"Hey! Watch where you're going, man!" A player cursed, his hands spreading out in an annoyed manner. I had inadvertently collided with him while dashing around town. Since it was the first day of the game's release, loads of people surrounded the town, so it was quite tough to dodge incoming players. I was also running, so that was another mistake I learned quickly not to do.

"Ah, sorry, my bad," I said, raising my hands in an apologetic action. The person looked at me with an annoyed face, but soon ignored me and moved on. As he walked out of view, I could see that another person bumped into him a few seconds later.

Whoops.

There were a lot of people moving about. Some were shouting at the top of their lungs because they couldn't be heard from all the commotion while others were creeping around trying to avoid any confrontation with players.

"Ay, fuck off, mate!" 

"Yo, watch where you're going, bro!"

"S-sorry, can you let me through?"

Several voices could be briefly heard among the multitude of people. The scene reminded me of previous MMOs I used to play, as something similar would happen on the first day of the game's launch. Usually, the best way to progress through the game is to level up and complete the storyline. To complete the storyline, you would have to find quests to complete. That was usually the first thing people thought of to do when first starting, so the scene wasn't uncommon. 

Dodging incoming passerby's, I arrived at my location and was able to slip through a crowd of players that were huddled together around an NPC. It was tough to see him with all the players blocking my vision, but a large orange triangular prism pointing downwards was situated five feet above him, marking him as indeed an NPC and not a player, which would be displayed as green instead.

Usually, games had different「Channels」to prevent a map from being overloaded with players. Channels were instances of a map inside the game. Channels provided players a way to spread out and not be clustered in an area. For example, if you wanted to fight mobs in a specific area, but there were too many people and not enough enemies, you could change channels to an instance of the map with fewer players to satisfy your needs. In this case, I would need to change channels because there were simply too many players in this one map, making it hard to navigate.

The only problem was, every channel was filled, and there were over fifty of them. Imagine fifty instances of the same map filled to the brim with players. The thought of it not only caused me to be surprised at the number of players currently online but also made me feel slightly claustrophobic.

Moving closer to the NPC, his features were becoming more apparent. No longer blocked by other players, it was a burly man with a thick twirly mustache. His short, flowing hair was a light brown color containing a smidge of gray undertones with his attire consisting of a bright brown coat with what looked like a semblance of fox-fur attire. He also had a thick belt along with a small purse jingling around his waist. His tall, dark boots contained long ended tips. He looked like the typical merchant.

Interact

A medium-sized popup appeared before me with one cleanly written word. I pressed the interact button, and the merchant's attention quickly shifted to me. "Ah, hello! Who might you be?" He inquired, clasping his hands together, showing a smile on his face.

I was expecting a message dialogue to pop up and give me options of what I was supposed to say, but that moment unfortunately never came. This caused some awkwardness to unintentionally rise from inside me even though the person I was talking to was only an NPC. Fumbling my words, I replied with the only thing that I could think of on the spot.

"Uhh...I'm an Arclight sent by the gods to assist you guys in your troubles," I replied. The merchant's eyebrows creased inwards but quickly widened with disbelief.

"Ah!" He yelled energetically, "So it is you! I had been wondering when our Messiah would arrive." His mouth was showing a full clean smile, revealing a bright golden tooth.

Messiah? I don't know about that. I was just a person who enjoyed video games.

"So, what do you need?" I asked, my head filled with questions and possibilities of what's to come next.

"Ah, yes, yes." He says, leaning closer towards me. In a hushed whisper, he replies, "I am taking an essential item to the Kingdom of Trius, and I need a specialized escort. I got informed that I would be getting a messenger from the gods to assist me in my travel."

It would've been easier if he said it aloud, as his hushed whispers were drowned out by the commotion of the crowd. It also looked like; however, he didn't notice the vast number of people clustered around him.

"Informed, from who?" I asked.

"The town Priest had duties to perform and could not deliver it himself, so he gave me the responsibility of the deed. The two of us are close associates, so he confided me with information that an escort sent by the gods would be assisting me. That escort must be you!" He said enthusiastically.

"Ah... I see, when do we start then?"

"Whenever you desire," he said. "Whenever you are ready, come talk to me again, and I will close up shop, then we can proceed."

Shop? What shop? Perplexed, I looked around him and caught a glimpse of a vendor stall nearby to him. I couldn't see it earlier with the people in the way, but double-checking, it seemed like the merchant was indeed an actual merchant that had set up a small stall filled with various foodstuffs and arrangements of weapons.

