Chapter 5: Brand new style
Three days later.
At noon, 12 hours before Skyroad went live, we gathered around a laptop. I got to work and personally registered our studio. There were two types of team allowed in Skyroad. The first type was the studio with 4 – 10 members. To encourage team play, members of the same studio would gain 3% additional EXP when playing together.
The second type was the squad with 10 – 50 members. The bonus EXP was only 2%. Although the bonus was lower, the benefit of a squad was the ease with which the players could be organized. This would be helpful for the larger group of players during the early game before they got the guild creation token. They would exist in the form of multiple squads before their guild was created in game.
I entered the studio registration interface and entered our information. Next, the system prompted me to enter the name of the studio.
“What should we name our studio?” Lin Che sank into thought.
“Ushering in Wealth and Prosperity. A simple and lucky name.” w.a.n.g Jinhai suggested.
I shook my head, “No way. This name would be way too embarra.s.sing when we become big in the future. With how high we are ranked in the arena, it will be a disappointment if we don’t have a good name.”
“Yeah.” Lin Che smiled, “Although our studio is small with only four members, one of us is a king-rank, two of us are grandmaster-ranks, and the other guy is a super meat shield. In the entirety of the national server, how many studios with such a lineup can you find?”
Zhang Wei coughed, “Screw you, Little Che. Am I the super meat shield you spoke of?”
“Yeap.” Lin Che answered honestly.
w.a.n.g Jinhai interrupted, “Back to the topic. What should we name our studio?”
I gave it a thought and said, “Chosen. How about this name? A studio founded by the chosen ones. This name is good enough even after we make it big in the future. We can use this name as our banner right away.”
“I second this name.” Lin Che nodded in agreement.
Zhang Wei laughed, “I agree as well.”
“Name accepted.” After entering “Chosen” in the interface, a new window popped up. The system was requesting for the username of the captain. Without thinking about it, I entered “Hopeful Present”.
“Wait a moment…”
w.a.n.g Jinhai was astounded, “Don’t we need to take a vote to decide who will be the boss?”
Lin Che laughed, “The strongest one will be the boss. Big Brother Chen being our boss is a done deal. Besides, even Lu Chen himself once said that Ding Muchen was the most balanced player among the five greatest national tacticians. Do you think you’re a more suitable boss than Big Brother Chen?
“Fine…”
Although w.a.n.g Jinhai was only a top 50 Gunman in the national server, he was already one of the strongest at Suzhou and the Qiuli District. He was used to being alone at the top all this while. After joining the studio, he was relegated to become the number two or even number three. He was finding it hard to adapt to this new position. Unfortunately, he could do nothing about it. Lin Che was indeed ranked higher than him. As for me, my rank was even higher than Lin Che. He had no choice but to accept this.
Di!
The notebook beeped to indicate that the registration was completed. All four of us received a notification on our phones informing us that we were now part of the Chosen Studio within Skyroad. Now, everything was ready.
We hung out at the studio lounge and started surfing the web while waiting for Skyroad to go live. Sitting by the window, I started browsing the official forum with my laptop. Several stickied threads in red font were at the top of the forum. These threads had ama.s.sed an incredible amount of views.
[Sticky] The three kings of Dragonslayers, Zhu Yingluan, Shen Ziwu, and Lie Fengying are entering Skyroad with Zhu Yingluan as the leader – Thread starter: Number One a.s.sistant
[Sticky] The Legendary heroes, Gui Guzi, Bei Mingxue and the other elite members of Ancient Sword are entering Skyroad together – Thread starter: Number One a.s.sistant
[Sticky] Lin Tu is leading the main lineup of Silverfox into Skyroad – Thread starter: Number One a.s.sistant
Numerous news were posted on the forums. Most of them were discussing the migration of the many well-known teams into Skyroad. One could say that the hype of Skyroad had reached an unprecedented level. Many old guilds were returning for the sake of this game. New guilds were appearing one after another as well. In the span of a few days, more than ten million squads had been registered. All the players were waiting eagerly to start their new journey to domination.
These red threads were all posted by one of the forum moderator called Number One a.s.sistant. I had no idea who this person was. This person was probably an employee at Yueheng. Otherwise, this person wouldn’t be so dedicated in doing this.
