Chapter 3 – To Bargain

Looked at the time, it was already half past three, the Xinyang game time was five o ‘clock in the evening to the nine o ‘clock in the morning, a total of 16 hours. It does not affect the work of the ordinary people; because everyone’s game time was more or less the same. It was improbable to pull huge level gap between players, plus the Xinyang had a super perfect simulation technology therefore it rapidly became popular, fashionable worldwide and gradually became indispensable part of people’s life.

This virtual technology had taken the dominant position of the world, a perfect system, five months later; Xinyang Online had completed docking with real currency and thoroughly integrated into the life of mankind.

High percentage of enrollment rate, such a large group of players, purred the virtual reality consumption. Yearly consumption of players around the world in Xinyang had even surpassed the total world consumption. Huge consumer groups spawned a large service industry, amongst them the most focus was upon professional players’ community.

Almost every consortium had established a presence in Xinyang Online. After Nie Yan’s father had started a business, the company’s profits were pretty good. Following the trend his father had injected funds in the Xinyang Online however in the end had suffered a crushing defeat, resulting in company funding chain to rupture, and Cao Xu could take advantage of it, he absolutely cannot let such a thing happen again.

It was necessary to establish a presence in Xinyang Online, the key was not to fail, Nie Yan wanted to help his father, and he would first pave the road and then wait for his father to inject funds later in order to gather advantage. The funding chain will be uninterrupted, the problem will not emerge.

Nie Yan spent thirty bucks on eating food outside; when he reached home it was almost five o’clock.

He put on his helmet, quietly waited for Xinyang to open.

After 12 minutes, the time in the helmet displayed as five o ‘clock, a peal of light and quick music played. It sounded so familiar, have heard it countless times in the previous life, but had not been aware of sound of music earlier but now unexpectedly it was so pleasant to hear.

System: Would you like to create a new account?

System: Please select your country.

Xinyang is divided into three factions, kindhearted, law abiding light faction, Greenland Empire and Sartreen Empire. Greenland Empire was an elder parliamentary system for human race nation and Sartreen Empire was made up of an alliance of dwarf, orcs, and elf tribe. Lawful evil dark faction has head dictatorship to regulate devil descendant’s tribe with departed spirit tribe. Peace-loving person could also select kindhearted order, neutral faction of giant tribe.

The word selected by Nie Yan was Greenland Empire of wind thief’s profession. The map of Greenland was more familiar, and furthermore he was well acquainted with all the skills wind thief and all professional mission. If he selected other country, the advantage of the rebirth was somewhat gone.

Nie Yan had special feeling towards wind thief after all it was the profession he had devoted nearly a decade of heart’s blood. 180 level of high thief represents supreme honor.

By integrating all the factors just like his former incarnation he selected wind thief.

System: You choose to be born in Greenland Empire.

System: You have chosen wind thief profession.

System: Please name your character.

“Black Flames!” Nie Yan chose the same name as his previous incarnation, Black Flames. Black Flames, it sounds like a nirvana of phoenix, meaning rebirth. [TL Note: Nie Yan used characters ‘涅炎’ as character name which literally means blacken flame/ nirvana flames the first character of his name ‘涅’ is abbreviation of ‘涅槃’ which means nirvana and the phonetically is nièpán].

System:  Character naming successful, character Black Flames is created.

After entering the game the system automatically blur the true face, makes subtle modifications to the face of the player. Under normal circumstances, there is a huge difference in the game’s characters and the actual appearance of the player, quite difficult to recognize them; however the actual beauty or ugliness was more or less same.

Nie Yan opened the properties panel and looked at his attributes.

Character: Black Flames

Level: 0 level

Properties: Strength 2 Agility 2 Intelligence 2 Vitality 2 Perception 2 Charm 1

HP: 100/100, Rage: 0/100

Defense: 2 (Defense rate: 21)

Attack: 3 (Hit: 10)

Resilience: 1

Reflection: 2 (professional expertise modifier)

Will: 0

Balance: 5

Concentration: 5

Jump: 5 (short range easy jump motion 0.9 yards, the middle range jump motion 1.5 yards, long range serious jump motion 3 yards)

Stealth: 0 (the skill is empty)

Hide: 5 (thieves can easily hide in the shadows)

Magic resistance: 0 (with defense, intelligence, vitality, magic defense rate of 0)

Moving speed: 5 (weight correction, 0)

Attack rate: 5 (weapons correction 0, weight correction 0)

Weight: / 60 pounds (weight correction 10) light weight 0 to 20 pounds (including 20, light and convenient movements) weight in the 20-30 pounds (normal movements) heavy weight 30 to 50 pounds (difficult movements).

Character’s race attributes: humans possess diverse races hard to achieve intelligence, with every 5 level up intelligence goes up by 3.

Thief Class Feature: With every 5 level up get trap’s saving throw bonus. [TL Note: Saving Throw – Generally, when you are subject to an unusual or magical attack, you get a saving throw to avoid or reduce the effect.]

Thief Class Features II: Sneak attack, when attacking the enemy from back, may receive extra 30 attack bonus.

Human Thief Class Feature: great intelligence which makes them proficient to use all kinds of tools and magic props.

Professional Expertise: Beginner Dodge (+2 Reflex) Beginner Weapon Specialization: Dagger (+1 attack) Beginner Hide (Hide +2) Beginner shooting (you can use bows, crossbows) Skillful Hands (storm thieves can agilely use their fingers).

