3 Shadow Valley

Avery headed out of the beginner village in search of the area she was going to grind in. Walking through the gates, she saw the fields all around the beginner village swarmed with players. All the fields around the beginner village were the village spawning grounds, and where the majority of common quests are done. If you couldn't find a rare quest (Or a hidden quest like Avery), then you had to do one of the common quests. One of them was from the village chief, where you have to go and kill 10 Wild Boars and 1 Wild Wolf.

[Wild Boar (Level 1)

Literally a wild boar

Health: 500

Mana: 0

Defence: 10

Magic defence: 10

Abilities: {Charge}

{Charge (Tier 1)}: Charges in a straight line. Deals 200 damage if it succeeds, but gets stunned for 2 seconds if it misses]

[Wild Wolf (Level 3)

Literally a wild wolf

Health: 1250

Mana: 0

Defence: 50

Magic defence: 50

Abilities: {Bite}

{Bite (Tier 1)}: Bites down on an enemy, dealing 350 damage if successful]

It would be fairly easy to finish that quest, because the wild boars are pretty easy to kill and the wild wolf requires a bit of skill, but is still manageable. The problem is that it only counts if you get the finishing blow. And since the game was just released, everyone is scrambling to level up and grind quests. The spawning grounds don't have enough monsters to support that many players, so everyone is rushing to kill any monsters that spawns. barely anyone can complete the quest. And for the people that do, they get the next one where you have to kill 5 more wild wolfs, meaning they have to join all the other players in scrambling for some kills.

There are other quests as well, but they're practically the same thing. Some will require you to deal a certain amount of damage, some will require certain materials from the wild boars and wild wolfs and some will require you to do errands for them.

There were a limited amount of those, so the unlucky players didn't get to do them.

But Avery doesn't care about that because she's going to a higher level area called Shadow Valley. It's meant for players level 5-7, but Avery doesn't care. It's currently the best place for her to level up.

In her world, after the game was out for about a week and people started to go to Shadow Valley, someone found an exploit they could use on any enemy in ShadowValley. It was difficult to pull off, but an extremely good way to grind levels. It involved the lore of Shadow Valley, so no one could know of it unless they're lucky or they read the lore of Shadow Valley.

Shadow Valley used to be a regular valley. It was lush with vegetation and was very lush. But, there was an evil shaman that found the valley and decided to make it their home. It soon became his lair for all his evil deeds.

His life was dedicated to making a new element. He called it the "Shadow Element", and he used everything in the valley to help his experiments ranging from plants to animals. Countless heroes and mercenaries had tried to stop him, but he was too powerful. Alas, he ended up using the valley itself for his biggest and last experiment. He failed, resulting in the valley to be infused with countless darkness elements and killing all the plants and animals.

Some players speculated that he failed because the "Shadow Element" was actually a part of the darkness element, but no one really knows. It's the best explanation.

Either way, the valley has been abandoned since. Mercenaries raided all the treasures of the shaman. Animals moved in and started to fuse with the darkness element to become shadow monsters, hence the name "Shadow Valley".

When the mercenaries first tried to take the shaman's treasures, they were greeted with a lot of hidden traps stopping their progress. It was until one knight with the light element accidentally used one of their skills on a trap and immediately destroying it that they realized the traps are weak to the light element. So, many mercenaries with the light element went and took all if the shamans treasures.

Avery couldn't care less about the shamans treasures. She came to Shadow Valley to grind Exp and level up. Originally, she was going to go somewhere else, but now that she has the light element it's easier for her to grind here.

With her spell, killing the monsters around here will be a piece of cake.

[Ray of Hope (Tier 1, Level 0)

Shines a ray of light onto an ally or yourself. Heals 50 health.

Cost: 50 mana

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Note: Don't look at the source of the light. Unless you want to become blind]

The system gives a weird description of everything, so it's hard to judge a skill by it's description. For example, this spell says that it can be casted on an ally or yourself for some heals. But, it doesn't say what will happen if casted on an enemy. In her world, after a complete study of all elements was done by a group of dedicated game theorists, they found out multiple untold things about every element and their skills. It was extremely thorough and well done, not to mention very practical, so Avery did her best to remember it extremely well.

