As soon as Klaus Park arrived home, he noticed a great smell in the house’s interior.

*Sniff*

This smell was nostalgic and, at the same time, cozy. This feeling was enough to unlock memories in him from the time his grandmother would travel from Pennsylvania to visit them, but she usually only did that during the summer.

Immediately, Klaus walked to the house’s kitchen, curious to know where this smell was coming from. He walked past the living room and saw Chun and Ard Park smiling together on the kitchen counter.

From a distance, Klaus noticed that both were preparing Michael’s mother’s traditional hazelnut cookies. Watching this loving and, still, a such typical scene between mother and son warmed Klaus’ heart. This kind of thing motivated Klaus to leave the house every morning for work without complaint.

Now it was undeniable that he needed to create stability for his family. So that moments like this would be more common.

Klaus thought during the train ride that he should tell Chun Park that the hospital called his boss because if they kept calling, Megan would surely be ordered to fire him. However, telling them now would get into the cozy atmosphere. So he just crossed the living room to greet them with a smile.

“Hey, what are you two doing? Oh, are those grandma’s cookies?” Klaus asked.

Ard and Chun had huge smiles at the sight of Klaus. “Yes, I called your grandma and asked for that recipe. It’s early December, I guess it fits with the Christmas mood.”

Ard’s mouth was all glazed with cookie dough, showing that he was in the kitchen more to eat than to help their mother.

Klaus couldn’t judge him for that because Grandma’s cookies were better than any other. These were crispy on the outside, soft just right on the inside, and the flavor was simply divine.

“Set some aside for me to eat later, Mom. And Ard, don’t eat them all at once, or you’ll get a tummy ache.” Then, with his right index finger, Klaus spoke to Chun as he wiped some excess dough at the left corner of Ard’s mouth.

“All right.” Chun agreed and turned her attention back to the next round of cookies she was preparing.

Klaus was not hungry since he had eaten a $5 hot dog on the way to the station, so he just showered and lay down on his bed.

He controlled the anxiety to play Rise Online all day long, but as he adjusted the NeuroGear in his head, he smiled with excitement.

“Start Connection!”

His field of vision slowly dimmed. Then the familiar voice of the system and music entered his ears, and his vision cleared again.

In just over ten seconds, his consciousness was transferred from the overwhelming reality of Earth to the Lands of Midgard.

He was exactly where he had logged out the day before. Before, he was in front of the beautiful crystal clear lake located in the confines of the Spider Den.𝓞𝒱𝐞𝔩xt.𝗇𝓔t

“I wonder what the winning bid will be for the Swift Arrows…” Remembering that before he went to sleep, he placed the 35 Swift Arrows he made with Therkara on the World Market.

The price of a Swift Arrow was normally 50 bronze coins. However, the arrows made by Kaizen had a Mutant Rating! Therefore, he expected the price to be 3 or 4 times higher. This way, he could profit a lot.

Immediately, he proclaimed the command:

“Open World Market.”

[You cannot check the World Market from your current location. Instead, find an Auction House or reach Level 10 in the trading profession to do this remotely].

“Shit…”

Kaizen didn’t know much about the World Market. He read that this was a platform where he could buy and sell items to other players, so that was basically what he knew. It was a nasty surprise that he couldn’t check how many bronze coins the arrows were sold for and that he couldn’t pick up the money.

Still, he had no reason to despair; there was probably an Auction House in Holinda.

Before Kaizen left the Spider’s Den for the last time, he scoured every building in the old blacksmith village.

He had no plans to return to this place after the unexpected visit of players at dawn, so this was his last chance to investigate the area, so he searched carefully so as not to miss anything.

As he was in luck, he found some copper ores and gold stored in stone jars, but nothing more significant than this.

The weapons and items found in the houses were all rusted or rotten, which confirmed the theory that that place was indeed flooded from time to time. The only things found that were usable were the items from the Medullar Forge, and even though there was nothing there worth the sacrifice of carrying, no user would buy such old crap.

As Kaizen climbed the ladder to exit the underground lair, he thought:

‘The Spear of Theus was really the only good item here. Well, I guess I was lucky that it was exactly the item I pulled to fight the Scarlet Demon Spider… The inside of the handle is a little hollow and rotten, but I think I can restore it.’

Kaizen was satisfied with the progress he made over the weekend. Before, he wanted to find a blacksmith to repair a broken dagger; now, he was a blacksmith and had a dagger ten times better than the one he already had.

In addition, he was proud that he could fight and beat four players with average levels close to 15.

At the time, even he didn’t understand why his enemies were so far below him. After all, in this last fight, his attributes were balanced with his opponents’, and he was debuffed and surrounded, so in a normal situation, he would have died. However, that’s not what happened.

‘From the reaction of their leader and the archer, I’m beginning to believe that psychic powers are not common in this game. They weren’t even prepared to react against it.’

Kaizen didn’t know it yet, but most of the players in Rise Online were as shocked as he was by the emergence of the Psych Class.

Hundreds of thousands of things about Rise Online have been posted in the past three days on the Webnet, but no news has shaken the community as much as the three totally bizarre events he caused.

On Friday, a warning about the emergence of One Class echoed through the skies around the world.

On Saturday, the first death of an unknown Boss occurred in the Cloudy Woods, an area believed to have been reset two months ago. This shocked mainly high-level players.

Finally, on Sunday, three Mutant-ranked Fast Arrows appeared on the World Market.

It was undeniable that Rise Online was once again changing. New things were being discovered every day, but this time all players could feel this tide of change, from newcomers to beta-testers.

Meanwhile, the person responsible for all these events was nonchalantly leaving the Den of Spiders.

“Fresh air at last!” He exclaimed with open arms. “Cof… Cof… I forgot how bad it is to breathe this mist from this damned forest!”

…

Edited by: DrHitsuji

If you want to see original illustrations of Rise Online characters, consider helping me on pa treon: Pa treon.com/NandoFalske

More character images in:

https:///bpqq9u4gS8

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