Chapter 3  : Game Start

Soon, the final exams began. It went more or less like it did in the past; considering Li Yi’s standard, he knew very well in his heart that he did not have much hope, and the most he could do was scrape by with a graduation certificate.

July, King of Pantheon officially began its open beta. Due to the incident with Chu Nan, Li Yi had not entered the game at the first possible moment in the previous life. Instead, he only entered the game a whole year after the game started testing.

“I have ten days left, let’s see if I can earn my first bucket of gold. If I can’t, I’ll just look for a job like an honest guy and go to work with my feet firm on the ground!”

A delicate figure flashed through his mind. Thinking about his regrets from the previous life, Li Yi’s heart ached again. Although he was still playing a game, just like last time, his perspective this time was completely different from before.

“Aunty, is Brother Yi at home?”

A grating voice came from outside the door. As soon as he heard that voice, Li Yi’s whole body gave a jolt, and he ran outside at full speed.

“Oh, it’s Chen Yang. Come in, your Brother Yi is at home.”

As soon as Chen Yang, with his fat head and large ears, walked through the door, Li Yi rushed over and grabbed his hand, refusing to let go.

He had a long line of apologies he wanted to say to this Fatty, but the words were stuck at the edge of his mouth, and he could not voice a single one.

“Whatchu doing, Lil Yi’zi? You’re acting strange? I’m pretty sure I returned the money I owed you a long time ago.”

“No, it’s nothing.” Li Yi’s nose burned with emotion, and he patted Chen Yang’s shoulder hard.

This inconspicuous Fatty in front of him now was Li Yi’s friend since childhood. There was a scar from a knife wound on his stomach, taken in place of Li Yi. Back when they were in junior high, they had accidentally provoked a group of gangsters. At the time, Li Yi had grabbed someone’s knife and stabbed around indiscriminately, but he had not paid attention to what was happening behind him. A knife came straight at him, but Fatty took the hit valiantly.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that they had bonded over life and death, but when Li Yi was at the peak of his fervor with the game, Fatty had asked him for help. At the time, if Li Yi had just agreed to help, he would definitely have been able to solve Fatty’s problem, but he... As a result of this matter, their relationship utterly fell apart.

Li Yi just kept patting Fatty’s shoulder, all of his thousand apologies unvoiced. It felt as though they were stuck in his throat.

“Lil Yi’zi, are you okay??” Chen Yang was getting slightly spooked.

“It’s nothing now, it’s fine now.” Li Yi took a deep breath and recovered.

Seeing that Li Yi was fine, Chen Yang relaxed and rubbed his fat hands as he said, “Oh yeah, I came here to ask you, do you plan on playing that King of Pantheon open beta? I hear you can earn money with that game.”

“I do.”

Li Yi’s reply was quite prompt.

Chen Yang rubbed his hands excitedly. “Great, I plan on making a killing in there. I’ve even chosen my class, the White Elf Vagabond that can restore HP 1and is perfect at Physical Spells.”

“Don’t use the Vagabond. Sure, the Vagabond class earns a ton, but to be strong as a Vagabond, you’ll need good equipment, and you’ll need to wait until after you’re Level 100. That’s way too long for you. The way I see it, you should go the Summoner route. Natural Summons with loads of health and defense would suit you perfectly.”

There was one more thing Li Yi did not say, which was that playing as a Vagabond was a test of your control skills. With Chen Yang’s gaming standards, he would not be able to master the Vagabond even after three years.

In truth, during the previous life, Chen Yang’s character was the White Elf Vagabond. However, forget earning money, he could barely even level up. He entered King of Pantheon a whole year before Li Yi, but Li Yi just used half a month’s time to surpass him in level. As for his equipment... A cheating player never lacked equipment.

Chen Yang was stunned. “For real? How do you know it so well?”

In order to choose a good class, Chen Yang checked the official page every day, looking up information. Now that he heard Li Yi’s reasons, he was instantly a little swayed.

“D’ya trust me? If you do, choose the Natural Summon. As for your class... a Dwarf is a decent choice, one of their Natural Abilities is Instant Slip-Away. That way, if you can’t beat ’em, you could just run...”

Chen Yang yelped, “Innate Ability? How come you even know the Innate Abilities of these races?”

The official page only listed out the eight main races and classes, but there was no introduction of the race’s Innate Abilities or the class skills. As for the alleged ten years of closed beta testing, although this rumor was widely spread among the players, no one could be absolutely certain if it was true or not, because no information from the game was ever leaked.

To the players, other than the bits and pieces of gameplay occasionally released on the official page, everything about the King of Pantheon game was still a myth.

“Whether it’s true or not, wouldn’t you know if you just try it once the game starts testing? When you create your character, the system will tell you what Innate Abilities each race has.”

His eyes narrowed, Chen Yang rubbed his chin. “Alright, if the time comes and it really is as you say, I’ll choose the Dwarf Summoner.

“I guess I should figure out how to get my hands on a Helmet. Sigh, I got enough money, but the Helmets are all sold out. The company behind this King of Pantheon is a strange one, too. All we got is that one official page, no one even knows what the company address is.”

Li Yi snapped his fingers. “That’s an easy one. Give me the money, and you can come to collect the Helmet from me tomorrow.”

“Really?” Chen Yang grew excited.

“I have a friend whose family is a direct seller of these King of Pantheon Game Helmets.”

