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(Recognizing User… If you are Elizabeth, the system will begin the next process.)

As soon as I touched the power button on the capsule, it quickly moved onto the recognition stage as if it was set to directly connect into the game when it’s turned on.

(Would you like to scan your entire body again?)

As I didn’t want to strip down bare again, I clicked cancel.

(Beginning scanning of your iris.)

At last, a red light passed by my eye for a moment. Even though it wasn’t particularly bright or blinding, the light did shine directly into my eyes, so tears were naturally formed.

(Recognition complete. Please type in your password.)

A virtual hologram of a keyboard that was installed inside the capsule appeared in midair. It was a 3D touch screen and looked fascinating every time I saw it, but I was flustered.

How am I supposed to input a password that isn’t in my mind?

Just as I thought I should give it up, I suddenly remembered the secret password that was written in the letter that my grandfather passed on to me. Although there was a low probability that it would be correct, it was the only password I knew. If the password is related with her past and her memories, then there should be a possibility that it’s here as well.

After deciding that to be the case in my mind, I carefully tapped the password one by one.

Then tapped the ‘enter’ button and waited for it to load.

(Recognition complete. Welcome to Blue Sky.)¹

With cheery music and the screen looking as if it’s jumping through time and space, my consciousness slowly settles down and goes into a trance. This was commonly referred to as the ‘Real Mode’, which is required for me to enjoy the game.

Every time I log in, my heart races. As I open my eyes again, it takes a while to adjust as my vision slowly turns from hazy to being more clear.

-Welcome to the Lucas continent, Artoria. It has been 29 days since your last login.

With a refreshing sound that notified me that I was logged in, it gave me a different feeling than usual as it was in English and not Korean.

With me logging in, the friends that she made in the game that are connected to this character will be notified that I had logged in. Or if I am registered in a guild, the guild members would be notified…

As the hazy fog disappeared from my eyes, I looked around. Usually when you log out, you would do it in a ‘Safe Zone’, if you were to log out in a place that’s not marked as a ‘Safe Zone’, you will receive the penalty of having your character’s afterimage stay in that spot for 1 to 3 minutes². Of course, you are in most danger in that period of time.

Therefore users would log out in safe zones, and there were several places that were designated as one.

It would be places such as villages, around the central fountain of the main city area, or usually the personal room inside an inn. Users who are quite wealthy would use their houses that they purchased in game or in the bedroom of the palace they own.

I also remembered that in the previous life I was using a moderately small sized house whenever I logged out.

“Hmm…”

Just as I suspected, I opened my eyes to find myself in quite a large bedroom, it was too big for only one person to use. Of course, matching the era that the game was set in, the decor of the room looked to be of the medieval age and didn’t have a single modern convenience. Even though it was different to what bedrooms are like in real life, it was still decorated in ways that had a feminine touch.

Realizing that this wide and expansive room was not much different than the real world bedroom that I was just in, I smirked and stepped out of the bedroom.

A long hallway with arched pillars came before my view. The wide hallway draped with red carpet and decorated with expensive magic lanterns on their walls looked amazingly beautiful.

I realized that the virtual mansion that I found myself in was not only as large as the one I was living in real life, but much larger as well. This fact became real to me once I reached the main hall.

“At this point, seeing as how the hall is domed, this isn’t a mansion size. Then is it a palace?”

I definitely remembered being invited to the largest scale mansion in the past and stepping into the main hallway, but this place seemed to be twice larger than that. Of course, I had thought that the place I was invited to was enormous, but this place seemed as large as a soccer stadium, though I may be slightly exaggerating.

After confirming that it was a palace, I decided I shouldn’t needlessly walk around anymore and open my status panel.

After a simple command, my sight became slightly blurry, then information about my character started to appear as I saw my character in 3rd person camera position.

