Starting from Zero

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The same pentagram appeared under my lance, [Tail Spike of the Dark Dragon Lord], which has been leaning on a tombstone. It sunk into the ground as if it\'s standing in a swamp.

The pentagram below me got brighter. I slowly raised my hand, with the grip of the lance following my palm. Then I grabbed the lance and pulled it out in a flash.

I found this move when I was trying random things out in boredom---I can call back my Dark Dragon Lord parts as long as I still possess more than half of them. Apart from being useful (I don\'t need to worry about missing any equipment parts), one other thing is that I can play cool in front of others, like this.

"Night Shade!"

I jumped high as a black portal appeared behind me. Night Shade sprinted out of it with some lightening sparks around his horn, he accurately caught me on his back.

"Let\'s do this."

Hawk whistled. "Ooh, looks like I found myself one heck of an opponent today! That\'s a nightmare, right?"

"Good eye." I gave Night Shade a pat on the neck.

*Snoooort*

Aw come on.

"Watch it. He\'s fast and is pretty violent."

Hawk touched his unicorn too. "Just about right. My Sunlight is about the same--fast, bad temper."

"Charge!" We yelled at exact the same time. Now I want him as a partner even more.

Hawk wasn\'t lying, Sunlight is surely fast. But his direction is too straightforward. When we\'re about to clash, Night Shade feinted to one side and dodged the attack by rushing to the other. I knew Night Shade\'s plan all along, so I wasn\'t using my shield at all. I was holding my lance diagonally to give him a poke for good from the flank.

Sunlight halted abruptly and almost did a forward flip due too his high speed. While Hawk tried very hard to balance himself--he was pointing his lance and shield dead towards ahead, expecting a hard collision with me. Though he still fell down from Sunlight because of that awkward positioning. It\'s a fatal mistake for a rider to fall from his horse during combat, but this time it saved his life--now I can\'t hit him.

Sunlight raced back to Hawk upon hearing his call. He skillfully got mounted and charged at me again.

I asked Night Shade to turn around and face him too. Sunlight is charging slower than before, probably to prevent me from tricking him again. And this is what I\'m waiting for.

"[Heart Piercer]!"

The spear head exploded into five and launched towards Hawk. After some metal clashing noises, Sunlight galloped past me without anyone on his back. Hawk is now standing several meters away, holding his shield with five holes on it. The five spear heads locked themselves onto his body, each with a red colored steel wire connected to it, all the way towards the lance in my hand. My HP bar is filling up--the wires are draining Hawk\'s health.

He realized it too and tried to pull off the stings. But when he touched the first one, an electric arc went from my end to him and shocked him back. He still knocked the head off him though. He quickly pried away the other spear heads using his own weapon. When the last head fell to the ground, the wires began to retract themselves. The five spear heads combined into one and returned to my lance.

This is the first time I tried this skill, and man it\'s dandy!

"The hell is that attack??" Hawk struggled up using his lance as a walking stick.

"That was the most horrible weapon I ever seen." He waved his broken shield. " I give up! I gonna lose it for sure if you use any more of those moves."

"How much damage did I do to you?"

"3000 on the first hit. 500 HP drained away, and 200 more with that shock. I only got like 20 HP left. For cheese\'s sake! My shield defense is above 2k you know! And that was a successful block! It went through like paper! Are you sure you\'re only 313? I\'m 443 by the way. I don\'t meet many people who can even break my defense. I killed like 10 people in that fight when a hundred are trying to attack me. Do you get traps and tricks all over your body? "

"Well, not really. That was actually the first time I use the skill. Oh, I kinda used you as practice, sorry about that... But you\'re quite good. I\'ll send you out of here."

I teleported Hawk to the Storm Cloud city. Well, a certain distance away from the city at least. Any closer and I\'ll have to speak with the guards again.

Hawk sent a whisper to his girlfriend to come here, so we waited. I don\'t think we should just stand here so I tried to recruit him.

"Hey Hawk, that was impressive. Can you help me level up when you have the time?"

"Ah ha-ha. Me? Help you? You should be the one helping me. You get less EXP when carried by someone higher than you because you either kill low level monsters and get little EXP, or try to kill high level monsters when the weaker player tends to die a lot AND get little EXP. Not many people are willing to help low level players unless they\'re good friends. Buuut if you can help me, I believe my level will just go skyrocket. You\'re more powerful so we can go against monsters much much higher than us. So...will ya?"

"Deal. Let\'s do it together. By the way, you\'re not going to repair your stuff?" I pointed at those holes on his shield.

"Oh. This..." He gave it a glance. "My golden set recovers durability on its own when I equip it as a whole. I don\'t need to worry about repairing it."

"Really?" I looked at his gear with stars in my eyes. "Awww, why no such convenient attribute on my equipment..."

