There and back again. A Non-Player Character story.

Chpt. 5 - Continual grinding

Calum came home elated.  He felt so happy to study with Nala.  As he got home to the basement, he went straight to his computer.

He thought for sure his NPC was dead.  Not that he cared too much.  He didn't have time to walk his character to a safe zone before he left the basement earlier.  He thought someone would kill it, but no.  He was sure someone would loot his character, he hardly had any money or worthwhile items in his backpack or on the body of the character.

NPC was looted.  He had no money and and it would take him a while to get his dinky character to get those wimpy items back.  His character was in a garden still, within the village, with little purple bouncing slimes.

Maybe that is why the other users hadn't killed his character.  Maybe they found it funnier watching NPC suffer than to kill it.  NPC was covered like a purple, bulbous marshmallow man.  The slimes could not kill you, though you could kill them.  They were one of the lowest level creatures.  The purple tiny blobs would suck down your health and mana (if you had any mana), consistently.

Calum's NPC was tortured for hours, I guess.  When Calum got the inactive status off of NPC, it was like he still had a new character.

At least the tutorial part of the game was over.  It was time to explore.  One of the reasons Calum liked this game was it was an open world.  You did not have to pay money or be certain levels to have access to certain parts of the game.  In other words, a newbie could teleport to places where high level monsters and Users would clash it out.

Another thing Calum liked is, there was no level restriction on how cool a weapon a newbie could use.

Soo, if a newbie saw a group of high level characters take on a behemoth, on a high number level, and his character (like NPC) didn't die from a creature looking or breathing on him from a far off vicinity, and the whole group left some high loot laying around, his character could grab it.

Some groups were charitable to low lifes.  If the whole group had duplicates on high items, and did not feel like trying to sell it, they would leave it behind.  The loot drops from a dead monster had a time out before it disappeared.

Calum wanted to get a high level loot drop.  His character took a long time to walk to a teleport that would let him get to a higher level.

Once there, he tried to follow a group to one of the nearest monsters.  By the time he caught up to the group, they had already dropped 3 monsters.  He got a massive staff drop and then tried to walk back as fast as he could to the portal, back to the village, before a monster respawned.

He got lucky and made it back to the portal.

Once in the village he equipped the staff.  It gave his character high damage points against monsters the staff hit, and area damage to smaller creatures.  It also raised his health bar significantly and a buff for his own personal healing.

It meant he could stay alive in a lot of areas and not die while inflicting big damage on some big creatures.

It did not make him strong (strength), smart (intelligence), fast (speed), dodging ( like agility), magical (mana), lucky or charming (charisma).  It did not increase him in lots of other areas too or skills, etc.

Calum was very, very pleased with the acquire though.  He couldn't wait to try it out on some things.

"Die vicious purple slimes," Calum said to the computer as he walked NPC into the garden village.  Not only did he vaporize the slime he hit, but the surrounding ones as well.  His character leveled up in strength, agility and intelligence.

"This is way nicer," said Calum outloud to only himself.  Calum had a smile on his face.

Calum thought back to Nala and said outloud again while getting drousy, "this is way nicer."

He waked his NPC out of the village garden back into a safe zone and let his NPC go into inactive status safe.  Calum started falling asleep in his computer chair.  He didn't even try to fight it and make it to his bed.

Calum woke up in the morning to find himself on the floor by his computer chair.  He had a coat draped over him and an unopened bag of puffy chips under his head as a pillow.  Drool was coming out of his mouth.  "OOh, not again," said Calum as his body ached from sleeping on the carpeted floor.

Calum went and checked his phone and saw no messages.  Calum was going to play a video game for a couple of hours before he went to his 1 day a week cuushy job.  Some coorprate giant picked him up as a student liaison / invention assistant to fulfill some grant requirements on an experimental project at the University Science Research facility.

Calum checked out NPC and NPC was exactly where he left him.  There were a few friend requests from newbies who saw Calums character carrying a cool staff.  Some had typed requesting if he would like to trade it.

Calum typed "No Way,"and hit the 'reply to all' button on the response screen.

Calum demolished slimes a couple of times and then went to try his luck at a higher level.  Not as high of a level as he got his staff.  He didn't want to lose his staff after just getting it.

Characters who died in the game lost everything except their stats.  Even their weapon or equipment buffs would be gone.

Calum went to the large spider realm.  Once he got to the portal that would take him there, he crossed his fingers above his computer screen real quick, popped his knuckles, and then NPC enters the portal.  Calum was really taking a chance on this level, or realm in the game.  If NPC died, he would probably let this character go and try a different game, maybe.