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This is the basic attribute, every thief class is the same, in addition to 0 level, system comes with 5 attributes and 1 specialty skill points.

Nie Yan looked at the property bar, in his previous life when he had selected wind thief, to get more resistance he had added a little strength, two points to vitality, which made initial attack weak, attack speed was also very slow, he had wasted a lot of time leveling. In fact the thief class in the initial stage absolutely doesn’t require too much HP. He could only refrain himself from flapping his wrist and sighing from the initial stage failure. Wishing he could delete and level up his character again, this time he would not follow the track of an overturned cart.

Adding 3 points to strength and two points to agility, this optimal allocation of points he had arrived at from his own lifelong experience integrated with his own way of leveling up habit, attack became 6.0, hit 10.6, agility rate 5.4 and attack speed 5.6

Furthermore there was professional specialty skill, for thief profession characteristic, mostly human race thief players first added specialty skill points to dodge, weapon specialization or hide. Nie Yan was about to add specialty skill point to weapon specialization but suddenly stopped and considered carefully for a moment and then added it to shooting.

Intermediate Shooting: High-speed fill-in load 3, Firing Range 3, When using bow and crossbow attack damage 3, Ignores level difference 3 (Thief Profession test 1).

Specialty skills are divided into five levels, beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert and specialist. Cannot continue to upgrade after reaching specialist level however there are many types of specialty skills, different class can upgrade different Specialty skills.

The human race thieves were proficient in a variety of tools and magical devices, bow and crossbow belong to one of them therefore the intermediate firing received extra bonus attack.

After allocating stats Nie Yan switched to a different setting and appeared in Carol City’s teleport point, it was surrounded by row upon row of high-rise buildings. All buildings in Carol City were white, bright and clean, incomparable. In the centre a white obelisk pierce straight into the skies, next to the obelisk, stood a hundred yards tall enormous white sculpture of a mage which held scepter in his hand with solemn expression, it was the patron saint of Greenland empire, Qiao Biya the Great.

The street had many people going in all direction; it was bustling with noise and excitement.

When it was night time in reality it was morning in the game,   dawn spread over Carol City like a layer of silver white ray’s curtain enveloping every building.

Carol City was the capital of the Greenland Empire, a city floating in the sky over the Carol prairie. There were countless teleport points leading to various cities, towns and villages.

“First-rate white grade dagger for zero level, 2 attack points 1 point higher than the novice dagger, only two copper coins, sold out only three left!” A third class mysterious individual had set up a vendor’s stall in the street next to Teleport point; many newbie’s were gathered around the vendor’s stall.

Each new player when first enters the game gets 10 copper coins of start-up funds, many players in order to level their initial level quickly, although their heart ached, they bought one.

Nie Yan snorted disdainfully, the same white grade dagger, in 1-5 levels map of Locke towns, sells for one copper coin only, 0 level players could teleport there for free, use teleport service find the NPC, buy a dagger, round trip required 2-3 minutes complete.

In his previous life he also foolishly bought one dagger, only to discover later that he had been cheated.

Link town for plain cotton clothing store, Joseph town for shoes & hat shop, Locke town for dagger shop, Nie Yan sat teleported three times, spent six copper coins, Replaced the defenseless novice equipment with new. He put on 1-2 defense from shoe, hat, 2-3 defense cloth armor for protecting shoulder and leg.

These are the lessons learned from the previous life, to take care of his defense finally it was 8-13, in the initial stages 2/3rd of the thieves don’t have sufficient, fast and abundant information, hence it was not possible to keep up with equipment also this was just defense and nothing more.

While strolling around the market, he found level 3 Paladin selling a thief’s stealth skill book, he was vending 6 books priced at 6 copper coins each, and since the price was too high lower level thieves could only gaze at it.

The Silent Paladin looked about 20 years old, tall and above average stature fitting a soldier more so a Paladin’s.

Paladins are attached to the temple as guardians, they can learn temple’s traditional Godly techniques, magic attack capability, cure ability furthermore good close combat ability, at the same time they can provide support with aura to team member , considering all the aspects they can be classified as relatively balanced profession. As for Silent Paladins, they may learn silence, a divine silence skill suppresses the mage, priest and other such profession.

“How many coins for Stealth skills book?” asked Nie Yan bending over and picking up the book that lay on the cloth on vendor’s stand. Stealth skill books is essential initial  thief skills, fortunately the drop rate of the stealth skill book from killing monsters was very high so the price was not very expensive.

“You can see the price is 6 copper coins” Silent Paladin exerted with pursed lips.

“You are trying to rip-off, right?  You are a Silent Paladin, in Link town you hunt Fallen shaman, in a day you get six stealth skill books, without loosing blood, and make enough money, don’t you have any shame to sell it so expensively, three copper coins and not a coin more.” Nie Yan carelessly offered half the price.

“How can you say it was easy, my whole day as well as so much potion money was also consumed? If I sell it to you for three copper coins, I don’t make profit, I cannot go below 5 copper coins.” said Silent Paladin. Silent Paladin was overawed by Nie Yan, didn’t answer for a while, he is not a man to calculating the new player seemed to be well-informed slick customer, not so easy to deceive.

“Of course you are leveling at a wrong place, if you go to coordinates 22385.21338.23329 to hunt Fallen shamans, you can get at least ten books a day furthermore it won’t cost much potion money too, three copper coins and not a coin more. If you don’t sell, I’ll leave at once.” Nie Yan looked at Silent Paladin, Silent Paladin square-shaped face, with stubble, was not too highly wretched in appearance.