“What da hell, Little Pony? Why didn’t you tell me those things were murdering fuckers?” I said to the kid Mardukryon. I revived in the middle of the village, in front of GranGran’s house, which was logical since she was the healer in the village. When I played games in the past, most of the time you revive in a church or an inn, usually the place where you heal up.

Dying wasn’t that bad. It was like getting small static shocks on your body. If they implemented real pain in this game, just imagine the number of lawsuits they would face. An important fact that I noticed in the few seconds before I died was that when my life fell to critical levels, I also lost some movement. I played some games before where your character limps or gets their performance impaired if they have very low health; they have implemented that same mechanic in this game.

Little Pony was there waiting for me when I revived which mean that I didn’t revive immediately after I died. Resurrection was probably after ten minutes since it would take that amount of time to reach GranGran’s house if Little Pony trotted from the gate. The time delay in reviving was, undoubtedly, to give time for resurrection skills of a priest or a revival item to be used during a battle.

“Yes, the Mirdabons outside are dangerous when you attack one of them. They often travel in packs around the village, but the group outside the village is the largest,” Little Pony said.

“Yeah, well thanks for that helpful information,” I replied as I rolled my eyes. Looking at my experience bar, I noticed that it was golden in color and says [Beginner’s Protection: No Death Penalty (Experience Reduction, Money Loss, Decrease in Durability) For 167:22: 01 (In-game Time)] “Huh? There’s an in-game time? Does that mean that time flows differently here? With all this ice and different time flow, it’s like I’m in fucking Narnia.”

Handing me a scruffy pouch, Little Pony said. “The healer said to give this to you. It should help you out in your journey. You should eat this when you get injured.”

I grabbed the bag and examined its contents. It was full of leaves.

Mirdweed (10)

A plant with weak medicinal properties that can restore small amounts of health.

Placing it in my inventory, I said, “I don’t think this could have helped me get out of those rabid furballs outside.” They couldn’t kill me with one attack, probably due to my armor and passive skill. They killed me in about five attacks. Another thing that stopped me from running back was that when one bit me, it didn't let go and weighed me down. When the others joined in, I became history.

“When you attack one of them, all of them will attack you,” Little Pony said.

“Yes, I kind of experienced that firsthand.” Well then, I guess it was time for me to go to work. As I was about to look for the logout button, I saw three Mardukryons coming towards me. They were the ones who watched my heroic death at the gates of the village as I tried to stem the tide of the furball horde.

“Hey, newbie!” the person I assumed to be the leader said.

I stopped myself from smirking. Great, I don’t need to look for them anymore. I didn’t answer them but put on a puzzled Mardukryon face, looked around and pointed at myself.

“Yes, you newbie—”

The lady Mardukryon cut him off. “Are you okay?” She asked with genuine concern. Surprisingly, her voice sounded normal, not the grating, guttural voice of Marukdryons, even GranGran’s. Maybe it was in the settings.

Am I okay? Of course, I’m okay. We don’t feel pain and get resurrected, good as new. Stupid question. I didn’t say that out loud, but instead said, “Uh, yes, I’m fine. Just rattled with all the attacking Mardukryons.”

She was about to say something when the leader guy laughed and said, “Why did you do that, dude? Why’d you attack them? That’s like, the one thing you shouldn’t do.”

“They didn’t warn me or anything,” I said, hanging my head a bit. Body language was the key here. I needed to get as much information as I could from them without begging for it. No one liked needy newbies. I doubt if there was much information about Mardukryons on the internet if few people play them. My best bet was to be the humble, shy, clueless noob.

“You should—” she started to say before the other player cut her off again.

“Dude, you should ask them for information,” he said. “Pay attention to the story. We’re born here and this is common knowledge even to Mardukryon kids,” he said, nodding his head towards Little Pony. “You should be mindful of our place in the story here. Get your head in the game, dude.” Then he looked at the other guy and they both said at the same time. “But our heads are already in this game!” they said at the time and burst out laughing. Their female companion just shook her head.

My head jerked back a bit. This guy actually made sense. If I’m supposed to have stayed here from my birth up to growing to be a youngling then it was a given that I knew shit like this. Of course, I don’t really know about it since I just started the game, but I should flow with the story, like what he said. Awesome advice, actually.

“Maybe you skipped the introductory quests?” she said while giving the guy an annoyed sidelong glance.

“Uh…yeah. Sorry…”

“You don’t have to apologize to us for that,” she said putting on a friendly face.

“Swear? That’s such a newbie mistake to make,” their leader said. “There we were…walking outside and then we saw a level one dude. We knew you were level one because you had the shitty gear the Elder gives out. Anyway, we saw a level one dude and wondered what the hell he’s doing? He’s actually going to attack the Mirdabons?

“If you followed the quests you’ll come across an old Mardukryon that asks for your help tending their domesticated Mirdabons and you’ll deduce from the way she talks that you’ll need to be careful around Mirdabons. Dude, that was wild! That was a total massacre out there!”

“Norman, you can’t have a massacre if there’s only one person killed,” she said.

Norman said, “Come on, Nic. You know what I mean.”

“I didn’t know that playing a Mardukryon could be so hard. We could still change race, right?” I said, getting them back to trying to help me. If I just let them talk and talk they’ll eventually be bored and move away. I looked helplessly at Nic, maybe it was short for Nicole. If I get her to help me, Norman, the dude guy, would surely help.

“There’s like a list online of races to avoid along with the reasons why,” the guy at the back said.

“I sort of just jumped into the game. If it isn’t too much of a bother to ask, how do I change race?” I said, looking disappointed.

