CHAPTER 1 PART 2
"Ezecrain Hartell, welcome to Hartedvast."
Suddenly, his vision blurred for a few second and he feels like he's floating in the air. Blood rushed to his brain, he has a sudden urge to throw up. It feels like riding a roller coaster, aimlessly falling down a cliff. What a horrible portal experience. They need to fix this portal, Ezec remind himself.
The next thing he knew, he was standing among the ruin of what seems of be like an old temple. A statue of a dragon as tall as 10 meter stand mighty on the highest platform. On his feet where he was standing is the same circle he see at his uncle's place. Four broken pillars surround the Portal.
He look down from where he stand, there's a stair going down to the lower ground. Two disfigured statue that once stood proudly is now lying on the floor, broken into thousands pieces. The broken statues lie on the floor on the each side of the lower platform. There's a pool of water in front of the lower platform, all the way to the entrance door. Connecting the lower platform and the entrance door is a pathway as wide as 2 meter and around 15 meter long.
Vine creeps on the walls, green moss covered almost half of the exposed bricks on the walls and floor. Wild grass and bush grows among the ruin. The sun rays enter the temple through the broken walls, illuminating the interior of the ruin.
'This should be the Portal.'
He look down on his feet and realize he is now wearing another set of clothes. Brown boots that looks like its made from animal's skins, a roughly made black pants and a plain brown blouse. Apart from that, there's nothing else on his body. He wiggle his toe, pat his head and pinch his arm, 'Ouch..!' This level of pain is too real!'
Still standing on the Portal, a hologram appears out of nowhere in front of him. He touched the screen with his finger but it passed straight the screen.
'So how do you control this panel?'
He try touching it several times but failed to click on the image in front of him.
A line appears on the screen.
____________________
WELCOME TO HARTEDVAST KINGDOM
EZECRAIN HARTELL
RACE: HYBRID
LEVEL: 1
EXPERIENCE: 0/200
HEALTH: 150/150
STAMINA: 150/150
ATTRIBUTE:
STRENGTH 10+
DEXTERITY 10+
INTELLIGENCE 10+
AGILITY 10+
MAGIC 10+
SKILLS:
COMBAT ART
HERBALIST
He study the information on the hologram screen.
'Is that all? Any other information? How about the map of this place? Maybe this thing is voice activated.'
"Open map."
Nothing happened.
'Maybe with my thought?'
He focused his thought on the hologram image floating in the air in front of him, giving out instructions to the system as he focused on the word, 'MAP' inside his head.
Suddenly, the screen changed into a series of map.
"Aha! I knew it!"
Based on the map, he is now located in Hartedvast Kingdom. Zooming in the map with his mental command, he scrolls the entire Kingdom and finally reach his current location. There are several province in the Kingdom, and the one he's currently standing at is Kurbatov province. Based on the map, he's currently standing at the outskirt of a town, within an old ruin surrounded by forest. It seems that he need to get out from the forest to reach the town. Several spot on the map are covered in black spot, seems that he need to discover that area himself to activate the map, he thought to himself.
'I've seen the character sheet and the map... What else do I miss?'
'Quest'
'Mission'
He give a mental command to the screen in front of him, but nothing happened.
'Uhhhh…'
Suddenly, a thought crossed his head.
"Uncle Frey, can you hear me?"
'This is a prototype, so they should be able to communicate, right?'
He waited for a while, but nothing happened. Did his uncle just dump him there with no further instructions? He left out a big sigh and decided that he should just make do with his situation.
Sigh… This prototype really need a lot of improvement.
Ezec walk down from the Portal, walking through the pathway. He look down inside the pool, surprisingly the water was crystal clear, and he can see inside the pool, red and golden fish swimming inside the water. He counted them, there's around 10 of them inside the pool. Occasionally, a radiance golden light can be seen shining from the fish's head, illuminating the pool like the firefly at night.
