Chapter 5: Mo Ming’s First Battle

From the moment 【Horizon】’s servers went live, information about the game flooded virtually the entire internet; discussions about it could be seen almost everywhere.

Aside from the players fortunate enough to get the first batch of chips and enter the game at launch, the rest could only discuss it on forums or elsewhere.

In the Chinese server alone, one million chips were released in the first batch.
With a million people crowding into the game at once, it naturally produced a lot of amusing incidents.
Some players, who didn’t want to fight over mobs during the initial rush or who weren’t as keen on combat, paid more attention to other aspects and, in doing so, discovered many interesting things.

After all, this was the first time that thousands upon thousands of people were playing together on the same map, and in a virtual holographic online game at that.
The chaos and amusing stories that arose from so many people gathering were numerous.
Including game streamers, many people were willing to share these things with others, especially with those who hadn’t entered the game yet.

And among all one hundred novice villages on the Chinese server, the big news happening in Novice Village No. 2 was clearly the most eye-catching—

The fact that someone had fallen from the sky and died less than a minute into the game was hardly worth mentioning.
First, there was that screenshot that seemed to show someone triggering a hidden quest, then the news of a hidden quest in the mine, and then a group of people getting completely wiped out in that same mine—

This series of events was naturally reported by someone, and the hidden quest in Novice Village No. 2 became the focus of everyone’s attention.

Mr. Mo Ming, the culprit behind it all, was currently striding towards the mine at an unhurried pace, completely oblivious to everything.

And in the time it took for Mo Ming to walk to the mine, the group of people who had rushed there after getting the information had already, without exception, all died and returned to the Revival Shrine.

“What the hell, why are the mobs there so strong?
Don’t tell me we got tricked?”

“How are we supposed to fight a level 6 mob?”

Most of the first people to respawn were lamenting like this.

For these level 1 players, trying to break into a mine where the monsters were generally level 6 or higher was almost impossible… In fact, they couldn’t even get past the first wave of mobs at the entrance.

If it were open terrain, they could have overwhelmed these level 6 mobs with their numerical advantage.
Unfortunately, in the narrow terrain of a mine, their numbers were almost useless; no matter how many people came, they could only line up to die one by one.

Some players immediately rushed back to the mine after respawning, while the rest wisely chose to give up.

Of course, aside from those who refused to believe it and intended to continue trying the mine for the so-called “hidden quest,” the last few to be sent back had a slightly different objective.

Some of the players who had been planning to give up saw the anxious looks on the faces of those who returned last but still ran back to the mine.
After a moment of thought, they followed along as well.

And so, this group of over a hundred people organized once more and launched a second assault on the mine.

【You have discovered a new map: Mine】

Upon reaching the entrance of the mine, Mo Ming received a system notification.

“This must be the place, right?” Mo Ming brought up the system’s built-in map, took a look, and confirmed his target.

The map was a built-in function that every player had, but its content only included areas the player had explored, as well as towns.
To fill out one’s map, besides running around on foot, one could only buy maps from others… Of course, the map of the novice village didn’t need to be explored.

Mo Ming directly took out the Novice Sword from his backpack, swung it twice in place, and then stepped into the cave.

Since the main purpose of the novice village was to familiarize players with the game, it had many convenient features.

Besides being able to directly view the complete map of the novice village, the lit torches in the mine were another one—normally, apart from mines that had already been occupied and developed, other mines required players to bring their own items like torches for illumination.

Not long after entering the mine, Mo Ming encountered his first welcoming guest.

Although there were torches in the mine, they only provided the most basic illumination—enough to keep players from being completely blind, but the inside of the mine could hardly be called bright.

A gray shadow, using the darkness as cover, pounced ferociously at Mo Ming.

“Pfft—” Mo Ming flicked his sword up at this gray mass, sending the whole thing flying.

【-1】

【-19】

Two numbers, one gray and one red, popped up from the gray mass and Mo Ming’s head respectively… The immense recoil transmitted through the sword nearly knocked it from Mo Ming’s hand.

The thing that Mo Ming sent flying slammed onto the ground, then quickly flipped over, its pair of small eyes staring intently at Mo Ming—what had attacked him was a rat.

But it was different from an ordinary rat.
As a wild monster in 【Horizon】, this rat was as large as an adult Chihuahua, and that was without including the length of its tail.

Mo Ming sighed helplessly… To have his weapon nearly knocked out of his hand by a collision with such a small thing was a very embarrassing matter for him.
Not yet fully immersed in his role, Mo Ming couldn’t accept his own weak strength for a moment.

【Mine Rat (Elite): Level 6

????】

This was the information he obtained after sending the rat flying—attacking a monster revealed its basic stats, another one of the novice village’s benefits.
However, the level gap between Mo Ming and the Mine Rat was too large, so nothing but its name and level was displayed.

Because the rat in front of him was an elite monster and had a 1-tier level suppression on him, combined with Mo Ming’s extremely low stats, he had lost nearly half his health even though he had parried the blow.

However, the monster had less than 1/5 of its health remaining.
It seemed to have been damaged by the wave of people who had rushed in earlier.
This was probably the only piece of good news.

