A beautiful sky with delicate clouds decorating it could be found when one looked up, as mesmerizing as the realistic sky was, it was the sun that brought everything together with it's near perfect warm rays of light, making the whole scenery greatly endearing.
Just like the real-world, the sky was a plagirized baby blue, holding a ball of fake light and many randomly AI shaped foggy structures covering the sky, also imitating the real-world's sun and clouds as if trying to hide the fact that 99% of the people who see this 'sky', this 'sun', and these 'clouds' would never be able to see the real sky, sun, and clouds.
As one could clearly tell by the second description of the sky Reitolk was angry and was taking it out on how the sky in the game looked compared to reality.
"To think that we had no hope the second we entered the capsule", Reitolk sighed in frustration.
He knew focusing on the choices that led up to what happened now would do nothing and instead focused on what was before him. What he saw was a forest, a forest that is found on an island about the size of 3 Texas states combined; well with such a comparison it's not much more of an island than it is a small country.
He knew this was a place he only had 24 hours to be in before he was transported to his actual spawn.
Looking around he could spot others that must have spawned here befored he arrived. Looking around he found a man remembered was named Jolan, a charismatic idiot who led him and half of the other players here to their deaths. Losing the only extra life a player started with, and immediately sending them to the real spawn area in Survival's Rise, the myriad of dungeons filled to the brim with traps monsters, and worst of all, other survivors.
The 24 hours spent on this huge island is meant to be used to gather the necessary equipment and resources needed to survive and break out of the dungeons one will spawn in. The resources one can find in this place would be hard to acquire once one entered into the real start of this game.
Knowing this Reitolk decided to start moving immediately. He looked at his basic stats which were the same for all players.
__________________
Player Status:
Name: Reitolk
Condition: Healthy
****
STATS:
Health: 20 Max: 75
Stamina: 20 Max: 75
Energy: 10 Max: 40
Strength: 3 Max: 10
Agility: 3 Max: 10
****
Equipment: None
__________________
This was a player's Status screen, this allowed players to see their stats, condition and equipment.
Now this game wasn't like other games in the rpg sense, Reitolk remembered what he had experienced in this game. You can't level up or stage up, or go and train your stats to unbelievable levels in this game. You can become stronger, but the path to strength is dangerous. The likelihood of you dying is much higher than you succeeding in this game.
But here he was with the knowledge of the future and in some way with the perfect opportunity to get stronger in a much more quick and refined process and with a relatively safer method than most can get.
Although he was in a place he isn't used to, he knew it would be easier to get stronger here than in the actual game world because this was the place of resource gathering for newbie players and in the true game world it's a place where survival is only for the strongest, luckiest, smartest, and most valuable players and npc's.
Knowing this Reitolk started scanning the area, and sure enough this was a place for players to gather resources with ease, he found three uncommon plant type resources around him, these weren't too valuable on their own, but they just happened to be the resources needed for health and agility potions.
One of the plants was called Tense Blade grass, which was quite big with each blade extending 2 feet outwards and 1 feet upwards also having a width of 7-8 inches. This plant was useful in creating health potions. Another plant was called Dripping Vital root tree, its roots covered the ground's surface area and the tree part was underground, its roots were constantly dripping a glowing yellow substance that would energize you, specifically targeting the leg muscles. This plant was useful in speed potions and stamina potions. Last was the Dented Yellow Carrot, unlike the usual carrot plant its stem was yellow and bent up in many spots, making it look like a bunch of kindergardeners woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to take it out on the poor plant. This plant was useful for perception speed enhancing potions.
Reitolk simply gathered the grass and the carrot, but with the Root tree being too big to carry with him he decided to simply leave it. He realized he would need a container to take the glowing substance with him. Understanding that, he decided to leave for more resources.
"Hey!!"
Before Reitolk could run off someone called for him.
'I almost forgot about the other players, although I'm not planning on sheepherding them through these 24 hours I can at least warn them about how dangerous the ruins and dungeons in this game are.'
As Reitolk was thinking the person who called for him ran up to him.
Reitolk, snapping out of his thoughts examined the person before him. Funnily enough it was another notable person who had a great hand in getting half of the players here killed '(also the reason why I don't have much knowledge about this tutorial area)'. His name was Danny, he's a red head, with a lean build, a loud mouth, and is a complete piece of crap.
