Chapter 12: Buzz
Arthur grinned and took a seat. A minute later, Luke walked over, balancing two steaming bowls of chicken soup on a wooden tray. It smelled great as always. Rich broth, fresh herbs, and a dash of lemon. It was his grandfather’s go-to recipe whenever either of them felt under the weather.
Arthur took the bowl, but he didn’t reach for the spoon. Instead, he watched his grandfather while his grin slowly turned into a frown.
"Grandpa, how are you feeling? Are you alright?"
Luke glanced at him and then at his bowl, and then, as if realizing what was wrong, he shrugged and answered,
"Of course I’m alright, kid. It’ll take some getting used to everything, but my heart’s not frail enough to give out just yet."
He drank a spoonful of soup and pointed at the TV behind him as he continued,
"Now, tell me about this damn game. I turned on the television earlier, but the news was spewing a whole load of nothing, just telling everyone to stay calm and wait for more information. Your grandfather needs to be prepared if I’m going to start playing games at my age, you know."
Arthur shook his head. "Grandpa, don’t worry about it. You can just focus on the restaurant."
Luke opened his mouth about to say something, but Arthur quickly cut him off and continued,
"It’s just a game. I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to get involved, so don’t worry too much."
Luke fell quiet, stirring his spoon through the broth. But the look in his eyes made it clear. He was still worried.
After all, he wasn’t naive enough to believe this was ’just a game’.
Still, Arthur didn’t give up. Since his grandfather was this distrustful, he had to try and ease his heart a bit more.
So he leaned back in his chair and began to explain things.
He told Luke about ’Zenith’ and what it was like. The city, the chaotic battlefield past its gates, the forest, and even the goblins. He mentioned the way classes and levels worked, or at least the way he thought they worked, and how goblins dropped items.
He conveniently left out a few minor details, too, like the close brush with death he had during the fight with the three goblins, as well as that first imp that had almost caused him to die from blood loss.
Still, Arthur grinned and continued, "So, I farmed twenty-six elemental stones in a little over an hour."
Luke’s spoon paused mid-stir. He raised his brows and looked at Arthur. "That many?"
Arthur nodded. "It wasn’t too hard. I fought a few of those goblins, but they weren’t all that strong. I think I’ve gotten the hang of it now."
He still counted the [Goblin’s Fang] as part of his haul even though he hadn’t sold it yet. Still, the shopkeeper had said it was worth ten elemental stones, so that should count, right?
Luke went quiet for a moment, then did the math out loud.
"Twenty-six stones an hour, that’s over two hundred a day... and more than six thousand in a month!" He leaned back and exhaled softly, "That’s enough. That’s more than enough."
Arthur could see the tension unwind from his grandfather’s shoulders, even if just a little. The numbers added up. That’s all his grandfather needed to hear, it seemed.
Granted, it wasn’t really that simple.
Two hundred stones a day meant farming goblins for at least eight hours straight. And even then, that would only work provided the drop rates remained exactly the same as before, and that Arthur hadn’t simply gotten lucky during his earlier hunt.
But still... if he could somehow keep up this pace, without anything changing, it would be enough. For now, at least, it seemed doable.
The two of them began eating after that, and the atmosphere became noticeably lighter. Still, Luke had a lot more questions, all of which Arthur was forced to answer under his grandfather’s scrutiny.
It was only after Arthur had emptied his bowl and reassured his old man one last time that everything would be fine that he was finally allowed to go back to his room.
...
Arthur didn’t dive back into Zenith right away.
Honestly, this whole thing didn’t feel as real now that he was back in his room.
Still, the image of the policeman getting beheaded at the bus stop was still fresh in his mind, reminding Arthur that the quota he had to meet was very much real.
And if he wanted to meet it, he needed to dive back into the game as soon as possible. There were just a couple of things he wanted to check first.
The first one was Leonard. Arthur sat on the edge of his bed, pulled out his phone, and sent a quick message to his cheerful blond friend, to make sure he and his family were alright.
