Umber’s First Darksday of Harvestfall, 1442, Nogoon Steppes, just outside of Altansuun.


    Elyssia tightened the bands of her leather gloves, a grin creeping across her face. This is it.


    The Nogoon Steppes stretched before her, a lush green expanse framed by towering mountain ranges, like a sacred hidden valley tucked away from the world.


    Scattered across the plains, flocks of white sheep grazed peacefully, while nearby shepherds kept a watchful eye on them.


    This was the homeland of Aer’s and Cryonix’s children, the Half-blood felinaes and the Noble burrovians. Almost everyone here had animal ears, like her Bagsh. Of course, there were some exceptions—notably players who had created characters of different species and started as either martial artists or druids, like herself.


    Elyssia absentmindedly brushed a strand of hair behind her long sylvani ears, still getting used to the feeling of both her hair and ears in this form. The calibration had made it feel like they truly belonged to her, but minor detail like this could still catch her off-guard.


    Her eyes scanned the horizon, looking for threats. Or rather, source of experience points. Predators like wolves or foxes would surely would skulking around the flocks of tasty-looking sheep, making it easy for her to find targets to practise against. This is a video game. Elyssia grinned. There will be patterns to it.


    Different level predators would surely surround different flocks. The farthest she went from town, the higher level they would be. Perfect for mapping out a route.


    In this game, to maintain an XP Chain—a reward gained from stringing together consecutive kills—she had to fulfil many specific conditions. First, time was of the essence. Each kill needed to be faster than the previous one. Second, no recovery allowed—every hit point lost would carry over to the next fight. And last, the enemies had to be equal or higher to your current level. No special rewards for chaining enemies that posed no threat.


    As a starter zone, the highest level enemies here would cap at level five. At least, those in high concentration that you could chain, there were always a few dangerous exceptions, designed to teach players to watch their threat indicators. Elyssia would have to leave this zone behind once she reached level six.


    She also knew about the Hunt List—a system that rewarded players for killing a specific amount of enemies found around their starting city. The rewards were substantial, both monetary and in experience points. The designers built the system to encourage the player to seek various enemy types and explore new areas.


    Opening her martial artist Hunt List, she reviewed the five different targets found in the Nogoon Steppes.


    Level 1: Zev Ulaan Foxes.


    Level 2: Carrion Vultures.


    Level 3: Bonepickers.


    Level 4: Ongon Spirits.


    Level 5: Steppe Wolves.


    She grinned. Gotta stick to high-level enemies for XP Chain. So she had to start with the foxes.


    She set her sights on a nearby flock of sheep, figuring the shepherd would know where to find the elusive foxes. With a burst of speed, she took off with a dash.


    Running in this wide-open space felt exhilarating. The wind catching her clothes and hair, making her feel alive than she had ever felt—even in the real world. Each foot barely touched the ground before she launched herself off again, leaving small clouds of dust in her wake.


    She sped past the shepherd but stopped herself with a backflip, landing gracefully next to the startled six foot tall burrovian.


    He took a step back defensively, blinking at her sudden appearance and grinning face.


    “What brings you here, Salkhin?” he asked, using the local word for Wind sylvani.


    Elyssia still marvelled at how the locals referred to her kind. The word, meaning “wind,” carried a subtle air of reverence to it.


    “I was wondering if you knew where Zev Ulaan Foxes hole up?” she asked, her grin widening.


    The burrovian flinched at the mention of the creatures, his expression darkening. It was clear he had no love for the foxes.


    “Aye, they nest in dense shrubs,” he said, his tone serious. “We always have to keep our eyes peeled when we pass by their dens. Sneaky little things. You’ll find them in the thickets, mostly. Look south-west—that area’s more overgrown.”


    He pointed towards a patch of land where the grasses were thicker and denser, the perfect hiding place for small predators.


    Her grin broadened. “Sweet, thanks! I’ll teach a few of them a lesson or two. Hopefully, that’ll keep your flock safe for a while.”


    The shepherd gave her a slow nod, his large, fur-covered ears twitching in surprise. “Thank you. That’s… very nice of you, Salkhin.”


    She gave him a playful thumbs-up.


    “Don’t mention it!”


    Without waiting for his response, she kicked off the ground and sprinted in the direction he had showed. The world blurred around her as she scanned the terrain for signs of movement. Zev Ulaan Foxes should not be too hard to spot—their rusty-brown fur contrasted against the green grasses. But in the underbrush, the ground and branches would make it far harder to see them.


    Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw movement. Got you!


    As a fresh level one martial artist, Elyssia did not have many abilities yet. She could throw punches and kicks, of course—those were her baseline “white” damage or auto-attacks, in MMO terms. That was the damage your character would deal to enemies as long as you were engaged in combat and in range.


