MMORPG: Shattered Land

Marius didn't return to the game immediately.

Instead, he pledged for the slower course of exercising and preparation.

He exercised slow and controlled movements, moving through his forms carefully. Mindful of any and all changes in his condition.

Marius schooled himself to discipline. He could accept his body was failing but it was far too soon to count him out.

After an hour he showered and rested, finding a comfortable spot to think.

He needed a strategy.

As an experienced businessman that had swept his generation by being the best in the business. His secret of success was an old philosophy ' failing to plan was planning to fail'.

Thus strategy.

Long-term thinking, deciding goals and formulating a mission that you abide by at all cost. Then you create tactical short-term goals to help support it. This was the basic business formation and now Marius put it to practice for playing a game.

No.

It was time to stop deceiving himself. This was not a game anymore. It was his final stand. And he had the tools to win.

What did he plan to do? Well, that was easy. He told Rajan that he would break his game. So that was exactly what Marius was going to do.

What did he need to do that? Be the best player obviously. Have the best equipment and the best skillset.

Would he play the solo player or create a dynasty that crushed anyone that opposed him? Looking at it practically, it was probably the easiest option but it would fail.

Marius couldn't dedicate that kind of time to the game. To try would be inviting another episode like yesterday.

Besides, he didn't know if he had the energy to become such a tyrant again.

So solo play it was. It would be him against the world. It had a nice ring to it.

Now the big issue. How can he match pro gamers by only playing a fraction of the time they do.

Marius internally grinned. High risk, high reward.

Logically, players would grind in maps that their own levels are either slightly higher than or slightly lower.

Higher-level grounds would yield more exp, but the player would run the risk of dying and losing a level. Thus why teaming up would be safer in such a scenario.

But this would also make the leveling up slower because the experience would be distributed evenly among other teammates.

So the team could take on even higher-level grinding maps, but then the entire team would need to be adequately skilled. Or it could lead to a team wipe.

Alternatively, the easier, lower-level maps would yield tiny amounts of experience. In other words, low-risk even lower rewards. And extremely time-consuming.

Marius dismissed that option, he didn't have that much time, nor the inclination for such a boring gameplay.

So his path was clear. High-risk solo play. Break the game. Complete before it kills me. Marius smiled as the thought.

After resting and planning, Marius began his research. The forums had given him an excellent idea on how to plan his initial entry into the game. Now it could give him an idea of what had happened since his absence.

For a good four hours, Marius scoured the forum, taking in every strand of information pertaining to quests and grinding maps, committing it to memory.

His mind was one of the few things Marius could still be proud of. Years of life may have ruined his body, but his mind was still a fairly well-trained tool.

It was 6:00 in the evening before Marius pulled himself away from the forums. He was tired now and quite hungry.

He went to the kitchen, making a large dinner for himself. He took care to make it as full of nutrients as he could endure and made himself eat it all. He hadn't eaten large meals like this in a long time and his stomach did not appreciate the excessive nourishments.

feeling sleepy after his excessive meal, Marius made himself a coffee and drank it, slowly mulling over his plan of attack.

He didn't rush

According to the forums, few people had made it to level 8 which meant, he was still ahead of the pack. Though he knew that the advantage wouldn't last for long if he kept being idle.

Taking his time, he finished drinking and looked at the clock. It was now 7:00.

Carefully, he walked into the entertainment area, picking up the VR gear and walked into his room. He would not remain idle anymore, but he would also take more care to monitor his activity.

2 hours. no more, no less.

Marius set a timer on the headset.

2:00:00.

Climbing into bed, Marius made sure he was tucked in nice and warm before putting on the headset.

Login. 1:59:59.

After logging in Marius quickly ran about the Village, collecting every quest he could and completing them. He could have run to the Large Boar area of the level 5-10 grinding map but he knew that the large teams and guilds had started grinding there. A solo player like himself would get little benefit training there.

It was unfortunate that the higher-level grinding maps were locked until players advanced from the Beginner Village to one of the Main Cities.

But Marius wasn't concerned. He was more concerned with clearing a few quests around the village before taking on his real objective.

