Starting from Zero

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"I can understand. My entire childhood is surrounded by a group of people (bodyguards), they only made me feel lonely. Being alone does not mean lonely. It\'s when there are people around but none of them can speak their minds with me."

I switched my chatterbox mode on and began to speak my feelings freely. But what Rose said next almost choked me.

"So you had a poor life too! Did you grow up in an orphanage? An orphanage means children who don\'t speak to each other. Truly awful!"

"That\'s not--"

But I didn\'t get to explain. Rose hugged me and began to cry.

"Hold still! I need to rest a bit. Just a bit."

I gave up my attempt to push her away.

"My family isn\'t really a happy one. My mother died long ago. Dad found a stepmother, and they both were cruel to me. It got worse when that woman had a kid! My grandma was my only friend. But she passed away several years ago. Still, I think that\'s better then what you have gone through as orphan. I at least had a loving grandmother."

The heck is this all about?! When did I become an orphan? The girl got some crazy imaginations!

And no, this is not important. We were discussing about our red names, how did it suddenly turn into a complaint interview??

I shook Rose awake. She just fell asleep!

"Now hold on a minute! We\'re far off topic here. Don\'t we need ideas about our red names?"

"Um, good point. Weird. Why are we speaking something like this?"

"Nevermind that. What are you going to do? Your name won\'t get clean any time soon, any plans?"

"As usual, grind or do quests with you while cleaning it. That\'s how we spent the past days right?"

"It\'s different now. We were mostly traveling through deserted areas. But my destination is the Dragon\'s Canyon, we will need to go past several populated cities now. Two players with super-red names above their heads can\'t just go wandering among the crowds. Thousands of people will try to hunt us down!"

"Really?" Rose is not convinced. "Why would they kill us if we don\'t do anything to them first?"

"Well, there can be lot of reasons. First, our names mean we killed innocent people. Thus some \'heroes of justice\' will try to take us down. Second, we buried thousands of people outside Flowing Cloud city. They will certainly NOT forgive us. And it\'s very likely that their friends will all become our enemies too. Third, red named players drop more items when killed. They will at least drop one of two equipment if I remembered right. Besides players are easier to deal with than monsters (normally), which means they are great targets for farming. Lastly, killing red names gives you Reputation instead of Evilness.

That\'s about it. Do you still think people will be nice to you? By the way, you heard the announcement. I\'m now a public target admitted by the system, with rewards and bounty on my head. I\'m sure some bounty hunters are already investigating on how to find me right at this moment!"

"What do we do then? This is terrible! And because of you! I was planning to become an angel respected by other players using my skills, now you made me into an evil witch first!"

I stared at Rose until she felt uneasy enough to scratch her head.

"What you looking at? Something on my face?"

"Nope. I was just thinking maybe you should go trim your demon horns. They look too long!"

"Why you--!"

I dodged a flying water pot. "This is murder! You will get Evilness!"

"Screw that! You\'re red name too! Kill you and I can clean myself!"

"Why don\'t you just suicide?!"

We started a pillow fight. The door was suddenly pushed open, with Wayne outside. At this moment Rose is well on top of me, pinning me down (tickling). But our position looks...

"Ouch. You two seem busy! I didn\'t see nothing. Carry on."

He shut the door and left.

"Come back here!" I quickly got on my feet and rushed after him. While Rose tidied herself with a red face.

When I caught Wayne I was told he came to deliver some information. "I checked the forum just now and the top topic is about that avalanche you caused. Your pictures got exposed!"

"What?? Who did it? And how did they get our pictures?"

"It\'s from a screenshot. Someone also recorded the whole mess."

"They did?"

Rose opened her in-game forum browser and displayed it to us, our photos instantly fell into our sight. There is only one picture with me in it, where I\'m stuck upside-down in the snow with half of my body covered. The only thing that stands our is my cape which is spread wide on the snow. I don\'t think anyone can recognize me with this.

There are more pics for Rose though, actually the pictures are captured in one session which can be combined into an animation. Rose is recorded when falling down from the sky. It looks blurred too, probably because the high falling speed plus whoever did it failed to adjust his focus in time.

"Bah-haha! You look funny!" She pointed at my stuck-in-the-snow picture.

"I didn\'t have much of a choice! You won\'t do any better if you crash-landing in an avalanche. No one can ever tell up from down after being thrown about like that."

"You have a teleport ring right?" Wayne asked. "Why don\'t you just teleport to the Dragon\'s Canyon?"

"Of course I thought about that!" I complained. "First, Lucky won\'t understand what is a \'coordinate\', he can only remember the way. Second, as he said, the area is completely isolated from any magic effect. You can\'t use any spells in there, no teleport, no recall and such."

"That sounds like a graveyard for level 1000 bosses alright."

"Then how do we get past cities?" Rose asked.

"How about you try to estimate your landing point and teleport across the city, as long as you can avoid the player crowds?" Wayne suggested.