"I saw you gathering some strange grass, and was quite surprised when you started pulling out carrots from the ground"
Stifling a laugh Danny remarked, "though those are some of the most f*ed up carrots I've ever seen"
Reitolk turning his gaze to the recently picked carrots in his hands couldn't help but silently agree with a nod.
"Oh by the way, my character name is Danny, may I have yours?"
"My name is Shadow thorn" Reitolk replied somewhat candidly.
"You seem to have some knowldege in herbal plants, from what I've gathered from the games details it is a hardcore survival game along with being a fantasy dungeon explorer game. Your skills could make survival for everyone much easier. Say, why don't you join us, we have a group of 7 people with expert combat gamers including me, we could protect you and you could help out by pointing out different useful plants." Danny suggested.
Danny certainly had talent in speaking, what people don't realize however is that, that is all he has. He is a manipulative coward who's only skill is talking. The absolute opposite type of person you want as a teammate.
Reitolk wasn't interested, he knew what he was dealing with and had his own life to look after. For what reason should he carry 7 other people on his back too?
"I'm afraid I'll have to decline. I've always played solo, but I don't mind giving you guys a tip. Beware of the ruins in this game and any spooky structures. The dungeons in this game are highly dangerous, I advise looking for resources to start off"
Having said that Reitolk excused himself and left, taking a random direction to run off to and shake off any possible taggers, trying to follow him, a force of habit he supposed realizing how unrealistic that situation is here.
30 minutes passed and along the journey he found more Tough Blade Grass and dented yellow carrots, as well as a few more of the tree roots he also looted a abandoned house. Finding a bag to carry stuff in as well as a metal pot he can now harvest the vital fluid from the volital root trees. He also found many other useful plants.
As Reitolk was walking around in the forest he noticed the trees start to clear up. The grass that was there before started to fade away into plain barren dirt. Before continuing any further Reitolk searched and grabbed 2 thick rotten and unearthed logs and started dragging them with him.
Working up a sweat as he journeyed eventually there was nothing around for him to hide himself around, he was in a plains biome. Looking out he saw a Stony structure about 0.8 miles away. Looking like quite the daunting task having a bag filled with various herbs on his back and two heavy logs to drag over there he felt like quitting. But he knew he didn't have time, and thus pushed himself to go forward.
Reaching the ruined castle Reitolk surveyed the area, before taking a break. While resting he went over the details of what he saw. The castle was dilapidated, old and ruined. It seemed to have been abandoned for a long time. Moss covered many holes of the clearly breached walls of the castle. One could occasionally see rats scurrying around the front of the barely recognizable gates of the castle. Many of the structures found on this land were like that, Reitolk infered, using other's talk about their time in this startup island to get such a conclusion.
Getting up Reitolk decided to get things started Setting down the logs in the place he desired them to be at he stepped back a bit and found a stone about the size of both of his hands clapsed together and tossed it over to the gate.
*Crack*
*Swoosh* *Swoosh*
*Clank* *Clank*
Reitolk had thrown the stone at the gate and triggered a magical trap. The trap shot 2 initial arrows out and then calculated the direction the stone came from, finding that there were only two logs where the stone came from it deactivated. If it had found someone in the direction the stone came from, said person or even people would be bombarded with arrows. If it didn't it would deactivate. As one would guess seeing how well Reitolk knew this trap he had indeed survived this trap. The method of how...he was not proud of.
Walking out from behind the dead tree logs Reitolk immediately started walking towards the castle's gates. Looking up into the sky he could tell that the sun has moved a little bit. Judging the position of the sun Reitolk guessed he had about 1-2 hours before Jolan and his group of people got here so he had to be quick.
Walking through the gates of the dilapidated castle Reitolk immediately took after a more stealthy disposition, bending his knees and hunching his back until he was in a slightly crouched position. He moved along the wall avoiding the monsters he knew were there, the undead. Eventually he got to the right chamber. If he was to walk there normally it would have been a about an 8 minute walk, but dodging the skeletons and zombies around the area made the 8 minute walk a 27 minute stealth mission as there were quite a few of them. Even the small noises had a high chance of attracting the zombies and skeletons could sense anything within a 4 yard radius of them. Making avoiding this castle of brain dead creatures an absolute hassle.