Starting from Zero

Book 3, Chapter 3

Steel Beast

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We ran outside the Lost City and found a spot suitable for us to grind, according to King Chemist's map. It's a vast grassland, with strange creatures everywhere.

The most common monster is something looks like a rat, called the Thunder Mouse. They are fast and can use some lightning spells. Level 120, a bit higher than me, perfect target.

The highest leveled monster here is called Iron Beast. They look like those armored dinosaurs, but smaller. (*) It's level 200. Weapon can't get through their armor, spells don't do much damage, and their HP is huge! Fortunately they're really slow, not any faster than a snail. They won't move more than 20 meters even if given 10 minutes. And they can only use physical attacks, you're totally safe as long as you are more than 3m from them. Their number is small too. We just need to be careful not to wander too close.

I summoned Lucky. He must be bored for not getting out for a while. Once he's free he began to wreck havoc on the entire grassland, causing all the creatures to run wild.

I sat on a stone and began to check my loot obtained from Big Blade and his cohorts. First is an equip from . It's an ordinary legguard, worse than mine. I just threw it away.

Then a red ring from Big Blade.

Holy mother of sacred cheeseburgers--

It's an Artifact, Star Gaze. Ignores any invisibility and camouflage effect, can detect the coordinates of specified player, gains Super Sight. Oh shit. So that's why I was mauled big time back there.

I tried it on. And wow this feels good, my surroundings look really clear now. I tried looking farther. I can even see the Eye of Underworld high above Lost City, and I think we accidentally looked at each other for a moment. The eye is closed but it must know I was looking at it. It slowly turned towards me, opened a slit, then closed up and turned to its original direction.

That was terrifying. Luckily that eye didn't seem to mind my gaze at all. I turned and looked at Wayne. His name is displayed above him (Soulless), gray, followed by a blue number "68", must be his level. Below his name is a red bar and a blue bar, obviously his HP and MP. Woah this feels like cheating!

An option window appeared beside me, with a system notice: "You used Star Gaze for the first time, please complete the initial settings. You can change them later. Would you like to use the default settings or customize on your own?"

"Customize!"

"First, Name Display. Do you wish the player names to display all the time, or only after you specify?"

Well it won't look fun if every single player got a name above their head. "After I specify it!"

"Second, Super Sight effect. Do you wish the Super Sight effect to be effective all the time, or only where you focus at, or never activate?"

It's useful but it feels awful if I keep it on. "Only where I focus."

"Third, Level Display. Do you wish the player levels to always appear, or only after you specify?"

"After specify."

"Fourth, HP & MP Display. Do you wish HP & MP to display all the time, or only when you engage the target in battle, or never display?"

"When engaged!"

"Thank you. The settings are now completed."

I looked at Wayne. Now nothing is over him. I think about the name in my mind, Wayne's name immediately appeared. It vanished after 15 seconds. Level is the same deal.

"Hey Wayne, stand still, I gonna try something out." I walked over and gave him a punch. His HP and MP bar appeared above his head. Aha, this could come in handy. "You know, I took this ring from Big Blade. It lets me see people's HP bar!"

"What? That's like cheating!" (**)

"You bet it is! I took quite a beating just because of this ring. Now he lost it to me, Big Blade is going to cry! Yeah just imagining his face now makes me want to laugh! Oh right, this ring can tell me a player's position too. Lemme try find Big Blade."

I selected Find on the ring, entered . A voice came beside my ears. "Target location is Mountain City, coordinate..."

Ha! Good stuff! "Wayne, once I get my name clean let's go into the city and kill him again."

"Uh, no. We already revenged, let's not take it too far."

"Alright then! I'll leave him be as long as he doesn't offend us again! Let's get on with the grinding!"

I charged at a Thunder Mouse nearby and chopped at it. I continued to train after logging off and took a small rest at noon. Maybe feeling too bored, Wayne asked me to help catch a Companion for him, just for fun.

"How many Companions and Servants can you hold?"

"One each."

"Well let's save it for later then! You can't change Companion once you claimed one. You got only one slot, if you wasted it on low leveled Companion you will have a hard time in the future. How about getting a Servant instead?"

"Let's do it then!" Wayne is disappointed, but he understood. Unlike me, I can take one or two Companions "just for fun".