He walk outside, surveying the exterior environment around him. The old ruin is surrounded by giant trees, roots and vines creeping on the ground, climbing its way up the ruin and the giant trees.
He walk a few round inside and around the ruin, scanning the area hoping that he might pick up some treasure or artifact. Maybe pick up some weapon or magic potion? Looking at his condition right now, if a monster comes up, he probably have to fight bare handed. The ruin area is relatively small, it only take him less than 10 minutes to complete one round.
After turning the ruin upside down, he couldn't help but to feel disappointed when he didn't manage to find anything useful or valuable.
'I need to out from here.'
His eyes were fixed to the forest in front of him.
Ezec open the hologram map and search for the direction to the nearest road or town. Walking to the north side will only lead him further deeper into the forest, the west and south area seems to be another dense forest. On the east side, there are river not far from the ruin and there seems to be a road there? A large area of the map seems to be locked, it can only provide either general map of the kingdom or left a patch of black spot here and there.
'To the east then!'
He close the map and walk to the eastern side of the forest, determined to face whatever challenge he will faced inside the unknown forest.
'Nevertheless, I'm still a level 1 player. Based on the game logic, if a monsters come out, it should be equivalent to my level right now.'
Ezec take a big breath and path his way into the forest. The view around him changed as he walk deeper into the forest. At the beginning when he enter the forest, he was surrounded by giant trees and bushes growing wildly everywhere his eyes can see. The forest are slightly wet and humid, wild mushrooms in various brilliant colors not bigger than his palm grows on the dead log on the ground, some thorny vines climbing their way up a trees while some found their way sprawling all over the ground.
Ezec realize that as he walk deeper into the forest, the mushrooms size start to increase from palm size to knee height, then to the same height as his head, and not long after he found himself surrounded by mushrooms as tall as a house. The mushrooms come in different colors, and they illuminate a greenish light.
Ezec was about to walk further when he suddenly hear a sound coming from the bushes on his left side. He stood frozen for a while, preparing for the worst of whatever might happen. With his body positioned ready to fight, he keep his eyes fixed on the bush.
"Ke ke ke"
A faint giggle of what sounds like an eerie laugh come from the bush, his heart began to pump rapidly. After waiting for a minute or so, nothing comes out from the bush.
'Shit… I hate suspense'
He pick up a stone from the ground and throw into the bush. Out of nowhere, a small red fury animal that looks like a rabbit come out from the bush. The red rabbit is as tall as his knee. Red eyes and bloody jaws, with a pair of sharp claws ready to jump and attack him.
"Damn!"
The red rabbit leap forward with its mouth open ready to take a bite of his fat thigh. He dodge to the left and the red rabbit fall on the ground. He kick the red rabbit with full force towards the log lying on the forest floor, sending it flying a few times before he knocked it out.
"Hah! Easy kill!"
A screen popped out after he defeated the monster.
YOU HAVE DEFEATED BOORAH, LV 1
10 XP GAINED
Ezec keep his eyes fixed on the corpse as the rabbit monster rapidly melt as if its drenched in acid, its body vanished like a water evaporating into the forest floor, leaving a small shining object behind. He walk over and pick up the object left by the monster. Its round, opaque and about the size of a blueberry, shining with a faint tint of purple light. After observing it for a while, he keep it inside his pocket.
His lips slightly curved upward.
'One rabbit is equal to 10 XP point, I just need to kill 25 more to level up.'
Feeling good, he walk around looking for more rabbit monster to kill. After killing another 7 more rabbit monster in that area and gaining more XP point, realizing that there's no more monster left there, he move forward to the river side.
'Walk through the mushroom forest, cross the river and walk forward, I should reach the road soon.'
Walking forward, he realized that the view has changed and the mushroom has gotten smaller. There are less trees surrounding him and he can see the sun clearly. Judging the sun's location, it should be around 3pm now.
'I almost reach the outer side of the forest, coming closer to the river.'
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