The World Of Skill

Game Mechanic and Friend

After walking for 5 minutes towards the center of the training ground, Ryu can see a hut with a bonfire lit in front of it. As he starts playing in the afternoon, the sun already sets now and is heading towards night. The game time is the same as the real world with a 1:1-time flow ratio. There is some virtual reality game out there that used a faster time than the real world so it can progress faster but the desynchronization with reality is causing some problems. Some players mentioned that they have lost track of time and thus 1:1 ratio decided to be the best.

He knocked on the door to check if it is the right place.

*knock knock*

“Excuse me, my name is Ryu and I am looking for Teana. Is this the right place?”

Ryu learned his lesson from Abby and start with a polite greeting.

“Yes, please wait for a bit.”

After two minutes or so, a girl comes out from the hut. She wears a tank top and short pants that make it hard for Ryu to focus.

“I’m sorry for my lack of hospitality, but please sit down.”

Sitting in front of the bonfire, Ryu can feel the warmth emanating from it. He can also feel some chill on his back brought by the wind.

“I guess you are here to learn more about this world. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“For now, I am going to explain to you about stats, skill, and social. Let’s start with stats first. There are six primary stats here and you will earn 10 points to distribute each time you leveled up.【Strength】, 【Vitality】, 【Intelligence】, 【Agility】, 【Dexterity】, and 【Luck】. Strength determines your attack power and the maximum weight you can carry in your inventory. Vitality determines your health point, health regeneration rate, defense, and 【Stamina】 gauge when it is unlocked when you choose your class. Intelligence determines your magic attack, magic defense, mana point, and mana regeneration rate. Agility determines your attack speed and movement speed. Dexterity determines your skill cast time, crafting, and accuracy. While luck determines your critical hit and some believe it affects drop rate. Is there any question so far?”

Just like any other game the stats don’t differ much. Ryu shook his head and Teana continues with her explanation.

“Skill on the other hand is quite complex. This world took more importance to skill. You can learn a skill through 【Skill book】, clearing a quest, or by repeated action. The most interesting part is 【Skill evolution】, 【Skill resonance】, and 【Unique skill】. Skill evolution is triggered when you met certain requirements and your skill will evolve into a higher form. For example, 《Firebolt》 that can evolve into 《Fireball》. Of course, the fireball can be evolved further but it requires strict criteria. Skill resonance is when you use skills that complement each other and maximizing their effect. For example, executing a 《Shield bash》 while having 《Enhance shield》 cast will increase the damage. Do you understand?”

“What about unique skill then?”

“Unique skill can only be acquired if you met the condition. By far it has the stringent requirements to unlock. It is said that each unique skill surpassed others and there is only a handful of them known by the world. Each individual that has them always keep them a secret and no one wants to mess with them. One of the most well know unique skills is Baron Dirga’s 《Indomitable Will》, it gives him 90% resistance to mind-controlling skill and a 30% chance to ignore de-buff. Such a skill can be called a cheat but to acquire his skill it is said that he resisted an attack from 「Banshee」 for a year. Not everyone will be able to do it. Most of the masses will try to kill himself due to the Banshee’s curse even after experiencing it for a minute.”

Ryu hasn’t completely grasped the skill system just from the explanation. The best way to learn about it is when he experienced it later on. But he gets the gist of it and he could already imagine it. The most popular class must be magicians which have lots of skills to experiment to combine. 

“So, how to choose a class?”

“Each class you want to choose have different requirements and test. Most of them have their own branch office in each town with their main headquarters usually occupying a city. The city of swordsmen 【Gladisen】, the city of magic 【Hekania】 is the example where the class main headquarters is located. Most of the class has the same basic requirement which is reaching level 10 to choose the first class. If you don’t have any other questions, I will proceed with social.”

Ryu shook his head signaling that he doesn’t have any other question and Teana continue her explanation.

“Social consist of mail, friend, party, and guild. Mail will be where a message left by your friend is. Friend will list all of your friends, their level, and their online and offline status. There is also a call function but some area has a restriction which makes call function unavailable. Party can be created when you are hunting with friends and all experience gained will be divided equally between all party members. There is a limitation of 10 level differences for experience sharing to stop high-level players from helping new players leveling up.”

“Wow, and here I thought I can ask Ginji to help me power level. I guess it is impossible. How about I ask him to weaken a high-level monster and let me kill it then?”

“I’m sorry to ruin your expectation but there is a restriction just like how killing monster experience is shared. It will be depending on the percentage of damage you dealt to the monster, not granting all the experience to the last hit player. This is all to reduce the chance of player stealing other player monsters and ruining the game or a level 1 player leveled up to level 100 when last hitting a level 100 monster that his or her friend weakened for him to the last hit.”

“I guess I should level up by myself then.”

“That’s not completely true. By joining a party, you can tackle monsters several levels higher than your level and gain more experience. Dungeon diving also easier with more party members.”

“I guess that is true.”

“Let’s continue with the guild system then. There are some requirements for creating a guild but there is a special merit to it. A guild can join the guild war to compete for the ruling rights of territory. By controlling a territory, they can gain the tax of the area and there is a special buff for their guild member when hunting in their territory.”

“That was something that is out of my league for now.”

“Well, I am just tasked to explain it to you. Who knows that it will be useful for you later.”

“Yeah right. So what’s next?”

“Next will be battle training. However, it won’t be conducted by me. Not far from here,  to the west, my friend Randy is waiting in the training hall.”

“Alright then. Thank you for the explanation Teana. I will take my leave now.”

Teana nodded and Ryu was going to leave before he remembers something.

“Say Teana, can I register NPC as my friend?”

“NPC? You mean like me and Abby?”

“Yeah! If I want to ask something about the game, I might give you a call in the future. Isn’t the NPC who explain about them in the tutorial will be the best person to ask?”

Teana pondering for a while before answering.

“I believe you can register an NPC as a friend. It’s just nobody has ever done it before. After all we’re just NPC and our response when answering your question is also limited in variation. We have a limited function as your friend in my honest opinion.”

“To be honest I don’t care about that. Furthermore, you are so *cough*sexy*cough* I mean informative that I don’t mind having you in my friend list.”

“If you say so.”

「Teana has been registered as your friend. 」

“Alright, now I need to add Abby as my friend too before continuing. Bye Teana.”

Ryu then moved back to the place where he met Abby then told her about his idea.

「Abby has been registered as your friend. 」

“You know Ryu, it is really weird. For you to go such lengths to add NPC as your friend. You aren’t just doing this for me, right? Do you have any ulterior motives in doing this? You’re not a real pedophile, aren’t you?”

“Ugh, what are you talking about? Of course not. I’m just doing this since I really don’t have any idea who to put on my friend list and by doing this we can keep in touch. Who knows if I found your mother somewhere out there?”

“Alright then. Enough of your blabber. You should hurry up and finish the tutorial. I don’t want to see your face around here.”

“Okay okay. See you later Abby. I can contact you anytime anyway.”

While heading towards the next tutorial NPC, Ryu opened his friend list.

「1. Teana Lvl 65 Elementalist – Online

2. Abby Lvl 615 Wave Rider– Online 」

“There’s all kinds of classes out there huh. I wonder if I really should be an archer now? Choosing another class with magic skills seemed to be interesting. Well, right now I should just focus on finishing the tutorial, level up, and enjoy the game.”