0005: Chosen by Chaos III

"What in the actual fuck?"

The skills and spells given by the Rings were nothing short of incredible. At this stage of the game, they shouldn't even exist but somehow, Pain had received them. However his problem wasn't the awesome skills and insane spells. It was the demonic curses attached to them.

The Hatred of the Sun curse terrified him. At the moment, Pain had very poor stats. Right now, his stats were pathetically low. If a Steel-grade weapon landed just three points of damage, or if a Level 1 monster landed an attack on him, he'd die Instantly. The system was indirectly forcing him to play only at night time.

Then there was the Aggro Calamity curse which was bound to give Pain a headache when passing through Monster-infested areas. As for this curse, the only thing Pain could do was become strong enough to handle the hordes of monsters that would always attempt to kill him on sight.

If the Hatred of the sun terrified Pain, the Glass Cannon curse made him want to cough out his liver. This was another curse that meant instant death for him if he doesn't fortify himself. His attack power by now was the highest in the game by a very large margin, but his defense had to be the worst.

Pain's knees crumbled forcing him to sit on the sandy ground. He covered his face with his palm. There was even a curse that prevented him from using extra lives. Without extra lives, a player dies permanently and all his/her accomplishments are dropped after being killed in Hell's Foundation.

Then there was the curse that would make him lose 10% of his HP every hour. In a game were the only ways to attain HP was by levelling up, buying of HP potions or receiving the potions as drops or rewards, that was a curse from the pit of Hell. The Rings indeed were worthy of being Chaos-grade entities.

Pain exhaled sharply. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.

"So what if I'm cursed?" He stood up, flexing his fingers. "With this weapon, I can be the strongest player in the game."

He lifted his arms, staring at the jet-black Rings wrapped around them.

"Thank you for choosing me."

A normal player would be losing their mind, trying to find a way to ditch these cursed artifacts. But Pain? He wasn't normal. From his perspective, the Rings made the game even more thrilling and interesting. Pain was going to prove that he was worthy of owning the Rings of Ra.

"Open Complete Avatar Profile."

{Player: Demonic Angel

Battle Zone: United States of America

Level: 0

EXP: 0/100 (FROZEN)

BP: 0/2000

(Sunlight detected! All stats will be halved)

MP: 550

HP: 175

Fatigue: 0/50

Magic Attack Power: 15

Physical Attack Power: 71

Speed: 150

STR: 1

AGI: 1

VIT: 1

MAN: 1

Luck: 15

Charm: 13

Defense: 100/100

Money: 0 }

{All values have been calculated by adding the initial given to all players to the influence of any equipped item. Influence refers to the boosts and curses of an item a player has equipped}

{Defense: 101 (1 VIT = 1 DEF point. The Iron equipment below also gives 1 DEF point. 200 points from The Rings. All Summed then halved) This attribute regenerates 1point/hour.

Fire Resistance: 0%

Lightning Resistance: 0%

Dark Resistance: 100%

Water Resistance: 0%

Wind Resistance: 0%

Earth Resistance: 0%

Light Resistance: 0%

Poison Resistance: 0%

Skills (initial):-

Inspect Skill: Cost 1MP. Can see information about monsters that do not exceed the user's level by more than 10 levels.

Spells (initial):-

Magic Bullet (Active): A streak of mana is launched at a target, dealing 10 Magic Damage. Cost 2MP

Casting Speed (initial): 1 spell per second}

Pain's eyes lingered on his high attack power and his MP bar. At least something looked good.

Thinking about everything, Pain's smile grew even wider as joy filled his insides. He opened his Inventory and saw a pair of black daggers and an armor. The system generates a weapon and armor for all players at the start of the game.

Pain looked at the statistics of the daggers and armor.

{Ordinary Dagger:

Equipment Requirement: None

Grade: Steel

Property: Magic Attack + 2}

{Ordinary Armor:

Equipment Requirement: None

Grade: Steel

Property: Defense +1}

Without hesitation, he equipped the armor. It looked shabby as hell, and the defense boost was laughable, but it was better than nothing.

Next, he grabbed the dagger and tapped Equip, but nothing happened. He tapped it again, but still nothing.

Frowning, he spammed the button like a maniac.

"Why wont you equip?"

Something he did not expect happened:

The Rings on his arms squeezed his wrists for a brief second, as if to say it was their fault.

Pain clenched his fists, resisting the urge to curse. He calmed himself down to think, hoping there was a solution in his mind.

The Rings were preventing him from equipping a Steel-grade dagger. The only logical conclusion he could come up with was that a steel-grade weapon was too weak to be equipped with a chaos-grade weapon.

"So, that's how it is."

Pain couldn't recall anything about this particular Chaos-grade weapon. He knew a lot about the game but nothing concerning the Rings.

"Great," he muttered. "I guess I'm barehanded for now."

Pain had to come up with another way to fight if he couldn't equip the only weapon he had. He couldn't depend completely on spells since he could only cast 1 spell per second and there was also the cooldown period of his current spells to consider.

Brushing everything aside, Pain decided to head back to the NPC Market. He intended to get a suitable mission to enable him test out his skills and spells. After a long while of walking, he finally got close to the market. Pain didn't know if it was because the sun was harsh or because his stats had been reduced by half but he felt a bit tired and sweaty.

'Byakugan activate!' Pain commanded.

Instantly, his vision of the NPCs was altered. Earlier he could only see the labels above their heads that revealed they were NPCs but now, above that circular label was a glowing question mark. Somehow, Pain could tell that the question mark represented an available mission.

When Pain squinted his eyes to look at the NPCs far off, he discovered that some had different glows than others. The glows appeared in Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue. More info entered Pain's mind. The above listed colors were the order of difficulty of missions. The number of NPCs with Yellow and Orange glowing question marks were smaller than others.

"Here we go," Pain breathed, making his way to an old man with a Blue glow hovering above his head.

The old man was seated on the ground under a tree. A look of worry was on his face. He raised his head when Pain entered his field of view but quickly lowered it back. They were both at the outskirts of the village. Pain couldn't see anyone else around.

"Good Afternoon, Mister. I was passing by and noticed that you're all alone. Is there a problem I can help you with?" Pain said politely as he sat on the ground.

The moment the old man saw Pain sitting beside him, his eyes went to his arms and he jumped in the opposite direction. The sad look in his eyes had transformed to dread.

"Get away from me!!"

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A/N: More PowerStones = More Updates