“Yes” Lee Jun impatiently answered, the dive had been a success and he connected to virtual reality quite smoothly. It seemed as if he were completely cured of his fear…

  “Yes.” He impatiently answered, wondering how much more time would it take.

  A bright flash blinded his eyes and when his vision returned, he was standing on a sidewalk of a busy street. Before Weed had a chance to look around two dozen or so messages began popping up in front of him one after another. They nearly completely blocked out his vision field.

  ‘Not this again!’ Groaned Weed as he saw the first message. He really wasn’t interested in levelling such a useless skill.

  ‘What the heck!’ Weed swore. That was the last thing he needed. As infamy increases, he would find himself being chased out of towns and villages by the local guards. This was the absolute worst thing to happen!

  “Nooo!” Weed cried out aloud. A few passing NPC’s stared at Weed as he cried out aloud.

  ‘Why is this stupid thing increasing?’ Weed wondered as he felt he could almost cry. Most players would have been happy if part of their unique quest was being fulfilled without them requiring doing anything. However, Weed had mixed feelings about his unique quest. He was suspicious whether fulfilling his unique quest was actually the right path to undertake to beating the game. Mostly, he was wary of Lee Hyun. It wouldn’t be surprising if this was a trap to lure players into doing things while pulling them away further from beating the game.

  ‘That’s not too bad.’ Weed thought, he might have gained an edge over monsters here. ‘This could certainly help me kill monsters!’ He thought excitedly. He moved on to the next message.

  ‘Is that what is causing the cold blooded cruelty to increase?’ Weed wondered. By offering a mission to the Kobolds and deviating away from the original quest offered by the Count, he had triggered a chain of events.

  This was building up rapidly in Weed’s mind. ‘Would this mean…to trigger ripple effects I need to digress from the quest at hand?’ Weed had tons of questions and theories he wanted to verify but there still more messages to read.

  Weed groaned out aloud as if he were in fatal pain. This was too much; this was the last thing he wanted. He wasn’t of high enough level, his profession restricted him from taking melee professions and he played alone. Hunting monsters lower than his level was the only way for him to gain experience and level up. Now if these very monsters started avoiding him how would he level up?

  Weed knew it, there was no good from increasing infamy. What looked pretty on the outside was actually quite nasty from within.

  “YES!” Weed shout out aloud. By this time seeing his antics, most NPC’s and players began considering Weed has some deranged lunatic.

  Weed began dancing on the spot; with an experience cap limit it meant his cold blooded cruelty skill would no longer increase! Weed made a mental note that ripple effect from a single event usually had a cap limit. In this case it turned out to be the amount of experience he could gain from triggering an event.

  ‘Huh?’ Weed looked at the message in disbelief. He had never read about anyone posting anything like this in the VR community before. That or he had never bothered reading topics on inactivity. Most games had no penalities for inactivity, however Elementarem Vim was different. It was built on the premise, that if you don’t practice regularly you lose touch and mastery of the skill. It was another ploy of Lee Hyun to get players to regularly play Elementarem Vim.

  Initially the developers of Unicorn Corp were against this idea however they agreed once Lee Hyun comprised and agreed to move the Unique Skills out of the penalty scope. So all other skills etc were penalized for inactivity except for those relating to unique quests and A level above quests.

  Tears of regret dropping from Weed’s eyes. This was too cruel!!

  At last he was able to close all the message boxes. Weed was shattered, he had no idea that being inactive was going to be so expensive on him.

  Weed quickly opened his skills set window to get a better a picture of where his skills stood;

  As Weed analyzed his skill sets, he realized he only had five attack or attack related skills or skills that can be used in a combat situation; Eavesdropping, Lion’s Roar, Stealth, Fists of Fury, and Sword Mastery. Everything else was either crafting related or miscellaneous. Weed grumbled looking at his skills. He was one of the first players on Elementarem Vim however he was most likely the slowest progressing players as well. Royal Road Elementarem Vim was had completed its first anniversary two months ago and here he was with maybe five or six combat skills and a level of…Weed strained his memory wondering what his level was; realizing he couldn’t remember he quickly opened the stats window to check,

  ‘Level 20…’ Weed gloomily though to himself. The more he read about his passive stats, the more depressed he became. Glow in the dark was not a cool skill to have. However things weren’t as bad as he imagined them to be.

  ‘I have a long long way to go…’ he thought to himself with a sigh.

  ‘The journey has only begun! Even the original Weed began playing Royal Road one year after its release!’ Weed thought picking himself up.

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  Authors Note:

  1. Not much writing, as I emphasized that I don't have much time. So I hope you are happy with just the tables :)

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