"All right, thank you."

The merchant turned away, resuming his previous business. Speaking of weapons, I received a sword and shield for completing the tutorial as a reward, but I had yet to put it on. Remembering correctly, the way to open up your game settings was performed with a quick swipe of your hand up with any three fingers extended. Doing so displayed my「Personal Interface」

On the right side of my Personal Interface was a character tab containing all the information of my character, while on the left side was a grid-like menu displaying my inventory. The「Character Tab」 on the right held a multitude of things. Within the character tab, stuff like my Name, Title, Guild Association, Insignia, Class, Level, Prestige, and Medal count shown at the very top. Under all of that, the character tab itself divided into two sections, with the right one being slightly longer vertically than the other.

On the right section of the「Character Tab」, it displayed a visual model of my avatar along with twelve medium-sized squares, six on each side of my character neatly placed in a one by six formations showing my characters equipment slots. Each square contained a greyed-out icon, each resembling different items. It looks like I haven't equipped anything. This was called the「Avatar Tab」. As I looked closer, there were three small tabs just below the「Avatar Tab」 that read 「Gear」, 「Outfits」, and 「Badges」.

Switching back and forth, I found out the difference between Gear and Outfits. Gear was the equipment that was used mainly in combat and included several stats, while Outfits were purely cosmetic items that could go over your Gear. If I were to wear a cosmetic top, the visual appearance of the cosmetic would display over my Gear, but I would still retain the stats and values of the gear equipped below it — sort of like putting on a fresh suit over some protective armor. Badges, I had no idea what they were, as I didn't have any.

On the left of the「Character Tab」, my character's stat values and attributes were shown. There were nine stats in total, Attack, Defense, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Luck, Health, and Spirit and Stamina. Quickly going over each stat, I got a small description of what each of them did. This was the 「Stats Tab」.

Interesting.

It looked like Attack and Defense were absolute values that showed how strong you were and how much you can take hits. Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Luck were values that modified your Attack and Defense values based on your class. A Knight would mainly use the Strength stat, so to get the full potential of my damage, I would have to allocate Ability Points into Strength as I leveled up. Compare that to a mage-type class, where the mage would focus mainly on increasing Intelligence.

You gained five「Ability Points」every time you leveled up. Doing simple math, since I didn't assign any Ability Points prior, I could tell because I had a total of twenty-five Ability Points and was only level five. Ability Points could only get assigned to the four stats; Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Luck, so choosing Strength was undoubtedly my best option.

The last three stats were Health, Spirit, and Stamina. Health was self-explanatory, so I didn't have to worry too much about it. If your health hit zero, you died. At level five, I got situated with six-hundred and fifty (650) Health.

Spirit, on the other hand, allowed you to cast your skills. Specific skills cost a specified amount of Spirit. I started with about a hundred (100) Spirit. Spirit also regenerates over time, so that explained why the value was so low compared to my health.

Stamina was a weird and peculiar stat. Every time you engage in an activity that stresses your physical body, the stamina bar ticks down. That means if you're running, jumping, lifting a heavy object, etc. the stamina bar will decrease. I didn't know how the system could recognize if the object I was raising were heavy, but I assumed some system calculations ran in the background without my knowledge to do those things.

Some skills also used Stamina; I realized the ability 【Shield Charge】had a description, and the cost of using the skill was Stamina. Stamina also looked like it regenerated slightly faster than Spirit, but I wasn't too sure as I had to do some testing to find out if that was the case or not.

My「Inventory」was to the left of the「Personal Interface」. The inventory tab was pretty straightforward. It contained an eight by ten grid of empty item slots where I can obtain items on the left, and to the right were several categories that I could press. Certain things went into specific categories, and as I went through all the groups, each class had it's very own inventory grid, meaning I had massive amounts of space for each type. Below the grid, housed a number for the amount of money I had, or Silver coins as this game called it.

There were eleven categories in total, but the one I was most interested in was the Equipment tab. Pressing the tab, I could see several items displayed on the grid. A white wool tunic, studded leather pants, a steel longsword, and a wooden shield was shown, each item having a white background to mark their rarity.

Equipping each item gave me a boost to my stats, mainly Defense and Strength, which in turn raised my Attack a minimal amount. The items were only of Common rarity, so they didn't give me too big of a stat boost, but it was still better than wearing nothing.

