Mocked at Level 1, I Became the Spear God

Chapter 2: Roll the Bones

Nate stood at the center of an ancient stone altar. Around him, translucent figures drifted in the half-dark, each holding a different weapon, waiting to be picked.

"Please name your character."

The system voice was warm, almost musical, and it landed right inside his skull.

He thought for about half a second. "Wren."

"Name accepted."

Cheap, maybe. A swallow had always been his mother's favorite bird—small, tough, showed up every spring when nothing else did. It beat the edgy garbage half the people on the forums were calling themselves.

"Please choose your class. Touch a figure to read its details."

He walked the ring. Melee classes ran on Strength and Vitality. Rogues and archers on Agility. Mages and healers on Intelligence. Standard textbook stuff.

Then he stopped in front of the figure holding a long spear.

He'd always loved spears. No cool reason. Just that a spear looked like it meant business in a way a sword never quite did.

He closed his hand around the shaft. It was solid, real, cold against his palm.

"Confirm: Spear Warrior?"

"Confirm."

A pulse of light. The figure dissolved like smoke on a wind and folded into him, and suddenly his head was full of motion—thrusts, sweeps, blocks, hundreds of them, muscle memory that wasn't his but felt like it.

The game was absurdly real.

"Roll spear-specialization talent now?"

Right. The roll. He'd almost forgotten. "Roll."

*Ding.*

"Congratulations, Wren. You have drawn a **Rare** talent: Spear Mastery."

**Spear Mastery (Rare): spear-skill proficiency gain +10%. +1 to all spear skills.**

Nate stared at it. He'd had no idea how rare "rare" actually was, but the forums had spent weeks slavering over the tier, and his pulse did a stupid little flip.

Okay. Maybe today wasn't a total write-off after all.

"Talent roll complete. You will be dispatched to a random starter village. Good gaming."

The world blinked.

A village appeared below him—timber houses, smoke from chimneys, green hills rolling off in every direction. Players materialized around him one after another, swearing, laughing, whooping.

The Western server had four capital cities, thirty-two walled towns, a hundred starter villages under each. He'd been dropped wherever the IP said he belonged.

He pulled up his sheet.

**Name: Wren**

**Level: 1**

**Strength: 1 / Agility: 1 / Vitality: 1 / Intelligence: 1**

**Attack: 3 | HP: 100 | MP: 50**

**P.Def: 3 | M.Def: 3**

**Attack Speed: 1.1 | Move Speed: 1.1**

**Attribute points to spend: 1**

**Talent: Spear Mastery (Rare).**

**Skill: Basic Spearplay Lv1 (+1) — spear strikes deal +20% damage.**

Spear Warriors ran on Strength. Every point bought three attack. Every level granted +1 to all stats plus one free point.

He dumped the free point into Strength. Six attack.

He opened his pack. The starter gear was exactly what it sounded like: one plain wooden spear.

**Wooden Spear**

**Quality: Common**

**Attack: 6**

Beautiful.

The village square was a zoo. Nate shouldered his way through the crowd toward the chief's hut, same as everyone else. It took him a full minute of elbows and apologies to reach the old man.

"Son," the chief said, like he hadn't said it four hundred times already, "the rabbits are tearing up my root-fields east of the village. Drive them off for me?"

"Accept."

*Ding.* **Quest: Cull the Rabbits.** Solo. Collect 10 rabbit teeth. 0/10.

The east field was open grassland as far as the eye could see, and it was crawling with—no, it was crawling with players. The actual rabbits were outnumbered about two hundred to one.

Normal mobs dropped at one percent. Quest items dropped higher, but not by much. Kill credit went to whoever dealt the most damage and landed the final blow; loot went to the killer, with a three-minute protection window.

A hare popped into existence ten feet away. Nate charged, spear cocked, and drove it in with the first thrust the game had ever given him.

*-10.*

About a tenth of its bar. The hare's stats popped up: Level 1, 120 HP, 10 attack, 5 defense.

His real damage worked out to about fourteen a hit. Ten swings and it was dinner.

The hare clawed him back. *-7.* Fine.

Then an arrow hissed in and buried itself in the hare. *-7.* Before Nate could even swear, a guy with a hatchet came hacking.

"Come on, everyone on it!" the stranger yelled. "Last hit takes it!"

The crowd mobbed in. Nate gritted his teeth and stuck with it, edge slightly higher than everyone else's, and when the bar hit zero the nameplate flipped to him.

No drop. Of course.

One hare, five XP. Level 1 to 2 was a thousand XP. He'd have to win two hundred of these scrums to move up.

He ground for an hour. Won three kills. Got zero teeth.

He stopped, sweat running, and looked out at a field that was nothing but players shoving at rabbits. No way was this the fastest path. He turned and walked back into town.

He worked the questgivers like a checklist. The blacksmith wanted twenty rabbit teeth. The tailor wanted ten wolf pelts. A girl named Lila wanted ten chicken feathers. The grocer wanted ten wolf fangs. Old Mrs. Hale wanted ten rabbit hides. The grocer's boy wanted ten eggs. Do them all, and he'd hit level two or three.

On his way back through the center of town, he spotted something nobody else had noticed: a walled training yard with a sign that read *Newcomb Training Hall*. It was nearly empty.

He touched the notice board.

*Ding.* **Enter the training trial? Dummies grant no XP. This is for practice and skill proficiency only.**

Right. Nobody wanted to be here. Everyone was chasing levels, and why waste time on free damage when you could be out murdering rabbits?

Except—Spear Mastery gave him +10% proficiency gain.

He walked in.

The yard was as big as two football fields. A dozen players were already there, working on their basic skills before going out to compete. That was smarter than it looked, but most players figured a +20% damage bump wasn't worth the grind. For Nate, with the talent stacked on, Basic Spearplay Lv2 meant +30%. In a kill-stealing war, that was everything.

Dummies spawned at random within two meters of him. They were invulnerable. Every hundred hits added one proficiency point. At his attack speed, about two minutes per point.

Lv1 to Lv2 needed a hundred points. Roughly three hours.

Boring? Sure. But Nate had spent whole weekends in college just chaining combos against a training robot until his wrists ached. Patience was the one thing he'd never had to borrow.

He hefted the wooden spear, squared up on the nearest dummy, and drove it straight into the thing's chest.

*Clang. Clang. Clang.*

Nobody else in the yard knew it yet. But the guy about to win the launch wasn't the fastest draw. It was the one willing to do the boring thing first.