Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

After the flurry of system notifications, Thomas was simply ecstatic! He couldn't stop himself from grinning like a madman and even jumping for joy a bit. The first player created magic weapon! He didn't even do anything special and he made a magic weapon! How awesome was that?! In most games you needed to understand magic to make a magic weapon. Or make a weapon and then enchant it heavily to make it a magic weapon. All he did was use some forging techniques and he'd made one!

Thomas stared at the weapon with a look of utter joy for a long moment. But nothing happened. After managing to calm down a bit Thomas began to frown. Usually, in games, magic weapons would have special properties. So he'd expected to at least get an information window to explain the properties of the kukri. Once again AoG had messed with his expectations and experience garnered from years of other games.

Rock made his way over to Thomas while Thomas was grumbling and staring at his kukri. Rock held out a finished pair of matching daggers, the apprentices had added the handles and finished sharpening the blades. They'd even made a matching set of leather sheaths to store the daggers, "Kid, you forgot these in the smithy yesterday. You shouldn't just leave nearly finished items laying around!"

Embarrassed at the oversight Thomas accepted the daggers and asked, "How much do I owe you for the materials?"

Rack waved dismissively, "Don't worry about it. Thanks to you we're making a fair number of those kukris of yours. Whats a few gold here and there?"

Thomas smiled and held onto the daggers then looked over at Rock, "Hey Rock, what does it take to make a magical weapon?"

Rock rubbed his stubbly chin as he answered, "Well kid, to make a magic weapon a blacksmith needs to not only have a decent rank at blacksmithing, but he also needs to either be a really good spellcaster or have studied enchanting. From what I know they combine their knowledge in one of those fields with blacksmithing to produce a magic weapon. I'm not sure on the details since I focused most of my attributes into my Power and Endurance so I could forge faster and longer."

Thomas listened to Rock's explanation but couldn't help being shocked at the last sentence, "Wait. People here can earn experience and set their own attributes too?"

Thomas didn't have any qualms asking this question, Rock had been the one to mention attributes so clearly he knew about them. Most importantly it didn't touch on the taboo that was saying 'NPC'. Rock grinned playfully at Thomas, "What kid? Did you think that was something special to you otherworlders?" Rock threw his head back and laughed, "Any kid off of the street knows how to get some experience to increase their attributes. How do you think the guards for the city get so strong?" Rock gave a loud belly laugh at the dumbfounded look on Thomas's face.

Thomas was once again completely shocked by how the developers had set up AoG. To think that the NPC's would have the ability to gain experience and increase their attributes! This was completely unheard of! Usually, only main story characters could get stronger, and only as the story and patches to the game dictated. If what rock said was true, then it was entirely possible for even the kids he'd met the other day to gain experience and possibly be stronger than the players!

This... this changed everything. If the NPC's could grow in strength, then didn't that mean it was possible for the top tier NPC's like kings and master magicians to always be more powerful than the players? Thomas couldn't help but grin, if that was the case didn't it mean that the players who liked to take over kingdoms were in for a very rude awakening? Seeing Thomas grin Rock spoke up once more, "The only thing making you otherworlders different from us are the special abilities you all get when you're summoned here. Other than that, anything you can do we can do and we can usually do it better!"

Thomas laughed along with Rock as he retrieved his bag and stuffed the twin daggers and the unfinished magical kukri into it. He couldn't help but wonder what the look on Rock's face would be like if he was to point out that he'd managed to do something Rock probably couldn't do. Make a magical weapon without magic! But... was it really a magical weapon? Thomas was rather confused on this point. The system said it was magical, even granting him a title for it, but the kukri itself didn't seem even remotely special and there was no information about it.

Since the day was done, Thomas decided to worry about it after finishing the kukri tomorrow. With his decision made he bid Rock farewell for the night and headed to The Swans Nest where he paid another 27 gold for a good meal, his room, and laundry service. Upon retiring to his room Thomas changed into his linen clothing and lay down on his bed. He pulled up his character sheet and smiled at the large chunk of experience he had to spend on his attributes.

With all of his attributes sitting at seven, he decided to keep with the theme of raising his attributes evenly for the time being. He immediately spent 320 experience to raise all of his attributes to eight each leaving him with 270 experience. That left him with exactly enough to raise three more attributes by a single point so he chose Power, Endurance and Agility bumping them all to nine. He was quickly closing in on the theoretical maximum of a regular human. Once he hit eleven on his attributes he would enter the realm of a superhuman. He was greatly looking forward to that!