"That might work." I made my decision. "It\'s settled. Let\'s first try to force our way through. But before that we need to level up and make it safer. I\'m not in a hurry, the canyon won\'t run by itself."

After discussion, we canceled the room and got ready to grind. Wayne said something about "being the third wheel" and ran off somewhere. Which means me and Rose again.

"Where are we heading to? You\'re familiar with the place so you decide!"

True. The Lost City is a new place to her, I definitely should take the lead.

"Follow me then. Let\'s go shopping!"

"Shopping? Are you feeling OK?"

"Oh yes I am!" I shook Rose\'s hand off my forehead. "It\'s worth it to spend some time getting prepared. Look at what you\'re wearing! I know you don\'t have much money to gear up. But other people will just see you as a beggar or something!"

Rose looked at her wheat colored line robe. "What\'s wrong with this? This is pretty good where I came from. Most people can\'t even afford this robe, especially us casters who need tons of MP. You know why most mages are played by females? Because they burn a lot of money. A caster usually needs support from several warriors!"

"Did you happen to spawn somewhere poor, or is the whole game like this?" I never thought it so hard to farm for equipment. (Says you.) Well I was in some money crisis at the start of the game but it sure got better soon. And I was never short on potions.

"Not everyone has that insane Luck like you who just find loot in piles!" Rose feels unfair. "We usually had to clear half of a mountain area only to find a dozen random drops, most of which we couldn\'t even use! There are so many different races and classes, its hard to find something suitable. And they even got gender requirement! You can change that at the blacksmith NPC but it costs money! Do you actually think you can just pick up something and put it on? Everything got a strict requirement besides rings, bracelets, necklaces and breast pieces plus those weapons!"

"Really? But there aren\'t any race restrictions on my equipment."

That\'s what I remembered about my Dark Dragon Lord set. Nothing about race, gender, class, there aren\'t even limits for your base Strength and such. Any player can use them!

"That\'s impossible! You must have mislooked. There can\'t be anything THAT convenient."

"Well let\'s go check it then!" I dragged Rose towards Clark\'s place.

Rose yelled, "Aren\'t we going to buy some gear?"

"It\'s the same place!"

Rose looked around when we\'re walking. "The buildings here are awesome! That city I was in looked like a village compared to this! But why is everyone closed?"

"To keep the sunlight out!"

The weapon shop is not far from the inn. I pushed Rose inside and closed the door.

She checked the empty room with curiosity. "Can we just come in like this?"

"No prob. I know the owner well."

I took Rose to the workshop upstairs. As expected, Clark is repairing my outfit in here.

He stood up. "You\'re back? Who might this be?"

"Crimson Rose!" Rose stretched her hand.

Instead of shaking it, Clark grabbed a sword and gently tapped it at the ground. A knight\'s salute! I never saw him do that to me.

"The name is Clark, owner of the shop. Ziri is my brother here, if little\'o sis need anything, just ask!"

That\'s not what I expected from an NPC.

"Nevermind those. I got something to ask you." I took a number of ice cubes from my bracelet. "You asked me to collect materials before right? I farmed on the snow mountain for some days and got these stuff." (*)

I dropped the ice cubes onto a nearby workbench. "I\'ve done the identification. They are called [Black Ice Core]. They should be on your collection list so I brought them to you."

Clark picked one up and is obviously smiling. "Nice! These are the real thing, no doubt about it. Now I won\'t fail when forging equipment."

"Won\'t fail?" Rose took a cube as well. "I know someone who can repair equipment. From what he said, the process of repairing and forging are easily botched. Even if you\'re a professional you can\'t possibly guarantee a perfect work right?"

"That\'s when this baby comes in! Black Ice Cores are used to immediately halt a forging process when something goes wrong. If any equipment piece is about to break in the forging fire, you throw an ice cube in there and the whole furnace will freeze up. Then you un-freeze the whole thing slowly and take out whatever you were working on unharmed and try it again. As long as you got enough of these cores, you will always success after several attempts. So how many did you manage to get?"

I pointed at the workbench: "That\'s all, about a dozen?"

Clark seems disappointed. "That\'s it huh. A bit more would be good."

"That\'s the best I can do. They are from those level 370 Blizzard Lich, 200 levels above myself! I had to carefully kite each one of them for some time to kill it, and that\'s thanks to Rose\'s healing skills! Otherwise I\'d just avoid them at all cost."

"Ow, sorry I sounded like that. These materials are really valuable though, just try to get more if you have the chance! I\'ll pay you 500 crystals for each of these."

"You bet I will. No one hates money!"

"Wait, you, but--This is too much!" Rose\'s mouth has been hanging open for quite a while now. Though her cherry lips won\'t go very wide even if she tries to. "Thats..five or six thousand crystals! Just gone??" (**)

"Why not? I still owe him 150k crystals you know."

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(*) This is mentioned in b2c16.

(**) Somewhere around $8,000.