Chapter 15
Just as she expected, a floating blue screen popped up in front of her.
[System Notice: You have been chosen as a Player under the Unknown Lord. Do you want to enter a new world where you can level up fast, change your life, and get powerful Martial Souls?]
[ Yes / No ]
"Yes," Clara said without any hesitation.
Instantly, her vision shifted. Her bedroom vanished, and for a second, everything went dark before changing into a completely new scenery. She felt a little dizzy from the sudden shift, but her body instinctively adjusted. She had done this countless times in her memories.
Clara looked down. Just as she expected, she was completely naked. She knew the rules: no one could bring any outside items or clothes into the private world. However, the rule did not apply the other way around. Any item found or made inside the private world could be brought back to Earth.
Without panicking, she opened the basic system shop, bought a simple cloth tunic with her starting credits, and quickly put it on.
Without further ado, she dashed straight into the nearby forest. Clara knew that every player was sent to a random starting location. Her first goal was to build her own base. Building a base near good resources was the best strategy in the game because it allowed players to farm materials and gain experience much faster.
Therefore, it was very important for every subordinate to build their own camp as soon as possible to maximize their leveling.
Another important thing was teleportation. The private world was huge. Some blueprints for weapons or buildings required special materials that could not be found in just one area. Because of this, players needed to share and trade resources.
However, players could only teleport to another player's base if they were allowed by the base owner or by the Lord. This rule existed because players could fight each other and plunder other camps. At the start, it was hard to build trust and harmony when everyone was hungry for power. So, you could not just visit someone else's base without permission. Of course, the Lord could bypass this restriction, as he had absolute control over all his subordinates.
Clara also knew about the capturing system. As subordinates, players could craft a "blue orb." This item was used to capture different units in the wild. But capturing was not always easy. The orbs came in different tiers: Normal, Epic, Legendary, Mythic, and Rebirth. The chance to successfully capture a unit depended on the orb's tier, the player's luck, and how weak the unit was at that moment.
Clara had a clear plan. The very first thing she needed to do was gather basic resources like wood and stone to build a working bench. Once the bench was built, she could craft her own blue orb and start capturing units.
As someone with memories from the future, she knew that every unit had a specialty. Some units were meant for battle, while others were better used for crafting, mining, or farming. Once she captured them, she could assign them to her base and make them work.
...
Meanwhile, across the vast private world, millions of other players began to appear. They did not all spawn in the same forest. Some appeared in the middle of a hot, endless desert, while others spawned near scorching volcanoes, on top of freezing high mountains, in unending snowlands, or even on tiny islands in the center of a massive ocean.
At first, these players were completely confused. But they quickly learned the mechanics of this new world just by gathering basic resources around them.
Every one of them felt like a main character who had finally received their golden opportunity. You have to know that back on Earth, after paying a huge entrance fee to hunt wild beasts, it would just give your team a tiny bit of experience after a kill. Because the controlled wild areas were packed with people, you couldn't really hunt as many as you wanted, even if you had the power to do so. Controlled wild areas were the only things available to the public. Every powerful household or company held a private wild area where they farmed and even bred beasts just to kill them for experience. Also, the beasts on Earth didn't drop items or resources.
But here, it was totally different. It was like a paradise for everyone. Every time they gathered resources, they gained experience. Every time they killed a beast, they gained experience plus loot.
The biggest prize was not just the resources, but the wild units roaming around. If the players were strong enough, they could subdue them and start building their own power.
***
Whoosh!
An arrow made of pure light shot through the forest and perfectly pierced a snake resting on a tree branch. Immediately after, a second light arrow flew out, hitting a small lizard hiding in the bushes.
These were common units that lived near Clara's spawn area. Because they didn't have much fighting power, they were the perfect targets for players to farm for immediate resources. A common snake could drop venom or meat, while other small units dropped normal crafting ingredients or even low-level items.
Since Clara was already Level 20, she could easily deal with these kinds of weak units.
Whoosh!
Another wild snake died, and the glowing arrow vanished into thin air.
*Ding!*
[Congratulations on reaching Level 21! Please allocate your stats.]
It had been less than an hour since Clara entered the private world, yet she had leveled up effortlessly. If this were back on Earth, it would take her three days of constant hunting in the wild just to level up once. But this did not satisfy her.
