Chapter 3: An Unconventional Start

Seven seconds after Horizon’s servers went live, a white light flashed in the Revival Shrine of Novice Village No. 2 as it welcomed its first guest.

Mo Ming appeared beside the Respawn Altar with a dumbfounded look on his face, still processing what had happened… the sprite’s words, “Please confirm your reward in-game,” were still faintly echoing in his ears.

‘You’ll know as soon as you enter the game’… was the reward being thrown into the sky, falling from a height of several hundred meters, and being killed on impact?

【You have unlocked the achievement: First Death.】

【You are the first player in the game to die.

Your heroic deed will be recorded in the annals of history.

Your reward has been distributed; please confirm it in the system interface.】

Two system notifications appeared in Mo Ming’s mind, one after the other.

“Huh?” Hearing these two system prompts, a very strange expression appeared on Mo Ming’s face.

While Mo Ming was left baffled by these system notifications, a few players noticed him at the Respawn Altar and cast curious glances his way—

Although the white light that flashed around Mo Ming was the same as when other players entered the game, of the many people who had already arrived in this village, Mo Ming was the only one to have spawned at the Respawn Altar; everyone else had spawned nearby.

As more and more people turned their attention to him, Mo Ming, having come to his senses, quickly slipped away.

“…This body.” It was fine when he was standing still, but the moment he moved, Mo Ming immediately discovered just how frail this in-game body was.

Although it was slightly stronger than an untrained ordinary person in the real world, for a Transcendent Being like Mo Ming, it was indeed excessively weak.

‘This should count as a bit of a challenge, right?’ Thinking this, Mo Ming suddenly remembered that he hadn’t even looked at this character’s attributes yet, so he immediately thought the words 【Attribute Panel】 and checked his stats.

“…” Staring at the stats on the panel, which should have been absolutely impossible, Mo Ming suddenly found himself at a loss for words.

Strength: 1 Agility: 1 Constitution: 1 Spirit: 1 Intelligence: 1

Even random attributes couldn’t possibly roll something this bad, let alone when Mo Ming had chosen the option to gain attributes based on his physical constitution… Wasn’t the minimum for a single attribute supposed to be 5 points?

What was with these five 1s?

‘Did the values exceed the limit during the attribute assessment, causing a bug?’ Mo Ming thought for a long time but couldn’t come up with any other possibility.

Feeling that logging off to ask customer service would be too much trouble, and not particularly caring about the attributes anyway, Mo Ming opened his inventory on the spot to see what the so-called reward for being the second to log in was.

Inside the basic 4×8, 32-slot backpack, there were two items.

One was a white-quality Novice Sword with 1 attack power, a weapon prepared by the system for players who chose the physical development path… If he had chosen the magical path, he would have received a Novice Staff.

The other item was a small, round wooden token, with the words 【Reward】 floating above it.

The words vanished as soon as Mo Ming noticed them.

【Proof of Valor: The highest honor, obtainable only by the bravest of warriors.】

Although the description sounded impressive, the item was only of gray quality.

As the color representing the lowest quality in Horizon, it naturally couldn’t be anything good.

‘Looks like a quest item.

I’ll hold onto it for now.’ Mo Ming had some understanding of common RPGs, so he didn’t throw away this seemingly useless item.

For some reason, despite having been in the game for only a few minutes, Mo Ming could already feel the game’s deep malice towards him.

Then Mo Ming suddenly remembered that he had also received an achievement for giving “first blood,” which mentioned some kind of reward.

Although he held no hope for this game’s “rewards,” Mo Ming still opened the system interface again to search for the so-called first blood reward.

“Eh?” Even after checking several times and confirming that this was indeed the first blood reward, Mo Ming still wore a look of doubt.

It wasn’t because the reward was too strange or useless; on the contrary, this reward could be considered quite normal, even excellent.

But it was precisely because it was so normal that Mo Ming found it a bit hard to believe.

【Death’s Pity: As the person in the world least skilled at protecting their own life, you have successfully caught the attention of Death.

You have received Death’s pity and gained the power to reap souls.

Perhaps this power might just give you the ability to protect your own life, who knows?

Of course, Death does not like losers—when the player is killed, this ability will be lost.

(This is pity, definitely not mockery… pfft.)

Effect: Gain the power to collect souls.

Each time an enemy is killed, you can collect the slain’s soul to strengthen yourself.

Each soul collected grants 1 (Level Tier x 1) attack, and a maximum of 1 (Level x 1) souls can be stored.

Souls from elites and above grant double the attack power.】

Level Tier was a setting related to levels in Horizon: every 5 levels constituted 1 level tier.

Levels 1-5 were Tier 1, levels 6-10 were Tier 2, and so on.

In combat, units of a higher level tier would have a level suppression effect on units of a lower level tier, while units of the same level tier would not… In other words, a level 1 fighting a level 5 would have no level suppression, but a level 5 fighting a level 6 would.

If the max level in this game was 100, then there would be a total of 20 level tiers, meaning the maximum attack power this “Death’s Pity” ability could provide was 2000 points, or 4000 if all were high-grade souls.

Of course, due to a lack of concrete data, Mo Ming couldn’t accurately judge the game’s attack power values, meaning he didn’t know how significant a boost of 4000 attack points would be.

But well… Mo Ming glanced at his panel attack power: 2-4, and 3-5 after equipping the Novice Sword… Hmm, this ability was very powerful.

While Mo Ming was standing there studying his attributes, the other players had already begun their gaming journeys one after another.