One of the things mentioned was that if you use light element skills against the darkness element, it deals quite a bit of bonus damage. Even if it's a heal spell, it still does that bonus damage. This trait is evident with every element. some elements are stronger/weaker when facing a certain element. They made an element chart to represent it.

Fire: Strong against nature, metal and ice. Weak against water, wind and earth.

Water: Strong against fire and earth. Weak against nature, lightning and ice.

Nature: Strong against water and earth. Weak against fire, ice and darkness.

Wind: Strong against fire. Weak against earth.

Earth: Strong against fire, wind and lightning. Weak against water, nature and ice.

Lightning: Strong against water and metal. Weak against earth.

Metal: Strong against nothing. Weak against fire and lightning.

Ice: Strong against water, nature and earth. Weak against fire.

Light: Strong against darkness. Weak against nothing.

Darkness: Strong against nature. Weak against light.

Anyways, it's a unique part of the game that's not mentioned. The game creators did the same thing with a bunch of other things, so that you're forced to make your own playstyle. You have to find out lots of things by yourself in order to fully play the game.

Like another thing Avery was going to exploit. When you attack a monster, if you attack certain areas, or weak spots per say, your attacks ignore defence and magic defence, dealing more damage. If you attack a monster that has a defence or magic defence higher than your attack, you can't do anything. But, if you attack their weak spots, it ignores their defence/magic defence and deals damage. It's a way to beat monsters that have a higher than you.

Those features give people that dedicate themselves to research the game an advantage. That means that Avery can use everything she learned before and use it to her advantage to beat the monsters in Shadow Valley. She already knows the best grinding strategy for the area, so she can confidently grind for however long she wants.

After a while of walking, Avery finds herself at the entrance of Shadow Valley. It's pretty close to the beginner village, but because of the level difference, not many people came here to level up. And for the people that did, well, they immediately died.

Everyone is either at the spawning grounds, or trying to explore the other areas to try and grind for levels. But, all the people that explored inevitably died, so they soon gave up and joined the insanely packed spawning grounds.

Well, those people didn't know what to do unlike Avery, so she can do things others can't. She walked through the entrance of Shadow Valley and walked a bit before seeing the first monster.

[Shadow Rabbit (Level 5)

A rabbit infused with the abundant darkness elements in Shadow Valley, gaining an increased strength

Health: 2200

Mana: 50

Defence: 100

Magic defence: 100

Abilities: {Shadow Steps}

{Shadow Steps (Tier 2)}: Fuses with the shadows and passes through the shadow plains]

It looked like a regular rabbit. The only difference was that it's fur was black and it had red eyes. It looked very satanic and ready to kill. But Avery wasn't going to give it a chance.

"Ray of Hope!"

She shouted her spell and she immediately prepared it. A split second later, there was a ray of light descending from the skies onto the shadow rabbit. It screeched out in pain and rolled on the ground for 5 seconds before the spell's duration finished.

[Direct hit! Dealt 750 (50*5*3) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 1450/2200]

After the spell stopped, the shadow rabbit tried to crawl up. But Avery didn't stop her attack.

"Fireball"

4 fireballs appeared around Avery and flew toward the shadow rabbit. It was still trying to get up, so it couldn't dodge and got hit.

[Direct hit! Dealt 100 damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 1350/2200]

[Direct hit! Dealt 100 damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 1250/2200]

[Direct hit! Dealt 100 damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 1150/2200]

[Direct hit! Dealt 100 damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 1050/2200]

The shadow rabbit was panting on the ground, struggling to get up. it's body was on fire, but 5 seconds later they were put out and Avery got another notification.

[Direct hit! Dealt 50 (10*5) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 1000/2200]

[Direct hit! Dealt 50 (10*5) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 950/2200]

[Direct hit! Dealt 50 (10*5) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 900/2200]

[Direct hit! Dealt 50 (10*5) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 850/2200]

"Damn! This is some massive damage!" Avery thought. This was so satisfying to look at. Seeing so many notifications about all the damage she dealt was somewhat oddly satisfying. She waited a few seconds for "Ray of Hope" to go off cooldown and to regenerate her mana, before casting "Ray of Hope" once again.

[Direct hit! Dealt 750 (50*5*3) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 100/2200]

The shadow rabbit was clinging on it's last bit of life. It was about to die, but at least it wanted to go out fighting. It collected itself and pounced at Avery.

