Leon blinked twice, and in that short span of time the large ship had already traveled 40 meters away from shore and left him sitting on the sand, confused and alone.
"Well, I guess this works just as well!"
After all, he could freely do whatever he wanted without being tied down by any quests now.
He got up on his feet and picked up the sword which had been halfway buried in the sand.
"Right, should probably check my own status..."
The tutorial in Dreamland was very short, it consisted of a hologram quickly explaining some of the basics to you and another excusing his behaviour and explaining the rest.
It would appear first when you thought about opening your status. Basically, you gained 2 stat points each level which could be distributed between the stats strength, vitality, intelligence, dexterity, and agility. You also gained 1 skill point which could be used to level up passive skills or unlock new skills.
To open the menu, all one had to do was think off the word menu and it would easily open. The menu had a few different tabs, but Leon was only interested in his status at this time.
Name: Leon
Level: 1 (0%)
HP: 1150/1200
MP: 800/800
Stats: STR: 1 VIT: 1 INT: 1 DEX: 1 AGI: 1
Special: Cha: 2
Skills:
Holy Knight: [Lv.1 Slice <0%>] [Lv.1 Block <0%>]
Engineer: [Lv.1 Basic Engineering <0%>] [Lv.1 Creator's Eye <0%>]
Merchant: [Lv.1 Bartering <0%>] [Lv.Max Charisma]
Marshal: [Lv.1 Commander <0%>] [Lv.Max Charisma]
Alright. It seemed that his stats were very low, but that was because he had just started playing. He decided to check the effects of some of his skills.
[Bartering] (Passive/Active) Allows the player to barter with NPC's. Passively decreases all NPC item prices by 1% per level and can actively be used to convince NPC's to buy items for more and sell for less. (Based On Charisma)
This skill would probably be useful, if he could ever find another NPC.
[Commander] (Passive/Active) Passively increases the magic and physical damage of your NPC allies by 1% per level and their defense by 1.5% per level. Actively this skill can be used to command troops, each level allows you to command 10 NPC troops. Current: 0 troops Max: 10 Troops
This skill could also be useful, if he ever found an NPC.
[Slash] (Requires Sword) (Active) MP Cost: 50 A slash that deals 2x your regular damage.
[Block] (Requires 2-handed weapon/Shield)(Active) MP Cost: 20 A block that compares your strength with the enemy's to block part of the damage you might have taken.
Alright! These were useful combat skills. He checked the engineer skills as well, but he didn't need them now so he mostly just skimmed through the description.
"Now then, let's get exploring!"
With his longsword in hand, he headed into the dense tropical jungle that was just beyond the shore. The air was quite nice in the forest, and he hadn't really encountered any monsters yet so he was mostly just taking in the sights.
Then he spotted his first monster, a small dark grey rabbit with a horn in the middle of it's head.
"Right, first kill."
He instantly charged towards the small creature with his longsword, landing a flawless surprise attack on it with his sword which... bounced off the rabbit.
-10
He dealt ten damage. Ten. Damage. And he could now see the creatures HP bar as he had engaged in combat with it.
[LV. 25] [Horned Chaos Rabbit] [8491/8500]
It had already regenerated one point of health in the split second that had passed...
"Shit!"
He knew exactly what to do in this situation, there was really only one choice!
"Run!"
He turned around and ran at full speed in the opposite direction of the rabbit.
After about a second of running, he felt something behind him which made his hairs stand up straight, and he threw himself onto the ground while rolling to the right, a few sticks and stones scraping his skin.
Right above him the small ball of grey fur came flying at the speed of a bullet, piercing straight through a tree which fell into another and caused a small chain reaction. Leon's heart was beating extremely quickly and adrenaline was pumping through his veins.
He needed a solution, quick. He was sure the rabbit had lost him, at least temporarily. He only had one choice now, escaping. Using the recently fallen trees and the bushes which had existed here before as cover he crawled on the ground and tried to hide as well as he could.
He might have been crawling for five minutes now, or ten but he didn't dare look up. All around he had been hearing strange sounds, gurgling noises coming from the trees above, screeching noises from around him and drumming noises from under him were just some of them.
He gulped down his saliva as he continued to crawl.
HP: 950/1200
Crawling on the ground in this place seemed to be a rather harmful activity however, as he had lost 250 HP already. He continued looking forward and crawling though, it wasn't like he had anything better to do in the real world anyway.