But even after a few minutes, there was no reply. Leonard’s status showed him offline for the last three hours, so Arthur figured he was probably inside the game and hadn’t logged out yet. Otherwise, he would have definitely sent him a message himself.
After sending him a message to ’call him when he sees this’ Arthur opened his browser and started combing through the internet. Unsurprisingly, the entire world was buzzing about Zenith. And unlike the vague, sanitized coverage his grandfather had written off as worthless, the internet was overflowing with firsthand accounts and reports.
Reddit alone was drowning in new posts, the trending ones already racking up millions of upvotes and hundreds of thousands of comments.
The top post read:
"I have to play a cleric without any damn skills. What kind of trash game is this?"
Arthur tapped it open almost on instinct.
The poster was venting, facing the exact same problem he was. They had no starting spells, no passives, and their stats were trash. The replies were full of other people piling on, and it didn’t take long for Arthur to realize they were all in the same boat.
Mages weren’t the only ones, either. Enchanters, healers, summoners, none of the support classes had been spared. They’d all been dropped into the game without a single skill, and were forced to fight monsters with their bare hands.
Well... no wonder the field outside the city looked like a massacre.
Arthur kept on reading. The second post was titled:
"Dying inside the Game."
It was only four words, but this one instantly caught his attention. Arthur had to admit, he’d been curious about this exact same question as well. What happened to someone who died inside the game?
He tapped it open and skimmed the first few paragraphs. The poster claimed to be a level 2 Archer who had just gotten ambushed by a group of slimes. And according to them, death wasn’t some slap on the wrist. It was really painful.
"The sensation is horrible. It feels like a million knives stabbing through your skull all at once... and then I just blacked out. I woke up back in my living room, and I’m still shaking like hell. Took me more than ten minutes just to sit up straight.
But the worst part? I logged back in and found out I was level 1 again. Fucking level 1! Do you know how many damn monsters my group had to grind through to hit level 2? And one death drops me all the way back? What kind of bullshit is this?"
Arthur felt a chill down his spine.
He kept on reading and the replies below only confirmed it. Other players chimed in with the same story. They all felt the same pain and experienced the same reset. Most of them were just level 1 though, so the legitimacy of losing a level wasn’t confirmed yet.
Still, it was no surprise people were so mad about this whole thing.
After a moment, he scrolled down to the third post. This one had a more practical title:
"Working the city mines: is it worth it?"
Apparently, someone had actually tried laboring in one of the city’s elemental mines like the four-armed alien had suggested. According to the original poster, a level 1 warrior with a strength stat of 5 could mine a hundred elemental stones in an hour. However, city regulations only allowed them to keep ten percent of that.
So after a full hour of backbreaking work, the man walked away with a grand total of ten elemental stones.
Arthur frowned.
A strength stat of 5. The gap between them was just too wide. Even after leveling up, his own strength still sat at a measly 4, and he’d probably have had a much harder time against the goblins had he not gotten his hands on the fang.
He had definitely gotten lucky!
He went through the post again, and his frown only deepened. If that was the warrior’s haul, Arthur could only imagine what it meant for mages and the other support classes who wanted to do the same. If they tried mining, what would they come away with after an hour? Two stones? Five?
The cracks in the system were already starting to show.
It wasn’t generous, and it sure as hell wasn’t fair. If a warrior had to mine for ten hours a day just to meet his own quota, then what about the rest?
After scanning through a few more posts, Arthur finally leaned back against the headboard.
In the end, though, his biggest question had gone unanswered. He hadn’t found a single post about his own title.
He’d combed through dozens of posts, searching for anything that matched. "Child of the Elements," "unique title," "absorbing elemental stones." Nothing came up. The closest he found were a few scattered mentions of the Goblin Slayer title, and that was it.
Some players had earned it too, apparently, after killing enough goblins. But oddly enough, some people who swore they’d done nothing but slaughter goblins too hadn’t received it at all, even after leveling up.
The inconsistency had already sparked a string of heated debate in the comments, all about the fairness of the game and the complete lack of transparency.
Eventually, Arthur switched off his phone and tossed it onto the mattress beside him.
He’d seen what he needed to.
It was time to get back to farming goblins.
