Retrograde Gaming

Chapter 8: Re-encounter

Translator: Henyee Translations

Editor: Henyee Translations

A repetitive task always makes people fidgety and forget time, just when Li Huailin felt that he couldn’t stand dying anymore, a ‘ding’ was suddenly sent from the system. Immediately after, a golden light enveloped him.

System Notice: You leveled up to level 2.

Li Huailin immediately checked his character’s stats. Since his character was bugged to begin with, he didn’t know what it would turn out like after he leveled up.

Name: Open-Minded Like A Forest

Class: None (Not yet changed)

Support Class: Miner

Level: 2

Experience 0/1,400

Attributes

HP: 140/140

MP: 140/140

Attack: 5-10 Defense: 5-7

Magic Attack: 4-7 Magic Defense: 2-2

Strength: 9

Agility: 11

Constitution: 7

Intellect: 9

Spirit: 7

Luck: 5

Reputation: 1,200

Free Attributes: 5

“Good! Good!” Li Huailin patted his own chest, fortunately, his attributes wouldn’t be deducted after he leveled up. Or else, if he leveled up three to four levels, his attributes would go in reverse until they were negative.

But forget about his own attributes, it seems that inside ‘Heart of Glory’, all attributes would increase by two points with an increase of one level. Five freely assignable attribute points would also be gifted to the player. This game seems to be one that relatively places more importance on levels, after all, higher-level players had much more attribute points compared to lower level players—they were utterly incomparable.

Li Huailin contemplated in passing as to how he would assign his free attribute points. Since his mission was to kill himself, then the more fragile he was—the less blood he had—the better. This meant that he could consider adding a little Agility while anything near Physical Defense wouldn’t be considered at all. As Constitution could directly increase his health and defense, this wasn’t even considered at all. Intellect and Spirit were both a Mage’s attributes. However, since he already decided to play a Warrior, he didn’t even need to ponder about the thought of adding them. Ultimately, it seems that the objective of his assignment of attributes was to become a full-strength Warrior.

“This odd assignment of attributes…” Li Huailin couldn’t help but mock himself. If his character wasn’t bugged in the first place, then he would have thought about adding roughly two points in Strength and three in Constitution—in order to become a physical defense Warrior—or perhaps two points in Strength, two points in Agility, and one in Constitution—becoming an offensive type warrior—however, he really couldn’t help but do what he needed to do right now. An increase in defense and health would directly increase the time he took to level up, this was why he could only use such a bizarre assignment of attributes.

After he added five attribute points to Strength, it became 14 points, his attack also turned into 8-17. However, there wasn’t a drastic change to his overall stats—he simply had more health because of the extra two points in constitution—originally, the bats had to hit him three times to kill him, but now, it changed to four times.

After confirming that he could level up without any further problems, Li Huailin who had just died consecutively for 20 times, was a little excited again. With this push of enthusiasm, he started on his path of leveling (seeking) up (death) again.

At the mining cave’s lobby, a miner who was in the process of mining took a glance at Li Huailin, who had just run in. He then patted his fellow miner friend who was also mining alongside him.

“Say… I think that that guy had already run past me a lot of times.”

“Hm?” The miner friend also lifted his head to look at Li Huailin, who had just run past them. “Now that you mention it, I think I’ve also seen him run inside plenty of times.”

“Why is he constantly running deep into the mines?” This miner asked out of confusion.

“Probably quests, what else could it be? He definitely accepted a quest that can only be completed in the depths of the mines, he’s just constantly running in to see if he can complete it. The monsters inside the mine are quite plenty and also abnormally strong, he definitely won’t be able to complete it. Forget about him, let’s just keep to ourselves and just mine,” the miner friend said this without much thought, and then, he continued to mine.

The people inside the mine were simply mining, minding their own business. Not many people noticed Li Huailin constantly running back and forth, suffering terribly. Only these two people barely noticed him, however, they didn’t think it was any of their business and didn’t really bother about it. Li Huailin hovered between life and death in this way for an entire day, it wasn’t until seven at night that he couldn’t endure it anymore.

Along with the golden light that showered him upon leveling up, Li Huailin, who had just leveled up on the respawn point, logged off without delay. This task was really too dull… it really made him break down a little, even though he hit level 7 right now, he was already a little fed up.

After taking off the gaming helmet, Li Huailin picked up the cup of water by his side and took a large gulp. “Tomorrow, I’ll still need to die 30 more times to leave the newbie village, I really don’t want to play anymore today—I was just running the entire time—besides, it seems the time I calculated was a little wrong. Now that I’m level 7, even without a single free point added to Constitution, I already have 340 points of health. A bat needs to hit me 11 to 12 times just so I can die, even if I luckily encounter a zombie, it would still take seven to eight times. The amount of time to level up has increased again…”

While feeling like he was bored to death, Li Huailin started to randomly surf the web. Of course, he was just mainly reading the information on the official website and forums of ‘Heart of Glory’.

Pinned Forum Thread: ‘Kickass brother strikes again! Newbie village’s blacksmith surrenders to tyrannical abuse and hands over a hidden quest!’