    Her first special attack, a short-range Elbow Strike, was explosive. It broke the enemy’s guard and staggered them backwards, setting up her next attacks. Risky, sure, but getting close and personal did not bother Elyssia at all.


    Baji Quan clearly inspired the martial artist class, with its short-range, explosive techniques, rather than the more popular striking styles like karate or kickboxing.


    As she approached the fox hideout at breakneck speed, Elyssia timed her leap perfectly, flipping mid-air and crashing her heel into the thicket. Dirt exploded around her as landed, right where she had seen the fox earlier.


    She imagined battle music playing in her mind. As the dust settled, a rusty-brown fox stood, facing her, its tail puffed up to make itself look more threatening.


    “Sorry, my guy,” Elyssia said, cracking her knuckles. “Nothing personal, but you’re barely the size of my foot, and I’ve got an appointment with a friend in Luminara.”


    The fox leapt at her, but instead of flinching or dodging, Elyssia twisted her entire body, intercepting the fox mid-air with her left elbow. The satisfying sound of a critical hit echoed in her ears, as the fox flew backward, dead before it hit the ground—right in front of two more of its kind, hiding deeper in the brush.


    Elyssia grinned, seeing a third of her experience bar filling up with her first kill. Nice! With those two chaining, that should be level two right there.


    “Come on, you two, I’ve got places to be!”


    She beckoned the foxes forward, her knees bent slightly, feet light. She was ready to counter their every move.


    One of the two foxes, braver than the other, dashed toward her, leaping at the last second. Its target: her left knee.


    With a smooth step back, Elyssia intercepted the attack with the back of her right hand, deflecting it. And just as the timing lined up perfectly, she executed the martial artist’s Counter-attack class feature.


    The poor fox practically evaporated from the strike, its body disintegrating as if it were a meteorite burning up on reentry.


    Counter-attacks were around the same strength as her Elbow Strike. The rule of counter-attacks is that you could only use them after you successfully guarded against an attack. Evading them was far easier, requiring less precise timing. Of course, the trade-off was that you could not counter-attack after evading. Guarding was riskier than evading—requiring perfect timing. If you misjudge the timing? You would take full damage.


    But what if you had mastered the art of guarding? That meant turning every attack from your enemies back at them, while avoiding damage.


    But there was one other reason counter-attacks were so good. That was the part most people did not consider when looking at the class and its abilities. Neither guarding nor counter-attacks had any cooldown. You could retaliate as often as your enemy’s attack speed allowed. The more enemies you fought at once, the higher your damage potential followed.


    Elyssia sneered at her enemies. Honestly, these level one foxes, designed for new players? They would never land a hit on her. A decade of being the world’s best tank in the previous incarnation of the game meant that she could handle far higher-level challenges before she would even break a sweat.


    “Sorry, foxes, this is going to be quick,” she said, cracking her knuckles again. “You’re not even a warm up. You’re the just the first stepping stones on my way out of here.”If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Mere seconds later, a notification popped up in Elyssia’s field of view.


    “You have reached level two for the martial artist class.”


    “You have unlocked the Palm Strike action.”


    Palm Strike by itself did minor damage—far less than Elbow Strike. But when used right after the latter, it gained a significant potency bonus and could knock back enemies, or lift them into the air, setting them up for future combos. Elyssia could already picture the flow of combat in her mind—the rush of moving from one strike to the next, chaining them together. She could not wait for more special attacks to unlock, especially as her combo potential expanded.


    She looked at her experience bar and saw how little experience the last two kills had given her. Thankfully, the reward for defeating the five targets somewhat made up for it.


    She pocketed the handful of cuprum shards and chips that magically manifested in her gloved hands after she defeated the fifth fox.


    “Tsk. Had to kill two of those at level two. What a waste. The first levels are just too quick to chain anything seriously.”


    As Elyssia walked away from the area, dozens of foxes stayed frozen in terror, having witnessed a natural disaster shaped like a Wind sylvani. Five of their neighbours perished without landing a single hit, and none of the remaining ones felt the need to prove their superiority by seeking vengeance. No. It was best to act as if that this massacre had never happened. Maybe if they stayed really still, she would not notice them and leave.


    The next target on Elyssia’s Hunt List, the Carrion Vultures, had been easy to track down. Wherever there were corpses—fallen sheep, monsters or adventurers—the sky was full of slow, circling shadows, waiting for their turn to feast.


    Like most flying enemies, their attacks were predictable. Once they began their descent, Elyssia knew exactly how they would try to attack her with their talons and beak.


    “Come on, make it challenging a little. They all use the same attack patterns,” she said, easily dodging the opening dive of the next vulture.


    A single Elbow Strike sent the bird to the ground, and a lightning quick dash followed by her Palm Strike sent it flying into the air. Moments later, a sharp crack echoed behind her when the poor creature impacted on the ground.


