Chapter 3

It was 12:32pm when Riley finished his lunch. Stepping out of the house and into his backyard, Riley breathed in the fresh air.

“Ah. What great weather today. Gotta love cloudy skies. Ideal for some training.”

As he said this, he dropped his baseball beside a nearby tree, then started climbing it.

After climbing for about five or so meters, he produced a ball of string from his pocket.

It was an ordinary piece of string that he had tied to a rectangular piece of wood beforehand. He proceeded to tie one end of the string to the nearest branch, making sure it was secure before he slid down.

After reaching the bottom, he picked up the ball. It was a standard baseball, with a tiny slit that had been pierced through one end and out the other. It was basically a rectangular hole with a width of around three millimetres. Riley took the piece of wood, then slid it through and out the other end of the hole. Letting go of the ball, he let it dangle in the air to test the firmness of the string.

“Alright, this should be good enough.”

After a couple of warm-up exercises and practise swings, Riley took his stance. Taking a deep breath, he swung.

Riley cursed under his breath as he saw the ball fly upwards. He had struck too low, and the ball had almost hit the tree branch it was tied to. He caught the ball as it came down, and then prepared for another try.

This time, he smiled with satisfaction. The ball had flown at an almost perfect 35 degree angle. He nodded to himself as the string went taut, forcing the ball to bounce backwards slightly instead of flying away.

“Alright, just need to keep at it for a few more hours.”

It wasn’t until Riley had eight more “homeruns” when it happened.

As soon as he had struck the ball, two windows popped up in front of him. Startled, he dropped his bat.

“Rats. I was so absorbed in my training that I completely forgot about this.”

The first window was a simple stat increase.

"Due to diligent training, your strength has increased by 1 point."

The second window was a notification which stated: “Through thorough training, you have gained the skill [Blunt Weapon Proficiency].”

After reading through, he clicked on the button that said “Details.” The window disappeared, and a new one popped up.

This one was the details of the skill from the “Skills” window. The icon was an image of two staffs crossed together in the shape of an “X”.

The details of the skill were indicated below the icon:

“You deal 5% more damage.”

“You gain 5% extra attack speed.”

“You lose 5% less energy per strike.”

“Your attacks are 5% more accurate.”

“Your weapon loses 5% less durability on hit.”

“Only applicable when a blunt weapon has been equipped”

“Awesome! Now my swinging and performance on the field will definitely improve!”

Riley fist bumped the air and did a mini celebration dance.

“Alright! Now to practise more swings. I should be able to level up this skill a lot more in the next few hours.”

After another hour, a window popped up.

"Due to diligent training, your strength has increased by 1 point."

Upon closing the window, another appeared.

"Your passive stat gains are now at 5/5. The cap has been reached. Reset will happen at level 11."

Riley scratched his head.

"Huh? Does this mean I can only gain 5 bonus stats every 10 levels? I guess I'll have to wait and see how many points I gain through leveling up… Oh well! Back to practicing my swings."

After practising his swings for another two hours, Riley had managed to level up [Blunt Weapon Proficiency] by two levels. Increasing by 1% per level, [Blunt Weapon Proficiency]’s stats were at 7%.

Feeling extremely satisfied and exhausted, Riley climbed the tree to retrieve his string, tucked both the string and the ball into his pockets, then dragged his body into the house.

"Time to test out [Virtual Body]"

After taking a brief shower, changing clothes, and setting his alarm clock for thirty minutes, Riley dropped onto his bed, dead to the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Opening his eyes, Riley felt surprisingly refreshed.

"This is incredible! Only thirty minutes of sleep and all my fatigue is gone. There’s a few more hours to waste before dinner."

Riley slumped into his chair and turned his computer on. He’d just spent the whole day bewildered by his newfound powers.

He knew that he had barely scratched the surface of his power’s true potential. True, he’d gained some new skills, leveled up his stats, and even tested out the miraculous healing potential of [Virtual Body], but he knew there had to be more to his new "power", if you could even call it that.

Heck, what he’d gone through had barely even scratched the surface of the tutorials of most role-playing games.

Riley reflexively typed his password in, and launched World of Legends.

“Normally, tutorials in RPGs would cover more aspects than what I’ve done today. I should really check out what World of Legend’s tutorial covered.”

Riley then typed his character’s login information, and continued where he left off. His character had been left standing in the middle of a bustling street in Silverrune City, one of the largest cities in the world of World of Legends.

First thing he did upon logging in was to check his inventory. Because of how tired he was after the previous night’s guild raid, he hadn't even had the chance to check for loot. Opening his inventory, he discovered that he had not received any new gear, except for a few extra zeros in his coin pouch.

“That’s weird. Normally, a ‘Legendary’ guild raid will drop at least one ‘Mythic’ class weapon or armor for the Top 10 contributors. I know for a fact that I dealt the most damage. How is it that I, one of the top players in my guild and the main damage dealer, failed to receive ANY loot? Damn Rizzard.”

Frustrated at the developers of the game, Riley had lost his mood to play. Instead, he thought about casually exploring the game’s world to inspire himself to test the limits of his newfound abilities.

“Wait, why not just create a new character, and actually experience what a real tutorial is like?”

Grinning to himself, he logged out of his current character, and went back to the title screen.

After successfully navigating his way around the title screen, he clicked the "Create New Character" button.

While selecting his race and class, Riley pulled out his notebook and mechanical pencil.

“Hah! Who would have thought there would come a day where I’d do research in-game, for myself in real life?”

Author’s Note:

Patch 3.0 (Hotfix)

- Bonus chapter released due to unexpected views and ratings.

Patch 4.0 still due this Sunday

- Added stat and skill level increases to the end-of-chapter summary for ease of readers (and ourselves)

Name: Riley Petesgeralt

Age: 16

Job: The Roleplayer

Strength: 27 (+2)

Dexterity: 23

Vitality: 25

Intelligence: 29

Wisdom: 22

Charisma: 25

Luck: 20

Skills:

Roleplayer’s Mind

Virtual Body

Analyze (Level 2)

Blunt Weapon Proficiency (Level 3) (+2)