Checking the other tabs if I had any extra items, the tutorial also gave me a substantial amount of small health potions. The potions restored 100 health, but I only had twenty of them, so I had to use them sparingly.

With a quick swipe downwards, I closed the Personal Interface. Finishing equipping the items that the tutorial gave me, I looked around to see if I had anything else to do before starting my first Quest. A small minimap that lay at the top right of my vision containing a rough layout of the town along with several icons and markings, so I had thought of exploring the town beforehand.

Putting my finger over the minimap expanded the tab, showing a map of the area. Several icons could be seen, such as houses, inns, potion bottles, anvils, and several others apace with various triangles of different colors sprinkled across different places on the map. I could only guess what each of the icons signified, but it wasn't all too hard to determine.

The town was quite large, with intricate buildings and beautiful scenery. Passing through all the houses, inns, stables, churches, and castles, each of them had their own allure. Some buildings contained rich dark oakwood while others had brightly colored stone brick layering, giving it a baronial resemblance.

I spend the time to go over to every icon indicated on the map to understand what each of them meant. It took me roughly thirty minutes to survey the whole town, but it wasn't all too bad because everything felt surreal, maybe a bit too surreal. My body was still getting accustomed to moving around in a virtual space so that, so I would unconsciously lose my footing now and then.

There were plenty of places that let you buy items, shop for potions, provide a place for housing, etc. Inns gave you a safe place to stay for the night, giving little passive experience over time. Visiting churches let you heal your character back to full health while removing any debuff effects. Each building had a use inside the game, but it also didn't feel misplaced.

It felt like an actual town that you could see yourself living in.

After satisfying my curiosity with exploring the town, I head back to where the merchant's location. A large group of players still surrounded him, and it was bigger than last time. Squeezing through the masses, I eventually got to the front. Interacting with him once again gave me a small popup message.

You must be Level Fifteen (15) to start this Questline.

Huh, level fifteen? But, the merchant said I could start it whenever!

Making sure it wasn't a mistake, I repeatedly interacted with the merchant, getting the same results each time. It seems like the system itself is preventing me from starting the questline until I reached a certain level. Since there was no way to bypass the system requirement and start the quest earlier, there was nothing I could do but spend the time to raise my level.

To raise levels, you needed to gain experience. Experience is gained in multitudes of ways. In most MMORPG's the most efficient way of leveling was doing quests and killing mobs. There might be other ways, but I didn't know if the game provided a better option of increasing levels.

Looking around town for some quests to do, I realized that NPC's that have an orange triangle above them their head indicated that they had a quest available to complete. Grabbing all of the quests currently available in the town, I wanted to maximize my time and efficiency for leveling up. It didn't matter if it was a small quest to deliver goods or a hunting quest subjugating monsters. I would leave nothing out.

Several quest notices queued in my Quest log. I hastily went to work completing the new quests I had received. Searching for an exit, I consult my minimap. The town was surrounded by massive cobblestone walls, with a heftily sized gate located in the direction precisely east of the town.

That was where I needed to head to leave town.

Upon reaching the gate to leave, two guards standing watch greeted me with a firm handshake. With a slight nod of their heads in approval, they allowed me to pass through cleanly without any trouble.

Entering a new zone, my minimap updated, and a clean holographic title appeared in front of my eyes. The title said「You have entered Ashur Woods Trail」. It was the name of the current map I was in. While looking at my surroundings, several players were spread out across the map, as it was reasonably large. Some players were hunting what seemed to be slime-like monsters, while others had axes and were cutting down trees. There was a broad winding trail that cut through the foliage of thick trees and shrubbery. Pieces of patched dirt surrounded the area.

I was interested to see what the players were doing, so I called out to one close to me. It was a person with dark hair with brown highlights with slender but firmly built features. He stood just a few inches shorter than me, but he was still considered a tall person. He also looked to be about the same age as me - twenty-four.

"Yo!" I yelled out to him. "Whatcha doing?"

He was currently swinging his greatsword at green-slimed monsters. With every huge swing, a monster would get cut in half, its Health Points dropping from full to zero in an instant. A faint sound of coins clicking and a defined system sound could be heard every time a monster died. This probably meant that the slime dropped items and appeared in his inventory.

"Hunting slimes." He said. "What bout you, man?"