Clara was currently assimilated with her Epic-tier Martial Innate Soul: the Light Archer. She looked almost like a floating fairy. Even though she was only wearing a simple cloth tunic, visible specks of light gathered around her body. With every move she made, she left behind a faint trail of glowing dust. On her back rested a huge, beautiful bow that emitted a pure, brilliant light.
"Weak... I'm way too weak," Clara muttered, looking down at her hands.
"Now that I am back to Level 21, I can't help but feel terribly weak. My Martial Innate Soul is still in the Epic tier, while my future self had already upgraded it to the Legendary tier. My stats are so low... Tsk!"
Clara was frustrated when suddenly, a loud rustling sound echoed from the thick bushes directly in front of her.
"Oho..." she whispered, her eyes narrowing. She immediately raised her bow, readying her third skill: *Rapid Fire*.
A large, bulky Minotaur wielding a massive iron axe smashed through the bushes. Clara's eyes widened slightly as she instantly recognized the unit's aura.
"An Epic unit right on my first day? Not a bad start," she said with a smirk.
The Minotaur grunted, slowly approaching her. But then, space distorted around it. In the blink of an eye, the massive beast teleported directly in front of her, swinging its giant axe down to chop her in half!
*Whoosh!*
The heavy axe smashed into the ground, but it only cut through Clara's afterimage. She had already leaped backward with incredible speed, landing gracefully on the thick branch of a huge tree.
"What a cunning fellow," Clara chuckled. "I am going to make you mine ores all day in my base."
As if the Minotaur understood the insult, its eyes turned blood-red. It let out a deafening roar and immediately entered a Berserk mode. Muscles bulging, it charged straight at the tree.
*Bang!*
The massive tree was chopped in half with a single swing. But Clara was incredibly agile, relying on her years of future battle experience. She easily leaped to another tree mid-fall and activated her third skill: *Rapid Fire*.
Her bow hummed with pure energy. An insane volley of light arrows shot out with unbelievable speed, streaking through the air and piercing the Minotaur's body. However, the Minotaur's Epic-tier body was incredibly tough. The arrows didn't do massive damage, and it continued to charge at her like a raging monster.
Clara quickly activated her second skill: *Light Dodge*.
Her body became weightless and extremely fast. More than that, she began to emit a blinding, radiant aura. To the Minotaur, trying to look at Clara was now like staring directly into the blazing sun, causing momentary blindness.
She moved from all angles, becoming a blur of light. Even though the Minotaur's body was tough, Clara rained down arrows, slowly and carefully wearing it down. Finally, just as her mana was almost completely used up, the giant beast fell to its knees, heavily panting and too weak to fight back.
She held back her final strike. She made sure to keep the Minotaur alive.
"Let me craft a Blue Orb, hold on a minute!" she said to the groaning beast.
She hurriedly collected nearby ores and stones to build a simple workbench. The blueprint for a workbench was free in the system, along with the recipe for a Normal-tier Blue Orb, so she just needed to gather the materials and build it right there in the dirt.
Within moments, the workbench was ready. She quickly crafted the Blue Orb, threw it, and successfully captured the weakened Minotaur. Without wasting a second, she immediately disassembled the workbench, returning the materials to her inventory.
This was a classic veteran tactic in this world: you could build and disassemble structures on the spot as long as you had enough materials, allowing for extreme mobility.
"Great! Now that I have a heavy miner for my base, I need to go back and set up a simple camp near a good mining spot. Preferably a spot with lots of ores."
Clara perfectly remembered what the most important resource for beginners was.
Ore was incredibly important because it was useful in many ways. There were different kinds of ores, and they were the main ingredient needed to craft better capture orbs. Blue ore was used to craft Normal-tier Blue Orbs. Red ore could craft Rare-tier Red Orbs. Violet ore could craft Epic-tier Violet Orbs, and so on. The rarer the ore, the higher the tier of the orb you could craft.
This was one of the biggest differences between being a Lord and being a subordinate. As a Lord, the capture orb was part of themselves because its one of their martial soul, and they just need to constantly use it. by leveling up they can eventually upgrade the tier of their martial soul capture orb. But a subordinate constantly needed materials just to craft them.
Imagine fighting a powerful unit, bringing it to the brink of death, and when you are ready to subdue it, you realize you ran out of orbs. This was a common, heartbreaking setback, and Clara knew it well. That was why, from the very start, her main aim was to mine ores and craft as many orbs as she possibly could. It was the only way to guarantee she could capture the units she wanted.