed before him he couldn't help but mutter.

"Damn"