His voice had a very medium pitched tone but also contained a thick Chinese accent, so I unintentionally blurted out a question that was on my mind.

"Are you Chinese?"

"Haha," He laughed. "Damn, you could tell already? Yea I'm Chinese, whatchu need?"

"What are you doing hunting slimes?" I asked. "Arent there better monsters to fight?"

With his attention focused on killing slimes, another great swing from his weapon destroyed another mob he was fighting. Quickly putting away the greatsword on his back, he turns towards me.

"Slime give good experience, super easy to fight at lower levels. Plus, you need some of the materials to craft the potions in the future, so I thought, why not."

"Ah, I see. What about your main questline, did you do that yet?"

"Nah, you need to be level fifteen to start it, man! These guys making do the hard work already in the early game content."

"I know, right!" I exclaimed, "What is up with that, the skill curve is higher than I thought it would be."

He gave a slight chuckle. "You take the quest called Grey Wolf Hunt yet?"

"Yea, I think so," I remarked, pulling up my quest log again.

"They are found in Ashur Woods, but they are level ten, so it is hard to kill them. That's why I fight the slimes to get my level up."

"Looks like you have some experience playing MMOs then." I inquired. Usually, people would get full of themselves and venture alone in an area way past their level range only to learn the hard way, immediately losing their life.

"Yea, I was a top player in Retribution Online. That game old news, though. I thought I would try something new."

"So you're an old-school player, then."

"Yea, I guess you can say that, haha."

Retribution Online was a popular desktop game and a traditional MMORPG. Unlike Arclight Online, the game was housed on the computer instead of in Virtual Reality. I heard the game had died out several years after when the first VRMMO came out. I couldn't blame the developers, most video games did. They couldn't compete.

"Are you in a party? Maybe we can go together and kill them." I said.

"Nah, bro. I'm not in a party, just add me." He said with a small chuckle. "You sure you can handle it tho? I tried to solo them earlier, but they were pretty hard." 

"Yea, no problem. Shouldn't be too hard."

I opened my 「Personal Interface」 and sent a party invite to him. At the bottom of the personal interface was a scroll wheel with several options. One of them was a 「Party」 option. Parties were groups you could make with other players to help you out. Being in a party gave you bonus experience when killing monsters, and you get to share any team buffs that a player uses.

"So what do I call you? DaAce?" I asked because that was the in-game name he had.

"Ya, that fine. You can also call me Ace. What about you, call you Winter?"

"Yeah, sure. That's fine."

"All right then, Winta!" He exclaimed, " Follow me, the wolf are deep in the woods so we gotta go further."

"Lead the way."

What an enthusiastic guy, I was usually more reserved when playing video games. This guy went all out, though; he was an eccentric person in every right. This wasn't mainly a bad thing, as it was always nice to have a person that raised morale. Running past a couple of players and mobs, we traversed through two zones.

As we got closer to the Ashur Woods, the number of trees thickened, and foliage started to build up. Sunlight was also diminishing, and the number of players we were seeing was becoming less and less. Taking short breaks to rebuild up Stamina, it only took us about five minutes to reach our desired destination.

You have entered the Ashur Woods.

"Ok, we are here." He said.

Looking around, I could see an assortment of plants and trees. Several small animals also inhabited the place. I couldn't see their health bars, so that must mean they were non-interactable, but some rabbits scurried around, and birds were chirping away.

I was looking closely at a rabbit digging a burrow, but while it was hopping away out of view. A large creature suddenly lunges towards it, and with a large snap, the rabbit got bit with great force. I winced, the figure that just bit the rabbit was a Grey Wolf. Seeing a rabbit die right in front of me gave me a sense of surprise, but I realized that I was going to be the one killing the Grey Wolf soon enough.

"Hey, there's a wolf right there," I said, pointing directly at the mob.

"Where?" Ace said, looking around, scratching his head. He was also looking for wolves as well.

Finally noticing the wolf I was pointing at, he directed his full attention towards it. The wolf was the size of a grown adult bear, with flowing thick grey fur and razor-sharp teeth. It had a menacing look, and its paws could be heard thudding on the dirt as it moved around.

"All right, you want to go in first, my friend?" He said, his stance poised for battle.

I wanted to say yes, but at the back of my mind, a growing concern was raised about my abilities to kill the wolf. Even though I was a veteran MMO player, the monster was still five levels above me. Regardless of how proficient you are at the game, if you died with one hit, then there was no coming back from it. I didn't want to end up like that poor rabbit.

