Starting from Zero

------------------

"Hey Ziri, why are you always draining their blood?"

We traveled for a week now, Rose finally decided to ask me about it after watching me collecting blood everyday.

"Materials for repairing my equipment. Mine are all broken and I need these blood." I didn\'t stop my work while giving the answer. I kept it going until the Snow Bear in front me is sucked dry.

Rose watched curiously as I turned to the corpse of an Ice Fox. "There are more bears not far. Surely they got more blood than this tiny fox?"

"The material I need is called \'Thousand Blood\'. I need to collect from a thousand different creatures. Even if I get several buckets of blood from the bears, it will be no use!"

"That sounds really strange." Rose rushed away somewhere, and ran back with a weird looking animal in her hand. "Snow Hamster. A new one!"

I took it with a smile. The little thing didn\'t take much time.

"Let\'s go!"

"How many you got again?"

I checked my inventory. "473. And once we left the snow mountain there should be more creatures which means I can finish it faster. I\'m doing it now just to save some effort though."

"What are you trying to repair? I\'ve done it before and I think you need different stuff to repair different equip. Look at this wand!" She held up her weapon. "This is my precious treasure, [Wand of Life]. It doesn\'t look like much but it is useful! You know how I became unique resurrection wizard? By using this! It was originally a quest trigger, when I finished the quest it became my reward."

"This is a wand?" I took the weapon and looked it over. "I thought you\'re carrying a walking stick so you don\'t fall on this snow."

Rose\'s face turned red. "You-- Ugh!" She snatched it back. "This is a really rare support type weapon. My reviving success rate is higher than those NPCs just because of it. And it helped with my leveling too. I can\'t fight much, but I earned a lot of money with my reviving skill so I can buy tons of potions, and survive by drinking them."

Rose is a bit agitated from my comment so I tried to distract the topic. "That sounds nice. How did you earn money with your skills?"

"You don\'t get it?" Rose looked at me with the expression like you-are-a-real-idiot. "I revive people and they give me money, simple as that!"

"Why don\'t they just go to NPCs?"

"NPCs ask for 1 gold for each revive. I ask the same price but my chance of success is higher. If anyone doesn\'t want to risk it he will have to find me. Besides NPCs are all inside cities, while I can just stay near their grinding site. So they either wait for two minutes and get teleported back to the city, or just come to me and get instantly revived with a better chance, while paying the same money."

"Wait wait wait! How much for revive again?"

"One gold. Why?"

"It\'s not 55 crystals?" Something is VERY wrong here.

Rose is surprised. "55 --you\'re joking right? Do you think an ordinary newbie who just died can pay that much money? 1 gold is already overpriced. A good number of players cannot even pay that. So they have to wait for 12 hours to get revived by the system! (real time) Monsters in this game don\'t drop much spoils, especially money."

"Ahhhhrgh! I was tricked!!"

I held my head and yelled, which made Rose jump.

"What happened?"

"When my friend died back there, we found a revival NPC who asked us 55 crystals!"

"And you paid?"

"I did! Well I didn\'t know the price back then! Or there\'s no way I would pay that money!"

Rose held her stomach and laughed. "You, you got scammed by an NPC? Ha-haha! Funniest story I\'ve ever heard!"

"So that\'s why they said the NPC was bugged. He did more than robbing a transport!"

"Aren\'t you a rich guy. 55 crystals I say! You handed it over like its nothing?"

"I happened to be carrying it at that time. Plus that old man felt really spooky, I wanted to get out there fast so I didn\'t think too much."

"Stop thinking about it then." The little girl is now actually patting my back to comfort me. "I noticed that we get a lot more drops with you around. We won\'t need much time to make some money."

"Of course!" This is where I take a lot of pride. "I got a base Luck bonus when creating character, and I have a ring which adds 7 more Luck."

"That\'s...a lot. What ring? Let me see it!"

I showed my finger with the Ring of Stars on it and enabled information display to her. "You like it?"

Rose didn\'t answer. In fact she\'s completely frozen. Besides she lost every bit of her "lady image" again, with all the saliva coming out of her mouth.