There were not really that many quests in the beginner village. Marius has done his due diligence and knew that there were exactly 24 quests. Most of them seemed redundant and without much meaningful purpose other than to give the player Experience and a small number of bronze coins.

But Marius had a nagging feeling that there was a purpose to having them, so he made a point to clear them all. He had done most of them during his first 6-hour rampage through the game, now he polished off the last of them.

For the number of quests to be done, they truly did not take much time. Looking at the timer, Marius saw that he still had well over an hour to fulfill his actual objective.

With a grin, he started running towards the Elemental Squirrel Area of the Woods.

The forums had gone into a great amount of detail about how to finish the Squirrel Swarm quest, many of them revolving around the Brutal Arrow method.

Marius was sure Proud Master had made quite a killing from it.

But what no one had mentioned was the use of the Elemental Stones. Apparently, Elemental Ores hadn't dropped either which meant that the Shopkeep was likely a trigger for the Smithy side-quest. Putting those together, Marius guessed that no one would be farming Elemental Stones let alone getting a Customized Weapon.

It stood to note that most of Marius' plans revolved around the Customized Weapon. It might not stand a chance against most weapons now, but after some time Marius knew that it would be sort after in the future.

There might even be an option to obtain one later in the game but Marius felt the sooner he started leveling up Silent Night, the more effective it would be for him.

Not long after, Marius got to the ambush point. Above his head, he could hear the Elemental Squirrels. With a smile, Marius grabbed another stone and threw it at the low hanging branches.

Just like last time, a flurry of Squirrels dashed at him. But unlike last time, Marius went of the offensive.

With each swing of his sword, Marius cut down at least one of two of the offending monsters. He even threw out a Binding Shadow every 5 seconds to help level it.

With this method, it did not take long for Marius to cut down all 27 of the attacking Elemental Squirrels, taking all their Elemental Stones.

No Elemental Ore dropped which made Marius more confident about his original assessment.

In all, it took less than 4 minutes for him to clear the Swarm. Though now that his Level exceeded the Elemental Squirrels, he only gained 50 Experience for each kill.

But the low experience didn't concern Marius. He placed all the experience into his Silent Night increasing its completion to 1620/2000. He smiled.

One more Swarm and it would level up to Level 5.

Above him, Marius heard the Squirrels respawn.

"They really are a swarm." Marius smiled, picking up another stone.

An hour later Marius had repeated the process another ten more times, collecting almost 300 Elemental Stones and increasing Silent Night to level 5. He would need to reach level 10 before the weapon would level up but that was fine. He could be patient for that.

Customized Weapon - Silent Night

Level 5 - White Grade (6,000/6,000)

Attack: 10

Defense: 8

Intelligence: 10

Spirit: 8

Dexterity: 12

Each Stack of Elemental stones had 100 stones, so 3 stacks. If each stack was the equivalent of 20 Pure Element Stones then he would have close to 60 when he redeemed them.

0:14:01

Marius checked the timer and started heading back to the Village. With his speed, he should be able to make it and decided to really test his speed.

Just as the timer hit the last minute, Marus made it to the Village boundary. Breathing deeply, he looked at the distance he had run.

If only this world was the real one, he lamented sadly as he logged off.

Waking up in bed, Marius looked at the timer.

0:00:00

"Baby steps," he whispered to himself. After pumping experience into Silent Night, Marius had earned almost 10,000 experience for himself.

The quests around the village had earned him close to 24,000 experience leaving him with about 230,500 experience to go before leveling up to Level 10.

That translated to close to 4,610 Squirrels, 171 swarms and close to 11 hours of grinding.

Marius didn't have that much of a luxury. It would take at least 5 days at the rate he was going.

Unfortunately, there were no more quests that he could complete.

"I could do it in two days," Marius muttered.

The two hours of gameplay hadn't worn him down too much and since he was in bed, he didn't have to worry too much about getting a chill.

"No." He warned himself. "That kind of thinking will derail the plan." Marius coached himself to be patient.

It would not be to his benefit if he rushed to Level 10 now only to incapacitate himself again like last time. Or worse.

Curling up in his sheets, Marius mastered his breathing.

"Tomorrow is a new day," he told himself calmly.

"Small steps."