“Now, now,” Nic, or Nicole, said. “Don’t hastily change your race. You just have to be careful and patient while doing Mardukryon quests. I’m sure there are great rewards because of the difficulty of our race.”

I continued looking at her expectantly so that she would keep on talking.

She went on, “I knew you didn’t continue your questline because you are still wearing the armor the Elder gave you. If you met with the blacksmith of the village and made friends with him, he will give you a slightly better gear.” She placed her finger on her cheek and said, “Let’s see…what else you should know.”

Norman stepped forward and placed his arms around my shoulders like we were best buddies since birth. “I’ve got some tips for you, newbie. You should do quests around the village to level up. The best ones are the gathering quests. Gather this many stuff, you know those things. Their experience dole out might not be great but you could explore outside and kill monsters while gathering what the NPCs asked for.”

“But I can’t take on Mirdabons?”

“Dude, you gotta think here. Of course, you’re not going after Mirdabons. There are other monsters out there. Far in between, but they’re there. When you level up, you could try taking on Mirdabon packs far from the village. There are small packs out there, like half a dozen or so.”

Time to stroke his ego. I changed my expression to one of admiration and awe, a face that I have mastered in law school. Professors would like you if they think that they were teaching you principles that changed your life, giving you moments of enlightenment. I hunched my shoulders to show submissiveness and said, “Wow, that sounds hard. It’s awesome that you still went for this character even though you knew it’s hard to play.”

He thrust his chin to the air and grinned. “Well, you know me.”

No, I don’t, fucker. I just met you and your tagalongs here.

“I plan to make a guild of Mardukryons,” Norman said. “If you build up intimacy with Healer Gula, eventually, the Mardukryon Healer Job would open up. That’s what Nicole here is doing. The Healer Job Quest.”

I raised my brow. So her name really was Nicole. I should be appointed the National Director of Name Guessing. I could probably get the Guiness World Record of guessing a name based from a nickname.

“And Wharton over here, he’s training with the Pathfinders of our tribe. Anyway, I actually found out about this earlier when I was doing quests for the Hunter-Warriors; their hut is just on the next round over there. I found out that our buffs, healing spells, you know, those support abilities, only work on fellow Mardukryons. We have a special sort of mana and we can only buff or heal Mardukryons.”

“Really?” That’s a nice bit of information you gave me, Norman my long time friend that I have only met now.

“So that gave me an idea of building a guild with only Mardukryon members. This is going to be wild. I suspect the bonuses will go through the roof if we make such a guild. Who knows, we can beat that guild with the giant? Syndicate was there name right?”

"Yes, that's their name," Wharton the Pathfinder said. "I bet there's some hidden bonus if we have enough members. Norman said that there's some connection with our mission to find the other tribes."

"Yup, that's my idea."

“We have two more players that have signified their intention to join us when we’re able to make guilds,” Nicole said.

"I hope that I get strong enough to join your guild someday," I said with fake enthusiasm. "I guess I'll just do the gathering quests as you said."

[Trade Request from Aletheia]

"Let me give you some extra stuff I have that can help you in some of the quests here," Nicole said. "I have some excess plants and rocks while we were out gathering loot to turn in."

Aletheia? That's a Greek goddess, I think. If I accept this then she would see my name as well. I accepted her trade. It would be worse if I declined it. There was no reason for me to decline it. I was slightly worried on how she would react to my name since it wasn't suitable to the persona I was adopting.

She snorted and puffed her cheeks as she tried to stop from laughing. It was obvious she noticed my name.

"What's wrong," Norman asked.

"Nothing. I probably sneezed in real life, inside my VR pod," she said as she kept a straight face. Her finger was moving across the air, transferring items.

"Is that possible?"

"Maybe," she said flippantly. "There, I finished transferring the items."

"I also have spare quest items," Norman said, "And Wharton too. Let's give it to this poor dude."

"Trade it to me," Nicole said hastily.

"What? Why?"

"Just trade it to me," Nicole said. "Your spares are from the later parts of the quest, right? I'll arrange it so that when it goes into his inventory they'll already be in order." After getting the items from her party members, she traded once again with me and gave me the items, then winked at me as I accepted the items.

My eyes narrowed. Wait...She purposely stopped them from trading with me so that they couldn't see my name. If they saw my name, they would certainly make fun of me. She didn't want them to treat me as a laughingstock! I momentarily just gazed at her because I was surprised that I could find a genuinely nice person here. Eclairs was also a nice person but she had a bitchy exterior. Genuinely nice persons were as rare as pandas that weren't cloned.

"There," she said. "You'll be able to instantly finish some quests or at least have a head start in item collection."

"Thank you," I said. My head was down as I wondered whether there were still pandas that weren't the product of cloning. A couple of decades ago, there was a global project to clone endangered and nearly extinct animals.

"Get strong. Hear me, newbie?" Norman said. "Don't forget to be nice to the blacksmith to get better gear."

I nodded my head. Poor pandas. They just wanted to roll around and eat bamboo instead of have sex with each other and save their species. I read that cloned pandas have health problems but there was no other way to save the pandas.

"And don't touch the Mirdabons," Wharton said.

"Yeah, you don't want to get massacred again," Norman said.

I nodded again. Maybe I should buy a panda stuff toy. Those ones where they donate some of the purchase price to some zoo doing panda sex research or whatever research to save pandas they are doing.

"Just ask us if you have questions. We'll be around the village sometimes," Norman said. "Or you could add-"

"No," Nicole said with a slightly high-pitched voice. Norman and Wharton looked at her. "I mean we already gave him too much information. We should just let him be for now." She turned to me and patted my shoulder. "Take care of yourself now." She trotted away and Norman chased after her followed by Wharton.

"I will," I said after them. I will buy a panda stuff toy to save pandas.