“That’s great!” Chen Yang was overjoyed.

“Oh yeah, what class are you going for?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.” Li Yi smiled mysteriously.

...

The next day, before Fatty came to collect it, Li Yi sent the Game Helmet over to him.

The final exams were over now, and all that was left was to collect that relatively useless graduation certificate. Other than that, Li Yi no longer had to go to school.

Ten days passed in a flash, and Li Yi had long since completed all necessary preparations. Before the game even started, he put on his Virtual Helmet and waited quietly.

Ding!

There was a crisp sound, and the light before his eyes gradually brightened.

“A hundred and three thousand, six hundred years ago, the ancient gods created this world. Back then, the earth was completely calm...”

[Skip!]

Li Yi had heard the introduction when entering the game several hundred times by now. The game had just started, so every second was precious. To him, listening to this introduction that he knew like the back of his hand was nothing more than a waste of time.

[The game characters can be divided into eight races, namely Human, Dwarf, White Elf, Werewolf, Undead, Dark Elf, Giant, and Orc. Since the races are different, so too are their Innate Abilities...]

[Skip!]

[Skip!]

Li Yi kept hitting skip until he finally reached the Character Select page.

The tall and mighty Armored Warrior, the Paladin surrounded by Holy Light, the Wizard who controlled the Elemental Laws. Each of these dashing characters flashed past his eyes, one after the other.

Almost anyone who was not intimately familiar with this game would probably spend a long time on this screen.

[Race: Human. Appearance adjustments: None. Class: Archer. Name: Dark Wing!]

[Confirm!]

In the previous life, the character he had chosen was a Dark Elf Thief. This time, he had given up on being a Thief and chose to be a Human Archer instead. Only his name remained unchanged.

There was a flash of white light before his eyes, and Li Yi, dressed in cotton clothes and holding a pocket knife, appeared standing in an empty spot outside Novice Village No. 103.

There were several tens of thousands of Novice Villages in the King of Pantheon game. The Novice Village you were spawned at was first determined by your gender and then by your race.

[Level: 1]

[Name: Dark Wing]

[Race: Human]

[Class: Archer]

[HP: 20]

[ MP 2 : 10]

[ STR 3 : 15]

[ DEF 4 : 5]

[ AGI 5 : 17]

[ SPD 6 : 5]

“Those damn Small Wild Boars, they’re eating away at the barley in front of the village again. Sigh, can anyone help me get rid of them?”

Village Chief No. 103 held his hands behind his back, nagging as he looked toward the barley fields outside the village anxiously.

The Realism Level was more than 90%.

Li Yi ran up to him and accepted the first novice quest, Kill Small 10 Wild Boars. He immediately took off into a jog, running toward the outskirts of the village.

Player after player appeared in the Novice Village, and in the blink of an eye, the place was utterly crowded and a chaotic mess.

A completely realistic game would never allow the player to just walk through others, and King of Pantheon was very absolute in its execution of this aspect. In order to prevent something as untoward as men and women squeezing up against each other, they had separated the male and female players into different Novice Villages upon entering the game. Odd-numbered Novice Villages were filled with men, while the even-numbered Novice Villages had no one but women...

It was not too unbearably crowded, but there were too many people, so it was inevitable that they would block off each other’s vision. Add that to the fact that they were all novices here, and how could the situation have been anything but chaotic?

While the many players were still getting in each other’s way and yelling at one another, Li Yi had already run out of the village and used the pocket knife in his hand to stab seven or eight Small Wild Boars to death.

In the early days of King of Pantheon, the system treated each and every class equally. Since they had all just entered the game, every class was equipped with a set of Novice Cotton Clothes, DEF 1–1, as well as a pocket knife with 0–1 ATK.

The Small Wild Boars were very easy to kill since they only had 50 HP and extremely weak ATK. He just needed to stab one about a dozen times with the pocket knife to kill it.

As soon as he killed ten Small Wild Boars, Li Yi’s body shone with golden light. He had leveled up.

...

Leveling up once gave him a bit more AP 7 , and Li Yi did not give it a second thought before he added it to his STR.

To Archers, two of these attributes were the most important, the first being STR and the second AGI. STR could increase their damage output, whereas AGI affected their Evasion Rate as well as their SPD.

In the early stages, he did not really need Evasion or SPD. The best way was to just mow through the monsters as fast as he could.

By killing ten Small Wild Boars, he had earned seven pieces of Small Wild Boar Meat. Although he had completed the Village Chief’s quest, Li Yi did not return immediately. Instead, he continued to kill Small Wild Boars until he collected ten pieces of Small Wild Boar Meat. Only then did he stop, satisfied, and then he ran into the little forest in front of the village.

The little forest in front of the village did not spawn any monsters, so many novice players who ran here just looked around for a while before running out again.

Li Yi placed the ten pieces of Small Wild Boar Meat all around the forest and then hid in the shadows, waiting patiently.

Not long later, a big yellow dog appeared. It sniffed as it walked, and soon it found the first piece of meat. After sniffing it a few times, the dog swallowed it one gulp, followed closely by the second piece, the third... After it had finished eating all ten pieces of meat, the big dog finally barked a few times in satisfaction before lying down underneath a tree and falling asleep.

Li Yi walked up to it and touched the big dog with his hand. A notification appeared before his eyes: [Do you want to capture Erhei’s Old Yellow?]

“Yes!”