Starting from Zero

Chapter 6 – Leveling up! Leveling up!

After receiving the potions and leaving Medicine King’s shop, I immediately headed out of the city, watch out monsters, here I come! I first looked at the current rankings leaderboard. The style had changed a bit as a few more stats were included now.

Ranking Leaderboard

(TLN: This chart killed me… )

Seeing the levels of others and then looking at my own pitiful level of 29 was depressing. I took out the leveling map Medicine King had forced upon me as I left his shop, it was actually really useful! This wasn’t your ordinary map, the map showed where the Lost City was and all of it’s surrounding areas. It even listed the top mobs to level with, what level they were and their characteristics.

Following the route marked on the map, I made my way to the valley behind the Lost City. It took almost the whole morning to reach the mouth of the valley, along the way, I greeted the wife and families of those from the Lost City! Since the city only had one exit and was built on a lake, I was forced to run all the way around the lake to get to where I needed to go. When I get home, i’ll have my mom curse out whoever designed this d.a.m.n city!

According to the map, this valley was called the Dark Canyon and it was rumoured that all the spirits that did not want to reside within the Lost City ended up staying here. Medicine King had told me that the mob density here was high and they also resp.a.w.ned pretty fast. The most important fact was that the mobs level increased the further you ventured and due to the high level difference, it was the perfect place to level up.

I walked into the canyon alertly,after walking a mile, I still hadn’t encountered anything. Could that feeble Medicine King have tricked me?

Walking further into the canyon, I discovered the flickering of a figure’s shadow in the distance. Forging onwards, I found the shadow’s origin. It’s body looked like a corpsethe stench of it’s decomposing body made you want to throw up. Did the developers have nothing better to do, but to make it so realistic. Putting on my leveling mentality, I ignored the stench and rushed up to him. Thinking about it, it was quite strange, I extremely loved grinding levels in games, but other people that played hated the grind. To me, grinding levels was very pleasurable.

I aimed at the Zombie and slashed at it, instantly killed? How’s it so weak? Another one not too far away stumbled over, this time I used Identify to check it’s stats. It only took one try to succeed, since my Identify was already level 4. The stats looked like this:

No wonder it was so easy to kill, it was only level 30. My character had abnormally high attack stats that would frighten people, that’s why one-shotting monsters around the same level was to be expected.

I directed another slash towards the oncoming Zombie. It stopped for bit but didn’t die, I quickly slashed at it again to kill it. Looks like my attack isn’t high enough to guarantee one shots every time!

Soon after killing the two Zombies, a third one quickly appeared. Turned out Medicine King’s map was accurate, this monster density and sp.a.w.n times were perfect for solo leveling (Not taking into account the smell!). The Zombies took around one slash to kill, only 1 or 2 out of every 10 took 2 hits. After about two hours, I had already hit level 35, leveling here was so fast!

Considering my frightening attack damage, I started making my way deeper into the canyon, killing zombies on the way, while walking. A zombie appeared beside me, I slashed at it like usual but it didn’t die. A second slash but it was still running towards me! I suddenly realised this was not an ordinary zombie, using Identify, .different information appeared.

Turns out it was higher level, no wonder I couldn’t kill it with 2 attacks! I ran behind it and attacked again. While watching him slowly turn around, I stuck behind him and kept attacking. It took 4-8 slashes until it finally died! A clinking sounded out as two silver coins dropped onto the ground! Haha, It gave a lot more money than those rotten ones!

After pushing forwards a considerable amount, I was quite tired, so I found a cliff and then logged off. Taking off the helmet, I glanced at the time… It was already 3 in the afternoon. Realizing Ah Wei wasn’t home, I ate something, went to the toilet and then wore the helmet to continue! Upon logging in, I found myself being surrounded by a group of zombies, thirty feet away! Fortunately some had their backs facing me while some other ones were just wandering around. I casually slipped in between a few of them, getting away due to their slow reaction time.

While killing, I suddenly remembered that I should also help Lucky gain a few levels. In the future, it’ll be easy for it to help me level and PvP. With a thought, Lucky popped up in front of me, he then flew over into my embrace and gently rubbed against my shirt. “Lucky, you need to work hard and level now, or else no one will take you seriously with such a low level!” Come, let’s take these ugly fellows out!”

It seemed that Lucky understood what I had said, it flew onto my shoulder, while it’s two little claws pinched my shoulder. Then it released a small ball of fire that flew towards the nearest zombie. Bang. A charred zombie appeared in front of me except it did not seem to have sustained any damage. Seeing that it’s fireball was not effective, Lucky pitifully lowered his head. I gently patted it’s little head, “Don’t be sad, the evil and ugly monster is level 40, how can your small fireb.a.l.l.s hurt them, you’re only level 1!”

After my encouragement, Lucky looked more motivated. Preparing to attack, instead of only one fireball, it shot out an entire row of them! I was going to faint! The casting speed for spell was frighteningly high for Dragons! Lucky’s fired more b.a.l.l.s of fire as if they had no cooldown. One fireball after another shot out like a machinegun. In the span of 10 seconds, the helpless zombie was. .h.i.t at least 20 something times, turning into a pile of ash. Even the 3 silver coins it was supposed to drop was nowhere to be seen!

Seeing that the zombie had been burnt to ashes, Lucky cheerfully danced on my shoulders. A prompt from the system followed suite:

Congratulations! Your Pet is now level 5!

Feeling the weight on my shoulders increase, Lucky had grown larger. It was orinally about a foot in length from head to tail but it now grew to one metre in length! My G.o.d, at this rate he’d grow into the size of a small hill!

As I was lost in my thoughts, another zombie came wandering over. Lucky swiftly rushed up and clawed the zombie, one shotting it! Another prompt appeared:

Congratulations! Your Pet is now level 8!

Lucky was now about 5 meters long!

While I was still in shock, Lucky displayed his superhuman speed, shuttling back and forth between the cluttered zombies. The endless amount of system prompts rang in my ear until I finally reacted and shouted: “Stop Lucky! Quickly return!”

Lucky stretched it’s immense 5 meter wings spam and jumped in front of me. It looked at me for praise while showing off it’s huge body in front of me. My goodness, with a tiny amount of effort Lucky was already level 36. Due to the shared experience, I had also grown to level 36. Lucky had now grown to the same size as when I first met him, his size being similar to a bus. In addition, his entire body was covered with shiny polished black scales!

“You’re so violent!” I said while stroking Lucky’s head, “In the future, although you will level really fast, you must keep this a secret from outsiders! If others learned that you were such a strong Pet, they’d definitely try to steal you away!”

( had a system where Pets could be s.n.a.t.c.hed from their owners. If the loyalty of pet exceeded 80, the chances of it being stolen was smaller than 10,000 to 1, but if the loyalty exceeded 95, then it would be impossible.)

Hearing what I said, Lucky used his claws and hugged me while making whining sounds, “Ahhh, quickly let me go, you’re going to kill me!” Lucky promptly let go of me, I sat down on the floor fuming angrily, “Your size isn’t a problem and so is your strength, but you can’t hug me like that next time!”

Lucky then vigorously nodded it’s head very fast.