Strength: 1065+(120)
Dexterity: 438+(50)
Wisdom: 103+(30)
Charisma: 305+(60)
Luck: 532+(50)

Level – 895
Class – Knight (Proficiency – Grand Master Level 3)

Health Points: 18900/18900+(2000)
Magic Points: 1400/1400+(500)

Safe Zone Assigned: Sky Castle]

I couldn’t help but gasp out loud in surprise even when I was staring at a simple status screen. I did have a hunch, but I didn’t know I would truly be the Artoria that I was thinking of. Artoria. Who is it? Although the server was different, she was officially number 1 in the level ranking of England, and a number 1 in unofficial worldwide ranking, shining brightly as ‘First Master’ in both name and skill.

The existence that was shrouded in veil as she never revealed her identity unlike the other top ranking players, which was even more mysterious as no one was actually close to her. No one could have actually predicted that Artoria was actually female in real life as well.

I would have also not believed that to be the truth unless I saw it with my eyes.

“Ahaha…”

On top of that, she was level 895. Considering that I was level 758 in the month previously, I couldn’t disregard the massive gap in levels. I remembered that the actual number 1 ranking player in Korea was in the late 700s in level, and may have just entered the 800 range recently…

On top of that, her proficiency, which is different to levels and is the true testament to power and skill, was at a grand master tier. The ‘Master’ tiers are separated to 10 different levels, and I knew that once you reached the max tier in ‘Master’ you would advance into even higher tier of mastery, but to think that not only did she reach beyond level 10 of ‘Master’, but she was level 3 of ‘Grand Master’ as well…

I was too stunned for words. I knew that there was a difference between me and her environment that she plays in, but the difference was so massive that there was no way I can even imagine closing the gap between us. As I remembered myself being confident in the upper mid echelon of all the ranking players, I became suddenly embarrassed to even think that way.

Even her health was at the level of an average mid-tier field boss monster’s level. Regarding the health points, you gain additional max points as a level up bonus whenever you play solo since there were no other partners to take the hits for you in battle, but considering that I barely reached 10,000 at my level, it was an extremely large gap of number.

“A number that can’t possibly be obtained unless you played from beginning till now as a solo player.”

Although it was a show of her wealth to be able to hunt alone this whole time, playing as a party is fun as well. When you understand that she didn’t play a single moment in a party for the last 5 years and hunted alone, you couldn’t help but understand how patience she was. It wasn’t like this was a single player game…

At this point, the fact that the registered Safe Zone was a Sky Castle didn’t surprise me anymore.

Usually guilds would be sporting a castle to do the contents that castle owners can enjoy such as defending from castle sieges, but Sky Castle was something that was owned by a single person and was exempt from such content, a ‘non-siegeable castle’ in other words.

Although it gives a whole slew of advantages to the owner, the cost to create one was equivalently huge. It was a well known secret that in order to create this special castle that’s floating in the sky, you needed to complete a secret special quest as well as to consume an enormous amount of materials, plus you required 3 dragon hearts that reached millions of dollars each.

I’ve heard that there were two existing in Korea, but they were both owned by giant guilds as a cooperative ownership, not by anyone personally. Considering that it is Elizabeth’s personal ownership, one could assume just how much Elizabeth had.

The problem is how many people in the real world can invest that much money into this game.

Therefore I was confident that I wouldn’t be surprised even when I look at the items that are equipped onto my character.

The very first thing I checked was the 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐝 sword type weapon that was the only thing equipped on my hand, which had the option to be wielded one handed or two handed.

Growth item. The attack power increases related to the character’s level and strength.

Strength +50
Luck +20
Attack Speed 20% increase
Potion Effect 10% increase
Skill Cooldown 10% reduce
Attribute: Attack (Light type) + 100%]

“This is just cheating…”

That’s right, that weapon was enough to make me say even those words.

“National Item”, something I’ve only heard from others. That’s right, there were only ten of these ‘legendary tier’ items in existence in each nation. Usually the items would be born from the history and legends of the real life nation, but there were also other special exempted items as well, but in this case it seems that this legendary item was based on England’s most famous sword. It was a sword that even I, who don’t know much about England’s history, would recognise after all.

