Alessio Leone's Perspective
The search for magical items had always been nothing short of a saga within the Black Tower.And it simply didn't matter what level a player was, how strong, how wealthy, whether they led a powerful guild, or how many resources they were willing to burn for gear.
It was never going to be easy. That was a fact.
A fact that applied to every category of magical items: rare, epic, legendary, or mythical.Acquiring any of them was never simple.
And if someone asked a veteran like Alessio how to obtain such items, he would usually say there were three possible routes.
The first was to buy or receive one.At first glance, that might seem like the simplest route.But in practice, Alessio believed it was actually the most complicated of them all.
For one simple reason.
You couldn't just walk into an ordinary weapon shop and pick a magical item off the shelf.Those shops simply didn't deal in such goods.
Magical items were always in the hands of three very specific groups:the NPC nobility, who hoarded most of these treasures;the few craftsmen capable of forging them;or NPC adventurers who, for one reason or another, had ended up in possession of one of these artifacts.
And even then, negotiating with any of these groups was never straightforward.Each had its own demands, its own conditions.
That was, if they were even willing to part with the item at all—which was rare in itself.
And when they did agree to negotiate, money alone was never enough. There were always favors involved.For players, that meant only one thing: quests.
Quests before they could even touch the item.Quests to prove loyalty, to earn trust, to unlock the slightest gesture of generosity.
And the higher the item's grade, the more quests were required…each harder than the last.
It could take years of dedication.
Then came the second route, a favorite among the great guilds in Alessio's previous life.He would describe it as the easiest and most straightforward of the three.
But there was one catch: following this path required something that was still in short supply inside the Black Tower at the moment.Strength.
It was simple.Magical items weren't only in the hands of nobles, artisans, or adventurers.Many belonged to entities the world freely branded as absolute evil.
Hordes of orcs.Twisted aberrations of nature.Liches, vile dragons, monsters so devastating that just the mention of their names could silence entire taverns.
The list was long.
And if someone had the power to face such beings, the process was straightforward: hunt, kill, and loot.
Of course, just because this route was theoretically simple didn't mean anyone could follow it.The required level of power was terrifying.
Even in Alessio's past life, only a handful of items were claimed this way.And the guilds that did so paid in blood and resources.
After all, there were NPC forces so absurdly strong that their very presence made even empire-building players retreat.Men and women who bore hegemonic titles, yet still hesitated before such horrors.
And then there was the final route.
This one couldn't be easily classified as easy or difficult, simple or complex.For a clear reason: even starting it depended on something highly subjective.
Luck.
It was the path of chasing long-lost magical items.Artifacts that had become legends, scattered through ancient tales or buried in places few dared to explore.
In general, the quality of these items surpassed anything acquired by other means.Weapons and relics that eclipsed even dragon-hoarded treasures or quest-bound rewards.
But there was a problem.Even getting the smallest clue to the whereabouts of such items required more than effort.It required luck.
And unlike other games, in the Black Tower luck wasn't a stat you could raise with points or special skills.Here, luck was exactly what it was in real life.Unpredictable.Uncontrollable.
Luck was just luck.
And paradoxically, it was precisely this route that Alessio was following at that moment, in search of his very first magical item.
Of course, he wasn't relying solely on luck.In his previous life, he had read on obscure forums where players shared accounts of stumbling upon clues to such artifacts.Stories of ridiculous strokes of fortune that completely changed their fates.
Whether by keeping the items or selling them to great guilds for millions of gold coins.
But in this new life, Alessio considered all of those items—or at least the ones he could still remember—as his private property.Even if he hadn't literally laid hands on them yet.
Beyond these lost magical items, Alessio was also prepared to obtain many more through an alternative route. One that some players even called the "fourth" most likely way of acquiring magical gear: the Black Tower itself.
Standing at the center of the world, it wasn't only the heart of the game but the very essence of the entire experience—so much so that it was the game's title.
But at that moment, even considering the Tower as an option was unwise.Other players might not know, but he was well aware of that place's reality.He knew just how brutal and inhuman each floor truly was.
For now, he would content himself with hunting in the normal world.Still, there was nothing simple or cheap about that decision.
His journey for a first magical item was already taking its toll—not on his body, but on his wallet.Just the teleportation to the adventure's starting point had cost him two thousand gold coins.Literally two thousand dollars.
His immediate destination was the city of Durnholde, once a thriving trade outpost, now in decline.But that was only the first stop.
The real target lay elsewhere.
The item he sought rested in a place far darker: Gloomshade Forest—an infamous land whose haunted reputation had long since become legendary.