Then I fell under my weight.
Yeah. Three push-ups. And that’s coming from a skinny guy. I was pretty much a skeleton in real life. I definitely needed to start improving my health and physique from now on. For a start, I could probably do push-ups and squats and whatever bodyweight exercises existed. If I didn’t need equipment, I wouldn’t need to leave The Cave, which would be optimal.
I checked the internet for a workout routine, when my phone buzzed from a message. This time, not a message from Wonderwind, but a text to my phone number from Anna, my sister.
“Hey,” her text read. “Are you alive?”
Wait, was my sister actually worried about me?
“I’m doing a lot better than what dad probably thinks,” I wrote. “There’s no need to worry.”
“Really?” she wrote right away. “Dad regrets kicking you out, by the way. Mom has been arguing with him.”
I sighed. “Sorry for stressing you out. I’m doing perfectly fine. I have a legendary dagger now, and I just sold a lot of gear for a lot of money. I’ll probably start earning more than dad soon.”
No, Anna didn’t play Wonderwind. I just liked to tease her by speaking with game terms. “So you’ll get an apartment soon?” she asked.
“I’ll see about that,” I wrote. “For now, I’m living kind of like in a motel.”
“Dad also checked your bank account, and he saw that you’ve been playing in some cheap internet cafe. So he will probably come visit.”
Oh, crap. I forgot my parents still had rights to look at my bank account. I had intended to revoke my dad’s access after turning eighteen, but I’d been too busy playing the game and earning money. But if Dad had seen I’d made a purchase in The Cave, he would definitely come visit.
Well, whatever. “Thanks for checking in, and thanks for the warning, but I’m doing well. I’ll take you out to eat as proof some day.”
I closed my phone, and my brain immediately moved to daydreams. I’m not popular yet. Nobody knows I live in The Cave. I can stay here and save money.
Still, getting my life and physical appearance in check would be useful. I still had some shampoo remaining and a single towel in my box of belongings. Nothing to shave, so I’d need to visit the corner store at some point, and I’d need to figure out where to do laundry, but whatever.
For now, I waited for my death timeout and sent a few memes to Veyra.
***
When the timeout ended, I headed straight to the auction house with one specific item in mind.
I was in a hurry, and Sam was occupied, so I opened up the auction directly from the system. It worked kind of like a self-ordering touch screen at a fast food restaurant. As long as I was inside an auctionhouse, I could freely search listings directly from the system menu.
But when I searched the auction for the item I’d seen listed just a week ago, to my horror, it wasn’t there anymore.
Maybe the seller knows who has it, I thought. And luckily, I'd also memorized the player who’d been selling the item. It was [Syntrix] Sylriu. He wasn’t a top five hundred player, but rather, a famous item flipper. He bought and hoarded cheap items, and sold them for a profit. Essentially, he was a Wonderwind merchant. I saw that he was online and sent him a quick and simple message.
Assassin: “Hey, are you still selling The Immortal (Epic Dagger, Unique)?”
With the message sent, I paced around nervously for a few minutes, until a notification made my head perk up.
Sylriu: “Hello. Let me check if I have it.”
Stolen story; please report.
What he doesn’t even know if he has it? Goddamned rich people. Sylriu’s collection of items must have been so large he couldn’t even name everything that was in there.
Sylriu: “I have it, yes. Feel free to make an offer. I’m about to be busy in five minutes, so make it quick.”
I nodded to myself. The dagger had been listed for auction a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t sold. Sylriu either hadn’t gotten the price he wanted, or simply, nobody wanted the dagger. Which would make sense, considering its odd stats. Maybe I could haggle.
Assassin: “I saw its stats when it was in auction. Everything was low for an epic dagger. I’d like to test its passive, though. I’m down to pay the standard rate for a low-end epic unique.”
Sylriu: “Sure. I’m placing it back in auction. The low-end epic unique price is definitely fair.”
I pumped my fist at the victory. As far as I was concerned, The Immortal was one of the best items in the game. It would really make my playstyle stand out, for reasons I would soon get to showcase.
I bought the item at an absolute steal price of exactly a thousand gold, or about 800 dollars. I received it instantly in my inventory.
