Vellen Online

In a small, worn out room with only a spring mattress lying on the floor beside an old nightstand sat an unkempt, thin looking 19-year-old boy. The walls were yellowing with various stains from who-knows-what. Locke groaned before taking a large bite out of a brick of dry instant noodles.

Crunch.

"Never lucky! If only the coin-to-credits exchange didn't raise their fee! Damn those greedy guilds, I swear, I'll take them all down one day. Ha ha."

Locke swung his fists in the air as if he were fighting a phantom. After a few swings, he laughed at himself as his arms fall to the sides from exhaustion. His sad attempt at shadowboxing was even more pathetic, because he did not have the physical strength to continue.

A notification popped up on a worn-out smartphone near his bed.

'5 minutes until your death penalty is lifted.' The notification made Locke's sour mood perk up. He stood up and did a few minutes of stretches before downing a whole liter of water from a thermos and finally laying down on the mattress.

Underneath the nightstand was metal box. It had a stark contrast to everything else in the room based on how expensive it looked. He carefully slid it over and gently released the latches. Inside was a well-polished and futuristic looking helmet. He slid it over his head and had a wide grin on his face.

[Connecting to 'Vellon Online' server. ID verified, Lucky Skeleton death count: 999. Remaining lockout period: 0:32 seconds]

An avatar which closely resembled the frail-looking boy floated in this dark space for several seconds while waiting for the timer. He waved his hand and a menu popped up. Several options appeared, including inbox, friends list, and inventory.

'After the 40% penalty for death, I still have 62 copper and 3 soul chips. Since I found that hidden area in the forest, I can grind at least 2 copper an hour. I can't believe I starved to death the moment I found out about this jackpot! Hopefully no one has found it in the last few days.'

Just before the timer reached zero, the phone icon on his menu began to shake and flash. He clicked it and a voice came through the other end laughing hysterically. Locke was not particularly happy being ridiculed but this was his only friend so he waited for him to speak.

"Hey Lucky, I see you died again. How long was the penalty this time?" A guy named Black Bull started to tease him. Ever since Locke joined Vellon Online, Bull has been his friend. Everyone else blocked him after he failed to move on with the group after twenty tries.

"Sigh, four days."

"What the… doesn't the death penalty only go up by one second each time? How many times did you die already?"

"The number seems to scale the more deaths you accumulate… this would be my 1,000th new life."

The game Vellon Online broke the market when it came out. It was a monumentally different kind of game than any other online multiplayer for several reasons. First, it implemented the newest quantum computing and AI technology, allowing the system to run itself.

The company advertised that the system could generate new quests, encounters, and its own micro-civilization with perfect accuracy. Those who play in the game world won't know the difference between that and reality. This also meant that they had no control over what happened in the game.

Second, the developers had partnered with several large corporations and implemented the first ever seen digital currency exchange in a VR game. This pulled in billions of unemployed or dissatisfied people to play the game on launch day. One had to realize that the population of the world had already reached ten trillion, with many unable to find work.

And finally, the main mechanic of this game was truly unforgiving. Once you died, you had to start from level 0 again. There were naturally some balances in place to make recovery a lot easier. For example, if you reached level 5, then you would be able to reach that level with less experience than before.

However, the most difficult thing was your items were destroyed on death. Only a few unique classes could soul-bind their gear or recover items from people's corpses. Examples of such class being the Artificer and Scavenger

"You're truly talented, I don't think any of those bigwigs could have the perseverance to die that many times in two months."

"Well, its easy for me, I just farm enough money to survive and pay my bills day by day. I can't beat the promotion trial to move on from the tutorial anyway."

Locke ended the call after he exchanged a few more casual words with his friend. He finished inputting the avatar data for his new character and the dark world around him changed to a noisy town square.

The first thing he did was open his storage. Although dying set you back to level 0 and destroyed all of your equipment, that only applied to level 1 or higher equipment.

Locke took out several items and fully equipped himself in level 0 gear. His armor was a thick padded cloth and weapon was a wooden short sword. They only granted +3 defense total, and +2 damage, but he never had to buy a new one.

A new player appeared a white light in front of him and looked around happily. When she saw the short and scrawny Locke she beamed. She clearly had not read any guides; Locke called these people 'easy money.'

"Wow, you already have armor? How do I get it? Where do I go?"

Locke chuckled inwardly, this person clearly thought he was some sort of expert. He didn't bother to correct her and simply said, "Three copper and I'll show you around the shops and hunting grounds."

She looked excited thinking she found a really helpful person to guide her through the start of the game. Each new player started with ten copper. "I'm Dazzling Orchid, thank you for your help!"

A trade request opened, and just as she was going to accept, a group of three players walked over.

"Hey newbie, don't trade with this guy. He's trying to scam you. Only people who hang around here with full cloth and wooden sword are scammers or Super seniors. He he."

"Yeah, it's better if he were a scammer, a Super senior's bad advice might just ruin your account."

Dazzling Orchid looked confused at this group wearing leather armor and copper weapons. However, Locke wasn't surprised at all. 'Level 1's, looks like these guys beat the trial and are here to get their rookie badges to leave the tutorial.'

"What's a Super senior? Are they some sort of bad group?"

"They may as well be! Super seniors are players who consistently fail to beat the tutorial and have died several times. And the worst of them all is a guy called Lucky Skeleton, people say he's died over a thousand times!"

Locke winced at that. 'I've only died nine-hundred and ninety-nine times, get it right you bastard.'

However, Locke knew he was infamous, but it's already been four days since his last death, how are people still talking about him? It's a shame he couldn't figure out how to turn his fame into profit. He turned and started walking towards a smithy in the town, ignoring the group.

As he entered the run-down smithy, a mature looking woman swinging a large hammer at some heated metal. She was well endowed and fairly muscular, but it did not show. Her hairs were beginning to grey a few strands at a time, but it was mostly hidden by being tied up.

She heard someone entering and turned to look.

"Ah, if it isn't Lucky Skeleton, its already been a few days I thought you'd finally moved on." Bria gave Locke a sincere smile and beckoned him over to the next room. Many people did not believe the advertised intelligent NPCs but were quickly proven wrong.

"Here's the load of reforged scrap iron for today. Like always, 20 copper to buy them from me, and old Bert will pay you 25 once you bring them over."

Locke nodded at the NPC and passed the copper over. He had been making a slow profit like this since he found out about Bria's daily delivery to the border guards. It took two hours to travel to the border where the field smith Bert worked.

Five copper for two hours of work, with the rate of three credits per copper, that's fifteen credits! Delivery drivers get paid twelve credits for one hour of work, so it was pretty good for him who stayed home all day. With fifteen credits a day, he can save four-hundred credits a month to pay for his bills. The remaining credits went to living expenses.

Unfortunately, since his death penalty has been increasing more and more, he's started skipping meals. At first when he discovered this, he was able to save some extra money and splurged it, only to die the next day and not have a meal for 3 days.

"Awesome, I'll be back to deliver some more."