The bit about unique skills was surprising, but not unwelcome. Joshua’s sensor web now spread out through nearly two kilometers of the tunnels in every direction, giving him an accurate map of every adventurer’s location at all times. It even provided a minimap in the corner of his eyesight, allowing for ease-of-use. With it, he was able to easily evade the few groups of players that had been able to track him.
The Beginner Pestilence Master: Weapons skill wasn’t quite as exciting at first until Joshua thought about its implications. With it, he could theoretically create up to 35 flying swords at the same time, with each only costing 2000 Pestilence instead of their normal 3000.
Of course, Joshua immediately tested this but found his limit to be about 20 at once. He was able to create more, but they either flopped limply to the ground or dissolved back into Pestilence after just a few seconds. It reminded him eerily of his earlier experiments with the flying eyes.
Joshua quickly decided to put his new skills to use in massacring the new bounty hunters. News had spread that he was still going strong after three hours, and more players had begun to arrive through a massive portal that his web now extended to. It made sense that magic portals were how players traveled to and from fantasy worlds, it was just a wonder that he hadn’t seen it before.
These new hunters were, surprisingly, weaker than the first ones. All of the people that wanted his bounty had arrived within the first hour. The people that decided to join this late were only here to be a part of the event. Joshua was more than happy to accept their kind donation of EXP and quest progress.
Chapter 9
Unique skills are our answer to endgame progression in Macrocosm. We hadn’t really thought about it when promising an MMORPG with near-endless growth, but that meant coming up with a near-endless amount of both skills and classes to match. This obviously isn’t a realistic possibility, so we decided to have the overseer AI do it for us dynamically. It constantly monitors all player’s progress determining if anything they do is worthy of a unique skill or not. As for the classes, well…you can find out along with everyone else, once more people start reaching tier 5 and above. – on Endgame Progression, from The Chronicles of The Founder
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Macrocosm’s first major bounty hunt! I’m your host and fellow hunter, Rein-”
Five flying swords’ cut the player to pieces, killing him instantly. The dozens of players he had killed in the underground tunnels had drawn in people like this one, more interested in streaming a fight than actually fighting. It made sense, Joshua thought. After all, they could make thousands of credits from advertisements with the sheer number of people that must be tuning in.
Joshua had been ecstatic when he found the second person streaming, with the first being the spear guardian Dremun. The arrival of more streamers looking for easy views meant that weaker and weaker players kept pouring in through the tunnels, giving him easier targets than the groups he had been fighting so far. He had been able to single-handedly kill entire groups of them without retreating or leaving survivors. This last streamer, Rein-something, had been the last one that Joshua needed to finish his quest.
Even without the quest’s massive reward, the EXP that it allowed him to earn from killing other players was a much faster way of leveling up than hunting monsters. The prey was even nice enough to deliver itself to him. He had managed to ding level 29, all the way from his original level of 16, in less than four hours, and that wasn’t counting the quest reward.
Quest Complete: Kill 1000 Guardsmen
Reward: 1,000,000 (5,000,000) EXP and 500,000 gold
The Blessing of Growth proved its value once again, shooting Joshua’s level sky-high, all the way up to 42. Joshua could feel the change immediately. He had been growing slightly stronger and faster with each level, but the growth had been padded out over the last several hours. The rush of gaining that much power at once was practically addicting.
The 500,000g bonus was just icing on the cake. Joshua immediately sold it on the auction house for 5,000 credits and laughed as his bank account balance rose. He was tempted to do the quest again just for the reward but having to fight like this for another several hours would drive him mad with boredom. All of the more experienced fighters had retreated to lick their wounds and grow stronger, having seen him gain levels with each fight, while the newcomers were too weak to be a challenge.
Joshua was salivating at the thought of reaching tier 5 as quickly as possible. Only a few thousand people across the world had managed to get there so far, and they were keeping their mouths shut about it. Joshua didn’t know why, but he was certain that tier 5 was different somehow. It was special compared to the ones before it. Maybe it was the significantly longer time than it took to reach compared tier 4, maybe it was something symbolic about its level cap being 100, he didn’t know. He just knew it was special.
The only problem was thinking of a way to break through these final few levels. Joshua had done the math: each level took 10,000 more EXP than the last, and that number had added up quickly. It would take another 460,000 just to reach level 43. It would take just under another five million EXP to reach level 50, plus the extra needed to evolve once again. Joshua retreated to the Necromancer’s Guild to think of a plan.
Navigating the underground tunnels had come to be second nature to Joshua, as his web allowed him to effortlessly avoid the hunting parties. He was forced to take a detour to avoid more players, slowly making his way to the guild. He was perfectly capable of killing these players, as he had proven, but fighting them wouldn’t give any EXP now that the quest was complete.
Joshua didn’t even make it back to the Necromancer’s Guild before a new notification appeared as if answering his prayer.
Daily Monster Attack has begun!
Report to the walls to earn rewards!