Hp: 326/1200
After god knows how long, he finally saw it... A house! It was a completely run down shack on top of a hill, the wooden roof seemed about ready to slide off at any minute, but it was shelter! Standing up, Leon made a mad dash for the small house, running toward the door.
As he got closer, he threw himself toward the door, but instead of smashing through the wood his face ended up hitting a wall.
"Welcome!"
"What?"
Quickly turning around to face the voice, Leon saw a woman in her late 40's standing beside the door which had now been closed. She had apparently opened it for him which had resulted in him almost receiving severe head trauma.
"Thank you!"
But he didn't care, he was just thankful that the brown-haired woman had decided to let him in. He bowed before her courteously and then looked up at her face. It seemed she was having trouble holding in laughter.
"Ahahaha, are you some sort of comedian, boy?"
He realized it then. In a medieval society, the way he was bowing was probably something that nobles did... But right now he was wearing torn leather garments and covered in wounds. But it did seem like he had made his savior laugh, so that was a good first step.
"No, I'm but a traveler."
"A traveler as unprepared as you? Out here? Yeah, I doubt that."
"Well..."
He didn't really know what to say, he was worried that if he said something wrong he would be kicked out again.
"It doesn't matter, at least you don't seem like a bad person. Come, I think you might need something to eat."
Oh, it seemed this lady was truly a kind person. With a "thank you." he followed her into small room to the left of the entrance hallway. There was a table and a few chairs in the middle of the room, in the corner there was a small fireplace where a pot was standing and there was another slightly taller table in another corner.
On the table in the middle of the room there was a basket with a few bits of bread in it. Leon was told to sit down and wait a bit, and so he did.
The house seemed quite cramped, but it also had a cozy atmosphere, a heaven compared to the hell outside.
Leon was served a bowl of some sort of soup consisting mostly of vegetables, though the stock didn't really taste much more than water, the vegetables were really delicious. Once again, Leon was surprised at the realism of the system.
The older woman sat on the opposite side of the table, and the two started talking about a few different topics. Leon was asked about how he got here, and he told the woman the full story. At the same time he asked the woman questions about the creatures of this island, and how she had survived here.
"Well... I mostly stay inside. You see, I'm a caretaker of the underground tunnels."
That was the response he got out of her for the surviving part.
"There's also that, I have a few copies so you can have one. Wait here for a bit."
She walked of somewhere and he could hear her rummaging through something in a room on the upper floor of the house.
"Here you go."
The woman came back with a small book wrapped in a leather cover. The book seemed almost unused, and at what he found inside he was very surprised.
On the first page there was a very basic map of the island, showing the locations of not only rivers and houses like the one he was currently in, but also a small village on the complete opposite side of the island from where he had arrived.
On the other pages, there were different descriptions for making traps as well as pictures of different weird animals as well as descriptions of their weaknesses and strengths.
The book seemed to be an 'Island Survival Guide', which was great for Leon as he definitely would need a guide to survive in a place like this. Still... It seemed almost all creatures on this island were above level 30, the horned rabbit he had met before was one of the weakest creatures.
He shivered at the thought of the stronger creatures on this island.
"Well, is there anything you need help with?"
For now though, he had a different priority. He was the sort of man who would never let himself be in debt to anyone, he needed to pay people back as soon as possible.
"Well, I don't really know..."
The woman seemed to be in deep thought.
"Ah, there is that! I've got a rat infestation problem in the tunnels, and I'm having problems clearing it out because of how many there are. But I'm sure a young man like you would have no trouble with it, right?"
"Of course, I can help."
Leon smiled at the woman, this would be his first job in the game.
Quest Accepted: Rat Extermination
Objective: Kill 2000 rats Current: 0/2000
Reward: ???
"Two...Two thousand?"
"Maybe, there might be more."
She still smiled at him.
"Alright..."
For some reason he felt like he was being used, but she had already helped him a lot.
It wasn't like there was anything else he could really do here so this might be for the best.
"I have a storage room just upstairs, there's rat poison and a bunch of other things there, feel free to use whatever you like."
She handed him a key and showed him to a room on the upper floor. There were multiple large bags made from cloth here, each filled with a type of purple powder. There was a piece of paper on each bag as well, describing the effects of the poison.
Other than that there were multiple old broken metal object in the room, and all sorts of other things.
"Alright, I might as well get to work."
Leon rolled up his sleeves as he got ready for the hard work ahead of him.