[Please note: In-Game Name will never be changed once confirmed. Confirm 'Just Me'?]
A wry smile touched Neo's lips, and he said "Confirm" without a second thought.
And in a fraction of a second, the World continued its chaos as if nothing had happened.
The soldier who had locked eyes with him as he fell coughed, a wet, rattling sound.
With a trembling hand, he barely managed to reach for his breast pocket, pulling out a necklace with an emerald stone at its pendant.
"Just Me, please... I know I could trust you with this," the soldier said, before his body stilled, his eyes unflinching.
Neo snatched the necklace and searched for a place to put it.
[Side Quest: Bring the Necklace of Shattered Promise to the Queen of Eldersky. Reward: Unknown]
'Useless Quest.'
As his eyes glanced down, his tight-fitting leather armor was gone, replaced by a dilapidated tunic, and he saw his feet chained to a spherical metal weight that sat heavily in the mud, making every movement a struggle.
Without a pocket, he strapped the necklace to his left forearm, securing the pendant with his left hand, gripping it tightly.
'If this thing isn't important, I'm going to demand a key from whoever gave it to me,'
Having a moment to study himself, Neo realized that the only thing he owned for himself besides his clothes and the new necklace, was the spherical metal weight… more of a burden than a weapon if he think hard enough.
'Am I a prisoner? Or a slave? Since that NPC soldier knew me, it's more likely I am a Prisoner of War? Or a Rebel... It's the only thing that fits.'
The 'Craft and Conquer' game that he had chosen as his tutorial was a single-player game where the Player needed to craft from scrap to conquer everything.
It was a World at War that would not end unless you conquered it, or you silently finished the game by waiting for 10-In-Game-Years.
His father's story was the latter; though he tried to conquer the world with his unparalleled blacksmithing, he couldn't finish it in less than 10-In-Game-Years, sending him back to their Original World with a Legend Grade Class, [Starsmith].
The one-and-only known crafting class that could use any kind of material without restriction, and the only thing that restricted his father was the limitation of what their world could offer.
Class Grades are divided into Common, Rare, Epic, Legend, Mythic, Transcended, and Divine, and their world only has three known Legend Classes, including his Father.
From Mythic and above, there were none, and only through the stories inside the Ludoverse did the world come to know the different grades existing in it.
And these Grades were everything in the Ludoverse.
They defined a Player's potential, the uniqueness of their skills, and the very root of their power.
And, the key to getting to the person who gave his father the Legend Grade Class was the pendant he strapped to his arm right now.
The necklace wasn't a memento or a gift, but a map his father discovered only by accident when the pendant cracked against a rock. Revealing a glowing, three-dimensional chart of the world etched inside the stone.
'Damn it, how can I escape this area without dying?'
Neo's eyes scanned around. He thought of cutting the chain with the weapons scattered around the battlefield, but he disregarded it.
Then he stared back at the person who trusted him with the necklace.
Without waiting for another arrow whizzing, Neo kneeled beside the corpse and used his free hands patting down its pockets until his panic was cut by a blessed sound: the metallic jangle of keys.
'Fast. Fast... I need to be calm and fast.'
Neo grabbed the dozens of keys attached to a single hard metal wire. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat drowning out all other sound as he inserted them one by one into the rusty lock holding the chain on his feet.
'Keys. Just find the right key.' His breath hitched as his trembling fingers fumbled with the metal wire.
As he heard the click of metal, his mouth curled into a smile; for the first time since his arrival, it was the most pleasant sound he had heard among the millions of sword clashes.
The shackle fell away. The searing pressure vanished, leaving behind raw, stinging welts on his ankles.
Not wasting another second, Neo scanned the ground, his eyes locking onto a dagger buried in a corpse's chest. He pulled it, splashing blood on his face before stumbling back from using too much force.
"That shitty voice should've asked me if I want censorship or not," he muttered, wiping the blood that sprayed on his face.
Though VR training from the Basic Combat School had been immersive, it hadn't prepared him for this level of visceral horror.
Neo crouched low, gripping the dagger and the necklace as he scramble away from his original position while his eyes darting across the chaos. He had no idea who was an enemy and who was an ally.
After a few seconds of crawling and dodging the stomping of feet that felt like an hour, a burly pair of them stopped his advance.
Neo glanced up and cursed when he saw a heavy sword striking down at him.
'Shit!'
He forced himself to roll to his left, and when he faced the sky, the sword followed his roll, committed to the kill.
Neo's instinct made him raise his hands with the dagger, supporting it with the one that was holding the necklace.
A flash of experience went through his mind, and a grim smile touched his face.
'I'll be in half if I tried blocking this!'
The burly man's sword and Neo's dagger met, and in a fraction of a second before the sparks flew, Neo tilted the dagger's angle to the left, using the flat of the blade to deflect the sword's momentum away from him with a trained grace.
'Damn that Stella, I even thought of thanking her for her brutal pellets!'
Thanks to the earlier sparring session with Stella that retained the itchiness in his skin and muscles. Neo learned how to anticipate the timing of the sword's impact, which was much slower compared to pellets, deflecting it with all the strength he could muster.
The burly man's sword was stuck in the muddy ground, giving Neo a chance to hold the foot of the burly man and stab his ankle repeatedly until the burly man fell backwards, still trying to raise his arms that got stepped on by another soldier ahead of him.
"You're dead, you bear!" he shouted, eager to come back at the burly man who reminds him of Stella.