"Sure, why not," I said.

This comment was directed towards the wolf, his attention shifting from the now dead rabbit and towards me instead. His brown eyes were glaring at me, giving me a piercing gaze. It looks like there was really no going back now.

Getting into a battle position and initiating the fight with a【Shield Charge】, I send a well-timed blow with my wooden shield to the wolf. I landed a direct hit as the wolf staggers back, shaking its head in frustration. Regaining control, the wolf lowers its body in a fighting stance and growls deeply at me while barring his fangs.

-72

A damage value floats atop the Grey wolf, fading away slowly. A health bar also appeared above him, decreasing steadily. The wolf circles around me while preparing its steps. Seeing me lower my guard, it suddenly lunges at me at high speed. I jumped back instinctively and sent out a【Shield Bash】to stop the wolf's advance. The wolf tries to dodge it, but it was too late. A tremendous thwack could be heard as the wolf was sent flying back towards the hard dirt, letting out a small whimper.

-36
Stunned (1s)

This was my chance to counterattack. I rush in the direction of the wolf, but before I could follow up with a direct【Lunge】attack, Ace quickly jumps in front of me, preparing an attack of his own. "Hiya!" He triumphantly yells, shifting his body forward and swinging his massive greatsword horizontally across the wolf's body. With the colossal cleave attack, his greatsword radiated a bright red. Whenever this happened, it meant that he was casting some sort of skill.

-212

The wolf was sent tumbling back a few meters with a hard thud, Ace's greatsword getting embedded in a nearby tree. You would think an attack that massive would leave the wolf in complete tatters, but his HP bar only ticked down from green to yellow. He still had a little over half his health left. Quickly pulling his greatsword out, Ace positioned next to me.

"He's hard, but he's not that hard," I said to him. If we were to keep these rotations of skills up, the Grey Wolf would die in due time. We wouldn't even have to waste any potions in this fight, which was a relief.

As if understanding what I was saying, the Grey Wolf got low to the ground and performed a sizeable deafening howl. The sound reverberated off the thick trees, causing the surrounding animals to scurry away hurriedly.

A sense of dread invaded my body as several other Grey Wolves of the same level started appearing out of nowhere from behind the trees. In total, another nine of them showed up, and my optimism from earlier quickly vanished and was replaced with growing fear.

"You were saying, man?" Ace said, the expression on his face telling the whole story.

"I see why you said these guys were hard to deal with now," I said with a nervous chuckle. "You got any plans to handle them?"

It seemed like the wolves were able to call upon each other with a war signal. It made sense since wolves usually traveled in packs. There probably wasn't ever going to be a single Grey Wolf just by itself.

"Don't worry; I'm always a man with the plan!" Ace said. It looked like he wasn't fearful at all, smiling in the face of danger. I wish I could be that enthusiastic.

The wolves were beginning to prepare their attack, each one of them ready to pounce on their prey. It was only a matter of time before they realized that they had the upper advantage. The Grey Wolves weren't completely stupid, acting with caution before closing out the kill. Even in a situation of danger, I had to praise the designers who programmed them this way.

"Now would be a good time to get that plan in motion, Ace," I said.

We grouped closer together, our backs against each other. Ace was slightly trembling, and even though he really didn't want to show it, he was also just as terrified of dying as I was. Death was not a joke in this game; you lost a shit ton of progress doing so. This probably the closest "bro" moment we could get before dying miserably. Ironically, I had made fun of the players that bit off more than they could chew, but we were pitted in the same situation.

"You know how aggro works, my friend?" He said.

Of course I knew! Aggro was a term used to describe the range of influence a mob had. Aggro is when a mob enters a combat state because you did something to piss it off. Whether it was attacking it, or entering its invisible danger zone, the monster would start attacking you once you pulled its aggro.

"Of course."

"All right, here what you gonna do. I'm going to run in opposite direction, and you start aggroing all the mobs. Lead them to me, but make sure you have enough health to survive, they deal a lotta damage. I'm going t- "

He didn't get to finish his sentence as several wolves started pouncing at both of us. Quickly activating my【Iron Defense】skill, which would give me more survivability, I started grabbing the attention of all of the mobs. Ace sprinted in the opposite direction, and I made sure that none of the wolves would be chasing after him.

