A New World, An Immersive Game Experience

Eldrian called up his avatar statistics, taking his time to work through how he would use his free attributes. He would still like to keep from using them since he did not know what the future would bring.

Currently though, he needed a boost. A significant one at that.

[Haru's Statistics:]

[Level: 6 (23k/36k)]

[Magic Class Tier 1]

[Subclass: Melee Tier 1]

[Avatar Affinity: 96.21%]

Reading through this Eldrian thought back to when he trained with Old Sword and first managed to successfully use a skill. Strangely he had not reached Tier 1 after learning general skills that simply boosted his attributes. He only gained it after learning Double Strike, a weapon-related skill.

Eldrian had no idea why this happened and only realized it due to general skills being easier to learn than weapon-related skills. At least this was true for him, he felt it was not true for normal players.

Once he did master Double Strike, he had been informed by the system of what it would take to reach Tier 2. He would need Rank 2 proficiency with his spear.

Eldrian did not feel that this was unreasonable and finally allowed him to make sense of the proficiency system. He was already level 6/10 in rank 1. He simply needed to use his spear around 20k times to reach Rank 2. Eldrian felt this was not too hard, considering he could simply grind it out against a dummy.

Other than his proficiency he also needed to successfully use a Tier 1 skill 5 000 times and then a Tier 2 skill 50 times. This was what the system informed him of. Eldrian still felt that it was not a perfect system, it did not make sense to him that it would be a hard stuck rule.

Considering how realistic and free most of the game actually was. A true martial artist might not even need skills, they might feel skill are restrictive. Or they might incorporate them ingeniously with their normal skills, hiding what was a skill and what was simply their skill.

Continuing on Eldrian looked at his attributes and stats, trying to figure out what Tiers added.

[Attributes:]

[Constitution: 110]<105>

[Strength: 110]<105>

[Agility: 115]

[Spirit: 110]

[Intelligence: 115]

[25 free attribute points]

[Stats:]

[HP: 121]<105>

[Mana: 121]

[Stamina: 110]

[Armor: 0.25]

[Magic Armor: 0.25]

[Physical Resistance: 0.5%]

[Magical Resistance: 0.5%]

It looks like attributes are just a one to one ratio. But gaining a Tier adds a bonus. Magic gave me more mana, 11 more. Melee did the same but for health. Eldrian did not think too much about this, simply taking this into account.

He had been shying from using his attributes because he wanted to wait and see what requirements later weapons would have. But now he felt it was more important that he use them.

Thinking back to the fight against the goblins, Eldrian felt that agility would be the best choice. He did not want to split his attributes since he had managed to clearly feel the increase of 20 agility. He could not really feel the bonus of 5 given by reaching Tier 1.

Everything in agility! He determined, feeling that it would be best to be able to react faster than others. He also felt this would be the largest bonus he could gain. Constitution would simply allow him to last longer. Be it stamina or health growth, both were not too critical.

Strength would increase his damage with his spear, not much more. Eldrian felt being able to get a vital hit was far better than a flat bonus.

Intelligence was the same situation, but Eldrian here not having an attribute that would lead to getting a vital hit. Rather it was his training and mastery over mana and the spell. Hence intelligence was a bit more tempting. But Eldrian refrained.

Spirit would also not do much for Eldrian as he was, if it only gave him 20 mana then that meant one more spell, maybe two. Eldrian felt that it was not a good enough investment.

Certainly spirit and intelligence would be prime if he felt he would be safe and could only focus on casting spells. But that was not something he foresaw himself in. The only thing Eldrian really doubted was if he should skip the constitution.

But after thinking about it for a while he felt this was indeed best. The damage he received was so much that 5 or 10 HP would not really make a difference. It might just bring him over to being able to survive one more hit. But it might also fail in doing so.

Eldrian felt it was better to simply gain more speed, it was one thing he felt was really important in a fight. This was enforced more with his damage already being enough to kill most monsters with one vital hit. Eldrian was not sure if this was because of the realism or just how his damage worked out.

