Versatile: Alternate World

9 The Beginning of the Grind

Well, that was kind of expected and unexpected at the same time. The stat number just increased and is all sitting in two digits. These kinds of stats only appears around level 5 or above players. People might already mistake me for a level 5 or higher player despite still sitting on level 0.

In the end, those are still temporary stats. What I needed now is to improve my equipment as soon as possible, clear dungeons, earn enough gold for me to exchange for real money, and to sustain my needs to upgrade things until I gain the EX job Blacksmith. It's pricey as heck but that is how MMORPG games work, you need more money to become stronger, and investing is the key.

But first, I had to try out another function of the Versatile Weapon. That is the Change Form. I am really curious about the function and I want to see for myself how it works since this is the first weapon in Alternate World to have the change form function.

To ensure no one is watching, I went a bit deeper into the forest and climb on a tree that has a bit of branch with leaves, allowing me to hide a little bit. Holding the Versatile Weapon, I raise it up in the air and chant the skill.

"Change Form!"

[Player cannot access the skill because you chanted the skill. Please use it via mental command]

Damn, that was a bit of an embarrassing thing. The mental command huh? It was convenient for me now since I am mostly used to activating skills automatically and only a few skills needed to be shouted or chant their incantations. If this function is only via mental command, then changing weapons is easy and can be used halfway through your attack without shouting at the enemy anytime you want to change its form. Talk about convenience right there.

I mentally conjured the skill and all of a sudden, my surroundings seems to be in slow mode, however, even though I am in slow mode, I am not really doing any slow motion in my thought process. The system in the game is working properly. As everything slows down, a sliding panel appeared before me. There is also an explanation that the panels before me are not visible to other players and only I can see it. Well, that is good to know.

The panels are all containing different kinds of weapon forms and from all the lists that I have seen, all of them belong to one specific class. Counting all of them, I confirmed that it has all of the forms of all weapons existing right now. Since that is the case, why not change to a weapon I am more familiar with? I selected the Magic Sword as the weapon form and before I knew it, the slow-motion I experienced stopped and returned to its normal speed. The panels disappeared too and the weapon form of the Versatile Weapon has already changed into a Magic Sword.

Normal swords and Magic Swords have a different look if you compare them to each other and players can immediately notice the differences between them. Magic Swords has a big green orb embedded on the blade near the pointy end of the sword while swords that Swordsman classes use are visibly lacking. In later designs, you can already differentiate them due to how the normal swords lack the magic runes that would have been printed on the blade or hilt. By just that little mark, you can immediately tell which weapon is which.

The Versatile Weapon's look changed. It turned into a Magic Sword. Just like the usual, it looks like the beginner magic sword. I check my mana if there is a loss on mana and sighed in relief after seeing none was consumed. This skill is not mana consumer skill. I also noticed that it has no cool down. This is a good thing!

I tried to check the other weapons and this time, I tried the gun option and multiple panels appeared before me which revealed the different types of guns like the revolver, single pistol, and twin handgun. I tried the twin handgun this time around and the form changed too. I never expected to see that the Versatile Weapon can divide itself into two as soon as the weapon formed. I thought I would only get one gun but in a form of a twin handgun since the Versatile Weapon is only a single weapon but, it's indeed a real twin handgun that appeared. I tried checking out the other weapons and they also turned out great. I checked the heavy weapons too like the hammer and axes and I realize that they don't seem to be as heavy as their actual counterparts but still possess the same destructive power the original ones possess.

There are a few panels that the Versatile weapon showed up along with the selectable ones but they are marked with question marks. I don't know how many question marks are there because I can't access the remaining panels after trying to bypass the first question marked panel. From my guess, these marks were only going to show themselves once a new class is released in later patches which would be happening in the future. Looks like Versatile Weapon will be really handy in the future and gets an update every time a new class will be added. Not only that but this will help my class a lot and will save me a lot in handling weapons without hoarding them for me to change weapons to accommodate the Versatile Class playstyle.

After testing everything the Versatile Weapon can do at the moment, I went down from hiding and looked at my level. Since it is still sitting in level 0 while most players right now should have already shot themselves out to level 3 or maybe even level 5 already depending on how hard they have done their grind.

First I have to go to the clearing. While on the way, the rain started pouring down. Weather systems are random in this game but it really affects the behaviors of various NPCs and makes the game unique. For example, there are fewer NPCs roaming outside the town once the rain started pouring down, and depending on the town or city you are in, there might be some secret NPCs that will appear only in specific weather conditions too. Even the time is also different. Morning, Afternoon, and Evening are all different times and they also affect NPC behavior. Just like the weather, there are some secret NPCs that only appear at various times of the day too like the Dark Shady Merchant that randomly spawns at night in various locations.

