With cheery music and the screen looking as if it's jumping through time and space, my consciousness slowly settles down and goes into a trance. This was commonly referred to as the 'Real Mode', which is required for me to enjoy the game.
As I open my eyes again, it takes a while to adjust as my vision slowly turns from hazy to being more clear.
"Welcome Artoria. It has been 29 days since your last login."
With me logging in, the friends that she made in the game that are connected to this character will be notified that I had logged in. Or if I am registered in a guild, the guild members would be notified.
I looked around, usually when you log out, you would do it in a 'Safe zone', if you were to log out in a place that's not marked as a 'Safe Zone', you will receive the penalty of having your character's afterimage stay in that spot for 1 to 3 minutes. Of course, you are in most danger in that period of time.
Therefore users would log out in safe zones, and there were several places that were designated as one. It would be places such as villages, around the central fountain of the main city area, or usually the personal room inside an inn. Users who are quite wealthy would use their houses that they purchased in game or in the bedroom of the palace they own.
I also remembered that in the previous life I was using a moderately small sized house whenever I logged out.
Just as I suspected, I opened my eyes to find myself in quite a large bedroom, it was too big for only one person to use. Of course, matching the era that the game was set in, the decor of the room looked to be of the medieval age and didn't have a single modern convenience.
stepped out of the bedroom. A long hallway with arched pillars came before my view. The wide hallway draped with red carpet and decorated with expensive magic lanterns on their walls looked amazingly beautiful.I realized that the virtual mansion that I found myself in was not only as large as the one I was living in real life, but much larger as well. This fact became real to me once I reached the main hall.
"This isn't a mansion size. it's a palace !" I said.
I decided I shouldn't needlessly walk around anymore and open my status panel.
(Disable Real Mode. Open Status.)
After a simple command, my sight became slightly blurry, then information about my character started to appear as I saw my character in 3rd person camera position.
[ ID – Artoria / Nationality: English
Strength: 1065+(120)
Dexterity: 438+(50)
Wisdom: 103+(30)
Charisma: 305+(60)
Luck: 532+(50)
Level – 898
Class – Knight (Proficiency – Grand Master Level 3)
Health Points: 18900/18900+(2000)
Magic Points: 1400/1400+(500)
Safe Zone Assigned: Sky Castle]
I couldn't help but gasp out loud in surprise even when I was staring at a simple status screen. I did have a hunch, but I didn't know I would truly be the Artoria that I was thinking of. She was officially number 1 in the level ranking of England, and a number 1 in unofficial worldwide ranking, shining brightly as 'First Master' in both name and skill.
She was totally unknown to everyone. She never revealed her identity unlike the other top ranking players, which was even more mysterious as no one was actually close to her. On top of that, she was level 898. Considering that I was level 750 in the month previously. I remembered that the actual number 1 ranking player in the USA was level 797. I read that it's really hard to level up past 800. the monster becomes much harder to kill. you need to be in a group with the same level to be able to kill them. The fact that she was able to level alone is amazing. On top of that. She is a grand master tier. The 'Master' tiers are separated to 10 different levels, and I knew that once you reached the max tier in 'Master' you would advance into even higher tier of mastery, but to think that not only did she reach beyond level 10 of 'Master', but she was level 3 of 'Grand Master' as well. To become a master you need to complete all the quests of the warrior class to be able to unlock the master skill. She also chose to upgrade her warrior class to Knight.
I was too stunned for words. I knew that there was a difference between me and her environment that she plays in, but the difference was so massive that there was no way I could even imagine closing the gap between us. As I remembered myself being confident in the upper mid echelon of all the ranking players, I became suddenly embarrassed to even think that way.Even her health was at the level of an average mid-tier field boss monster's level. Regarding the health points, you gain additional max points as a level up bonus whenever you play solo since there were no other partners to take the hits for you in battle, but considering that I barely reached 10,000 at my level, it was an extremely large gap of number.
"A number that can't possibly be obtained unless you played from beginning till now as a solo player."
Although it was a show of her wealth to be able to hunt alone this whole time, playing as a party is fun as well. When you understand that she didn't play a single moment in a party for the last 5 years and hunted alone, you couldn't help but understand how patient she was. It wasn't like this was a single player game.
At this point, the fact that the registered Safe Zone was a Sky Castle didn't surprise me anymore. Usually guilds would be sporting a castle to do the contents that castle owners can enjoy such as defending from castle sieges, but Sky Castle was something that was owned by a single person and was exempt from such content, a 'non-siegeable castle' in other words. Although it gives a whole slew of advantages to the owner, the cost to create one was equivalently huge. It was a well known secret that in order to create this special castle that's floating in the sky, you needed to complete a secret special quest as well as to consume an enormous amount of materials, plus you required 3 dragon hearts that reached millions of dollars each.