《Growing Puppets》Prologue
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I've been playing... or played Mosaic for about 10 years and I still don't know everything about it. It's been a year since I got transported here.
This game showed up on the eve of Christmas on 2243. It was free to play and soon the user base grew like wildfire. You could do anything in this game, and the open world was vast. The AIs expanded the world regularly, and if that wasn’t enough there were a lot of hidden areas.
Before I got transported the highest player level was 427; I don't know what it is now since the leaderboards stopped working with many of the menu options. From the information, I've gathered only a few players were transported. The game also had no max level, it was completely based on how you played. The game was completely broken and that’s what everyone loved about it.
It wasn't a game where you could pick a class when you reach a certain level but had to earn your class. Everyone started off as level 1 human. Then it just depended on how you played the game to get the other classes. You could change your race as well but that would make you lose your human levels, the max level for any race or job class was 10. If you wanted to be a warrior you would have to hunt and fight other warriors and that would gain you a level in Warrior. To gain higher levels you would have to do more warrior challenges. To become a Knight has its own challenges, after gaining level 5 in human, you have to join a country and apply for a knight position within that country. The trials for Knights are different in each country. Complete all that and there you have it, level 1 Knight.
If you wanted to become a Vampire, you have to kill a Vampire boss and drink its blood. When you become a vampire, you lose all your human levels. So level 1 in vampire makes you lose 9 levels total, but for the most part, this is okay because vampire level 1 is still stronger than a level 10 human and you don't notice any problems. But if you changed from human to undead, you'll notice the change because the body of an undead is much weaker.
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There are many classes like this where there are no problems with switching and large consequences with switching. And switching back would be just as difficult as changing races in the first place. Then there are jobs only certain races can do, so depending on the race you switch to you could lose a lot of levels. So most stayed Human, especially after finding out there is a level up for human to Immortal, everyone opted for that option. There are multiple ways to become immortal as there are to becoming a Vampire. As such I am an immortal human as well, one who became immortal after drinking from The Unholy Grail. Most immortal humans in the game became immortal from swimming in the Fountain of Youth. Though we both obtained a similar immortal class, it seems our leveling system is different for I am only a level 3 immortal, and don't know how to achieve the other levels, while others had already achieved level 10.
But! The plus side with my way is, I get a cup to take home.
Well, I'm not so worried about it anymore since I became level 368 just last week after coming to this world 1 year ago. I was 366 when I came here and it took me a year to raise 2 levels. I wasn’t the strongest player in the game but in this world, it seems I am overpowered. I've been living under the radar for the most part since I came here, to build a new base and prepare myself with knowledge of this world. Knowledge, yes knowledge the most important ingredient in becoming a puppeteer.
To the east an entire country fell to one man, people even started worshiping him as a god. It is clear that that man is a player. 'Myth' the adventure party killed the Undead King a few months back, didn't even know there was an Undead King. Then there is also the pharmacist Cobalt Medi.
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I've been laying low, as I always did even in the game. I have Player Killed in the game but I wasn't really the best at it, I mostly just adventured and build my base. My base is my home. I don't know how strong it is, and compared to the big guilds it probably isn't that strong but thankfully it came along with me. It has three floors, the city, the lab, and my living area. It’s all underground and built using real world money, it’s pretty large especially the city. I hid my base by building it in the middle of a forest with the entrance looking like a broken down outdoor toilet. When you enter it, it looks like a broken down toilet too, but when you flush the toilet it becomes an elevator down to the first floor of my base. The Otnorot city, an underground city I build for my NPCs and as a way of guarding the rest of my base. Technically you could say there are 4 floors because of the Treasury.
In the game dying has no level penalties instead, you lay dead for 20 minutes on the floor at which time they can steal whatever they want - everything they want - then you are force logged out for 3 days. You can log into a safe spot like Jesus after the 3 days are up. Well that was how it was in the game, I don't want to test it out now that it’s become real.
I spent a lot of real world money on that base, so I been building another base that I could use without worry about being followed and having my real base found.
With the NPCs help, it was pretty easy, however, it still took half a year because I wanted it to be good enough to live in comfortably, and not just a beautiful shell. This way even if someone finds this base I can retreat to my game base.
Finally staying in the dark is over, I have done enough research on this world and found its average level to be around 15, with the exception of other players, and I have even taken over some tribes and small areas without revealing my true identity. In my command are a small dragon tribe, and mostly forest monsters. I don't like the idea of owning slaves but killing them when they surrendered might be worse so I decided to treat them as my citizens in a sense and let them live.
The preparations are done, time to attack. Or perhaps more accurately; time to grow my puppets.
Name: Verra
Human: 10
Monk: 10
Espionage : 10
Mage: 10
Kung Fu: 10
Fruit Power: 10
Great Sage: 10
Ninja: 10
Time Lord: 10
Farmer: 1
Bookworm:10
Witch’s Hero: 8
Invincible: 10
Alchemist:10
Elementalist: 10
Blacksmith: 8
Cheater:10
Necromancer: 10
Ki Master: 10
Craftsman of Taboo: 10
Divine Magician: 0
Sharp Shooter: 10
Creator: 0
Healer: 0
Painter: 1
Dragon Slayer: 1
Summoner: 10
Deathless: 3
Vengeance: 10
Devourer of Life: 10
Lord of a Castle:10
Justice: 0
Kosmophagy: 10
Archery: 10
Tamer: 10
Destroyer: 10
Sword: 10
Babysitter: 1
Infected: 10
Spear: 10
Baby Killer: 1
Night: 4
Cooking: 1
Power of Hermes: 5
Explorer: 10
Strength of Hercules: 10
Samurai: 0
Vampire Hunter: 10
Engineer: 4
Commander: 6
God Slayer: 3
Fisher: 1
Total: 368
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