"Where the heck did you get this thing? This is ridiculous!"

"But it\'s legit." I pulled my hand back so she can finally wipe her face. "It\'s a reward from defeating a level 1000 Boss." I pointed at Lucky. "He was that Boss but I somehow managed to capture him, that\'s when the system gave me this."

"Lucky is a level 1000 dragon boss? He\'s not a drake? And that...Loong\'er, is she a dragon too?"

"You can say that." I called all my companions over. "This is Lucky, level 1000 Dark Dragon Lord. Loong\'er, level 1000 Shinryuu. Phiona, level 999 Inferno Phoenix. Night Shade, level 800 Nightmare. And Phantom, level 600 Spirit Mutant."

"The fu-- are you a game master?" Rose\'s eyes are now big as baseballs. "That\'s not what I expected when I saw them. I thought Lucky is level 200 Drake, Loong\'er is level 230 Mutated Horn Python, Phiona a Flame Crow, and Night Shade...a level 80 black horse! And this Phantom, I never saw it before! Why don\'t you call him out?"

Before I can explain Phantom yelled first: "Of course I\'m out. Actually I have the longest appearance here! My skill is to merge with master, it\'s only natural if you can\'t see me."

"He can talk??" Rose reached towards Phantom but touched nothing.

"Cut it. Phantom is a spiritual creature, he doesn\'t have a body."

"And it\'s wonderful too!" Phantom bloated. "Physical attacks don\'t hit me, if a Warrior come across me I can basically choose how to play with him! ...But there comes the problem that I don\'t have any physical attacking abilities myself."

"How do you fight then?"

"It\'s complicated. I usually control my enemies and let them cut themselves. Oh right, I can manipulate their actions."

"Ahhh!" Rose suddenly screamed. She began to walk towards me while slowly unbuttoning her cheap wizard robe. "What am I---"

Rose is going to drop naked. I can already see her laps. Something really bad will happen if it goes on.

"Stop! Leave her alone."

"Alriiight." Phantom left her body, somewhat reluctantly. I never knew he is into such things. Though I don\'t know if he is technically a "he".

Rose regained control of herself and hurriedly tightened her clothes. "Phantom!! What was that for??"

"I...was demonstrating, so you understand better! Now you see how I can order someone to attack their own teammates, when they have no one left I can just make him use a town portal scroll. Heheeheeehehe..."

I can see Rose getting goose bumps. "You\'re more devilish than a devil!"

"Come on I\'m not!" Phantom isn\'t satisfied with Rose\'s comment. "And watch out!"

Rose\'s body moved on itself again and rolled sidewards, causing a sneaking Snow Leopard to miss its mark.

"Now you see what else I can do!" Phantom jumped out again and started to control the leopard to spin in circles.

I finished the beast off and collected its blood. "Now we should get moving. We aren\'t out camping, I got a mission to do!"

"Mission?" Rose knocked some snow off her clothes. "About repairing your equipment?"

"Eeyup." I went ahead. I\'m positive Rose is going to discuss till the end of the day if I just stand here.

"What kind of stuff needs blood to repair? My robe only needs threads, my wand needs some quicksilver and wood, plus some silver and iron for my other armors. I never heard of anything needing blood. And so much of it!"

"I\'m repairing Artifacts!"

"You got Artifact gear?"

"Duh, that ring, you saw it right? An Artifact."

"Well I didn\'t pay attention to its grade. Now you think about it, that totally explains the ring\'s crazy bonuses."

"There\'s the mountain top!" I stopped to look at the broad grassland in the distance. It looks like a giant green carpet from here. The edge between the grass and the trees at the foot of the mountain serves as the carpet\'s trimming. I can somehow make out several beast herds moving slowly on the grassland too. They might be running though, it\'s too far to judge.

Rose caught up. "This is beautiful! I never knew I can ever witness such a sight in my life."

Phantom cut in: "But my homeland is even better than this."

Lucky became pretty excited too, and roared happily, which caused something really bad to happen.

Guess what?