Author's corner:

Note 1: I tried to get this chapter out yesterday, but due to my idiocy i lost half the chapter sooooo... i had to rewrite.

Note 2: I've tried to pay attention to your tips, although i still find describing things hard, i've never been really good at it.

Note 3: This turned out to be a little longer than i thought. Wanted to squeeze more in this chapter.

Chapter 2

The world changed in front of his eyes. The boring loading screen was exchanged for a bustling japanese-styled town. Zaran stretched his body, looked around and saw that he was the only user that was already playing. He took the time to observe his surroundings. He spawned in a market square and noticed four ways leaving the marketway. The way to the north led to the housing district, to the west the craftsmen district, to the east shopping district and to the south the garisson, training field and various magic, mystic art, martial arts academies.

Virul lied in the middle of the Liberiu kingdom, which in it's turn was located in the south-west of the Kian contincent. It was a recently formed kingdom, who's territory used to be part of the Tarra kingdom. The territory was claimed by the Zuno after the war with the Human alliance led by the Tarra kingdom. It was set-up to act as another threat to the Tarra kingdom, if they attacked the Zuno kingdom of Zenora, the Liberiu kingdom would attack the Tarra kingdom. The Tarra kingdom lied to the west of liberiu, while the Beast kingdom Barat lied to the north, the Valkyria kingdom Celun lied to the east and the Zenora kingdom of the Zuno lied to the south. Out of those four surrounding kingdoms all but the Tarra had a very friendly relationship with the liberiu kingdom. As a result the Liberiu kingdom hosted a large variety of different species, but very little humans.

As a result of it's position Virul acted as a hub between the 4 major cities of Liberiu. Those being the military city Deneg to the west, the trading city Lemu to the north-east the capital Librus to the east and finally the religious city Karu to the south-east.

As Zaran stared at the market square, a message box suddenly popped up in the middle of the air.

"Congratulations for being the first user to complete character creation! As you are the very first user to start playing you'll receive the bonus of being able to upgrade 2 skills to the advanced level straight away with no charges!"

A list of available skills popped up in front of him.

"Eh? There was this kind of thing? This will save me a ton of money!" Zaran said stupefied. "But these skills... There's not much i can use straight away."

Two skills caught his eye among the list. Advanced smithing and the beast-master skill. Smithing would be useful the moment he could get ore to make flawless equipment and beast-master would allow him to tame pets with ease. Both these would be handy in a moments notice. The others like advanced mining, advanced smelting, advanced herbalist, advanced enchanting, etc. Would not be useful early on because even if the lower level items he could make would be more effective, the advantages looked negligible for him. Even if he got most of the other skills early on they would barely be worth it until he got a sufficient enough level to get higher level resources.

Zaran confirmed his choice and another message popped up. "Your choice has been confirmed. Please go see the smithing instructor and beast trainer to receive your rewards."

"I still have to run around to receive my rewards?" Zaran grumbled. "Still it's going to make my life easier for now..."

Zaran checked his character information screen.

Character infoRaceZunoProfessionN/AStatsHealth100ManaN/AStrength8Flexibility5Agility5Stamina5Intelligence5Wisdom5Perception5Luck5Charm2Willpower5

"I didn't think the penalty for stats would start at level one, so i'll have to start training hard from the start huh." Zaran muttered. "Still it's not like i don't know what training is."

Zaran went south and excited the market square heading straight to the training field. The training field was a large area with various different types of dummy's strewn around and besides the gate, was completely walled of from the outside. He greeted the instructor, went towards an isolated spot and started practicing a sword skill he developed over the course of his lifetimes. "Dance of the butterfly, first stage, flutter." Zaran muttered as he performed a slash downwards to the left followed by a downwards slash to the right and finished with a stab right in the middle where his previous slashes intersected. He performed it so fluently that it looked as if it was just one simple motion. In the corner of his eye he saw a small message box appear.

"Custom skill detected, synergy 20%".

As he performed the first stage again and again the synergy rating slowly went up. "I guess if it reaches 100% it will create a custom skill for me?" Zaran thought as he kept on repeating the movement. As he got exhausted but still continued performing the skill he noticed that the synergy rating suddenly dropped a little from 50% to 49%. "Shit!" He exclaimed as he immediately stopped after finishing the motion. "So training while tired doesn't work... that's a little troublesome."

He took a small break, walked outside of the training field and looked around. Users were starting to pop up to his left and his right. It had already been a good hour in-game time and only now were users finishing up their character creation. "Six minutes longer than me huh?" Zaran grinned. If only these fools knew about the rewards, they would've finished up even faster! And not only that but he had an advantage of an hour in game! Although he had been spending that time on creating a custom skill, to him it still felt better than nitpicking about your character's looks.

After recovering his breath another message popped up.

Due to recovery from exhaustion your stamina has increased by 3Due to training your strength has increased by 3Due training your flexibility has increased by 3

Zaran pondered as he saw the message box. "Hmm so it seems like i will only get stats points after i rest from training... So the game tries to make it feel like reality, you don't gain strength while training but after recovering and letting your muscles rest they grow. And looking at the drop in completion from the custom skill... I'd say losing stats due to excessive training could be possible. Best not to over commit too much."

