Skills with levels can be upgraded using skill points, up to a maximum of level 10. For example, after maxing out Power Strike, the chance to trigger an extra attack can reach 50%! However, players only get one skill point for every 10 levels gained. Even if you reach the game’s level cap of 300, that’s only 30 skill points—extremely precious and rare. Still, skill points can also be obtained through certain main or hidden quests, and there’s a chance for wild world bosses to drop skill points, but the difficulty of obtaining them is extremely, extremely high!

……

“Those damned wild wolves killed three more villagers today! Is there any hero who can help us eliminate these cruel beasts?” The bearded, white-haired Old Chief paced anxiously back and forth. If it weren’t for the “Village Chief Old Juan” title above his head and a yellow exclamation mark, no one would be able to tell him apart from a real person!

—A yellow exclamation mark means this NPC will give players a quest.

Ultra-high realism! This is one of the most charming aspects of the game, but also something that was later criticized—because it was so realistic, some players actually got the wild idea to run adult businesses in the game, which led the game company to release a patch specifically to prevent players from removing their underwear!

Amusingly, several countries actually requested that Dream Technology remove this restriction for players in their countries, because they believed that allowing such adult transactions in the virtual world would greatly reduce ugly phenomena in real society!

And sure enough, after Dream Technology made the change, prostitution and solicitation activities in these countries dropped significantly, and the incidence of crimes like rape also decreased a lot. It was truly astonishing, to the point that several other countries then requested Dream Technology to remove the game patch for their players as well.

Because of this, bored players even voted for the “Top Ten Most Famous Courtesans” in the world’s eight major regions. Of course, some innocent female players were unfortunately caught in the crossfire. For example, “Wu Mei Qian Jiao,” who ranked third in the China region, is actually the only daughter of the president of Tiannan Pharmaceuticals in real life, worth billions—how could she possibly be in that kind of business? It was just some people deliberately smearing her, and the uninformed public spreading rumors, eventually turning white into black!

Of course, that’s all beside the point.

David Bolton stepped forward and said, “Respected Village Chief, I am willing to serve you!”

Old Chief was overjoyed and said, “Brave young man, your kindness will surely be blessed by the gods!”

“Ding! You have accepted the quest: Eliminate the Wild Wolves!”

Opening the quest log, David Bolton checked the quest description.

[Eliminate the Wild Wolves] (Quest Difficulty: D Rank)

Quest Description: You have accepted Old Chief’s request to go to the west side of the village and kill 20 wild wolves to protect the village’s safety!

Progress: Wild wolves killed 0/20

In “Miracle,” quest difficulty is ranked from highest to lowest as S, A, B, C, and D. The difficulty is determined by two factors: first, the level gap between the player and the monster; second, the monster’s own strength. For David Bolton’s quest, since the wild wolves to be killed are only level 1, the system judges that this quest is extremely easy for David Bolton, so the difficulty is shown as D rank.

After accepting the quest, David Bolton ran to the nearby blacksmith shop and learned forging and mining from the blacksmith and miner, respectively. A miner’s pickaxe immediately appeared in his backpack.

After that, David Bolton immediately headed west of the village, arriving at the western wasteland where the wild wolves gathered.

Over thirty wild wolves roamed around the wasteland, occasionally howling at the sky, their cries shrill and quite frightening.

David Bolton drew his novice sword and charged at a wild wolf. Although his attack power wasn’t high at this point, the wild wolves didn’t have much HP either—about seven or eight hits could kill one.

In just a few minutes, twenty wild wolves had already fallen to David Bolton’s hand. A flash of golden light appeared on David Bolton, and he leveled up to level two, with all attributes increased by one and five free attribute points gained.

David Bolton casually distributed the free attribute points in a four-strength, one-agility manner, then continued slaughtering wild wolves until he had collected 10 wolf pelts, at which point he stopped, satisfied. By now, the army of new players had also arrived, swarming the western wasteland.

David Bolton didn’t linger here. In the leveling wars, the worst thing is too many people and too few monsters, so he immediately decided to leave.

However, before leaving, David Bolton took a quick look around nearby. Luck was on his side—he found an iron ore vein. He took out his miner’s pickaxe and started digging away at the iron ore.

“Ding! You used mining on the iron ore vein. You picked up Iron Ore *3. Your mining skill increased by 1 point!”

David Bolton put the iron ore into his backpack, turned, and left the western wasteland, returning to Old Chief to turn in the “Eliminate the Wild Wolves” quest, receiving a pair of white-quality boots and 3,000 experience points.

Old Chief still looked worried. David Bolton continued talking to him and received the “Haunted Cemetery” quest.

[Haunted Cemetery] (Quest Difficulty: C Rank)

Quest Description: Recently, strange events have been happening at the cemetery east of the village. Every night, strange noises can be heard! Go investigate and find out what’s going on!

Progress: Discover the cause of the haunting 0/1