Original Post: I have a dream… I have a dream that someday I’ll rule the four seas and have an awe-inspiring reputation.

I have a dream… I have a dream that one day I can lift up those unscrupulous businessmen in the newbie village and while slapping them, tell them that one shouldn’t be too much like Ma Xteng1.

There was a video link after these comments.

First post: I sincerely beg to learn on how to beat up the newbie village blacksmith.

Second post: I sympathize with the blacksmith, pay close attention to this matter.

Third post: This is my party membership dues for this year.

Fourth post: Why did I die after trying? 20 points of Favorability were even deducted! Is this game even playable?

…

…

“It’s a little strange though… speaking of which, there are already two pinned forum threads about me. The people at Sky Corporation should’ve noticed that something was off, why does it seem like there’s no one handling this matter?” Li Huailin was somewhat baffled as he thought of this.

He naturally couldn’t figure out why this was so even after he thought about it, this was why he didn’t pay any more attention. If no one cared about him, then he’ll just keep on playing.

After browsing the web for a while, he then went to sleep. Li Huailin’s daily schedule was quite normal—sleep at eleven pm, wake up at seven am—this had already become a habit. His biological clock was also adjusted to an extremely precise degree.

Once he woke up, he ate a little bit of something as usual before he continued to go online and level (seek) up (death). Yesterday, he had just reached level 7 before going offline, today’s mission was to first hit level 10 and leave the village.

He ran very proficiently to the mine, because it was seven in the morning, there weren’t many players right now. The majority of people were still sleeping. Li Huailin randomly chose a path in the mining cave and charged straight in, striving to not waste a single minute.

However, after running for a short while, Li Huailin discovered that something was a little off. This was because he actually hadn’t encountered any monsters even now, he had to have run for at least seven to eight hundred meters so far. Normally, this would be the time he died and respawned, however, that actually didn’t happen right now.

Just as he was thinking of this, he suddenly discovered a zombie’s corpse in front of him. The system’s respawn time for corpses was roughly between one to three minutes, in other words, someone had just fought their way through here.

“Sh*t! There are also situations like this…” Li Huailin died over a dozen times yesterday without encountering anyone in the mining paths, it was honestly also because it wasn’t worthwhile to level up here. First of all, the monsters here were stronger than the monsters outside, they had more health and higher attack! Not to mention, if a player wanted to level up in this place, they would have to expend candles for illumination. Stuff like these weren’t cheap either, one of the candles only lasted for an hour—this was absolutely wasteful—the same-leveled monsters outside were much safer and nothing needed to be expended while hunting them. The only benefit of this place was that it was close to the newbie village, it was faster to go back to buy things and it was also faster to come back if one died during hunting. However, despite all this, there were still very few people trying to level up here.

Li Huailin didn’t want to go back the way he came, because there was someone leveling up anyway, it wasn’t a big deal to run ahead of them to find a monster to kill him.

With this thought in mind, Li Huailin continued to charge forward. After running for a few minutes, he saw a sliver of light from a candle and he also heard some metallic striking sounds as well as zombie screams.

Li Huailin moved closer for a look, and beyond his expectations, there was more than one person here. Instead, there were 10 people! They also happened to form two parties. Since there weren’t any Class distinctions yet in the newbie village, these gang of people were chaotically slashing at the three zombies.

“Oh? It’s Huailin?”

Li Huailin was momentarily startled, just when he was going to circle around to the front to find a monster to kill him, someone unexpectedly called his name. In this game, there weren’t many people who knew his name, because of this, before Li Huailin even turned around, he already knew who the other person was.

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“Night Flyer?” The one who called him was the Spiritual World guild’s Deputy Leader, Spiritual World Night Flyer, the one who asked to buy the hidden quest from him. Li Huailin took a brief glance and saw everyone who accepted the hidden quest a few days ago; Spiritual World Fire Head, Spiritual World War Spirit, and Spiritual World Dust Machine, they were all here and were currently wrestling with the zombies right now.

“Why are you here?” Li Huailin and Night Flyer asked each other at the same time.

“Oh, I’m leveling up here.” Li Huailin was the first to respond, he was indeed leveling up here. After giving it some thought, he added more as an explanation, “There are too many people hunting in the spots outside, I can’t get to the monster before them, this is why I ran over here to level up.”

“Oh, I see.” Spiritual World Night Flyer accepted this explanation, he then said, “We’re here doing a quest, the hidden quest you accepted. The quest’s first step was to investigate the south of the village. Then, we followed each part of the quest and arrived here. Now, we’re already on the fifth part of the quest, I reckon it’s the last part. Unfortunately, I’m already level 10, if I don’t change classes soon, the reward of 30,000 experience would be wasted. But fortunately, there’s still a level 15 blue-grade weapon that can be selected according to my desire.”

Night Flyer was quite forthcoming with the quest rewards. A level 15 blue-grade weapon… this would be considered a godly weapon at the game’s current stage. The reason why Night Flyer explained it so clearly was because, firstly, Li Huailin already knew of the hidden quest, and secondly, the Spiritual World guild was one of the very best guilds to begin with—they weren’t afraid of people coming after their things at all.