Retrograde Gaming

Chapter 12: Why Force Me?

Translator: Henyee Translations

Editor: Henyee Translations

The City of Divine Protection—the main city of Humans—was situated in Gondor province at the center of the plains, Minas Dirith1. Although the city sat on a plain, due to its 30-meter high double-sided perimeter walls while being surrounded by a 5-meter wide moat, the City of Divine Protection was also known as the city that never falls. The imperial palace occupied one-fourth of the center of the main city while the southern part of the imperial palace was the noble’s district. The business district was centralized in the western part of the city, and apart from this, there was also the residential area that occupied the largest area.

This was the human’s main city inside ‘Heart of glory’, all of the houses were made of red tiles and white walls, it was a city with a Medieval European architectural style.

When Li Huailin was teleported to this city, he was also shocked by the sight. Just like many other players on the side, they could only stare blankly at the surrounding scenery and were unable to come back to their senses for a long while.

“This game is awesome as expected.” After a short while, Li Huailin said this to himself inwardly.

On the seventh day of the open servers, around half the players already broke away from the newbie villages. Unlike the newbie villages that were similar to separated instances1, all the players were teleported to the same city. Now, Li Huailin finally understood what ‘crowded’ meant.

For example, considering the position at the city’s central public square that Li Huailin stood at, because the business district wasn’t too far in the distance, he could see people coming and going. It could only be described as a stream of people. Occasionally, pairs of armored soldiers could be seen patrolling this city that was lively and bustling.

Li Huailin just reached level 10 this afternoon. After he was screwed over by Neidhardt before the latter’s death, although he was still somewhat gloomy because of it, after reviewing the quest over in his mind, he felt that he would be fine as long as he didn’t try to complete it. The quest’s tip only informed him that Neidhardt’s nephew appeared in the northern part—no other information was given—then shouldn’t that mean that the nephew would be hard to find? So long as he didn’t go actively searching for him, he wouldn’t be deducted 10,000 Experience and 1 Gold Coin.

After thinking this through, Li Huailin just focused on his business of leveling up. Despite fighting a boss, since the latter didn’t die and he declined the initial quest, this was why no experience was deducted and he was still level seven. Thus, he painstakingly rushed to die thirty more times inside the mining cave, and unsurprisingly, he finally reached level 10. He then came to The City of Divine Protection through the newbie village’s teleportation point.

Li Huailin’s current character status was extremely impressive, but because he couldn’t kill monsters and do missions, he had no equipment or a proper source of income. He was even still wearing the newbie three-piece plain cotton clothing set—which was gifted upon birth—and would also never break. Even for the poorest of players, they would already have a White set of equipment at level 10 and at least 50 Silver Coins or more. However, Li Huailin’s inventory was completely clean and empty, he only had 18 Silver Coins and 40 Copper Coins.

Naturally, he didn’t care at all. Why would he want equipment anyway? If he wore any, it would just increase his health and defense, this meant that he would die slower and in turn, directly affect his leveling speed.

“Oh right, I should do a class-change first.” Li Huailin suddenly remembered his current objective. Now that he was at the level 10 cap, if he didn’t do a class-change, he wouldn’t receive any experience even if he died now. In order to level up, he needed to go through a class-change.

Originally, Li Huailin wanted to play a Mage, he didn’t really think much about it. It wasn’t because he had a deep understanding of Mages, it was simply that after he watched the promotional video, he felt that throwing fireballs and raining down ice blasts was really eye-catching. However, due to his innate skills as a Human now, he had a deduction of 10% Intellect, this was why he immediately changed to the idea of playing as a Warrior.

‘Heart of Glory’ really did an excellent job with the details. In fear that the newbies who had just teleported to the city couldn’t find the class-change area, there was a massive street sign labeled: Class Area. The sign was just to the right of the central public square, it was so large that no matter how you passed by, you wouldn’t be able to miss it.

At the entrance of the class area, the first stop was the Warrior’s guild. Warriors, as a popular Class in online games, was probably chosen the most out of all eight classes, and as a result, the Warrior’s guild’s main entrance was also extremely large. There were two workers who maintained traffic in order to avoid congestion.

Right when Li Huailin walked in the entrance, he saw the Warrior Instructor standing at the center of the Warrior’s guildhall. However, he found it a bit strange, it was because it was only after he came in that he discovered that half of the Warrior guild’s hall was an operations area, while the other half was actually an indoor practice ground with many wooden dummies. There were currently a lot of players wildly slashing at the dummies, not only this, there was also a group of players lining up to slash the dummies.

‘How strange, it should be golden time just when the servers have opened, however, these guys aren’t actually leveling up, instead, they came here to cut down dummies. They don’t need to be in such a rush even if they really want to try new skills.’ Li Huailin thought, a little baffled.

Strange as it may be, Li Huailin didn’t really care about what they were thinking by doing this, he walked up to the Warrior Instructor and quickly started his class-change.