I remembered most of the secret NPCs and how to meet them, in fact, I have met most of them in the past timeline. However, most secret NPCs in Mining Town are just for the sake of the players getting stronger to be able to get by to the first challenge before they reach the main city of Resurgia and where the Teleport Portal is located. These guys will allow players to level quickly as these secret NPCs give out quite a lot of EXP once their quests are cleared. Before players can access the main gate, they had to become level 10 players and gain the token after defeating the so-called Gate Guardian to allow access to the gate where it leads to the main city of Resurgia which is called the Capital, where the adventure truly begins.

It is a rite of passage and everyone has to go through it so that no player will regret entering the Capital where the monsters gather all around. Not only that but the repertoire of quests and things you can do will expand now after entering the Capital.

There is no rush leveling up, I am not vying for the top spot. What I want is to get stronger. Taking quests that offer SP or AP would do good. Getting high leveled up in the very beginning is not so ideal. I want to take it slow in the beginning too. Also, I needed to obtain different kinds of armor and weapons for my weapon to eat. Since the Versatile Weapon can eat any equipment, maybe hoarding them to feed it to my weapon would be ideal. If I want to get stronger, I would have to rely on this weapon. Looks like I won't be selling my armor once I get a better one.

I did not go to the level 1 monsters. Although they are weak and they can be easily killed, they yield too little EXP and the materials they drop are very useless that I would rather throw them away as the NPCs do not receive them when you sell them unless they issued a quest for you to bring them. Besides, those monsters are being killed left and right for beginner quests. It's a waste of time to take them since most of the quests in Mining Town only revolve in newbies explaining things and stuff therefore I don't need to take them and it's not mandatory to receive them anyway.

I headed into the farther clearing where the monsters at levels 3 and 4 spawn. There are a few players challenging the area and most of them are solo players so I decided to look for monsters that aren't attacked by players. The monsters here drop more valuable loot so for beginners, this is the ideal place. Although the players of level 0 will surely have some trouble killing one monster here, with my stats that are equal to level 5 players, these guys are nothing to me.

I pulled out my sword and form my battle stance. My plan for today is to kill a few monsters and gain a level up to level 3 or 4. Once they drop some of the normal gears, I will have some fodders to feed my Versatile Weapon once I stopped grinding.

I just decided to stick to the Swordsman class and used a long sword. I needed a few active skills to use to earn more SP much frequently. As much as I want to buy the passives firsts, I can't earn a decent amount of SP return if I only have the passive. Once I rack up enough of them in every class, I can spend them for later in some passive skills and if there are some free SP left, might as well buy some stronger active skills. I am vying for a passive and a single active skill but it's not worth using the Free SP in classes that I can easily grind the SP so I decided to keep the Free Sp to the classes that I rarely use, after all, they are limited most of the time. And by killing the monsters, I will also gain exp. Killing two birds with one stone.

Since there are only a few players in this area, the monsters here are a bit numerous. I saw a Lizard with a long tongue aiming to attack me so I didn't waste my time and faced it.

[Grass Lizard]

Level 3

HP: 140/140

Attributes: Beast

Ha!

I slashed the sword into the Grass Lizard once. In fact, it's just a normal slash, nothing fancy of the like, it was like I am swatting a fly and nothing else.

-70

Goddang, I still can't get used to seeing small numbers. The fact that I am inflicting two-digit attacks is quite old to me and yet I can't get over the fact that I am at level 0.

Well, it was indeed big damage for a player around level 0. If the attack crit, this monster should have been dead before it can attack. Players who are level zero usually have attack values around 5-7 damage depending on the stat they have. Of course, if the stat of their STR almost reached the numbers similar to mine, this value is nothing, however, focusing on one stat is not good. A good balance stat would help.

Before the Grass Lizard can react, I slashed another one to the Grass Lizard.

-50

And a little finisher is a simple stab. With the soft body of the monster, it was like using a fork to a hotdog. It was boring.

-30

Kacha!

Blood spluttered out of the Green Lizard as the sword pierced through its body. I twisted the sword and pulled it out, putting the lizard down, lifeless.

-Grass Lizard was killed successfully.

-Got Sticky Tongue

-Got 3 copper

-Got 100 EXP(Title effects activated, Bonus 100 EXP earned)

-Got 5 Swordsman Class SP(Title Effects activated, 5 Bonus Swordsman Class SP earned)

Looks like this boring routine would take a while before things get exciting.

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like