As this is your first Daily Monster Attack, please read this. All major cities in non-starter worlds undergo a single major attack every day. The guard will repel the attack on their own given time, but the city will suffer extreme damage without player-intervention. For the duration of the attack, all bounties are temporarily suspended to encourage villainous players to aid the guard. If a player sufficiently contributes to the cities defense, their bounty will be erased. The difficulty of the attack will rise for each participating player. Special rewards are granted based on participation and difficulty.
Joshua hadn’t heard about the daily attacks before, but only a small percentage of players had even escaped their starting worlds so far. A quick glance at his sensor web showed that every player in the vicinity was reading a similar message, as this was their first time too.
He rushed for the nearest exit to the surface, determined to be one of the first to the wall. Joshua spotted guards almost immediately upon leaving the underground, but they ignored him just as the notification said they would. They did shoot him a mean glare though, so they clearly remembered who he was.
Using Airborne Pandemic to reach the rooftops once again, Joshua practically flew across the city. The recent levels had improved a lot more than just his HP pool, which now sat at a hefty 76,500. They also made him faster, stronger and gave him better control over his Pestilence. The bonus to control wasn’t enough to trigger another skill, but that would come with more levels and practice.
Joshua reached the wall in less than a minute, moving so fast that the environment blurred around him. He had taken to making springboards with Airborne Pandemic and Pestilence Manipulation, launching him across the rooftops faster than he could ever hope to fly. The only problem was that they launched him so far, so fast, that he wasn’t able to recollect their Pestilence before they fell apart. That wasn’t a big issue, however, as each took less than a thousand to create, and he regained that in seconds.
Joshua scaled the wall in an instant with his jump pads, landing on top. He was met with hundreds of guardsmen lining the wall, stretching out farther than he could see in either dire
ction. The sight that awaited him on the other side of the wall told him why.
Goblins. Tens of thousands of them, all tier 3 or higher. Little green men, barely four-feet tall and clad in leathers with poor weaponry, yet in such numbers that they blocked out the ground. Scattered among them were tier 4 evolved goblins and orcs, great pig-men wearing heavy armor and wielding two-handed axes and clubs. There were crude siege weapons such as catapults scattered among the horde’s ranks, though thankfully nothing like trebuchets.
The city had to deal with something like this every day?! This wasn’t an attack, it was a full-scale monster invasion. The overwhelming horde of monsters stretched as far as the wall did, well outside Joshua’s line-of-sight. There didn’t seem to be anything in the air, and his sensor web told him nothing was underground, but the sheer quantity of monsters was absurd.
“First daily attack, monster?” A now-familiar voice rang out over the wall. Sigmund was there, leading his garrison atop the walls. “I am loath to accept the help of a scourge such as you, but now is not the time for that. Do you plan to aid us?”
“I do,” Joshua replied. “I hope you and your men have learned something from me over the past day. From what I remember, fire will work just as well against goblins as it does against me.”
A few of the guard shot Joshua glances when he said this, and nearby captains recognized him as the man who had just destroyed a large number of guardhouses, but none of them made a move against him.
“Are you planning to earn yourself free of the bounty? I doubt you could. As strong as you have proven to be, your bounty has simply grown too high.”
Joshua’s bounty, following the last slaughter of other players, had risen to 8,000,000g. If it rose any higher, there was a risk that the higher-ranking players would take notice. 100,000 credits would be enough to draw the true monsters away from their grinding. He needed to get rid of it here and now.
“You let me worry about that. When does this start? Do we wait for them, or do we attack first?”
“Either, but today is an exception. Normally the attacks are composed of a large number of powerful monsters. We head out to meet them in the fields in order to prevent damage to the walls. Today, as you can see, the attack is instead a countless number of weaklings. We are planning to wait on the walls and kill them while they try to climb or set up ladders. Meeting them in the open would mean getting surrounded. A few other immortals like you have already headed out, but most of them seem to have fallen.”
Immortals? So, the guard knew about his ability to respawn. Joshua hadn’t been sure how NPCs this intelligent would react when he came back to life, but apparently, Macrocosm already had that covered. It made sense to have the NPCs aware of their immortality, he thought, due to how often MMO players tended to die, especially in PVP environments.
“Hmm…” Joshua mumbled. “I won’t be able to participate if I just stay on the walls…” Without warning, Joshua jumped off the wall onto the grass outside. A few of the guards watched in shock at his actions, but they quickly turned back to the oncoming horde. Another dead adventurer wouldn’t mean much, especially when they came right back.
Joshua charged right toward the goblin line. They saw him coming and prepared their weaponry, but they were disorganized. What few adventurer’s that had attacked them so far had stuck to ranged attacks or died quickly. They didn’t expect Joshua to crash right through their line, along with the 20 flying swords than fanned out behind him, cutting a wide and visible path of corpses.