    Every successful combo felt so rewarding. The precision, speed and rhythm of it all brought joy to Elyssia. This was a class that was all about mastery of battle, and her enemies had no chances against her.


    The rest of the vultures did not prove more of a challenge than the foxes, and soon she found her level three target, the Bonepickers.


    They were nearby, also hanging around the carcass of dead animals. Swarms of tiny insects with mosquito-like bodies. At first glance, they did not seem dangerous, but their erratic movement pattern made them hard to predict. How do you guard against a swarm of bugs attacking you, anyway?


    The Bonepickers moved like a single organism, a buzzing mass of wings and stingers. Elyssia swatted at them, but they came from all directions, circling her like a living storm. Some bugs sank their stingers into her exposed flesh. It did almost no damage. Her health bar barely moved. But her pride? That stung a lot more. Those were the first hit points of damage she had taken today.


    “Oh, you little pricks…!”


    She assumed her combat stance and focused on the swarm. Their nature made them hard to predict and read, which made it hard for her to counter-attack. So she forced herself to train against them until she could reliably counter them. She knew she would be thankful in the future if she ever fight in a raid with swarm-like enemies. So she took the time to figure out their timing and how to read their tells.


    Every battle against the Bonepickers became faster and easier. At first, her guard timing and counter-attacks were pretty messy, but by the time she killed her seventh swarm, she was landing them like clockwork.


    She felt pretty proud at having picked up the rhythm that fast.


    “Thanks for the crash course, boyos.”


    She had earned her reward of experience and cuprums for defeating the required amount of enemies a few kills ago, but she did not want to move on until she had perfected the art of bug swatting.


    That got her to level four, which unlocked two new abilities.


    The first was called the Earth Kick. It was another knock-back attack, but its primary use was to deal area-of-effect damage. The impact of the knocked target would cause a shockwave that dealt earth damage, which came with extra threat generation—a critical aspect of playing a tank class. Earth Kick could propel non-living objects and use them as weapons, and gained bonuses when using stone-based objects in this way.


    Elyssia grinned at the possibility of turning the environment against her enemies. Or, if it came to it, of turning an enemy in a weapon against its allies.


    She realised she could also close-in on an enemy with her Elbow Strike, knock the enemy up with her Palm Strike, and time her Earth Kick and send the enemy flying into its friends as it fell back in front of her. Oh, this was going to be so fun, juggling enemies like that!


    The second ability was a self-heal, Mountain Breath. This was a short cooldown self-heal that the martial artist class could use. It gained extra potency when the user stood on natural terrain and it gained even more when fighting using the Fists of Stone stance. That was the name of the martial artist tanking stance she would soon unlock.


    Looking over at her new abilities, she chuckled.


    “AoE, self-heal, counters, knock-backs, juggling and attack combos. This class has everything. It’s almost stupid how broken it is.”


    Her real first challenge came with the Ongon spirits.


    Elyssia had asked around for directions and eventually made her way to the burial grounds, haunted by the ghost-like enemies. The atmosphere here differed from the rest of the Nogoon Steppes here. It was sombre, the air colder and heavier, the weight of forgotten spirits hanging in the misty air. A shiver crawler up her spine as she surveyed the area.


    The Ongon spirits drifted aimlessly through the burial ground, floating between ancient stone mounds, their bodies translucent and eyes glowing.


    The whispers of wind blowing through the broken stones sounded almost like voices crying in pain and anguish, and all but begged her to leave this cursed place behind.


    Fancy environmental art would not intimidate Elyssia. Like every enemy in this starter zone, the spirits would not attack her until she started combat, so she stepped forward confidently, closer to the nearest spirit, and took her battle stance.


    She used her Elbow Strike to start her attack combo, but found that her attack did not land with the impact she had expected. Her elbow simply went through the spirit’s shimmering, non-corporeal form.


    The spirit turned to face her and retaliated with a slow-moving wave of spirit energy. Eerie whispers that raised the hair of the back of her neck accompanied the wave.


    Caught by surprise, Elyssia dodged the attack in time and took a few steps back, looking at the enemy in confusion.


    “Okay, huh? How do you punch a ghost dead, then?”


    The spirit sent a second wave of energy towards her. The attack pattern was as simple as it gets—a straight line towards her—making it trivial to side-step, if that was her plan.


    She waited until the wave was close to her, and guarded at the precise moment where the attack would hit her, successfully harmlessly dissipating the attack. But she could not launch a counter-attack, as she was out of range.


    “At least I can knock their spells out of the way.”


    She felt a flicker of annoyance. The enemy was harmless, but she could not really harm it either, it seemed. Any other player would probably run away and recruit a druid character to help deal with magic damage. Or come back with special items to allow them to deal with the threat. Ghost-slaying weapons or potions? Perhaps something to shift into the ethereal plane, where attacks would work against ghostly enemies? Any quest that would send you here would probably provide you with the knowledge or tools to deal with those enemies.


