He remembers another interview with Mister Sakamoto:

“…Combat will be something everyone can get behind, we believe. PvP in the wild will be the most rewarding form of exp, but also the most risky, as character death is an important thing for players to remember. We hope you will understand this choice,” he said before bowing his head respectably to the interviewer.

From that point on, he told himself he was going for the lion’s share every time. He knows he’s skilled enough. He’s watched every available clip of the beta footage, and he’s certain he has enough knowledge for a launch day advantage.

5l4Y rushes out of the city, past droves of new, excited players, talking to one another and all appreciating the breathtaking immersion of this new world.

He steps out into the city’s nearby lvl 1-10 zone, instanced to keep the population sensible. Of course it’s a forest, and of course everyone is killing goblins- pretty typical stuff. What’s new and wonderful about this game, is that it’s a full-loot, all-area PvP carnival of carnage. It’s clear to see that for the most part players are too afraid to pick a fight with another considering the immense weight of failure, but he’s played enough open world PvP games to know that your first lives are transient, and that learning the game and making mistakes quickly is the only way to excel.

He’s the sort that believes that the only difference between a beginner and a master is the amount of times they’ve failed, so by all means, fail fast.

The assassin starts weighing out his targets, checking out player after player, inspecting them with his tooltip and checking their levels. After only a minute looking over the field, he spots a couple of players, a level 3 male and a level 2 female, teaming up on the weakest goblins as they playfully banter back and forth.

They'll be his first.

He considers his approach a moment, standing still enough to gain a weird look from a passerby, and finally he comes to a nod.

5L4Y walks down a nearby hillside in the wood, and shoves one of his daggers into the mantle of bark, doing a humorous 1 Damage to the tree. He spot checks it a moment, making sure he can still see the two from where he placed the dagger. Satisfied, he clears his throat, gets behind a tree at the very front of the treeline, and mimics a goblin.

“You hear that?” the female asks with anticipation.

“Yeah, I hear a ghost! I’m spooked as hell!” the male says with emphasis, as if he thought he were really funny or something.

The girl giggles as the two approach the treeline. “Thanks for the subscribe! ~Muah~! Oh! Is that loot?” She asks outwardly, describing what is inherently obvious to herself and her companion.

5L4Y cringes; they’re streamers — an appropriate first kill. He would tab out to see if he can find their stream and watch him murder their asses live, but he needs to stay alert.

The two pass him by.

“Yeah, the game is wild so far!” The male says, probably answering another one of his asinine viewers. “The graphics are so good and everything is so immersive!” He says as he approaches the dagger.

5L4Y cannot help himself as he ranges up behind them. “That’s not all that’s immersive,” he says as he jabs his fist knife into the girl, getting a fantastic X5 critical and putting her down in a single vicious punch of the blade.

She screams, and it sounds an awful lot like how a person would really scream, if they were really getting hurt, but he doesn’t think on it as he draws up his bow.

The male fires a goofy expression in 5L4Y’s direction before drawing his sword. “Whoa! Casey! I’ll avenge you!” He shouts just as 5L4Y looses his arrow into the swordsman streamer’s eye. The weird thing is, as [blind] pops over the streamer’s head along with a fair amount of damage, his face actually looks pained, as if Clark’s hit caused actual agony to the player.

He dismisses the suspicion from his mind as he ranges in with his knives. In between the swordsman’s wild, furious strikes, 5L4Y only needs to insert a dagger into his backside to get another critical hit, this time putting the young tank down for good, and flooding 5L4Y with exp up to level 3.

He’s left with two bodies, convulsing their last as he sheathes his set of weapons and checks the loot.

They both had a fair amount of goblin parts on them, which he’s sure would be salable for a fair amount of gol, as well as some dropped gol of a small value. Other than that they just have the same starter weapons he was offered, the swordsman in particular is humorous, considering he’s lifting three different sets of gear as if all that slowdown would be worth it.

Has he lifts the gol and the monster drops off his victims, he notes again the horrifying faces of his victims, curled in what looks like legitimate pain. He supposes for a moment that they were just really heavy role players, but it didn’t seem that way by how they were acting and talking to their viewers.