And the facts were just as Mo Ming guessed.
The monster standing before him had killed over a hundred people to advance from a normal monster to an elite one.

Monsters in 【Horizon】 could advance, but the conditions for advancement were varied and mostly very harsh, not something one could encounter easily.
It was only because of the commotion Mo Ming had caused, sending a large group of level 1 players to feed themselves to it, that this monster had advanced.

And as the price of its advancement, this Mine Rat’s health was already running low… It was also fortunate that this was in a cave.
If the area had been more open, even as an elite, it would have been ground down and killed by the successive waves of several hundred players.

Before Mo Ming could think further, the Mine Rat pounced at him again.

If they collided head-on again, he might lose more health… Mo Ming only had a total of 45 HP.
Losing 19 at a time meant he could only block two hits; a third would kill him.

Although it would be more convenient to just swing his sword and knock the Mine Rat back, there was no chance of winning that way, so Mo Ming chose to dodge.

Even for an elite monster, a single Mine Rat’s speed posed no threat to Mo Ming—while dodging the attack, Mo Ming also managed to slash at the Mine Rat’s belly.

【-1】 The damage number was gray; he hadn’t broken its defense.

However, Mo Ming had no expectation that his pitiful 3-5 attack power could break the defense of an elite monster that suppressed him by a whole level tier.
Nor was his goal purely to deal damage to the Mine Rat with this guaranteed damage—

After taking another point of damage, the Mine Rat’s health bar dropped by an almost imperceptible amount.

‘Remaining health is between 70 and 80.’ Mo Ming made a judgment based on the amount of health lost from this attack.

After its pounce missed, the Mine Rat turned around, squeaked twice in frustration, and pounced again.

But this attack was also dodged by Mo Ming, who didn’t forget to raise the Novice Sword in his hand as he did so… but this time, instead of a solid swing like the previous two times, he scraped it across the Mine Rat’s back twice with very little force.

【-1】

However, although Mo Ming had scraped the Mine Rat’s back twice, only one damage number appeared.

‘Not enough force, so it didn’t register as an attack?’ Mo Ming thought to himself, looking at the single damage number above the Mine Rat’s head.

To test this, this time before the Mine Rat could pounce, Mo Ming took the initiative and met it, slashing at its body twice.

【-1】

【-1】

This time, Mo Ming swung his sword with much more force than before, so he managed to deal two solid hits.

“Squeak squeak squeak squeak!” The Mine Rat, having failed in its attacks multiple times, screeched in exasperation again.

But this time, because Mo Ming had actively closed the distance, the Mine Rat didn’t use a pounce but instead whipped its tail at Mo Ming, who was behind it.

Mo Ming saw the tail attack coming, but because he wasn’t fast enough to dodge it completely, he could only helplessly raise his sword to parry.

【-23】

This hit dealt more damage than when he had sent the Mine Rat flying earlier, but it made no difference to Mo Ming.
Whether he had 7 HP or 3 HP left, he was still on the verge of death.

After discovering that he couldn’t handle the Mine Rat’s tail whip, Mo Ming quickly circled around to its front.

Seeing Mo Ming actively run right up to its face, the Mine Rat didn’t hold back and lunged forward with a bite… Of course, this attack was certain to miss Mo Ming.

And so, what was originally a turn-based game turned into… a bullet hell game?
Mo Ming dodged the Mine Rat’s attacks at close range while swinging his sword to counterattack.
As time went on, Mo Ming became more and more proficient, and his attack speed increased significantly.

The elite Mine Rat, with only a little over 70 HP, didn’t even last until the group of people it had killed could run back before it fell under Mo Ming’s sword… As the first elite monster to be “solo-killed,” being slowly ground to death by guaranteed damage felt strangely humiliating.

【You have leveled up.
You are now level 2.】

After killing the elite monster, Mo Ming leveled up directly to 2, with over 80% experience to spare.

Leveling from 1 to 2 required 100 experience points, while 2 to 3 required 350.
If he had gone to fight over the level 1 mobs with single-digit experience next to the village, it would have taken a lot of time.

But what Mo Ming had killed was a level 6 elite, with a 5-level gap and a 1-tier level gap.
The already generous experience from an elite monster, boosted by the level-difference bonus, almost pushed Mo Ming to level 3.

At a time when most of the highest-level players had just reached level 2, Mo Ming had suddenly become the highest-level player in the entire game.

And besides contributing a generous amount of experience, 4 copper coins also dropped next to the Mine Rat’s corpse, along with a… hat that emitted a faint green glow—this elite monster had directly dropped a green-quality item.

In an era of novices who couldn’t even assemble a full set of gray equipment, this green hat… this piece of green equipment was undoubtedly at the cutting edge.
Although it couldn’t be called the best gear in the game, it could definitely be considered proof of being a top-tier expert.

“…” However, Mo Ming didn’t look happy at all.
Instead, he had a strange expression… He lowered his head and stared at this gray leather hat emitting a green glow for a long while before bending down to pick it up.

Even though it was the first piece of equipment he had obtained, Mo Ming didn’t even look at its stats, tossing it into his backpack with a look of disgust.

Mo Ming’s first battle in 【Horizon】 thus ended in his victory.