The important thing was that not only was this a legendary item, but it was also a weapon. In the past, I remembered that the legendary item in Korea that was revealed to the public was a flute called ‘Manpashikjuk’. Of course, it wasn’t actually a flute, but something that can be adjusted to that size while being able to become small enough to be hung around the neck like a necklace, and you equipped it that way.

In anycase, the giant guilds around Korea all fought over the ownership of this accessory, and a huge bloodbath ensued with many ranking players dying from the battle. As I didn’t have any power to match them, I only watched it happen on the sidelines, but in the end I couldn’t tell who the accessory went to.

Anyway, the main point was that it was simply an accessory that isn’t a majorly important equipment, yet it was so sought after that the minimum cost for the flute reached in the millions of dollars. Of course, it wasn’t actually ever traded for money, but it was the assumed price tag for the flute which was calculated by professionals of that area judging by how rare it was and the amazing options it had, and I also agreed with that amount as well.

And yet this legendary weapon is in my hand? This is amazing. It meant that I had in my hand something that would be worth billions of dollars in auction. This may sound like it’s out of nowhere, but there are currently 20 million users of Blue Sky around the world and the concurrent users reached around 3 million in Korea alone. Considering the numbers may rise even higher, the value of this item may increase even more dramatically. On top of that, the currency used in the virtual world is rising in terms of value per dollar, and the fact that it wasn’t too far off in value parity with real life money further boosted this value of the item.

I looked at my armor wondering if it’s similar.

Set Option

All stats + 30
Increased resistance to Light attacks 20%
10% chance of Auto dodge
Decrease Critical Hit damage by 50%
Increase Magic Item finding rate by 15%⁴]

“Phew…”

But at least, the armor wasn’t at legend tier. The other accessories I had equipped were at the ancient tier as well. I let out a sigh, which I couldn’t figure out whether it was because I was happy or disappointed.

But even so, the ‘Ancient tier’ of items doesn’t mean that it’s a common item.

In Blue Sky, shortened to B.S, there are 7 tiers of item quality.

From the lowest, it goes from Normal → Magic → Rare → Special → Unique → Ancient → Legend. Normal tier items are like normal equipment you can buy at shops. As they do not have any magic power imbued in them, you can simply say it gives nothing but attack or defence stats for your character. Of course, it meant that it was worth nothing more than something you sell at a shop. Although some users who specialize in enhancing and upgrading items like these would find them useful, they would still need rare ingredients and materials, so the fact that they are normal items doesn’t matter too much to them.

Magic tier. If you get it, it becomes more of a nuisance. Although it is definitely more useful than a normal tier item, it is so common and if there was even only 1 bonus effect on the item, the repair cost for the item was so high that it was too costly to use the item itself. Therefore users would end up selling them or use it like a ‘one time use’ equipment where they use it until its durability reaches 1 and they throw it away.

Rare tier. At this tier, the items that are admittedly worth quite a bit at shops, and are therefore much rarer than magic tier. As the players would be relying on these items to hunt on a daily basis, the prices of valuable accessories or materials could go up to several thousands of dollars. These items are the upper-middle tier of equipment that users use most frequently.

Special tier. As you can tell from the name, from this tier on, the items are of high quality. Although the price range for these items fluctuate way too much, the high level players would often trade and buy these tiers of items like the middle tier players would the rare tier items.

Unique tier. These items are used by ranking players of the server, and won’t be dropped by regular monsters, meaning that you can only gain them by killing raid-tier boss monsters. The prices for even singular parts of the item would reach the price of a regular car in real life, but nevertheless those ranking players would wear full sets of these items. Of course, the weapons they use would often be ancient tier which is above unique tier.

If they were accessories, they would jump up drastically in prices, and the amounts would be unimaginably high.