"Oh come on. You like it? Let\'s switch then. I\'m the envious one right now!"

I thought about that horrible repair fee I still owe Clark. Sigh.

"Everyone got his own problems I guess. They say it\'s easy to buy a nice car but hard to keep it in good condition. I\'m in the same situation now, they look good but I don\'t have the money to repair it!"

"So how much? I heard that you need really huge sum to repair Artifact. And some special materials too."

"Ugh. No, don\'t remind me anymore. Someone paid for me anyway." I looked at the sky. "I\'m not sure I\'ll ever repay the debt..."

"Someone did? Now that\'s some serious friend you got there."

"Hawk!\'\' Someone shouted.

"Elfy! Are you alright? Did they come after you?" Hawk embraced with a girl who\'s a lot smaller in size. When he straightened himself he lifted the girl off ground.

"Put me down you silly buffalo! Someone\'s watching!"

Yup, that seems a smart girl.

Hawk dropped her down with a red face.

"Hello! I\'m [Misty Elf], as in, a real Elf. Level 422, Elven Archer. So you helped my love escape? Thank you very much!"

Her Elven character has long, green hair, pointy facial features and delicate skin, just like those exquisite elves in stories. She has a long bow behind her back and is wearing rattan protections. That sunny character though...They look like born couple.

"Nice knowing you. I\'m [Ziri]. level 313 Divine Demon D&P Rider plus Soul Manipulator."

She lowered her head for a moment before exclaiming: "You\'re that number one criminal Ziri! I knew I heard about you somewhere. How did you kill soooo many people in one day? Did you actually wipe out an entire city?"

"Ohh ho ho I would like to try that if I can." I think I\'m getting affected by their style too. "So are you going to grind, or get some revenge on those people?"

"Forget about those suckers. There are too many, we won\'t win. Let\'s go level up. We already wasted enough time today. We planned to get three levels before noon!"

To get 3 levels in one morning is easy job for me. I suppose it\'s terribly hard for other people though. "Where are we going then?"

"Definitely not the same place in the morning...Let\'s go to the Wonder Forest." Elfy suggested. "Be careful Ziri, the monsters will be higher leveled than you, just hide and share exp with us."

"Nah, leave him be. He\'s a monster." Hawk commented.

"What do you mean?"

"We were fighting just now. He almost one-shot me with one skill."

"...A warrior, getting one-shot by someone 100 levels below? And those golden armors you\'re wearing are not just decorations you know."

Hawk handed over his shield, still with the five holes on it. "I got proof. He did this to me!"

"Oh my. Who made a Paladin shield with 2000+ defense into a pepper shaker?" She tossed the shield back to him. "It\'s decided then!"

Hum. Looks like Elfy is the decision maker here. I don\'t know much about the places other than the Lost City so I just followed them without a word.

The forest is quite near from the city. They seem familiar with the place enough.

We avoided crowded areas and marched straight towards the center. We eventually stopped at an open ground among the woods. According to Hawk, monsters spawn pretty fast around here and few people would come to such depth.

We soon encountered a pack of [Saw Teeth]. They look like ordinary wild boars with really scary tusks.

Hawk explained: "They\'re level 430, both high attack and high defense. But their HP is low, and can\'t move fast. They usually stay in large groups."

I\'m going to get them into my guild anyway so there\'s no need to lay low. I just summoned all of my companions and servants in one breath.

"Yah!!"

Hawk and Elfy jumped onto a tree.

"What are you doing? Get back. These are my friends."

"Dra-dra-dra-dragon!"

Elfy clamped herself on the tree like a koala. "Several days ago a group of people were fighting near the forest over a valuable gem. Then more people heard about it and came. The fight became an all-out brawl involving thousands of people. Then a dragon passed by, snatched the gem away and wiped all players with a single fire breath. Hawk was there too, am I Right?"

"Yeah I saw it! Thank god we didn\'t get there too soon or we would be barbeque\'d! We didn\'t have much equipment back then. But the corpses left tons of them on the ground, we sold them for some money, that\'s how we got what we\'re wearing now."

"Well you can get down here. This guy is still teenage, he can\'t do that even if he wants to."

Hawk is still hugging the tree like dear. "Are you sure about that??"

Elfy: "I have...uh, right, dragonphobia!"

I walked around the tree. "Are you getting down or not?"

"NO!"

"Last time. Get back here."

"What-what are you planning?"

Elfy is sure the smart one of the two. She soon realized my "evil intentions". Too late though.

I looked at Lucky. He nodded and gave the tree a poke.

They slipped from the shaking tree and fell. Two tentacles appeared out of the ground and caught them.

Hawk stared at the thing and decided not to struggle. There is a green crystal ball at the tip of it, with two leaves around which move like eyelids. The whole structure looks like a monster\'s head. There\'s even a mouth on it--some barbs that shift like a meat grinder!