Chương 1: Your Gear Is Rent Money

Magma sprayed from Oblivara's greatsword onto the trees behind as the giant knight [Swung] at me. The blade slashed with superhuman force, but its trajectory was predictable. I ducked underneath. My muscles were tested to their limits, but I managed to dodge with simple movement alone, no special skills required. No, I didn't use [Dodge]. That would have left the fight up to chance. I dodged by actually moving out of the way like one would in real life. My opponent was a semi-famous livestreamer, Oblivara.

He was the top 63rd player on the global leaderboard, and a member of Nova Imperium, clad in a full set of best-in-slot magma wyvern's gear. His breastplate alone tripled the stats of my full set. More importantly, he was livestreaming right now. Over ten thousand viewers were present to watch their favorite streamer get assassinated live. The clip of Oblivara getting outplayed by an unknown low-ranked player in uncommon trash gear would spark quite the stir on the forums. Assuming I somehow won, that was.

A death in-game now could send me couch hopping in real life. And considering everyone I knew in real life called me an idiot for turning a videogame into my full time job, I wasn't exactly keen on losing. Oblivara continued [Swinging] at me. The swings flowed in a rhythmic dance as he cast an attack every time it came off cooldown. [Swing] was essentially a system-assisted basic attack. Upon activating it, the system took control of the player's hands and performed a powerful swing for the player.

The feature existed both to let new players understand the game quicker, and to help more experienced players keep up with the insane pace of lategame combat. I always found it amusing how even most top players used [Swing], but I had to admit, Oblivara was good at using the system. His stance was solid enough that the system rewarded him for his footwork. Each slash of his sword came inhumanely fast. I'd be ripped apart if the sword as much as grazed my skin.

His swings were powerful, but the system assisted [Swings] were easy as hell to read. I leaned to the left, dodging, and for good measure, I threw a few assisted [Thrusts] of my own to taunt him. My attacks did nothing other than scrape a few durability points off from my shitty uncommon daggers as they collided powerlessly against his armor. He was growing annoyed with my weaving, though. Soon, he was bound to do something stupid. I watched his stance carefully. Specifically, I watched his left leg.

As expected, it came. His left leg lowered, and he held his sword for a powerful blow: the wind-up animation for [Magma Whirlwind]. One of the more powerful skills his class could cast. Not half a second later, his sword slashed in a powerful whirlwind all around him, spraying magma in the surrounding forest. By that time, I was long in the air, having jumped. Oblivara reacted immediately, as if he'd already expected exactly that. To his credit, he was a top player and a sharp fighter.

He cast another [Swing] to kill me mid-air. His sword cut the shadowed figure to misty dust, and it disintegrated. Too bad, you fell for it, I thought as I immediately dashed forward with my real body. That was just an afterimage. Oblivara required a moment to register what had happened. I used his hesitation for a counter-attack. I gripped my dagger tight, and without any system assisted nonsense, I drove it deep into the visor of Oblivara's helmet, piercing a dagger straight through his startled brain.

A loud slash followed as the system gave me the most satisfying reward in the whole game: the death sound effect. Oblivara's hands went limp. The system notifications poured in. [You slayed an opponent over fifty levels stronger than you! Experience gain increased by 1465%!] [You leveled up!] [You leveled up!] I retrieved my dagger. My chest pounded. The adrenaline rush was already kicking in. Holy shit. I'd actually killed Oblivara. I could pay rent this month. I wasn't a useless member of society.

I immediately looted all of his drops. Everything moved straight into my weightless inventory, while my thoughts raced like all hell. This very feeling in my chest was the reason why Wonderwind was my favourite game of all time. The game was realistic. Despite all the magic and skills in the game, Wonderwind followed simple rules of real life. It didn't matter how many levels above my opponents were; if I managed to drive a dagger through their eyeballs, they were dead. Fatal hits were actually fatal.

By actually knowing how to wield daggers instead of relying on [Thrusts], I'd sliced countless player throats for easy one-shots. When I finished looting, shouts were coming from the forest.