The Warrior Instructor was a tall and slender middle-aged man, his name was Ernst1. He wore a suit of armor in red and silver, he was helmetless, and he had a red ponytail tied up behind the back of his head.

“Rookie, I’m the Warrior Instructor, Ernst. Are you here to become a great warrior?” Just as Li Huailin approached, Ernst said this to Li Huailin on his own accord.

System Notice: Warrior Instructor Ernst wants to change your class into a Warrior, do you accept? Yes or No?

“Yes.”

With a ‘shua’, a green light gleamed on Li Huailin’s body.

System Notice: Successfully changed your class to a Warrior.

Li Huailin checked out his character stats panel. He discovered that his health points didn’t change at all. However, his physical attack suddenly rose quite a lot. After all, after a class-change into a physical class, the strength attribute’s multiplier for attack power increased by a lot, not to mention, he added all his attribute points to strength…

Originally, before he had a class-change, his physical attack was 57-73, now it skyrocketed to 97-121.

“Rookie, are you interested in learning warrior skills?” Right after he finished checking his character attributes, Ernst asked another question.

“Oh, right, I still have to learn skills.” Li Huailin was only reminded then that ever since his character’s birth, he only had the skill, Heavy Attack, that added five points of damage. Moreover, he never even used it once until now—the skill’s experience was still at zero points—anyway, he assumed that the skill’s experience would probably be deducted into the negative if he used it.

Inside ‘Heart of Glory’, skills were divided into normal skills and rare skills. Normal skills were the ones taught by the class instructor. Generally speaking, after leveling up every five levels, players could come back for a look, and usually, they would be able to learn a new skill or two. Rare skills were the ones that came from skill books that dropped from monsters or ones that are imparted by special NPCs, these were extremely precious. In ‘Heart of Glory’, there was no upper limit to the number of skills one could learn, so long as you had the energy, you could learn as many skills as you wanted.

“What kind of skills are there?” Li Huailin naturally wanted to see what skills there were, thus he asked.

Ernst waved his hand and a virtual screen appeared before Li Huailin, there were currently four skills that Li Huailin could learn.

Offensive Skills:

Rupture: Level 1 (0/300): Increases attack by 10 points and causes the target to bleed; loses 10 health points every second for 12 seconds, bleeding effect cannot stack. Instant cast, consumes 10 Mana Points, 6 seconds cooldown. Learning Cost: 1 Gold coin.

Swipe: Level 1 (0/500): Deals damage to three targets in front of you at the same time, the damage is 80% of the original attack. Instant cast, consumes 15 Mana Points, 10 seconds cooldown. Learning Cost: 1 Gold Coin.

Defensive Skills:

Defensive Stance: (No Level): Physical Damage reduced by 20% upon activation, but decreases movement speed by 50%. Instant cast, no cooldown, no Mana Cost. Learning Cost: 1 Gold Coin.

Shield Guard: Level 1 (0/300): Immediately raises shield to defend, decreases physical damage, damage decreased relates to shield stats. Requires a shield. Instant cast, consumes 5 Mana Points, 3 seconds cooldown. Learning Cost: 1 Gold Coin.

“What the f*ck!?” Li Huailin wasn’t surprised by the skills themselves, he was rather aghast at the words ‘Learning Cost: 1 Gold Coin’ after the skills’ descriptions. He never would’ve imagined that learning a skill would be this expensive. If a single skill costs 1 Gold, then to learn all of them, it would cost 4 Gold Coins, but he only had a total of 18 Silver Coins right now…

“Boss… it’s so expensive, who can afford to learn this…” Li Huailin bellowed at Ernst.

“Oh, it seems you don’t have enough gold to learn, what a poor rookie.” Ernst frowned, his expression was one of disdain. And then, he pointed at the training grounds behind him. “Seeing that you’re now a member of the Warrior’s Guild, I’ll instruct you. I’ll tell you the secrets to the Rupture skill. After you practice 1,000 times on the wooden targets, you’ll truly have learned this skill.”

“What the hell…” LI Huailin finally understood why there were so many people lining up to slash the dummies. The game was afraid that many people wouldn’t be able to afford skills, this was why they provided another way to learn skills. However, slashing at a dummy 1,000 times… since the Rupture skill’s cooldown was 6 seconds, then this meant that it required a total of 6,000 seconds, an entire 100 minutes, this task…

“Hey, pauper! Hurry up and get out of the line already! Hurry, hurry.” Since Li Huailin already talked to the warrior instructor for quite a while, the players behind him were already getting impatient.

“Sigh…” Li Huailin sighed lightly, he raised his right hand and said to himself, “I don’t want to be kickass anymore… why do you guys force me…”

“Hey, what are you talking about…” Confused, the player behind him asked.

A ‘pa’ sound echoed out, before the player finished speaking, Li Huailin immediately slapped Ernst on the face.

System Notice: Since you attacked Ernst, Ernst’s Favorability towards you has increased by 20. Current Favorability, Friendly.