With eight hours of rest, workout and food, Zaon now took the pod again.
Seeing that Karlo is still sleeping, and without consciousness, he just let him be, while Trove is the one who keeps the house clean and cooks food.
In truth, Karlo and Trove are soldiers that went out of duty after the war stopped. It was a small war that made the Baltinoir Family's Charles became famous.
Now, they were thrown at the slums, being pensioned by the war funds, and living their lives.
And the fourth person is Aki, the doctor who looked at Zaon's eyes when Upgrade took one.
He is currently using Zaon's controller console to play Selda. Although the Selda now has a son and daughter with the Princess, and he explores parenting and relationships
Which by the way, is harder than slaying a dragon.
Aki was the one looking after Karlo, and taking notes of his vitals and getting some medicines for him.
Looking at the "peaceful" sight in front of him, Zaon took the pod and sitted on it. With a swift zing, he entered the game, and appeared on Caelestia.
As he checked what he had last time, he is now only seven blueprints away from being an Intermediate Blacksmith.
While looking at the things on the floor and at the table, he can't help but sigh.
The things were some items that he dismantled, but because he is not that lucky, he destroyed the item, thus ruining the process.
The seven items he will also be dismantling needs to be assembled too, so he may know how to forge it, and he has some more items, but it is time to take the quest of Issa.
In short, he did not have enough time and resources right now.
Although, he got some things that he upgraded in the process.
The Seven Luminaries and the Seven Deviants are just blueprints of items, but they also have their different sets and different uses.
But, they also boasts uniqueness and strength.
The Seven Deviants are hard to use items, that they are not affected by the abilities, but has raw power.
While the Seven Luminaries are the ones that gets a buff from abilities.
That's just one of their differences.
But, the one thing they become similar is because they are amorphic.
With a simple forging, Charity Dagger became a shortsword, that's why Zypher can now do slashing and thrusting, and he can now fight with more variable.
While the Greed Chakrams are still chakrams but they became two small scythes, and can be used as melee.
Aside from this, the items now has Energy Conduction.
With his Strength, which is calculated as 5 points of Attack Power per 1 Strength, and his Energy Stats, which counts as 5 counts per one point of each and every energy, he is now more powerful.
Too bad, he is a bit late, but he knew what to upgrade next, so that makes his mind a little bit better.
Now, he walks back to Omadd as he looked once again to the messy table of the forging.
"Ugh, I hate this." And then, he cleaned up first, before coming to Omadd.
________________________________________
As Zypher went to the inn, he saw Issa who was now alone, sipping tea on the counter.
"Hello, Ma'am. May I invite you for a drink?"
"Oh, it's you! Wait here, I'm gonna take the items."
Yes, Zypher was flabbergasted as he saw Issa run away and took the items. In his past life, he talled to Issa for a bit of a few minutes before she went home to take the items.
It was only a matter of time when Zypher knew what was going on.
Murderous glares were aimed at him while he was drinking some Hibiscus tea.
As he took one cookie to eat, someone sat beside him and wrapped his arms around his shoulders.
"Boy, I take it that you are stealing my quest?"
Zypher did not do anything but brush off the hand, took another cookie and ate it. In truth, he was looking at the news for the meantime because Issa's house is far, but not too far from the inn.
And as expected, the prices of Triune Rings increased in the market.
Triune Ring is a Rare item, and it only drops in certain dungeons.
As an item that imbues a different energy to one output, this item became useless in others because they do not know how to use it.
But now, now that many overpowered item occured from one item, this became a necessity.
And so, profiteering people decided to ride the wave, and take money from people.
With a thumbnail of "OP than Legendary?" and the picture of the item, many people were intrigued. Controversies, rumors and even theories went out as people tried it.
Zypher just laughed at them, while eating the cookies.
"ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME?"
This time, Zypher was woken up by the sudden shout beside him.
His first response is to just scoot off to the next seat so he is far from the chaos, and he waits for Issa to come back.
He grabbed his tea and cookies when a hand grabbed his, and that's when he looked at the person.
He saw him like a bull, raging to fight, and then he looked around, only to see people looking at him also.
"Uhmm? What's happening again?" He asked curiously.
"You dare act oblivious?"
That was when the player pulled his hand and punched him.
But, at that very moment, a hand rolled on the ground.
No punch happened, just a whistling sound of something, and when it came back, the disc-like chakram went inside the tattoo on Zypher's hand.
"ARRRGGH!"
The burly man shouted as his hand was bleeding, and his HP was being depleted.
That was when he noticed Issa from afar and walked towards the door.
"You, shit! The Magic Nights won't forgive you! We are men of Sir --"
[YOU HAVE DIED.]
Respawn in 07:59:59.