"Did Ob disconnect?" a man called. It looked like my time was up. I activated [Stealth (Level Ten)] and [Conceal Footsteps] and dipped into the forest. While doing so, I swapped outfits. I took off my main cloak "Oblique Transcendence." The cloak was an epic unique, arguably my only good item, but its stats wouldn't save me from an onslaught of top players. I replaced it with a good old cosmetic camouflage forest coat. For the situation, camouflage would give me much higher chances of survival.

"He's fucking dead!" a voice called, finding the looted corpse.

"Ob got killed!"

"Anne, the wall!" another ordered.

"He just died!" Anne, their support mage cast a spell, and suddenly, a globe of frozen crystals formed around the forest. Sunlight was blocked. The previously green forest turned ice-blue and dungeon-like, everything inside freezing. Shit, I thought. The crystal-wall blocked my escape. I had hoped I wouldn't have to deal with this spell, but I was too late to escape outside it. [Crystal Prison] cast a globe around its caster, trapping everything in the surroundings inside.

The walls were too tough for my daggers to break. I'd need to hide until the spell ran out. Luckily, it only lasted for two minutes. I reached into my inventory and swapped my forest camouflage back to my main cloak. Then I climbed up to the trees, the branches of which now provided the darkest place to hide.

"Search around!" the man yelled. His tag read [Nova Imperium] MartinWind. He was the guild's co-leader and a top one hundred dread knight player on the global leaderboard. The woman he'd called Anne was a support mage with the nametag [Nova Imperium] Solace145. She was somewhere within the top two hundred. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. More players followed—all full-time gamers, just like me.

Though unlike me, these guys could call themselves wealthy in real life. Everyone had insane price tags attached to their gear. They continued searching below me using all sorts of illumination skills. Another mage cast [Detect Movement], which didn't help, considering I was sitting perfectly still on a branch. The only reason I wasn't immediately found was because of my [Stealth] skill. It made my character invisible to those whose perception stat was lower than mine.

So in other words, pretty much everyone in Nova Imperium here could see through the spell, considering everyone was much higher level than me. [Stealth] had an important side-effect, though. It hid my health bar and my nametag, as well as any other game-created special effects from around my body. With stealth-active, I looked like any regular human in real life—camoflauged. My heart was about to explode. Holy shit. I had actually killed Oblivara. And alongside that, I stole a piece of his gear.

I glanced into my inventory. The contents were flooded with the loot I'd picked up from Oblivara's corpse. Mostly just health potions with a few rare runes mixed in. Each rune one was worth about thirty dollars a piece. I scanned the contents for the important bit: his gear piece. When a player died in the wilderness, two harsh punishments took place. First, the player was timed out from logging in for two hours. That to ensure that if a player was killed during a large-scale fight, they couldn't just rejoin.

And generally, the death timeout added stakes to the game. The second punishment was what I cared about. A dead player dropped a piece of equipped gear for other players to steal. The drop was entirely random. That bit of randomness would decide whether my kill today granted me five hundred dollars or five thousand dollars. If Oblivara's sword had dropped, I could not only sell it for rent money, I could also upgrade my laggy piece of trash virtual headset for a full game-pod.

I kept scanning my inventory, expecting to find a giant breastplate or a sword, or at least a pair of magma wyvern gauntlets, something that took a lot of inventory space. Finally, I spotted the gear piece that had dropped. It wasn't large at all. In fact, it only took a single square of inventory space. A ring. I examined the item.

Ring of Iron Legacy Item Type: Epic Ring (Unique) Required Character Level: 193 Stats: +490 Attack Force +15% All Resistances +50% Potion Effectiveness Abilities: Iron Legacy (Passive): Resistance To Armor Penetration Effects by 30% I stared at the stats blankly. God dammit, I thought. The ring would have been an upgrade to my defensive stats, but I literally couldn't equip it. My character was severely underleveled at 183—still higher than 95% of the playerbase, but compared to top players, I was a fly.

For reference, Oblivara was level 243. Assassinating top players took a lot of time—tracking, preparing, executing. Good kills were rare and far in between. I didn't have enough time to hunt monsters, leaving me perpetually underleveled. There was nothing notable about the ring. It was a unique epic, sure, but the effects were all pure stats with absolutely nothing game-changing. All that this piece of shit ring did was give tank players a slight stats buff. Oblivara had dropped me a fucking stat stick ring.