Still, he felt reluctant to use all of his free attributes, fearing that he may block himself from using better magic grade weapons in the future. After a bit of a struggle, Eldrian decided he would focus on that later. He could always just level to close the gap.

With this settled Eldrian dumped his free attributes, bringing his agility to 140. As soon as he did this Eldrian could feel a difference. It felt like everything was slightly slower than normal, but this only lasted a few seconds. Returning to normal once his mind settled.

Eldrian felt satisfied after finishing this choice, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I am sure this is the best. He told himself as he came back from his thoughts and the system interface, the latter having had more updates to smoothen its use and look.

While this had felt like a very long time to Eldrian, less than ten minutes had actually passed. During which he had been following the NPCs around him. They were heading to a valley nearby where they were going to set up camp.

As they walked they encountered two smaller groups of goblins and one orc band. But their numbers were not even over 10, meaning they died without even being able to put up a fight.

"Alright, let's rest here," Andreas said as they made it into the valley. It was not large, simply located between small hills which were quite near to each other. But it would make their fire harder to see, which was the thing they most worried about.

"Alright." Floyd said as he started walking around the temporary camp, drawing a few rune-like symbols into the ground. He threw some reddish powder into these runes and then into the fire, which the others had started while he was busy with the runes.

As the powder entered the fire it changed the color of the flames. Flickering between blue, yellow and red. It settled on a low-intensity red after a few seconds. The runes Floyd had drawn also glowed lightly.

"Don't go outside of this pattern." Floyd said to everyone but directed it at Eldrian. The others all knew why, Eldrian was the only one who might not know.

Seeing Floyd's stare Eldrian nodded to indicate that he understood, sitting down onto the ground after he saw everyone relaxing.

"I still don't understand how that works." Terlas grumbled as he massaged his shoulder, due to the rush they had been in, Floyd had yet to properly heal him. They had to finish setting up camp before dark, else they would not be able to close their eyes.

"Divinity," Floyd answered simply, telling Terlas to take off his armor and shirt. He then started cleaning the wound, only casting a healing spell after making sure the wound was properly cleaned.

Eldrian was intrigued by this and asked, "Why don't you just use magic to clean the wound?"

"Because this is wound is not normal. Cadriel uses a skill to enhance her arrows, and she uses another to let the arrows splinter into her target. If not properly removed it would lead to a serious infection and death soon after." Floyd answered patiently as everyone grilled some meat from a random beast they had found and killed.

"It also reacts to being influenced by magic, which is why Floyd had simply healed his wound. Leaving the splinters alone." Cadriel added.

Eldrian nodded to show he understood, wondering just how that worked. It sounded almost like a type of poison to him. Poison, how good would that have been today. I would have been able to simply slightly wound the goblins. Making the start far easier. Eldrian thought suddenly, thinking back to when the old man had led him around the academy.

I have bought a poison spell... He sighed as the night came and settled over them. Realizing that his apprehension of poison was simply idiotic.

During his last few hours online, Eldrian practiced controlling Frost Needle. Wanting to be able to do it as well as he did with Floga and Nidia. The NPCs watched him curiously, finding his practice to be extremely impressive.

Not because Eldrian was working insanely hard, but because only people over Tier 5 would be able to control a spell. Yet here Eldrian was, doing it while being Tier 1. And he was able to do it far longer than they could.

They knew this was because he was a High Elf, but this did not take away from their interest. Rather it added more to it. The NPCs looked at Eldrian with more and more interest as time passed. Wanting to know how he did it.

Naturally Eldrian's control was still lacking, he could only slightly change the direction of Frost Needle, after having let it loose. He was nowhere close to being able to play with it like he did Floga and Nidia.

Wait, they don't have initial movement. Eldrian realized as his game time neared its end. He quickly decided that instead of trying to control Frost Needle as is, he would rather play with its spell module first.

At this moment Eldrian wished he could enter the magical abyss, it made it so much easier to do that. When he was in there he could actually impact the spell module, but outside he had to suggest and lead his mana.

Unable to truly control it at will, he needed it to the first form in a spell. But then the mana had a fixed signature and in the case of Frost Needle, a fixed momentum.