Silas dumped his remaining 5 attribute points into Agility, feeling a subtle, electric hum settle into his joints. He opened his combat interface one last time before crossing the threshold.
HP: 130
Physical Attack: 13 (+10)
Physical Defense: 13
Elemental Resistance: 15
His base attack of 13 came from his Strength; the (+10) was the edge provided by his starter weapon. Upon arriving in the Lands of the Forsaken, every player was granted a basic tool of their trade.
[Scrap Iron Dagger (Inferior): Grey Quality. Attack +10.]
Silas balanced the crude blade in his palm, spinning it with practiced ease. In his past life as a Warrior, he'd mastered heavy claymores, but he'd handled his fair share of daggers during desperate skirmishes. Using a weapon outside one's class reduced its effectiveness to 70%, but as a Shadow, this blade was an extension of his own hand.
"It'll do for now," he muttered.
With a total attack of 23, he was on par with any other novice. This only highlighted the sheer insanity of his Shadow Cloak bonus, an extra 90 attack power upon breaking stealth was a tidal wave of damage that most players wouldn't see for weeks.
He gripped the hilt and headed for the town's edge. He needed kills. He needed levels. But most importantly, he needed Genetic Memory, Evolution Points.
Unlike the static mobs in old-world VR games, the monsters here didn't wait around to be farmed. In their eyes, every player who stepped out of a Peace Zone was a walking battery. A "lifespan delivery service."
"There are two types of lifespan," Silas reminded himself. "Non-tradeable and Tradeable."
The 75 years he had started with were his life force; they kept him breathing. But Tradeable Lifespan was the true currency of the Federation. It was what you used to buy resources, bribe NPCs, or, most crucially, pay the "Extraction Fee" to manifest game items into the physical world.
Monsters hunted players to harvest this energy for their own evolution. It was the law of the jungle: the hunter could easily become the prey. In his past life, Silas had seen thousands of players lose their nerve. They couldn't kill anything, their lifespan would be halved again and again by deaths, until finally, they hit zero and simply ceased to exist.
"This time, I'm not carrying any dead weight," Silas thought, his mind flickering momentarily to the memory of Lucia. "The solo path is the only path to the top."
As he neared the outskirts, he passed groups of players huddled in confusion.
"Where the hell are we?" a heavyset man asked, looking around wildly. "I just got home from a double shift and lay down. Is this a dream?"
A younger guy with glasses shook his head. "I was in the middle of a battle royale match. I fell asleep in my chair and woke up here. Is this some kind of sick marketing stunt for a new AR game?"
Silas walked past them without a word. Their confusion was natural, but in this world, ignorance was a death sentence.
He reached the town's designated Resurrection Point, where beams of white light were depositing players back into safety.
Swoosh. Swoosh.
Five figures materialized. Among them was a young woman in a black short-sleeved shirt, her face pale, likely from the shock of her recent death. Beside her stood three men and another woman, a full party that had just been wiped out in the wilds.
Their lifespans had just been cut in half.
"That beast was insane," one of the men spat, his voice trembling. "It took half our health in one bite! How are we supposed to fight that?"
"That was a Level 1 Crawl-Beast," another groaned. "The weakest thing out there. We swarmed it and barely took off a third of its HP before it gutted us."
"Plum, what's the move?"
They all turned to the woman in the black shirt. She had her hair pulled back in a sharp ponytail and gripped a weathered longbow. Silas recognized the weapon immediately. Standard Archers started with shortbows; a longbow meant she had a Hidden Class.
She was the "Plum" they were looking to for leadership.
Her eyes scanned the plaza and landed on Silas. Specifically, they landed on the Scrap Iron Dagger at his waist. Her own party had an Assassin, and she could tell Silas's gear was different.
"He looks like he has a Hidden Class," Plum whispered. She stepped toward him. "Hey, brother! Want to party up? The monsters out there are Tier 1 predators. You won't survive alone. Our team just got wiped, but we have the experience now. We have one slot left."
Silas almost laughed. Experience? The only experience they had was dying.
He didn't answer. He didn't even slow down. He simply walked past them toward the rotted wooden fence that marked the boundary of the Peace Zone.
The rejection was blatant. Plum's face darkened, and the men behind her bristled.
"Is he serious?" one of them jeered. "We just told him how dangerous it is, and he's going out solo? He's a dead man walking."
"Maybe he thinks he's special because he's an Assassin," another laughed. "He'll be back at the respawn point in five minutes. If there's enough of him left to respawn."
Plum watched Silas's back, a cold sneer forming on her lips. "Alias: 'Shadow'? How pretentious."
She waved her team forward. "Come on. Let's follow him at a distance. I want to see how he dies. If nothing else, we can use him as bait to study the Crawl-Beast's attack patterns."
Silas reached the fence. Beyond lay the wasteland, a world of twisted trees and predatory silence. He knew they were following him, hoping to harvest information from his corpse.
"Shadow Cloak."
Silas didn't hesitate. He whispered the command, and the Isu-tech within his blood responded.
In an instant, his form blurred, turning into a translucent ripple before vanishing entirely into the silver moonlight. To Plum and her team, it looked as if the world had simply swallowed him whole.