That was the last thing he saw as the pod opened on his end.
The others, who were also his teammates, were struck silent as Zypher went out.
Little did they know that a woman was observing them from the corner of the room.
Zypher then led Issa to her house and decided to start the mission.
Issa's Mission, is easy, as it is just to deliver it to her fiancé, Anjelo. Yet, the process is so arduous that it made Zypher remember that he forgot something.
The distance between the Goblin Settlement and Omadd is almost 300 kilometers away.
That is almost 4 hours of drive in an expressway with a car.
But, this is Project: Zerø.
And yes, he forgot that he can get a mount in the city, yet he left already. He was almost halfway through when he suddenly remembered.
The desert is not his field, and so, he was distraught, exhausted and almost close to hest stroke.
The journey on foot will be two days, but, as the Tablet Inc.'s protocol, no humans shall ever use the pod for two in-game days straight, for health and hygiene purposes.
And, when that happens, Zypher will be back to the starting line, Omadd. If that happens, he will have a nightmare of sands, as all he can see are sands right now.
Omadd, is located in the southeastern part of Acias. The south of Acias is the sea, while the north is the Dark Forest. The southwest is the Great Plains, while the southeast is the Scorching Desert.
It became the desert as all of the winds come from the east, to the west, so the west has ample amount of rains, while the east has none.
And, that's not the only issue right now.
Zypher travelled halfway by foot, using eight long hours of time. In theory, he should be there in the next eight hours, right?
Wrong.
There are a few dungeons in the continent that were so hard that it has it's own teritorry. Due to Magic Tower's Sealing Palace Skill, they sealed the said place, taking gifts from the kingdoms in the vicinity for resealing it every three years.
And this is still the second year of the seal.
Known as the most dangerous phase.
Because the seal is weakening, some monsters are able to slip through the cracks. Although some of them are weak, they are still stronger than the most of the monsters in the dungeons.
And the dungeon in this place is called the Burning Rift, for there are undeads here that are burning with flames.
And in a very fortunate event, Zypher was found by a group of it.
As he was traversing the land, he completely forgot that this was a territory. He tried to boost his speed to the maximum to get to the place fast, but what happened next was unexpected, even for him.
A group of Burnt, undeads that the cause of death is by burning, saw him rushing. And because this is their teritorry, they became aggressive towards the intruder.
Frustrated, Zypher can only fight with the weapons he have right now.
Even someone who jumped back in time, forgets something while focusing on one thing.
Even the best falls down if they are narrow-minded.
And so, Zypher took a special detour: clearing the outer ring of the territory.
The outer ring is the space just outside the seal.
As Zypher went on, he killed a few Burnts on the way, but it is not easy to do.
First, Burnts have high fire-resistance, and they can only be damaged by either water-type attack moves, or holy attributed attacks.
Charity Shortsword is one of the items that has Holy Attributes, and he can kill them all.
The problem is when you kill one Burnt, you will take one Cinder, a debuff that burns your health down by one percent per second, for five seconds.
This made him commit to hit and run, always throwing the chakram to gain distance, and feeding it the Charity Shortsword to gain a few more kills.
This went on for almost three hours as he hit, ran and find a way to get back to his way in getting to the Goblin Settlement.
As he was running, he saw a stone that was in the way.
It was a large boulder, and there were a few burnts behind him.
Running fastly as he can, he charged over to the rock and decided to use the rock to get high ground and at least kill the Burnts from a distance.
The Cinders are what makes him hesitate killing them, but he has to at least fight, kill, and wait for the Cinders to come off while he is fighting, then kill again, to restart the cycle.
He can also stop to regenerate from time to time if he gets tired.
But the Burnts, seeing as he is speeding, decided to split into two groups, where one group will go on with speed and overtake him, while the other one waits for him to return to where he came from.
Although they are monsters, they gained sentience.
Through the long term of their reign here, and a secret only Zypher knows: the monsters of Zerø gains knowledge, intelligence and wisdom as time passes through.
That is proven when in his past life, a boss suddenly knew that this place is a cage for him, and he is under some sort of influence, and he tries to corrupt every data of the game.
But, suddenly, the game stopped for a few hours, and after that, the boss and his dungeon was wiped out of existence.
Every body called it the Armageddon.
As the place they terrorized was grazed into the ground, with only a crater that remains.
And now, Zypher is dealing with the knowledge he knows of.
This is just the beginning of his second journey, but he is already in a tight spot.
Zypher, did the unthinkable as the two groups closed in on him.
"Boundless Skip!"
He jumped up in the air, and as he glided down to the rock, he saw that the ones who were chasing him stop quite a few distance away from the rock.
"A safe zone? Luck--"
ROAR!