2. Beginner ninja

One of ninja characters’ basic skills was the ability to sense beings around them. This included humans, beasts and monsters. Thanks to that Waldina could easily find the small and weak monsters, slimes, hiding by the grass. In the game, Adventurous Online, slimes were simple droplet like beings which held little to no interest for the gamers. But here, in this version, Waldina found slimes to be absolutely adorable. She had to grit her teeth in order to slice through the slimes with her short sword. For beginners’ slimes were pretty much the only monsters they could fight against without unnecessary trouble. Still Waldina made a silent promise not to kill those adorable slimes any more than necessary. Thus as soon as she’d reach an adequate level, she’d leave the slimes be.

For an experienced player leveling up was almost bafflingly easy. A couple of slimes was enough to get to level two. A couple more and she’d reach level three in no time. Only the ninja techniques caused some trouble to this purple-haired girl as the skills needed a little more than a mere pressing of a button. It was surprisingly difficult to actually do the techniques, even though some part of Waldina seemed to unconsciously know the skills.

All in all, Waldina enjoyed the challenge. The beginner ninja skills were so easy to learn that a ninja fanatic like her could quite easily master them. Succeeding in the familiar ninja skills fueled her excitement and will to learn the rest faster. It made her steps lighter and faster.

Every time she leveled up she earned some experience points she could use to further level up a statistic she wished. Each statistic got some extra experience points and leveling up every time she leveled up, but the important upgrades happened with experience points.

The statistics she could level up were: agility, power, stamina, speed, health, mana, observation, luck and defense. In the game, Waldina had to prioritize leveling up her speed, agility, observation and power. This time she decided to focus on leveling up her agility and speed first. As she still did not know the nature of her surroundings she felt important to ensure her ability to move fast to and from situations that might emerge on the road. It was crucial to be able to get away from dangerous situations. As a ninja type her agility was heightened to begin with as it was such a key element for ninjas. Ninjas needed to be able to close the distance between them and others in a fast and silent manner. And obviously they needed to be able to escape if the situation so demanded.

Stamina was obviously necessary for both agility and speed so that those skills could be used to their maximum potential. Yet Waldina hesitated using her points to stamina and so refrained from doing so for now.

As Waldina had played different versions of ninjas in different games her knowledge of their skillsets was deep. She knew the basic skillsets and techniques even in her sleep which made it easier to actually try and use those skills in real life. Or how real you could call whatever this was. What using and learning the techniques right now took of her was mostly bravery and the will to try different things even while being hesitant. After a little while those things started to really come easily for her.

Yet skill combinations on the other hand were immensely difficult. She just couldn’t get the timing right. Waldina blamed it on the low number of techniques offered to her as of now. She hoped using combinations would eventually get easier as she’d get old familiar skills with which she used to play back in the day. Those golden combinations were the ones her character, Cyril, had ranked as one of Adventure Online’s top 10 most powerful characters. A few times she had even been the number one.

The ranking itself proved to Waldina - and others - that ninjas had potential. That gave her hope that she could make it even in this reality. It would take some time as it had in the game, but eventually she’d succeed. She was sure of it. Though it frustrated her a bit. She tried to remember she wasn’t here and now trying to prove how omnipotential ninjas were. After all, her only current goal was to enjoy this opportunity to feel like she was her all-time favorite game character.

For now Waldina mainly used the ninja techniques that helped with moving distances or made it easier to surprise monsters. At times she used her shurikens to kill monsters - while practicing aiming with those star-like weapons. It was by no means easy and in the beginning most of her shurikens flew to who knows where and she’d had to run around trying to regather her weapons. Yet with each throw her aim got better and after a while she was getting immensely better hitting her target more and more often.

Though Waldina liked her ninja techniques a lot, she mainly relied on the short sword at her hip and the daggers on her thigh belt. Using those came more naturally to her and thus felt easier to hit the target with. It was like the sword was molded for her hands. Naturally easier techniques meant faster monster killing.

She combined her sword and dagger skills with ninja-like jumps, twirls and somersaults. Her favorite combination so far was a fast twirl while drawing her sword. This way the blade hit faster and in some cases hit multiple enemies as well. Aaand it looked amazingly fun in the game of AO. It was a rather basic ninja skill but Waldina had enjoyed looking at it multiple times a day. And now she enjoyed doing it.

Twirling got her hair to flutter in the wind. In some way it made her feel years younger and somewhat carefree. It was as if she’d returned to her teens where the biggest worries were math tests and not the troublesome adult worries. It felt like freedom and excitement. Each moment in her black ninja costume made Waldina happier and more excited. She wanted to see what this reality had to offer for her.

After a long while and reaching level three Waldina finally saw the stonewall surrounding the starter city Inizio. There was still quite some way till she reached the city itself but being this close to her first destination made her feet lighter. She ran faster, using her extra speed and agility as ninja, and sped through the meadow. On the way she fought some small monsters and laughed how easy it already felt. She didn’t feel like a low level character no longer - even though she was. It was like she was made for this and she absolutely loved it. Finally her knowledge of ninjas became beneficial.

It was almost time for sunset and Waldina reached the gates for Inizio. In this time of day there wasn’t much line for the gates meaning she could just walk up to the gateguards. They had traditional armors on, adorned with the logo of the town they were guarding, meaning Inizio. Their faces were stern.

“Hello. What business do you have in Inizio?” one of the guards asked, looking at Waldina judgingly.

“Hello there. I’m looking to stay a couple of nights in the town of Inizio. I’m an adventurer”, Waldina flashed a relaxed yet friendly smile back at the guard who nodded slowly.

“And are you a member of Adventurer’s guild?” the other guard asked with an expectant expression. He judged Waldina’s clothing and demeanor with a little bit of amusement. Waldina frowned. Finally she decided to lift her bracelet and show the guards her profile from it. That made both of the guards go all serious and gone was any remnants of amusement. Waldina got chills running all over her back. Could it be that the bracelets didn’t work as identification here?

“Pay us three cold coins and check in to Adventurer’s guild tomorrow morning. With these we’ll let you into the city”, the first spoken guard told her and placed her hand expectantly in front of Waldina.

Waldina sighed and checked her inventory from her bracelet. Then she took some coins out of it. Even if she didn’t have her favorite gear with her starter character, she at least got tons of money. She liked to think it was compensation for all her lost equipment and hours spent on her dear Cyril.

“Here”, Waldina said as she placed the coins on the guard's hand. The guard looked warily at the coins for a moment before he nodded contently and moved to the side, thus letting Waldina walk past him and into the town. Waldina nodded as she stepped into a cute medieval city.