"Help me catch an Iron Beast as a Servant!"

"Understood." I called Lucky, jumped onto his back and dragged Wayne up here. Me and my two Companions are level 113 now. It isn't hard for Lucky to support two people. We flew high and found several Iron Beasts packed together not far from us. I ordered Lucky to charge.

Me and Wayne cleared some minions around us, then focused on the big one. There are three Iron Beasts here, obviously bigger than the rest. Are these mutated monsters again?

With the help of Star Gaze my [Identify] has become more powerful too. I quickly got its information. Steel Beast, level 230, evolved from Iron Beast. Near absolute defense against both Physical and Magical attacks. Slightly faster than Iron Beasts. Weakpoint is its soft belly.

Belly? The monster's legs are hardly taller than the couchgrass on the ground, its belly is almost sweeping against the floor. How the heck do I attack its belly?

Without any options, I charged and [leap slash]'d at the beast. Clang! I was pushed back several steps by the backforce, and my hands are numb. I only did 47 damage, its HP appeared and read above 3k. That's almost as high as Lucky.

"Um, Wayne? How about we find something else? This guy is so freaking solid!"

"Solid means good! It will help me more in the future!" With that, Wayne threw an ice cone at it, which was even worse than my sword. 15 damage.

Lucky charged and clawed at the beast, which caused a noise like when you hammer at an iron plate, with sparks.

That was only 65 damage. Now none of us can deal more than 100 damage to this thing! The beast bit Lucky when he's not noticing. Well Lucky's scaled body is no worse than this beast's defense, he only took 18 damage. But that bite totally pissed Lucky off. He quickly began to gain altitude, and started to dive toward us. Lucky sped up with his wings folded, when he reached us he abruptly spread his wings and swept against the grass. The current he caused pushed me and Wayne rolling on the ground.

When we got onto our feet we only saw two Steel Beasts. I looked up and saw Lucky holding something flying upwards. Using Star Gaze, I checked Lucky's claws, and finally made out the figure of a Steel Beast. Now I see Lucky turn around and started to dive down with that beast. Plus he is flapping his wings to gain speed.

I dragged Wayne. "RUN!"

We didn't stumble far before Lucky came down like a bomber jet. When he reached the ground he released the beast, and began to fly up again. The poor Steel Beast flew towards his two friends on the ground like a missile. The two guys on the ground saw it coming and began to get away, but surely they won't make it with that slow movement. The falling beast precisely hit in the middle of the two Steel Beasts. With a loud explosion, I felt the ground shake. Then debris and dirt began to wash down upon us.

My armor was hit over and over while giving out metal noises but I'm mostly fine. However Wayne's cloth robe didn't provide much protection.

"Ooof!"

"Awwweyy!"

"Yawwch!!!"

When the dust cleared up, the three beasts are already dead. I quickly started to use [Capture]. My skill level is pretty high now so it didn't take much effort for me to capture them as Servants. Three white dots came out of the three corpses and turned into white crystals in my hand. I can see the figure of a Steel Beast inside the crystal.

"Here. Drop your blood on it and it will become your Servant. Take the rest too. If your Servant dies you can just summon another." (***)

Wayne took the crystals with excitement, and brushed one of them against his face. The poor dude's face is bleeding due to those debris.

The crystal vanished once it touched blood. Wayne quickly summoned his Steel Beast. Woah this thing became a lot bigger as a Servant.

We checked over its status. Its Defense surpasses mine by a lot! The only problem is it's too slow. But that's not an issue, for Wayne is a Wizard, he only needs it to stand there acting like a shield. The beast got super high Defense and HP. It's born to be a shield anyway.

Wayne took his new friend and charged into combat. Now I'm actually considering if I should catch one or two of these things to use as shield, too.

With the new Servant, Wayne has lost himself in his grinding and completely forgot about me. So I left him be and went leveling myself. I'm feeling too tired by 10pm so I urged Wayne to log off, by which me, Lucky and Phantom have reached 118. Wayne on the other hand, is 93 now.

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(*) The author is probably talking about Ankylosaurus

(**) There was a game which dominated Chinese players before (or around?) 2000. In that game people can't see each others' HP bar, in other words you won't know when someone is about to get KO'd. But there was a cheating program you could use which allowed you to see it.

(***) Did the author mention that Servant death is permanent?