"Shit" Avery cursed. She used up all her mana and had to wait a few seconds for her mana to regenerate so she could attack again. The shadow rabbit didn't give her that chance and bit her.

[Received 396 damage from {Shadow Rabbit} 704/1100]

The shadow rabbit dealt a big blow against Avery, and before she could cast a spell, the shadow rabbit phased into a shadow and backed away.

"Dammit, It's {Shadow Steps}!" She cursed. It phased into a shadow, so Avery's spells won't work at all. Only light element skills will work, but Avery's "Ray of Hope" has a 30 second cooldown. There's 15 seconds left, which means she has to wait. She can't use any other spells, or else she won't have enough mana.

The shadow rabbit pounced on her again, and she couldn't do anything except run. When it leaped, she rolled out of the way to dodge. She barely dodged the shadow rabbit, but she couldn't celebrate just yet.

After missing it's attack, the shadow rabbit turned and pounced at her again. She couldn't dodge again, so she took some more damage.

[Received 402 damage from {Shadow Rabbit} 302/1100]

"Come on!" She said. She didn't have enough health to take another hit. Luckily, the cooldown just finished, so she could cast "Ray of Hope" again.

"Ray of Hope!"

The shadow rabbit was gleeful. It thought that it was about to die, but it managed to turn the tables around. Just as it was about to finish it's attacker, it was hit with a blast of light coming down from the skies and died immediately.

[Direct hit! Dealt 750 (50*5*3) damage to {Shadow Rabbit}. 0/2200]

[Congrats! Defeated {Monster}! Received 15 Exp. 15/100 needed to level up]

Finally, Avery beat that shadow rabbit. It was quite hard, but she managed to pull through in the end. She got a decent amount of Exp as well.

Exp is hard to come by in the game. Usually, the amount of Exp you'd get from a level 1 monster is 1 or 2 Exp, so you'd need to kill 100 boars or 33 wolfs at the hunting grounds to level up. Shadow Valley is an area meant for players level 5-7, so if you were level 5-7, you'd have to kill around 100 monsters to level up. But, Avery is level 1, so she can kill around 7 to level up. It's easier to level up in a higher levelled area.

Avery sat down to wait for her mana to regenerate. All of her spells cost a good chunk of her mana, so it's best for her to wait and get it all back before grinding again. She doesn't have to worry about other players showing up, because it's such a high level area. Plus, even if they somehow do, they can't copy her. They wouldn't know how to rapidly cast spells like her.

One of the features in the game is about actually doing everything yourself. For example, if there was a quest to catch 10 fish, you'd actually have to learn how to fish instead of casting the line and waiting 10 seconds before you automatically catch a fish somehow. Or, if you want to make a potion, you'd have to learn the recipe, prepare all the ingredients, have the proper tools, measure the specific amount, maintain a specific potion heat, pretty much manually do everything. It goes the same for elemental skills.

No matter what class you choose, you have to learn how to use elements. It's how you use elemental skills, or in Avery's case, elemental spells. The elements kinda feel like a part of you, and needs a bit of time get used to. Once you do, it becomes much easier to use skills and you can use them faster. Usually, someone in the early stages of the game would require around 10 seconds to prepare a skill by trying to call up their element. Once they got enough practice and more familiar, they can use skills faster. After a year, the average person would take 3-5 seconds to prepare a skill. But they still wouldn't be able to go against Avery. Because of her dedication and some free websites that could simulate using elements, Avery's control over all the elements is top notch.

Take Avery's "Fireball" for example. In the description, it said that you can have as many as you want at one time. That means with enough mana, you could have 100 fireballs made in a second. Well, that is if you have extreme control over the fire element. You'd have to practice for a year to get that much control over it. and that's just for that one element. To get control over all elements, you'd have to spend around 10 years to have full master over all elements. It shouldn't be possible. Yet Avery was so dedicated (and had nothing better to do) that she managed to do that.

If you didn't have good control over the fire element, It would take a few minutes to make 100 fireballs in a second. Of course, Avery could do it easily, but he doesn't have enough mana to support it.

Either way, Avery can go around Shadow Valley in peace without worrying about getting attacked or someone stealing her strategies, because no one could replicate it.

Oh well, she doesn't really care about that. Her mana has regenerated, so she could continue to grind all she wants.

Getting up, she headed deeper into Shadow Valley.