"That said where's sis. I thought she knew how she wanted to look in game?" Zaran walked around the market place looking for his sister when he noticed three men surrounding two women. An orc that had a face with more craters then the moon and a bulging belly. A ratman and the person chose to have as much features of a rat as possible and as little human features, so he looked like a walking talking disgusting rat. And lastly they had a snakeman, but opposing to his ratman buddy this guy chose to only have the scales of a snake on his body and not the rest of his features looked human, bar the snake tongue. As he got closer he noticed the two girls who were absolute beauties. One was a Valkyrie, with blonde hair, two angelic wings, wearing the white plated paladin's beginner set and she gave off an elegant vibe. The other was literally a catgirl, she had red hair, whiskers, a cute human face, a cat tail on her behind and only some fur armor covering her chest and upper-legs.

"What beauties no wonder... wait... that blonde... redhead... don't they look familiar?" Zaran thought as he moved closer. "... yup." As he got closer he noticed that the blonde Valkyrie was his sister, how could he not recognize that cute face and those green eyes of her that seemed to draw you in as you looked at them. The redhead was undoubtedly Irina, his sister's best friend. She had hazel eyes and looking at her face and figure she would think she was a popstar. Irina's slender legs, a nice perky chest and an hourglass figure would drawn attention towards her wherever she went. Still, Sylphie's figure was not that much worse, although not as slender as Irina, she would still be called a stunning beauty.

"Oi craterhead. STEP AWAY." Zaran bellowed. The orc, ratman and Snakeman turned around. "Who the hell are you?!?" exclaimed the orc. "These ladies are ours!"

"That's my sister." Zaran said as he pointed towards Sylphie.

The orc laughed. "So what, what can a level 1 Zuno like you do to me, an orc. You are the weakest race at level 1 while the orc's are amongst the strongest. "

Zaran smiled. "Let's duel then and see if the orc race really is as strong at level 1 as you say ~"

The Orc laughed again "HAHAHAHA, good but if you lose we'll take your sister from here." The orc nodded towards his companions, this would be easy for him, there was no way that an orc with its 20 strength at level 1 would lose to a Zuno who barely had any stats at level its.

"Zaran no! You can't win!" Sylphie shouted. She feared her brother got in over her head. How could a level 1 Zuno win. She too had seen the stats a Zuno started with and the disparity between a Zuno and the Orc races was too big. A 50 stat point difference couldn't be made up for with skill so easily.

"It'll be okay sis." Zaran calmly said.

Ed has challenged you to a duel. Do you accept?Yes / No

Zaran pressed yes without a second thought. An invisible ring appeared around Zaran and Ed, and everyone else inside it got teleported outside of it. A countdown appeared.

5...4...3...2...1...FIGHT!

Zaran swiftly took out his longsword, while Ed lifted the greataxe from his back and violently slashed the air in front of him.

Zaran scoffed and slowly walked forwards as if he was taking a walk in the park. This action enraged Ed even more. Why did this little punk Zuno act so smug? Didn't he know how weak he was? Ed roared, kicked the ground with his feet and ran forward. "SLAM!" he roared as he activated a skill and slashed downwards. Zaran noticed in time and quickly rolled towards the side, completely evading the attack while at the same time arriving to the side of Ed. As he was locked into the action of the skill he had no way of avoiding Zaran's attack.

"Flutter" Zaran mumbled as he fiercely slashed down left, raised his sword and slashed down right and then fiercely stabbed the point where the slashed crossed. Even though he wore heavy leather armor the stab knocked the large Orc body back a little. This showed just how much damage that single move did. Ed looked in shock as he saw 50 out of his 100 health disappear without the ability to react. The first 2 slashes didn't do that much damage only 10 damage each, but the third hit was a critical hit and instantly took 30 health away.

"No-no way!" the bystanders said as they saw what just happened. "How can a Zuno do that? Aren't they the weakest level 1 race?" Said one of the bystanders. "Yeah but look at how he dodged that Slam, could you do that? He surely must be a great martial artist in reality!" said another.

Ed roared again as he charged towards Zaran. "I WILL KILL YOUUUUU!"

Ed fiercely slashed in front of him, but hit air again. Zaran avoided the slash by simply back-stepping out of the range of the attack. Ed swayed as he had used too much force and couldn't control his weapon anymore, the greataxe loudly slammed in the ground, creating a small crater. Zaran used this opportunity to move towards the side he just attacked and performed another perfect flutter. The knockback of the third hit was much greater this time and the fat body of the orc smashed against the invisible wall of the ring and collapsed as its life hit 0.

The bystanders all had a look of horror in their eyes. Just how strong was this level 1 Zuno. Nobody believed it would be ever possible for him to win. The stats of the orc were vastly better but simply by relying on skill he won?

While the bystanders were trying to recover from shock a message box popped up.

You were victorious in an honorable duel!Honour + 5Strength + 3Agility + 3Stamina + 3Fame + 50

"Even this counts towards the 300% training rate?" Zaran said surprised. "Why would it work on duels? The reward seems too big..."

Another message popped up. A custom skill has been created. Do you wish to name it?

Zaran was stupified yet again. He didn't think using the skill 2 times in a single fight would unlock it so easily... Did the system just give him extra synergy because of how strong it was in a fight? Zaran recovered from the surprise and entered "Flutter" as the skill name.

Congratulations on creating the S-Rank skill 'Flutter'. Do you wish to disclose your identity?

Zaran pondered for a moment... Should he disclose his identity? Or should he not...