1,000,000,000 damage!

Rose’s mouse cursor was moving faster than I could comprehend. Clothing items kept swapping on and off of me at high speeds, and I couldn’t even look down to see what any of it was. Tensei tried to keep me entertained by showing off her collection of random shiny items she’d picked up around the world.

It was at least an hour before all the mouse clicking stopped and I didn’t feel a draft around my legs. Tensei seemed very enchanted with what she was seeing, so I had high hopes.

-I'm finished! Go on, take a look (▀̿ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)-

Tensei’s hands got all sparkly and she respawned her mirror, but this time it grew a few feet longer so I could see all of myself in it.

“Woah…”

There was a handsome man in a fine blue fantasy suit looking back at me. He had nice combed hair, clean shaven face and he didn’t look too bad around the belly either. She must have burned through a thousand different items to get this look.

-Your wife is awaiting her praises ⸜(രᴗര๑)⸝-

“Your husband certainly likes what he sees,” I replied in a charming tone. “You made me look like I did as a teen. Fantastic job, Rose.”

Was that enough of a compliment here? To be honest, I felt 10 years younger too. That was such a contrast with how the sluggish morning started. Rose deserved the world for helping me feel that way.

“Lady Rose did a good job picking stats too.” Tensei opened up a menu in front of me so we could both take a look. “Although the outfit she put together doesn't have a 'full set' bonus, it does give you a very good increase in charisma and stamina.”

-I totally did that on purpose BTW @_@-

Since she brought up my stats, it occurred to me that I’d never even looked at my own since I got to this world. Apparently I was a level 1 Administrator class. My highest stats were intelligence, followed by wisdom, then charisma. My lowest were dexterity, strength, then finally constitution at dead last.

“Well, the low strength and constitution explains why I’m so winded all the time.” I nervously chuckled. “Tensei, when you summoned me here, did it translate my actual body's condition into game values?”

“I think so,” Tensei said. “You're real life and class stats stack together. It just so happens that the Admin class was almost a perfect match.”

“What can this class do?”

“The Admin is one of the most privileged of all classes in the game…” Tensei started. “… You'll have the powers to control and manipulate anything, as well as moderate players as you see fit. Isn't that exciting?”

So it was because of my admin class that I was able to use the access points. As great as that was, there were probably going to be problems and threats we'd have to take on the old fashioned way, which posed a real problem with my strength stat being so low.

-Ray, I’m just gonna say it… These numbers kinda suck-

“Thank you for stating the obvious, Rose.” I sighed. “I am just a level 1, and it doesn't seem like this class is much for fighting to begin with.”

It might have been good with a ranged weapon, but magic was probably what I was going to need to hone, if I could figure out how to learn it.

-Sounds to me like we need to hit that level grind!-

That was a good idea. Even if the weekend went by smoothly, getting some levels and powering myself up was worth the time just incase things got hairy.

💻⚔️💻

We went back to the overworld, but when we returned we were outside the town gates instead of in front of the access point. Tensei took the lead and flew toward an open field to the right of Spawn Town. I actually happened to know quite a lot about where she was heading.

Internally, we called it First Steps Field. It was where most new players would spend a lot of time figuring out the core mechanics of the game. I remembered that Tensei loved this place for the flowers and was scripted to go through a whole monologue tutorial to explain how combat worked.

This was one of the spots in the game that I had a huge hand in producing. Since I was in charge of designing the mechanics, I had a lot of fun with giving the players a little playground to test things.

Slimes, Monstrich, Turkles… All the early game monsters were scattered around here and ready to be defeated by players just learning to swing their swords. There wasn’t a creature over level 5, which arguably would give a level 1 like me some trouble.

-LET”S KICK BUTT!-

“Wuh…” I drew the sword from my back and ran in there like a kid heading for the playground. “Wait wait wait!”

It was too late by that point to stop Rose. I swung the sword a few times and took out a couple of monsters on a hill. A huge number filled my FOV and Rose stopped me for a moment to look at it.

-1,000,000,000 damage per hit?! WTF?!?!-

My goodness! The damage numbers we were seeing were enormous! This was postgame levels of attack I was dishing out here. That was definitely a bug if I ever saw one.

-Dude, this is going to make the game super easy! We can kill anything in one hit!-

It felt like a cheat code, but given my terrible strength, I wasn't above letting this one slide for now.

"There’s not an enemy in the game who could tank that number," I said. "Maybe some bugs are worth keeping around for now."

"Are you sure we shouldn't fix that?" Tensei asked with a finger to her chin.

"Eh... If it makes the game easier, we'll save it for last."

I was pretty confident that fixing it wouldn't take very long. So it was a low priority thing on the list we were building.

Seeing as we were one shotting everything on the hill, We had a lot of great momentum and kept grinding away. Rose had me defeat almost everything we could before moving on to the next spot full of monsters.

-WOW! You’ve already leveled up 3 times!-

It was going great, but a bit slow since I kept having to stop and recharge my stamina.

“Rose, we need a better plan of attack,” I said, out of breath. “As much as I know you’re having fun running me around and swinging this sword, your using up too much of my stamina doing that.”

-I mean, what else am I supposed to do?-

“At the bottom of your screen is a hotbar. That is for all my special attacks or spells. Use those.”

Since she leveled me up, I gained access to a few new types of attacks that most classes unlocked around now. One of them was particularly good against groups of enemies.

A few giant ostrich monsters, appropriately dubbed Monstrich, were heading our way. It would have taken a good few swings to cut them down, but Rose selected one of my special skills…

“Here I go…!” I grunted as I raised up my sword and jumped high into the air like a basketball player. As I came down, I slam dunked the sword on one of the Monstrich and an explosion blasted out around me. All three were dead in an instant.

-THAT WAS SO COOL!!!-

“It also used up less stamina than three basic attacks,” I mentioned. “The problem is that it'll be a few seconds untill I can use it again.”

Most early game special attacks only took about ten to fifteen seconds to recharge, but they packed a real punch in a pinch.

“Mr. Roberts, look out!” Tensei shouted to me.

Rose turned me around in shock to notice one of the Monstrich wasn’t actually dead. It managed to roll out of the way of the AOE blast and was heading for me.

*SQWAA!*

It’s beak thrust forward for a peck attack. Rose moved me backwards to evade, but the tip of the birds mouth tapped my sword.

I saw the number ‘1,000,000,000' appear in red in front of me, which was not a good sign at all.

“Oh Lord no…”

Those were the last words I could speak before my entire body was flung down the hill like a rocket. I landed in the dirt like a meteor striking the ground at full force.

“Mr. Roberts!” Tensei flew to me as quickly as she could.

-RAY! OMG are you okay?!-

My entire body felt like someone had taken a rolling pin and flattened me out. Everything hurt, but felt strangely numb at the same time.

The good news was that I wasn’t dead. The bad news was that I realized we weren’t going to be able to take advantage of that one billion damage per hit thing, because that was something that needed to be fixed right away.

“Y-eah…” I grunted. “*cough cough* Yeah, I’m fine… No I’m not, but I’ll live…”

-What just happened? How did you survive that hit?-

It’s actually funny, because I survived thanks to a mechanic I put in place for this area. Tensei knew it too.

“New players can’t die near Spawn Town!” said our angel fairy friend.

That was right. I fought tooth and nail to make it so that players just starting out here wouldn’t be able to die in this area until they reached level 5. It was a safety net while they learned the game, and also to prevent griefing players from trying to kill them.

Everyone said it was too hand holdy and safe, but by golly I’m glad I got it implemented. It came in real clutch here. Now I just needed to figure out a way to heal up from 1 HP...