Joshua’s Virulence Aura flared up to its maximum, taking every point of his 7000/minute Pestilence generation to fuel itself. The flying swords formed a circle around him as he cleared a spot deep in the horde, cutting down anything that came nearby. The aura wasn’t strong enough to kill, at least not quickly, but it served to weaken and cripple the approaching goblins before the swords cut them down.
The goblins, being only tier 3 and poorly equipped, never stood a chance against Joshua’s powerful skills. Before long, they were climbing over piles of their comrades to reach him, which just served to extend the time that they were trapped in his Virulence Aura. The aura also served to drain the corpses of their Pestilence, and Joshua was forced to mentally turn off the constant notifications. Needless to say, he hit the current limit of 100,000 in just a few minutes.
Advanced goblins and armored orcs attacked occasionally, but most of them moved toward the frontline as the attack on the walls commenced. The normal goblins, plentiful as they were, gave little EXP, which was further reduced by the tier difference. Instead, Joshua began to focus on the catapults. A fight this large was almost guaranteed to let him reach tier 5, so focusing on helping the guard hold the walls by destroying the siege weapons was his best bet.
As Joshua cut his way through the horde, he noticed other players were attempting to do the same, with varying levels of success. A few tried to go at it alone like him, and some even succeeded, but most failed. Those in groups proved more successful, and Joshua watched as one group brought down a catapult while he was still making his way towards his first.
Seeing the groups making progress sparked a competitive fire in Joshua’s chest. Competition was always a good thing, helping to push both parties towards greater heights. He stopped killing the lesser goblins, pulling the swords and Virulence Aura back into himself and moving into the air. Launchpads pushed him up and over the goblin horde, quickly reaching the first catapult, bypassing several minutes of fighting.
Joshua hit an airborne platform directly above the catapult, angled to give him a good cut, and drew his sword. He remembered the trick he had used back in the woods against the Dire Wolf and repeated it with even more Pestilence. Joshua swung his sword from his floating platform, making it extend mid-swing, and cut the catapult clean in two. His extended blade cut through the wooden supports, the launch mechanism, and the wheels without effort before retracting.
Before the catapult was even able to fall apart, Joshua was already soaring over the goblin horde on his way to the next. Two more catapults fell in the next minute before Joshua stopped. There were still other siege weapons visible farther down the wall, but groups of players had started organizing from the revived loners, and they seemed to have it under control. Instead, Joshua put his efforts toward hunting down whatever tier 4s weren’t on the frontline.
Joshua left a trail of death behind him as he darted around the battlefield. The more powerful individual goblins were few and far between and were mostly supportive casters. This gave him plenty of time to massacre every goblin he passed with his newly recreated floating swords, helping to take some pressure off the front lines.
The fighting continued like this for half an hour until the goblin numbers started waning. The fighting died down completely within an hour. Joshua lost track of how many weak goblins he had killed, but there must have been a few dozen tier 4s among them. While he wasn’t sure how many he had killed, it was enough to push him up to level 50, and right into his next evolution.
You have reached the level cap for your current class. Would you like to spend 540,000 EXP to evolve?
Joshua said yes, expecting to see a regular class list pop up, but something new came instead.
Congratulations on reaching tier 5! You have unlocked your Paramount Class!
A Paramount class is a one-time choice that will set your playstyle for the rest of your time in Macrocosm. Future tier-ups will not allow you to change class, but instead, serve as a direct upgrade to your Paramount class. Unique Paramount skills can be learned at higher tiers. Paramount classes grow based on how the user plays and will adapt to the user’s playstyle during tier-ups. God-given classes may be revoked by the god or surrendered by the player, but this will reset the player back to tier 1. Tier 5 and all future tiers will have a level cap of 100. This choice cannot be undone later, except by creating a new character.
Paramount Class Choices:
-Decaying Titan
-Bli
ght Lord
-Miasma Sorcerer
-Champion of Filth
-Scourge AntiPaladin
Joshua took a moment to read over the different classes and was pleasantly surprised by the variety available. Each of the five classes had its own clear specialization, and he was able to get more information on each one.
The Decaying Titan class focused entirely on his physical powers, causing him to grow larger and stronger with each level but taking away his ability to use Pestilence for anything other than regeneration or body enhancement. Miasma Sorcerer was the exact opposite, focusing entirely on Pestilence-based spells while also giving a dramatically larger Pestilence-cap.
Joshua discarded Champion of Filth right away. He had gotten what he needed from Filth and walked away unharmed, there was no way he was going to risk it, no matter how powerful the class seemed. Scourge AntiPaladin seemed to be similar to Champion of Filth, just without pledging to any single evil god. It would still mean interacting with them and drawing power from them though, so Joshua ignored it as well.
He took the time to look over each class’s strengths and weaknesses, but he had actually already decided. Joshua selected Blight Lord, the natural upgrade of his Scourge Blackguard class. It improved everything he was already good at, without forcing anything new on him or making him change his fighting style.
The Omnithaneum Page 9