As for its monetary worth… nobody would buy it for more than a hundred dollars. A hundred and fifty at most if someone specifically required the passive armor penetration resistance for their build, which I found unlikely. Normies would say that a hundred dollars was an insane price for an item from a video game. Other players told me that it went against the heart of the game to trade items for real world money. Perhaps both were right.

But fact was, rent cost thirteen hundred dollars, not including electricity and everything else required for my body to not die. Nova Imperium's members continued running about, trying to find me. I still needed to actually escape. If I died, I'd lose gear of my own, as well as everything in my inventory, including the ring that I couldn't equip due to the level requirement. The ring wasn't enough. I couldn't pay for anything at all with it.

"They're gone!" MartinWind called.

"Anne, call off the wall!"

"Yes!" Solace145 responded. Her character and nametag were pretty much right underneath me. She focused on her spell, both hands firmly holding her golden staff. A staff I'd seen on the auction for over two thousand dollars. I need more! I thought. In a split second decision, I gripped my dagger and threw it straight at Solace145's neck. A cling sounded as my dagger hit her protective barrier. The barrier shattered, leaving the mage unprotected. I threw my second dagger.

She reacted with miraculous instincts, blocking the dagger with her staff. I gritted my teeth and used [Recall Daggers]. Both weapons appeared back on my hands as I pounced. She flicked the glowing orb of her staff up at me with speed and precision. Runic incantations formed the spell. The color was red, indicating an offensive fire spell, and the triangular shapes told me it was probably a [Firebolt]. I activated [Shadow Dash]. My vision blurred for a fraction of a second as the skill did what the name implied.

It was a simple dash skill to let me flee to my desired direction. I dashed to the left. By the time my vision returned, I saw that the fiery staff was still aimed directly at me. In a rush, I raised my daggers, blocking direct impact, but the heat of the flames hit me in the chest. The system alarmed me that I'd taken a critical hit.

[Oblique Transcendence - Blood Desperation Active Conditions Met] [Straight Attacks Are 100% More Effective When Under 40% Health] My health fell to 20% just by blocking a support mage's spell. No surprises there considering the level difference. I was more impressed by the fact that the spell had landed at all. You're good, I thought, grinning. You predicted my dash. But you don't have time for another spell!

I dashed for her throat, and I probably had less than five seconds to kill her before her teammates arrived. She raised her staff and blocked my first dagger. I thrust with the second, and she twisted the angle of her staff, blocking that as well. She didn't use [Block]. Oh wow, I thought. She's actually good. But she was still a support mage in melee combat, locked only in defence with no chances to cast spells. My third attack slipped past her staff, landing a clean hit in the shoulder. Her footing faltered.

I left my first dagger there and grabbed my second with two hands, thrusting it at her throat. A mad grin escaped, knowing I had her. Until my movements paused mid-air, flickering. My vision froze, everything stopping in place, as if my brain had disconnected. I immediately knew what happened. It was lag. No! I thought. Not now, useless fucking headset! Sensations returned half a second later and I saw my dagger had been blocked. I gritted my teeth and desperately advanced forward, slashing wildly.

The lag persisted; I couldn't aim at all. She blocked easily. In my laggy stupor, I headbutted her. I kicked, slashed, throwing everything I had at her. I was severely underleveled, but each attack had their power doubled by my cloak's Blood Desperation. In a dizzying low framerate, I could see her footing faltering. Then I used [Thrust]. The system performed a perfect thrust for me, two hands on the dagger. Lag did not matter, as I had no control of my character's movements.

I could only pray that she was thrown off enough for the dagger to land. Slash. [You slayed an opponent over fifty levels stronger than you! Experience gain increased by 1367%!] [You leveled up!] My screen was entirely frozen. All I could see was the system notification. My virtual headset, this piece of garbage useless shit ass cheap trash headset, had to die now. I heard another slash, this time an echoing one, followed by more system notifications. [You have died.] [Experience Progress Reduced by 54%] [Gear Piece Lost.] [Character Time-out Remaining: 1: 59] [Logging out…] The headset lost connection, and I woke up in the real world.