Karas checked his inventory, there are no weapons, no gears, just five pieces of bread.
“Uh… hey, does anyone know what we’ll do now?”
“I don’t really know, but we have no NPCs to start a quest or get any pieces of information from…”
“Oh, if it isn’t Young Master Han.”
“Young master Nah, it’s you.”
Almost all of the people playing the game are from the middle class and above, the game only had around a hundred thousand players from the start, it only escalated to ten million after a year.
And most of the people playing are those that have the ability to purchase the capsule at the starting price.
50,000 gis is enough to purchase a low-quality house in the 4th level of a tier 3 country, hence, such wealth is actually too much for most people. After a year though, the price will drop to 10,000 gis, causing massive numbers of players to join in on the fun.
Karas ignored them, after all, he couldn’t really take his guard down yet.
[Safezone will be gone in one minute…59 seconds…
58 seconds…
Hearing this, everyone that was chatting suddenly panicked, Karas frowned, he calmed himself and looked at the surrounding.
There, he found three round metal bars sticking out from the house’s foundation, he immediately held two and started pulling them out.
“What’s the guy doing?”
“I don’t know, but if the safe zone will vanish… wouldn’t that mean that there’s a chance that monsters will also appear?”
“……………”
Everyone was silent for a while before sweat started to appear all over their head(mentally), they immediately looked for anything they can use as a weapon.
“Bro, let’s take one each, me and my brother can help you out as well.” A young man started to help Karas pull out the round iron bar, and soon enough they pulled the three round iron bars completely. There is also an adult fist-sized debris attached to the end of it.
[Round Iron Bar HammerLevel requirement: 0
Damage: 2~12]
15…
14…
13…
Karas then started to look around, and found some bent PVC, he immediately equipped it and couldn’t help but smile wryly.
[PVC GauntletsLevel requirement: 0
Def: 2]
Seeing him, everyone nodded into a realization: “Right, we need shield as well, or at the very least two weapons!”
In Karas’s case, he has a gauntlet, but he remembered that any part of the body can be used for both attack and defense.
0…
[Safezone deactivated.]Soon as the system’s voice vanished, beasts started to appear from everywhere, dogs, cats, birds, even insects are included, only, they are at the size of a normal dog. Although there are birds,
[Bristling DogLevel: 1
HP: 15/15] [Ferocious Cat
Level: 1
HP:8/8] [Armored Mantis
Level: 1
HP:18/18] [Dirty Rat
Level: 1
HP: 7/7] [Granite Ant
Level: 0
HP: 4/4]
Seeing all of this, the tense atmosphere started to cool down as one of them even started to laugh.
“Hahaha, that’s it?”
“Woah, hooo! I was nervous for nothing!”
“D*mn, to think I was scared for a bit.”
Only Karas remained tense because he knew something immediately.
[KarasLevel: 0
HP: 14/14]
The beasts are looking at them like they are looking at their prey, not even as an enemy!
Karas shouted: “Idiots! We’re weaker than them!”
Someone was about to laugh at Karas, but before he could, a dog jumped at him: “W-what the… HELP! HELP! ACK! IT HURTS!”
And this is when the one week of hell started.
On the manual, there is a really big phrase, a warning for all players that will play it, and that is…
[YOU WILL RECEIVE 5% OF THE TOTAL PAIN YOU’LL BE INFLICTED WITHIN THE GAME IN REAL LIFE.]
It was emboldened so much that it’s extremely hard to miss, and as one logged in, they were also warned.
Everyone’s body froze on the spot, but that wasn’t the end there, with a beast starting, the others followed as well.
More than a thousand beasts against three thousand players.
It should’ve been a hide and seek, it would’ve lasted for half a day, but Karas wasn’t new to it, without any hesitation, he rushed towards one of the cats: “Stand up and fight, this must be the newbie section, we definitely outnumber them two to one!”
As he shouted, he slammed his weapon towards the cat using a wide swing. The cat jumped back to dodge, immediately, two more cats appeared and attacked Karas as the first cat followed as well.
Karas felt annoyed, he immediately stopped and started doing his combat skills: “Come at me you pu*sies!”
Seeing him fight three cats alone, a few clenched their fists tightly: “F*ck! It’s just a few pinches of pain, kill them all!”
“Yeah! Just a bunch of weak beasts, let’s show them who’s at the top of the food pyramid!”
Just like that, a few hundreds of them stood their ground, but still, cries of pain and agony surfaced everywhere as chaos continued.
What Karas had displayed was only seen by at least a thousand, yet, not even half of them stood and to fight.
But that was enough for Karas, at the very least, he didn’t need to fight alone.
Then, it wasn’t noticed by Karas himself, but the ones that stood their ground are starting to move towards him, it’s slow, but surely, they are.
Five minutes into fighting, Karas managed to kill six cats, four rats, and a dog.
[You’ve leveled up!]Karas smiled, but he knew that it’s not the end of it, he has no time to relax. It’s like being plunged in the middle of a battle without any preparation.
As many players are dying, there are also those that are just logging in, chaos continued to increase further.
Karas couldn’t help but frown as he looked back, there are about two hundred behind him, he couldn’t help but be shocked.
“D*mn, I’m level one just from killing a few cats.”
“I’m almost about to level as well, the monsters are spawning far from us now.”
“It was only five minutes, but we managed to fight it out, it felt like an hour though.”
Karas was speechless, when did these people follow him? No wonder no more monsters appeared beside him.
All of them looked at Karas when they managed to rest for a bit, they can see a few thousands of people still at the spawning spot fighting for their lives, and they are here alive because of fighting together with Karas.
It felt that they can survive if they follow this person, hence, they followed subconsciously.
“Uh… what are you all doing?” Karas asked in confusion.
One of them chuckled and shyly replied: “Well, we followed you because you seemed to be the most dependable at the time.”
“I… well, I didn’t even know I was following you guys till we reach here.”
“Well, I guess you can call it instinct?”
“We survived, but what about those people? There are still thousands of them there.”
All of them looked at Karas again as one of them spoke: “Well, since we followed you, I’ll follow you again till I get a hang of this game.”
There are players that only fought with their bare hands, some even used rocks just to get a few more damages.
Karas didn’t know what to say, he chuckled: “If we come back, we won’t be able to do much.”
He then looked ahead and there is a wide land of grass and trees: “I’m going to advance further. Since I can’t really do much for them, I’d rather set a camp there and get better equipment first before I return to gather a few more experience points.”
Hearing him, the others nodded: “Well, that’s one way to go.”
“Yeah, going back now is plain suicide, I’m not going to die to save them, I’d rather get strong and help them later.”
“Dying means six hours of being unable to play, and the game had just begun.”
Dying in the game has a few penalties, the first is being unable to log in again for six hours, the other one is losing 100% of your current experience.
“If we return, we may lose everything after accomplishing nothing, so I’ll follow as well.”
Karas didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, he shook his head: “Well, whatever pleases you all, but I’m not going to babysit any of you.”
“Fine by us, at least we’ll be able to enjoy the game for a few more hours.”
“Well, you’ll be our temporary leader then.”
With that, all of them proceeded to a location five hundred meters away from the mass spawning location of the monsters. Although there are still monsters in the vicinity, they are able to make do with it as there are only a little over fifty monsters on their current spot.