Ancient tier. If unique tier items are something that ranking people use, then it is adequate to call these items something that top ranking players would use. Unless you acquired it from an event or a quest, these would only appear from raid boss monsters with the probability reaching the levels of winning a lottery, and its minimum cost would still be around several hundred thousand dollars. According to which area of equipment it was and what bonus stats it gives, it would increase the price by the dozens, or by hundreds of times.

Finally, legend tier. As I have explained a moment ago, these items are like national treasures, and are limited in numbers per country, a one-of-a-kind item with equally powerful bonus stats and options imbued in them. As none of them were ever sold in the market, no one could put a proper price tag on them, and the ‘weapon’ slot item in legend tier was higher than any other.

Therefore, just because it was an ancient tier didn’t mean that it wasn’t particularly useful. It was actually enough to call it the highest tier of item just by looking at the bonus stat it gives. Although it does bug me somewhat that this armor set was on the heavy side since I was a medium weight armor user.

Heavy weight armor. Meaning that this plate mail was inherently huge in size compared to other armors, and it was so big that if you were to only see the silhouette of Artoria, you would believe they were a slightly small adult male. On top of that, if I were to wear a full helm as well, no one would be able to tell that there is a woman inside.

On top of everything, there was a cape that covered even the smallest gap that showed her shoulders, meaning that it was completely understandable that anyone would think Artoria was a male. Well, that didn’t matter too much anyway so I closed my inventory screen. I was sure that she must have had many more items in her personal stash, but I didn’t want to particularly go out my way to check it, and I was able to find out a lot of things about her just from what I currently had.

There were even hundreds of high level one-time-use potions that reached the price range of 50 gold ($50 USD) each on my shortcut bar. What more would you need to know?

The titles I had were even more shocking. Usually titles are given to you when you reach a certain requirement or complete a particular quest or action. Titles not only change your calling, but it would also often give you bonus stats or extra EXP.

Usually, titles of that calibre would only be bestowed upon people who were the ‘First’ to unlock an accomplishment, or achieved something ‘Nearly Impossible’. Titles like those wouldn’t be granted to the subsequent players. Naturally, rankers would make use of these prestigious titles, and it also serves to create a gap of difference in power among rankers and top rankers as well.

“First user. First Ogre Slayer, First Sword Expert, First Sword Master, Grand Master, First To Reach 500 Strength, 1000, etc etc…”

There were several times more titles that were unlisted than the titles that were listed in front of me. If there was one thing that’s curious, it probably is that fact that while there were many titles relating to becoming the first in achieving something, nearly none of that are about achieving something nearly impossible.

Of course, even just having the title of being the first to accomplish something was already way too powerful, so I didn’t particularly mind that.

I also had the title of ‘First Death Knight’ in my life, so I understood just how amazing each of these individual titles were. This really was an amazing character.

Because of that, her skills section were also amazing as well. There were 5 tiers in skills that you can acquire from skill books that drop from monsters, that go from P → S → A → B → C, and all the skills that she had equipped were P tier.

I wouldn’t really need to explain just how rare and valuable these skills are anymore to you.

“She really is amazing over here as much as in real life huh…”

1. Robinxen: Wow so convenient.
2. Robinxen: So….no panic force closes like I always do in combat games?
3. Silva: I still believe Altria works in place of Arthur, they did specifically mention that they know the player is a “female”, so doesn’t make sense to name a female character as Arthur.

   Another fact is that they also use Altria in FGO as a female version of Arthur. Well, I’ll leave it to Robin to decide whether to use Artoria or Altria as the character name
   Jay:hmmm, ok, yeah I’ll leave it to Robin
   Robinxen: Jokes on you, I chose neither

4. Silva: At least this is already considered a top-tier item and not some broken af equipment found at the start of the game like in Reborn as a Transcendent. Chinese is really so bad at writing game-related novels without making their items super OP.
   Jay: it’s a fine line between giant numbers and being underpowered…
   I’d say this is on the underpowered side, but they can always add more anyways.
   Robinxen: I dunno in PSO2 terms this is rather average. It’s basically just got Mastery and Lucky Charm with some other niche effects.