Some were wandering around the village looking for quests, others were heading directly out of the village to fight monsters, and still others were cheering with excitement over the game’s extreme realism… In any case, you couldn’t find many players like Mo Ming, who was just standing there like a fool, even if you searched the entire novice village.

After finishing his research on the attributes, Mo Ming began to wander around, wondering what he should do.

Although the village was large, there weren’t particularly many NPCs.

These NPCs were basically giving out very simple small quests, like killing troublesome monsters near the village or collecting materials from them—low-difficulty, low-reward quests for novices.

After observing for a while, feeling that it wasn’t too different from the games he had imagined, Mo Ming decided to find an NPC to accept a few quests and then head out to fight monsters… It’s an RPG, after all; fighting monsters is always the main objective.

Mo Ming strolled through more than half of the village, accepting every quest he could find.

Accepting all the quests first and then completing them together would naturally be much more efficient than doing them one by one.

After making his rounds, Mo Ming arrived at the second most crowded place in the village—the Blacksmith’s Shop.

Although at this point, only a few minutes into the game, players couldn’t possibly have enough money to buy equipment, and even if they did, they wouldn’t meet the requirements to wear it.

But that couldn’t stop the players’ curiosity.

Even if they couldn’t afford it, there was no harm in just taking a look, right?

Incidentally, the most crowded place was the Village Chief’s house.

There would always be people who thought they were the one and only chosen one, hoping to stumble upon all sorts of hidden quests with their eyes closed.

And the most likely place in the village to have a hidden quest was undoubtedly the Village Chief’s house… even if you’ve never played a holographic game, haven’t you read novels?

Hidden quests are always accepted from the Village Chief.

But such people were, after all, a minority; most people wouldn’t take the plots of novels as reality… So why were so many people gathered at the Village Chief’s house?

The answer was simple—the Village Chief was a beautiful young woman.

For this reason alone, countless people gathered there just to get a glimpse of the Village Chief.

In a holographic game like this, seeing a super beautiful young lady, even if she was just an NPC, felt almost the same as seeing one in real life.

But they could only look.

Sexual harassment was absolutely impossible, as the game had extremely strict punishments for such behavior.

Since Horizon used brainwaves to control game characters, and these brainwaves needed to be received by the optical computer that served as the server, the moment you had such a thought and intended to act on it, the system would directly punish you.

If the protection for NPCs was this strict, the protection for players was even more so—which was why in all the time Mo Ming had been wandering the village, not a single person had been sexually harassed… it wasn’t that people’s moral character was high, but that those with such intentions no longer existed.

Since the Village Chief’s house was completely surrounded by a crowd of people wanting to see the pretty lady, Mo Ming chose to go directly to the Blacksmith’s Shop.

A place like a blacksmith’s shop should have quests to accept, right?

It would be even better if he could learn a life skill—so Mo Ming thought.

However, the blacksmith, a shop NPC, wasn’t sitting properly in his shop giving out quests like other shop NPCs.

Instead, he was standing outside with a stern face, constantly scanning his surroundings, like a dragon guarding its treasure chest.

Although the blacksmith put on a very unapproachable demeanor, abnormality signifies something unusual.

What did it mean when an NPC suddenly became so strange?

A hidden quest!

So, even though the blacksmith looked extremely unfriendly, players kept trying to talk to him… but all these brave players were yelled at and driven away by the blacksmith—forget a hidden quest, he wouldn’t even give out a normal one.

As for the reason the blacksmith was so angry—Mo Ming looked at the small house behind the blacksmith… at its roof.

Unlike the smooth roofs of the other small houses in the village, this one looked as if it had been hit by a catapult; a huge crater had appeared on the roof, and even a small section of the adjacent wall had collapsed.

As an intelligent Transcendent Being, Mo Ming only took 0.1 seconds to make a judgment—this house was smashed by him…

The situation was already obvious: the blacksmith was looking for the person who had wrecked his roof… which was Mo Ming.

So now, Mo Ming had two choices before him—one: slip away quickly before the blacksmith noticed him.

Two: step forward and admit his mistake.

However, Mo Ming didn’t have time to make a choice before he was spotted by the blacksmith who was standing there looking around.

Heaven knows how he was able to identify the culprit as Mo Ming at a single glance.

The Mo Ming who had fallen and wrecked this house had already been taken away by Death; the one standing here should be a brand new Mo Ming, one who had been mocked by Death…

Upon seeing Mo Ming, the blacksmith strode menacingly towards him, knocking aside any players in his way.

“It was you who wrecked my blacksmith shop,” the blacksmith’s eyes, wide as copper bells, stared fixedly at Mo Ming.

“So what do you plan to do about it?”

The blacksmith, suspected of having a hidden quest, had finally made a move—and his target was a very ordinary-looking player.

In the next instant, a screenshot of Mo Ming and the blacksmith staring at each other had already been posted on Horizon’s official forums.

Compared to the other pointless posts, the one concerning Mo Ming, which might be related to the legendary hidden quest, was obviously far more explosive.

It was soon pushed to the very top, becoming the hottest thread.

After all, not everyone could log into Horizon at the first moment.

For those who couldn’t enter the game for various reasons, browsing forums and watching live streams were the only ways to engage with the game.

So, when the post related to the hidden quest involving Mo Ming appeared, it naturally shot up in popularity.

And Mo Ming, the person in question, was completely unaware that he had already become famous.

The Blacksmith: “Well?

What are you going to do?”

Mo Ming: “…”

What could Mo Ming do?

He was in despair too.