I teleported back to the Portal Mage’s Crypt, where Veyra was already waiting for me underneath the ethereal lamp. I walked up with a massive grin plastered on my face, which spread to her as she smiled at me.
“Aiden?” Veyra asked, giving me a funny look. “I hope you weren’t making this meme instead of warming up.”
“Which one?” I asked.
She showed me the meme I’d sent. The image showed the “hydrogen bomb versus coughing baby—who would win?” meme, except I’d hastily edited the image to be “S-ranked Time Mage raid boss versus cup noodle thief.”
“Oh, I made that one when I was seventeen,” I said. “I just edited the text today. The cup noodle thief isn’t defeated easily, by the way.”
She shook her head, mildly amused, and asked, “Did you get the item you needed?”
“Yep, take a look,” I said, and I shared the item’s details.
The Immortal
Item Type: Epic Dagger (Unique)
Required Character Level: 197
Stats:
-
330 Attack Force
-
100 Defence
Abilities:
Immortal Block (Passive): Perfect Blocks with The Immortal are 500% more effective.
Immortal Parry (Active, Conditional): Perfect Blocks have a small chance of staggering the enemy’s posture.
Veyra read its details, and raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t this trash?”
“No, it’s a best in slot dagger,” I said, still grinning.
“The attack force stat is abysmally low,” Veyra said. “A hundred defence isn’t useful either. And that passive… Doesn’t a perfect block have like a one in ten chance of happening?”
“Not if I land perfect blocks by myself,” I said. “This item is overpowered. I can use it to survive against the four swords.”
“You mean, you intend to deal with all of those just by blocking?” she asked, baffled. “And without using the system assisted blocks?”
“Should be possible,” I said. “And I’m not only going to use blocks. I can still side-step and dodge normally. But now I actually have blocking as an option. It’ll be a night and day difference.”
“You sound serious,” she said.
I spun my daggers in my hand like spinning a pen and nodded.
She watched the display and sighed. “I guess I’ll trust you, then. Meanwhile, I believe I got the attack patterns down.”
Veyra showed me a drawing—or rather, a screenshot of one from the real world, showcasing a cute scribble of the Lost Wanderer Of Time, along with what looked like all of its attack patterns. Underneath each drawing was numbers. “This is what we know about the monster so far,” Veyra said. “I didn’t have much time, but I drew all of its casting animations.”
“Wait,” I said, “you drew this?”
The scribbles were genuinely good, comparable to mangas I used to read. She smiled at my reaction.
“I calculated the cooldowns behind all of its attacks,” Veyra said. “Its Time Eruption has a thirty second cooldown. Arrow Of Time is five seconds, and it prefers that one every time it comes off of cooldown. The sword ultimate is tricky, but when it’s active, it has less mana for other spells, and other cooldowns become longer.”
“What’s the strategy?” I asked.
“Simply put,” Veyra said, “We’re going to stun-lock it.”
I raised an eyebrow. Stun-lock. That was a fancy term for the strategy of “beat the shit out of it so hard it can’t counter-attack.” Although, the classic art of stunning a monster repeatedly so that it literally couldn’t move wasn’t really a thing in Wonderwind. If a player hit a high level monster really hard, chances were that it would only hit back harder.
“You’re planning on stunlocking a level 365 monster?” I asked. “Is that possible? We’re too low level to pommel it to the ground. It’s also going to be resistant to Absolute Zero. You can’t freeze it.”
Veyra grinned. “I’ve dealt with worse. I told you, solo hunting dungeons is my expertise. I’ll prove it now.”
I tilted my head at her.
“Looks like we’ll both have to trust each other,” Veyra said. “We have our jobs. I need you to dodge its attacks and keep it occupied, while I maximize my damage output and annoy it as best I can. Once I get my spell rotation in, you’ll have a much easier time dodging as well, and blocking with your new dagger.”
“Sounds simple enough.” Although, I still didn't fully understand how she was just going to stunlock a monster like that.
“Just know that if you die, we both die," Veyra said. "Retrieving our items will be a pain.
I nodded and put on a serious face. I won’t die again, I told myself.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” she said.
I took one last breath, and descended the stairs first, where the familiar Lost Traveler Of Time (Level 365) stood in the same spot it had two hours ago.
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