The air in the Paradise guild training center was that familiar, pungent smell of sweat and heavy metallic equipment. Even the layout and feel of the facility weren't much different from city gyms in real life.

"Hah!"

"Hoo!"

There was one big difference though.

"Ha!"

"Ya!"

Gyms in real life didn't have dedicated sword training areas. The sound of sharp iron hitting straw reverberated through the facility, as grunts accompanied every sword swing. Typical warrior classes, a bunch of grunty meat heads.

To be honest, I was a bit jealous. Standing here cursing out the warriors was a player who unironically wanted to name himself Sword Emperor in character select. Yes, the jackass that wanted the super edgy name was me.

"Hoo!"

"Hah!"

Watching the guild members train was somewhat mesmerizing. I had to admit, in the realm of fantasy combat, swords were just visually something else.

Alas, they were not for me. I casually flicked open my character status and scanned down until I saw a familiar sight.

Strength: 1

Yeah.

Swords?

Not happening.

Daggers?

Not happening.

Katanas?

Not happening.

Clubs?

Not happening.

Whips?

Emmm...

...

Apparently whips are okay. Of all the different weapon types, why did I get stuck with a whip...

I headed over to a straw covered wooden training dummy and cracked my knuckles.

"Summon, [Love Whip]."

The long, black whip materialized in my hand. I got some weird looks from the other guys, but honestly I didn’t care what they thought.

This practice was for myself, and I definitely needed practice. Not like I could just go to whip school, like other warriors could go to a sword academy. Literally nobody used whips.

Thwack.

Whoosh.

Brandishing the whip in my hand, I practiced aiming at different body parts. It was much harder than I expected to get the accuracy right.

Whack.

Psssht.

Thirty minutes passed, and I decided to switch drills.

I telekinetically controlled the whip and practiced twisting and turning it in the air.

The mouths of all the other gym members were wide open.

“What the hell is that magic?”

“A sorcerer?”

“I’ve never seen that kind of magic before.”

“Black magic?”

At the corner of the room, a player with a powerful physique was looking directly at me with a blank stare. I had a feeling he was booting up the recording software.

Seeing him reminded me that guilds and factions were already forming in this game, and players were desperate for information on player abilities and equipment. Information on rare and unique skills could fetch thousands of dollars already, even at this early stage in the game.

If I continued to telekinetically flail my whip around, the world would know about my S-rank skill. Maybe it was best to hide it, in case having that information floating around on the internet would come back and bite me one day.

I left the training center in a hurry and threw on my Thief’s Hood. It was late evening, and the lanterns lit up the rainy streets in a haunting fashion. From the corner of my eye, I noticed some hooded figures following me. Thinking quickly, I ducked into an alley and ran down until the end, where I took a left into a secluded corner.

“Summon cat.”

“Nyaa~”

Meat Shield leisurely stepped out of a portal and landed on my shoulder.

“I think someone’s following me. Can you investigate?”

“Ok~”

Meat Shield disappeared back into a portal, reappearing on the rooftop of a nearby building.

She saw five hooded figures on my trail, and reported her findings. The one in the middle was walking with a slight gait.

“They smell familiar~”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they smell like home.”

“Like the dimension room?”

“No, silly. Did you forget I’m the gatekeeper of hell? That’s my home.”

…

“Halt.”

I turned around with a start. The cloaked figures had caught up to me in the middle of an alleyway.

“Love whip…”

“That won’t be necessary.”

A sultry female voice came from one of the hooded figures. She lowered her hood, revealing twin horns and a beautiful face. A succubus.

"A human, using succubus magic..." she said delicately, narrowing her eyes. "Now where did you get that magic from~? Do I need to have another chat with my sister?"

The others slowly revealed themselves as well. They were all demons. A snake like tongue flickered out of one of the demon’s mouths, as if it was trying to taste the air. I felt an enormous killing aura pressing down on my chest.

My whip levitated around my body defensively.

“What do you want?”

The demon in the middle adjusted his monocle and cleared his throat.

“Ahem. I am delivering a formal message on behalf of His Majesty Lucifer Asmodeus II, King of the Underworld, Ruler of Hell.”

“Human, your curiosity will be your demise. This is your only and final warning.”

He adjusted his monocle again, as if to make a point.

“What His Majesty means is that you are to stop usage of demonic magic at once. Any further violations will be punishable by an excruciating death, such as having your organs ripped out of your body one by one and fed to ogres.”

The hairs on the back of my head rose. Just from a single glance, I knew that any one of these cloaked figures could easily string me up like a fish if they wanted to. Theirs was not an empty threat.

By demonic magic, they had to mean my love whip, a demonic summon skill. I unsummoned my whip and took a step back. Their killing intent was suffocating.

“Understood, it won’t happen again.”

The monocle wearing demon squinted his eyes, emitting a piercing gaze as if he was seeing through my soul.

“Excellent. That is all for today.”

The heaviness in the air vanished as the cloaked figures put on their hoods and walked back the way they came. I breathed out a nervous sigh.

The encounter lasted for just a few minutes, but it felt much longer. Once they were gone, Meat Shield reappeared on my shoulder. I didn’t notice she was gone in the first place.

“Those were the Apostles.”

Meat Shield’s voice sounded more somber than usual.

“You know them?”

“Yes, Boss Lucy's underlings. They murdered my brother Cerberus…”

“Isn’t that your name?”

“No, I’m Cerberi. My twin brother was Cerberus. He was a dog…”

“I see.”

“I will teach you to become stronger, so we can skin those bastards, okay?~”

...

“Don’t say something so scary with a cute voice.”

I winced in pain as I felt a certain cat’s tiny claws lightly dig into my shoulder.

———

An unexpected development occurred over the weekend. The outbreak of a new respiratory disease was sweeping the nation, and more people were staying indoors given the circumstances.

I returned to my apartment with several grocery bags full of necessities like eggs, instant noodles, and broccoli. I still had to go to work on Monday, but the company was being more relaxed with overtime. That wouldn’t affect the amount of time I could play Eclipse in one day since the hours were capped.

There was a lot of Eclipse related content being produced at the moment for me to consume with my extra free time. Eclipse content was becoming a huge money maker, as advertisers were rushing to capitalize on multi-billion view Eclipse videos, and live streams were reaching several million concurrent viewers.

A lot of this content at this early stage in the game was based around the best ways to farm for gold, experience, and rare skills. Dungeon maps and other guides were popular hits.

However, a certain new app was gaining notoriety.

“Death Tube”.