Yueheng Corporation was behaving very strangely this time. Skyroad was going live at 12:00 am. They seemed to be intending to drive everyone in the gaming world crazy tonight. Many people were waiting for 12:00 am to arrive. I forced my team members to have some porridge as dinner and go back to our respective rooms to rest after setting up the alarm clock. We would all wake up sharp at 11:30 pm to go online and wait for the game to go live.
I returned to my room and fell asleep the moment my head landed on the pillow. I slept soundly. The moment the alarm sounded, my brain became wide awake. After dressing up, I picked up my helmet and rushed to the lounge. Everyone was already there waiting in excitement.
“Go online.”
I reminded them, “Don’t be in a rush to leave after getting into the game. Remember our usernames and add everyone into your friend list before waiting for my command. We don’t have to rush our level. Let’s see how things are before we do anything.”
“Ok!”
Everyone nodded. When I logged on, the fairy a.s.sistant leapt out and smiled widely, “Master, you’re here!”
“Yeah.”
I raised my head and looked at the countdown timer. Since there were 30 minutes left, I waited silently. While waiting, I moved my in game character around to get a feel at the difference between this game and the other games. Before long, I discovered that the character control was much smoother in this game.
It was as if my consciousness had been perfectly synched with my in game character, with my brain wave having perfect control over everything. As time pa.s.sed, I reaffirmed the goal in my mind: To lead everyone and make money in game. To never let down the trust my brothers had given me.
When there were only 10 seconds left on the countdown timer, the entire world around me seemed to start opening up.
A melodious female voice sounded in my ears. This was the voice of the system:
“A long time had pa.s.sed since the fall of the Yueheng Continent. The world had since changed. New overlords had appeared in the jungles while the human population continued growing, sowing seeds of life on their homeland. After the battle of the five dragons, a brand new empire had appeared on the continent called the Skyroad Continent. This empire was the Great Xia Empire.
The people of the empire lived off the land, working honestly thorough the seasons, continuing life on this continent. Numerous ambitious adventurers have now arrived to start a brand new chapter for this world.”
Whoosh!
Then, I formally entered the game and arrived at the newbie village. All around me, numerous other Horseman players were arriving one after another. Standing before us was a Horseman pulling along a horse with a sword in his hand. He raised the eyebrow on his pockmarked face and sneered, “Brats, you are still not qualified to call yourself a Horseman. Go train yourself. Come see me when you are strong enough!”
Was this the Horseman Trainer? Although he looked fierce, he is quite ugly as well! While I wallowed in disappointment, my character completed the arrival process with my feet finally stepping firmly on the ground. My surroundings were filled with crowd. It was said that there were 10 thousand newbie villages in our country alone. Based on the amount of registered players, every newbie village was holding several thousand players. Therefore, the newbie villages would definitely be packed full with people. Killing monsters would be hard as during the early game, the number of players would definitely surpa.s.s the number of monsters around the newbie village.
I looked down at my own body. I was wearing a shabby chest armor and a shabby leg armor, both with +1 defense on them. Apart from that, I also had a wooden sword with attack range of 1 – 1. This was the newbie equipment for Horseman players. These were gray equipments, the worst equipment in the game. I then checked my character stats. What I saw was quite sad as well.
Hopeful Present (Probationary Horseman)
Level: 1
Attack: 3 – 4
Defense: 3
HP: 100
MP: 100/100
Luck: 0
Great accomplishment: 0
Power rating: 5
There’s a power rating in this game? This starting power rating must be an example of how a trash player with low power would look like. Although I was wearing a shabby set of equipment, my heart was filled with valor. Because of this contradiction, I suddenly felt like I resemble a wild youngster that was about to single-handedly battle the heavens.
Before doing anything, I opened my friend list and added Lin Che and the others. Soon, Cold Autumn Waters, Headshot, and Shaolin Number One appeared on my friend list. All of them were currently level 1. I then contacted them using the voice chat, “Leave the cla.s.s trainers and get into the newbie village. Walk away from the village chief. Let’s meet up at the blacksmith.”
