There was no soap or body wash in the inn room, so Lin Yu could only give his body a simple scrub.
Lin Yu finished washing quickly. After soaking in the water a little longer, he rose from the bathing tub.
Stepping out of the wooden tub, Lin Yu casually took the bath towel hanging on the wall and began drying himself.
"This hair is so hard to dry. How did I never know long hair took so much work to dry?" After that casual complaint, Lin Yu continued drying his hair.
Once his hair was dry, Lin Yu returned to the inn bed and pulled the covers over himself. Then he silently recited the command to activate deep meditation.
As soon as he gave the command, Lin Yu noticed a progress bar appear in his field of vision.
After doing all that, Lin Yu silently recited the command to exit the game.
Looking at the option on the panel asking whether his character should enter deep meditation after he logged out, Lin Yu chose yes.
The scene before Lin Yu went black. When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was the lid of the game pod.
He pressed the button beside him, and the game pod's lid slowly opened.
Holding the edge of the pod for support, Lin Yu clutched his head and slowly sat up.
Lin Yu felt as though his brain were a rusted machine. Whenever he tried to think, his consciousness felt as though it were shrouded in gauze.
After taking some time to adjust, Lin Yu stood up in the game pod.
He rubbed his stomach. He hadn't had any water in half a day, and he had missed both lunch and dinner, yet Lin Yu felt neither hungry nor thirsty.
Glancing at the nutrient solution in the game pod, which was still more than half full, Lin Yu could only marvel at how amazing it was.
After a quick wash, Lin Yu lay down on his bed and soon fell asleep.
Lin Yu woke promptly at six in the morning.
After a quick breakfast and taking care of his bodily needs, Lin Yu took out his phone and opened Era's official forum.
Lin Yu wanted to see if there was any new information about Era on the forum.
Lin Yu still knew far too little about what was in Era.
After opening the forum, Lin Yu began browsing the posts that appeared.
Ignoring the posts with content unsuitable for children, Lin Yu started looking for information about the game.
On the forum, some players shared the fish they had caught, others shared the scenery in Era, and still others shared equipment they had made themselves using tools they had purchased.
Lin Yu saw one player share a simple set of wooden armor they had made. Calling it wooden armor was generous; it was really just a few wooden boards strung together with vines.
The player showed how the wooden armor looked when worn and how it performed in actual combat.
In the video, the player wore a full set of wooden armor and held a homemade wooden spear in one hand, facing three wild wolves alone. Lin Yu had initially thought the fight would be perilous, but the armor easily blocked every attack the three wolves launched at the player. Later, when one wolf approached, the player drove the spear straight through its abdomen, killing it with ease. The other two wolves immediately fled, and the video ended there.
"Should I put together a set of wooden armor too?" After giving it a little thought, Lin Yu abandoned the idea. The reason was simple: the stats of the character he controlled were too lousy, and wearing wooden armor would be completely useless.
Lin Yu's physical attack of less than 1 wasn't just a low number. It represented the physical strength of the character he controlled, and Lin Yu felt that his character was probably about as strong as a child of a few years old.
And because his maximum stamina was so low, he would start panting after running just a few steps.
With a physique like that, wearing wooden armor would only weigh him down.
Another very important point was that the original poster had gathered the materials and crafted the wooden armor by hand, bit by bit. There was no recipe for it in the crafting menu at all. To make it, Lin Yu would have to craft it by hand, bit by bit, just like the poster. Lin Yu couldn't do that.
Next, Lin Yu came across quite a few complaint posts. Some complained that there was something wrong with the game's party system: it actually had friendly fire. Others complained about the lack of a trading system. To trade, players had to meet face-to-face and exchange payment and goods on the spot.
Others complained about why characters were left where they were when players logged out. Lin Yu came across several posts from players who had logged out in the wild, only to find their characters dead when they logged back in.
Someone else had logged out in Newbie Village and come back to find their character's clothes stripped off. As for what had happened, Lin Yu had already guessed when he learned the player was using a female character. Speaking of which, why were there so many people doing that sort of thing in this game? Shouldn't everyone have been studying the game?
Someone posted a warning that players were only absolutely safe if they logged out inside an inn room.
When Lin Yu saw that post, he quietly breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, he had logged out in an inn room.
Afterward, Lin Yu learned quite a bit about other starter villages, including a lot of important information. For example, a player in one starter village had posted a dance video. The dancing wasn't important; what mattered was that Lin Yu noticed a group of people passing by in the background. They looked like soldiers.
It seemed the state knew there was more to this game than met the eye. Could the state have known some inside information about it? Lin Yu speculated idly.
Just as Lin Yu was engrossed in browsing, a post caught his attention.
"Oh, so Newbie Village upgrades when the village construction level is full!"
The post was about village construction level. Curious about what would happen when it filled up, the players in one Newbie Village had discussed it, after which most of the people in the village had started chopping trees and mining nonstop, turning the logs and stone over to the village chief of Newbie Village.
When the village construction level reached 1,000, it was finally full. At that point, an option appeared on every player's panel in that Newbie Village.
[Village construction level full
Upgrade the village?]
When most of them chose to upgrade the village, a ten-minute countdown popped up on the panel. It said there were ten minutes until the upgrade trial began.
The moment the countdown hit zero, Newbie Village's barrier vanished. A half-hour countdown appeared on the panel, with a progress bar reading 2000/2000 beneath it.
At the same time, large numbers of monsters spawned outside Newbie Village. As soon as they appeared, they charged straight at the players in Newbie Village.
Faced with the horde of monsters, the players became speed bumps. No, they couldn't even be called speed bumps. The servers had only just opened, and the vast majority of players were still level 0, with only a few at level 1. Facing two thousand monsters at those levels was suicide. The monsters then camped Newbie Village's respawn point and slaughtered the players over and over.
The moment the countdown ended, all the monsters in Newbie Village turned into specks of light and vanished. Newbie Village's barrier reappeared, and a notification popped up on every player's panel saying that the upgrade trial had failed.
The village construction level reset to zero.