    This was a starter area, though, so she did not think they would leave enemies that are literally impossible to defeat, that new players could accidentally stumble on. There were probably ways to deal with them.


    She tried kicking rocks with Earth Kick to damage them with the earth-elemental magic effect of the shockwave, and it seemed to work. But the damage from each projectile was unimpressive. It was mostly there for the threat multiplier.


    She defeated two spirits solely from batting rocks at them. It was a slow but steady grind.


    To increase the kill speed, she then engaged multiple spirits simultaneously, staying at range, kicking rocks at them. Since the shockwave dealt damage in an area of effect, it would be just as fast as killing them one at a time.


    The spirit’s attacks were no threat, even when three or four of them were wailing past her.


    Because Elyssia loved to push her limits, she kept approaching, reducing the distance between herself and the spirits a few steps at a time. Eventually she was close enough that she could attack counter-attacks, although she knew it would harmlessly pass through their bodies.


    So instead, she kicked one of the spirit, hoping to knock it back into its friends, curious to see what would happen.


    And that was how Elyssia learned that the kick part of the ability was also dealing earth-based magical damage. Instead of going through the spirit, her kick sent it flying! It wailed as it crashed into its allies. As it impacted, the shockwave detonated, spreading damage to all of them.


    She grinned at the accidental discovery. She could kick them!


    “Oh, you guys are so dead now.”


    The notification for reaching level five came together with the notification for unlocking the Fists of Stone stance.


    Elyssia’s grin spread wide. “But it’s not even my birthday!”


    On paper, this ability was there to solidify her role as a tank, as it mainly increased her aggro—the mechanic that made enemies focus on her instead of other targets. It even lowered her damage slightly to do so.


    But it also turned all her attacks to earth-elemental damage, which meant non-corporeal enemies would now be susceptible to all of her regular attacks, including her counters. That’s gonna speed things up!


    Elyssia immediately activated the stance, feeling the rush of power course through her veins. Ochre-brown energy flowed through her entire body, entering from her feet and coming alive in her hands, the power radiating from her body like a visible aura. The power filled her with a familiar warmth, the same as when she received Terra’s embrace during character creation.


    This was the power of the goddess of Earth. She just could not wait to test it out, and there were plenty of volunteers aimlessly roaming around the burial site. The grin on her face would freeze the blood of the Ongon spirits, had they any.


    Passers-by said that the wails of anguish that come from the haunted burial grounds that day made them feel sorry for the spirits.


    Once she was done with them, Elyssia pointed herself toward the mountain pass leading outside of the Nogoon steppes. As she travelled, she scanned the horizon, looking for flocks of sheep. She guessed this was where she would find the last target on her list.


    When she got closer, she easily spied the pack of wolves. They prowled the surrounding area, waiting for the shepherd and his guard dog to get distracted so they could snatch a sheep.


    Looking at them, Elyssia could tell they would act as a pack. Social mobs—enemies that linked up and swarmed anyone who attacked just one. Such a group would shred new players, but her? This was an opportunity. Eight enemies at once? More enemies, more damage, more XP. Exactly the fun she had been looking for.


    She approached the pack of wolves casually, picking a stone and tossing it in the air, as if she were about to serve in tennis. She hopped in a smooth motion and spun into a kick in mid-air. The rock, propelled by the force of her blow, flew straight towards the largest wolf.


    “Come on, it’s time to dance!”


    She had no fear. This was her element, and she was clearly the predator here. Every kick sent shockwaves through the earth, every Elbow Strike knocked her target off-balance. Palm Strikes flowed with practiced ease, sending others flying in the air. One after the other, each strike lead perfectly into the next, a deadly ballet of smooth motions, only occasionally interrupted by her brutal counter-attacks. She decimated the pack of wolves faster than it took to deal with that first Ongon spirit. The wolves never realised what hit them.


    She chuckled.


    “Sorry pups, but your special gimmick, linking? That actually plays in my favour.”


    Elyssia dusted her tunic. Not a single wolf drew blood. Her XP bar showed that another pack of wolf like this would get her to level six. Then it would be farewell Nogoon Steppes.


    It only took her a few seconds to spot a second group, only a minute’s run away. Those wolves looked hungrily at another flock of fluffy sheep, surely expecting a delicious meal. They were blissfully unaware of the threat that was already dashing their way.


    It took only a few moments before more notifications showed up in Elyssia’s field of view.


    “You have reached level six for the martial artist class.”


    “You have unlocked the Cannon Fist action.”


    Well, mission complete. The steppes have nothing they can teach me anymore. As she turned around, walking casually towards the mountain pass that would lead to stronger challenges, she overheard two shepherds’ exchange.


    “I think I heard stories about this Salkhin, before. I sure am glad she’s on our side.”


    “By the Sixteen, have you seen how she handled those wolves?”