Balancing between surviving and drawing the wolves to a specific direction was really tough. Still, since I had prior experience in another game, I could gauge when the wolves were attacking. Every time my【Shield Bash】 was off cooldown, I would instantly use it on a group that was pouncing at me. Dodging left and right, I managed to group up all the wolves together using well-timed【Tornado Slashes】 along with【Shield Charges】.

A part of my mind was afraid that Ace just abandoned me to die with these mobs, but I couldn't think about that since I got bombarded with a flurry of attacks. The attacks hurt like hell too, the game's engine was registering the wolves attacks with lifelike proficiency, and the sharp pain of a real bite was invading my body.

Wait a moment, I lied. It didn't entirely feel like a real bite, but it was pretty fucking close.

The good news is I managed to aggro all of the wolves onto attacking me, and the bad news was my health was dropping. Fast. My health bar was quickly ticking to the red mark, slowly getting close to zero — the only reason I wasn't dead yet was because my Iron Defense was mitigating most of the damage being dealt towards me. If Ace tried to do this, he would be chow-meat to the wolves already.

I sprinted towards the direction Ace ran earlier, praying that he had a plan. Using【Shield Charge】as an escape ability instead of an engage tool gave me some distance as I was running away, but it didn't take long for the wolves to catch up to me. Knicks of damage were being dealt to me, and my health was edging close to death. My Stamina was also decreasing at an alarmingly quick rate.

Another wolf from behind the pack pounced at me once again. Activating【Shield Bash】to block the incoming attack, my Wooden Shield broke utterly. This was the last time I could use Shield Bash, meaning that the next time a wolf decided to pounce on me, I was going to take the full brunt of the damage.

"Yo, move out of the way!" A voice shouted in the distance. Like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I could see Ace poised in a battle stance with his greatsword glowing a dark crimson red. He lifted his sword upwards in a sweeping motion, and a dark red streaking projectile hurled towards me.

Understanding that the projectile wasn't aimed at me but instead the wolves behind me, I used the last of my remaining Stamina to dodge out of the way. The massive projectile whistles past me at full speed, slashing all of the incoming wolves that were chasing me.

-924
-874
-902
-893
-872
-797
-613
-512
-505
-492

Several colossal damage values appeared above the wolves, promptly killing eight out of ten of them. The remaining two wolves growled menacingly, their aggro switched from me to Ace; but with their health bars in the red zone, dealing with them took quick work as Ace was able to finish them off with one big cleave of his greatsword.

"Holy shit dude, you got me fucked up!" I heaved a big sigh of relief, doubling over in a hard sweat. I hadn't noticed that my heart rate increased tremendously during the fight until I could hear the beating of my own chest. It started to slow down as the danger dissipated, but I was still panicked.

"You like that, man?" He said, chuckling nonchalantly with a slight smile on his face.

All I could do at that moment was expel out a hearty laugh along with some small giggles afterward. I needed to slow down my breathing and get the rhythm back in my heartbeat.

"Don't give me that, you were scared as shit as well."

This time, Ace couldn't help but laugh as well. "Yea, you right." He conceded.

"You owe me a new shield, bro." I said, "Also, what was that skill man, crazy stuff dude!"

"It's my ultimate skill, man!" Ace exclaimed, "It takes fifteen seconds to charge it up, but it deal crazy fucking damage though!"

"That sounds overpowered, why don't I get a skill like that," I said, feeling defeated.

You have leveled up to Level 6. You obtained 5 Ability Points and 1 Skill Point.

Oh, it looked like I leveled up. Since I was in a party, the EXP is shared equally amongst players with the system giving you a bonus in experience the more players that are present in the party. Killing ten Gray Wolves was enough to get me from level five to level six in an instant.

"You level up too, Ace?" I asked, intent on knowing the number of experience points he got.

"Hell yea man, level seven baby!" He cried out.

"Good job, man," I said, congratulating him.

"You ready to turn that quest in bro?"

Oh right, I completely forgot. The number of wolf furs that dropped from the dead Gray Wolves far exceeded the amount that I needed to turn in that quest. It seemed like both of us were able to get enough wolf furs to complete the quest.

"Sure, help me up first so I can get out of this dingy Forest."

With that said and done, we headed back to turn in my first quest. Along the way, I had sent a friend request to Ace and a few seconds after, my friends' list that initially displayed zero people online changed to one person online.