Chapter 1

“Excuse me, do you wanna team up?”

I turned around to look at the speaker and was surprised to see a low-level assassin. The assassin was a young boy of around fifteen, judging by his appearance. His white hair and blue eyes made him look almost angelic. Usually, lower level players aren’t courageous enough to ask for help from a veteran like me. It was quite saddening really, as I liked to mentor new people in the ins and outs of this new world that we had been introduced to. And this world had already been live for six months.

The sheer amount of dungeons to explore and artifacts to collect was the main objective of everyone in this world, after all. A game-like world that had completely replaced the normal world over six months ago.

“Sure, what would you like to do?”

The assassin seemed to hesitate while asking for my help. Maybe now that he had finally summoned the courage to actually approach me, he found the prospect of asking for my intimidating? I took this moment to look at his basic character sheet using my ‘observe’, which to my immense pride was level 47 which was among the top ten percent in the whole world.

The character sheet came up with his basic stats: Name: LowlyAssassin Lvl 2 Class: Assassin Guild: Not affiliated (Maybe associated but observe not high enough)

“No need to worry. You can ask me for any info or help and I will be happy to provide it. I have nothing better to do anyway.” I tried to ease his worries so that he could ask for my help freely. I am of the belief that it’s the duty of the older veterans to support the newbies so that they stick with the tough profession of an adventurer and the number of adventurers can grow faster. After all, the adventurers were now the main sources of resources in the world.

That’s one of the reasons I was hanging out in the village of Aldon in the first place. Aldon was the starting point of all the adventurers who chose to begin their career as adventurers, exploring dungeons in the hopes of obtaining fame and fortune. I always tried to reach out to groups of newbies just so I could teach them the details of this path they had taken. Only six months had passed since the world had changed but quests for higher-level players like me had become essentially nonexistent.

It was just because the newly discovered dungeons and quests that were available right now were just beyond the means of even the highest-ranked players. Quests generally required groups, which was encouraged by the existence of guilds in the world. But sheer numbers wouldn’t do the trick. No, numbers with a sufficient level of power were required for the player base as a whole to progress in this new order and uncover all the mysteries it had to offer.

Guilds throughout the world were looking for new talent to blood and then recruit said talent into their guilds. I was a part of the ‘Roaring Dragons’ guild, the seventy-eighth ranked guild in the whole world before I had been encouraged to form an offshoot guild to serve as a feeder guild of sorts.

Thus, with the encouragement of the leaders of the ‘The Roaring Dragon’ guild, I had formed my own guild, “The Flying Mambas’. We just had three members at the moment, all of whom had been previous members of the ‘The Roaring Dragon’ guild but we had many prospective members we were scouting. We only wanted the best, after all, seeing as we were a feeder of a very prestigious guild.

The assassin finally let go of his hesitation as he said, hand behind his head, “Sorry, it’s just that I am a new adventurer and can’t seem to get the hang of this class I have chosen to undertake. I looked at your gear and assumed that you were a high-level veteran. Can you help me with the beginner’s cave? As soon as I enter it, I am ambushed by the ravenous rats. I can’t seem to kill them and am stuck at level two.”

I just shook my head and said, “This game encourages group-building, especially in the beginning stages of the game. That cave is too high-leveled for a single level two player. You should have a group of at least three players.”

He gained a despondent look on his face as he said, “I am aware of that. But all my friends had already begun their journeys a long time ago. Now, they are higher level players while I am stuck at this low level. They seem unwilling to help me, seeing as they get calls from all over the world to perform missions or join groups. Now, I find myself wondering whether I made the right choice in choosing this profession after all.”

I was quite astonished to hear what he had to say, especially the tidbit about his friends. Getting called all over the world meant that they must be among the higher echelons of the population on this planet. Even I, a veteran from the earliest days of this world, didn’t yet have the opportunity to respond to requests from other nations or governments. I was more of a local hero, tasked to take out dungeons and monsters from the lower level towns or villages.

I tried to soothe his worries, not wanting him to change course so soon in his path. I also wanted to see if helping him would aid me in contacting a few of his friends so that I could benefit from their association, maybe even recruit a few of them for my guild or even the parent guild. Contacts in this world were of paramount importance. Higher-level heroes had better gear and just one or two of such gear that they gave out of sheer generosity would help any low levelled players to scale better dungeons.

“Don’t worry about those rats. I’ll help you if you want to. It’s a beginner level cave that I can easily help you scale. You can even have all of the loot, seeing as I already raided that dungeon a long time ago.”

LowlyAssassin nodded gratefully at me before asking, “That’s awesome. Can I get your name? I don’t have the ‘Observe’ skill at the moment.”

“My adventurer name is Scarlet Emperor. I chose the paladin class. What about you?” I already knew his name and info of course but I didn’t want to seem rude. Also, the ethics of using ‘Observe’ on humans rather than monsters were still being debated in the major forums throughout the WorldNetwork.

He replied, his tone eager, “My adventurer name is LowlyAssassin. As the name suggests, I belong to the assassin class. Do you have any tips on how I should progress in my selected class?”

I thought about that for a moment before saying, “You can follow the template that the top assassins in the world are following. Assassins are generally fast and stealthy. I would invest a lot of points into speed and agility. Also, focus on expanding your skill tree in the ‘stealth’ branch. That’s all I know, really.”