There were too many people here. I had to squeeze myself through the crowd. With great difficulty, I got out of the cla.s.s district and saw that the distant village chief was already surrounded by a huge crowd. A ma.s.sive amount of lively players were pushing at each other trying to get ahead. Some of them had already exited the newbie village. A certain level 1 Swordsman shouted loudly in excitement, “Brothers! Charge! We will be halfway to victory if we can leave before the others. Go and conquer the level 1 zone!”
More than a hundred people charged out with him. The scene of them charging felt like a major guild war. This Swordsman was probably the leader of some guild. It wouldn’t be easy for a person to muster such a crowd.
I ignored them and maintained my calm. After rushing to the blacksmith, I found that the blacksmith was indeed an uncle. A thick beard filled his face, his muscular arms looked vigorous, and a well-defined six packs could be seen on his abs. He was holding a hammer with a devilish smile on his face.
“Boss!”
Soon, a Gunman named Headshot walked over to me. It’s w.a.n.g Jinhai. He was also wearing a set of shabby equipments. Without saying anything, I invited him into the party. Instantly, a small suffix saying “Chosen” in a gold font appeared behind our names. That was the name of our studio. With this, we would have a bonus of +3% in our EXP gain. It was a small amount, yet it was better than nothing.
Subsequently, Lin Che and Zhang Wei arrived. One of them was dressed like a Daoist priest while the other was dressed like a Buddhist monk. This was indeed how the Talisman Master and Monk would look like. Since Zhang Wei had a different race, he had a faint golden glow around his body, signifying that he was a legendary demiG.o.d. Of course, he was currently a noob demiG.o.d.
“Do we leave the village and kill monsters immediately?” Lin Che asked.
“No rush.”
I initiated the blacksmith dialog and rushed through it to reach the purchase interface. He was selling all sorts of early game equipments. With a single glance, I noticed a shield with a metallic glow around it called the Thicket Steel Shield. This was a white equipment. The equipment rarity in Skyroad was cla.s.sified as white, bronze, steel, silver, gold, and so on.
This shield was a white equipment, one of the weakest in game and was only slightly better than newbie equipments. However, it had a terrifying stat of defense +8 on it. This stat was something newbies could only dream of. Naturally, it was not cheap with a selling price of 50 silver coins. Each newbie were only given 10 copper coins when they entered the game. Even if 100 newbies were to pool up their money, they still wouldn’t be able to afford this shield.
“Time to take a gamble.” I muttered.
“Gam…gamble? Lin Che and w.a.n.g Jinhai was puzzled.
I smiled, “Come. Sell all your newbie equipments and give me the money.”
“What?” Lin Che was surprised, “Big Brother Chen, what are you trying to do?”
I explained, “I’m planning to buy some protective equipment so that we can charge out of the low level zones. With this, we can start hunting the higher level monsters before anyone else and stay one step ahead of others. This is the best way for us to level. Or else, we would have to do what everyone is doing. It will be hard for us to stay ahead of others doing that.”
“Ok, I understand.”
Lin Che had a great game sense. He immediately sold everything on him. Even his cloth leg guard and magic sword was sold. Shortly after, he gave me 30 copper coins. w.a.n.g Jinhai and Zhang Wei were hesitating and only gave me their copper coins after 10 seconds. I had one silver coin on me now. However, this was still far from enough to buy the Ticket Steel Shield that was priced at 50 silver coins.
But then, Ling’er was the fairy a.s.sistant provided by the system. She would not say what she said for no reason. As such, this gamble was worth taking! As the saying goes, with a gamble, a bicycle might turn into a motorcycle! One must always have a dream!
I spent 50 copper coins and bought a gray staff. Then, I sold it to the blacksmith with 80% the original price. Then, I bought it from the blacksmith again and repeated what I did for three times.
Clang!
With a clang, the prices within the blacksmith’s interface changed. The Thicket Steel Shield had the greatest change. It had dropped all the way to 50 copper coins from 50 silver coins. As for the trash equipments that used to cost several dozen copper coins, they were now priced at several dozen gold coins. My heart nearly stopped beating. It had actually worked!
This muscular uncle blacksmith was indeed bad at numbers! Time to buy! I would be undefeated in the newbie village!