After slashing down the last spider in front of him, Zhang Cheng leaned on his greatsword, panting heavily with his head lowered.
The ground ahead was littered with spider corpses. Green, viscous blood stained the uneven floor, sharply contrasting with the pristine white webs that coated the walls of the cave.
As a fully immersive RPG holographic online game, Eternal naturally included the classic elements of dungeons, monster fights, and level grinding.
Despite its marketing tagline claiming it to be a “second life,” the game’s hyper-realism was limited to the world of Eternal itself. To preserve playability, the developers made several compromises—introducing instanced dungeons being one of them.
And rightly so. Real life was exhausting enough with work and study. If your leisure time felt like another job, then what was the point of playing at all?
Like many traditional online games, this one featured dungeons where players fought monsters and completed quests. But it still had key differences that set it apart.
The biggest distinctions were: infinitely respawning monsters, equipment drops from mobs, and open PVP.
Sound familiar? That’s because the so-called dungeons here were really a hybrid between traditional open fields and instanced areas. In comparison, the “world of Eternal” served as the main city—though calling it a “city” was an understatement; it was orders of magnitude larger.
Of course, “main city” was just a relative concept. Players could still engage in PVP or kill NPCs within Eternal World itself. But if caught, the consequences were severe—ranging from minor to top-level wanted notices, depending on the offense. Captured players would be jailed.
If a player resisted arrest, all NPCs would become hostile. This meant quests, job changes, and many game functions would be permanently blocked. Compared to the lawless dungeons, Eternal World was a far more civilized and harmonious space.
The dungeon Zhang Cheng was currently in was a level 1–19 beginner instance called Spider Cave. It was also one of the most recommended grinding spots in beginner guides.
The outskirts of the dungeon were swarming with spiders—not too tough, with low HP—making it a perfect place for new players to farm. The only downside was that it was a nightmare for arachnophobes.
In the dim cave, torches were spaced far apart, casting only a faint glow around them. The interior was filled with spider silk.
To move forward, one had to tear through the threads, but with every step, new milky-white filaments would cling to you, stretching out long and sticky.
Basketball-sized spiders crawled over every visible surface, their eight eyes glimmering green in the dim light.
Upon detecting a human presence, they opened their mandibles and let out a chittering screech. They skittered along the walls and ceiling, flooding toward Zhang Cheng like a wave.
That was the scene he’d faced earlier. Even though he wasn’t afraid of arthropods, it still made him shudder. Terrified, he’d turned and teleported out of the dungeon.
So yes, hyper-realism wasn’t always a good thing. In a fully immersive game, such scenes didn’t just feel real—they were real.
After a while, Zhang Cheng steeled his nerves and re-entered the dungeon. Once he overcame his fear, he realized why the forums had recommended this place—it was a leveling paradise. Just from basic attacks alone, he reached halfway through level 9 in only an hour!
According to what he’d read, top players could get to around level 10 in an hour. After that, leveling slowed significantly. With the server having been live for over a day, even the fastest grinders weren’t past level 20 yet.
But there was one thing that frustrated Zhang Cheng: at low levels, the game imposed harsh stamina restrictions.
A player’s stamina and endurance were tied strictly to their class and level, with no other modifiers. In the past hour, Zhang Cheng had gone from needing a breather after a few swings to being able to clear waves of spiders without stopping.
Possibly due to widespread arachnophobia, this dungeon wasn’t very crowded. So far, he’d only seen a few players pass by.
After standing still for a bit to recover his stamina, Zhang Cheng watched as the corpses and blood slowly dissolved into nothing, fading from reality.
Gripping the plain whiteboard sword the system had gifted him, he moved deeper into the cave—the spiders here were starting to feel too low-level.
After clearing out another chamber, Zhang Cheng finally hit level 10, and automatically learned the Knight’s second offensive skill: Judgment.
Judgment was a magical attack. The player channeled mana to form a glowing cross-shaped slash about two meters long. During the casting period, players could freely control the direction it would fire in. Upon release, the glowing cross would fly forward at a steady pace along the preset path.
As a magic-based area attack, Judgment dealt decent damage and had a fairly wide range—perfect for swarms of weak enemies. Its downsides, however, were high mana cost and a long casting time.
Except for priests and mages, all other classes only have one offensive skill before reaching level 10. Their main means of dealing damage is basic attacks. The goal behind this design is to help players familiarize themselves with the game’s control system. After all, a full-dive VRMMO requires players to physically dodge and attack using their own body movements, which is a far cry from traditional online games where you simply press a button to automatically release skills.
While other melee-based physical classes can rely on brute force and smash mobs with close-range weapons, archers—being the only ranged class in the early stages—seem comparatively weaker.
Although the system provides aim assistance and arrows are automatically replenished, keeping your aim steady while drawing the bow is a real skill. The monsters in-game aren’t standing still like training dummies either.
Players who have never touched a real bow in the real world need to put in a good amount of effort. As a result, leveling as an archer is generally slower than for other beginner classes.
But this isn’t a real issue. Before reaching level 20 and advancing to a formal class, players are still considered “unclassed.” As long as you have enough gold, it’s possible to switch to a different class before then.
Zhang Cheng pulled up the system menu, preparing to log out. He noticed it was already 6:30 p.m. in the real world, and he had scheduled a meeting with the people moving his game pod for 7 p.m.
[<-Important Notice-> Logging out in your current area will cause your character to remain in place under system protection. While under protection, your character’s status may change. Are you sure you wish to proceed?]
“What kind of dumbass setting is this? Damn it!” Zhang Cheng cursed and quickly started retracing his steps. On the way back, he cleared another wave of mobs. But by now, the EXP penalty for low-level monsters had increased, and the experience bar barely budged.
When he reached the dungeon entrance and saw the teleportation portal in his field of view, Zhang Cheng finally remembered he could log out directly from within a dungeon. Smacking his forehead in frustration, he selected the option to exit on the spot.
It’s all the fault of this immersive VR system. He had only spent a few hours inside, and he was already so absorbed that he started thinking like the character. While making excuses for his silly mistake, Zhang Cheng logged out of the game.
At 9 p.m., after seeing off the technicians who’d spent over an hour setting things up, Zhang Cheng looked at the now fully assembled game pod in the guest room. His gaze held a mix of nostalgia and sadness.
After setting up a timer reminder for game duration, removing his clothes, and putting on the monitoring gear, Zhang Cheng lay down in the pod and closed his eyes.
Since I’ve decided to trust my instincts, I’ll stick to the path. Even if this turns out to be a delusion, it won’t waste too much time.
Game boss, here I come! Zhang Cheng gave himself a silent cheer, reinforcing his confidence in his gut feeling.
After the familiar wave of dizziness, the system transported him back into the dungeon, where Zhang Cheng plunged into another intense leveling grind.
Unlike the dull repetition of traditional online games, leveling in a full-dive game was far more complex and tedious. However, the visceral stimulation and sensory feedback gave a far greater sense of achievement.
Four hours later, Zhang Cheng had reached level 14. He took a glance at the now-unlocked leaderboard: the player at the top had already hit level 20 and chosen the apprentice knight class.
Zhang Cheng checked his quest log and sighed. The road to leveling up is still long…
Knight Beginner Class Advancement Quest
Condition 1: Raise Knight Swordsmanship to LV2 (1130/2000)
Condition 2: Reach Level 20 (14/20)
The leaderboard lit a fire under him, and monsters at level 15 were no longer enough. He began pushing deeper into the dungeon.
After slaying a large Level 17 spider, Zhang Cheng plopped himself down on its corpse. These grotesque and disgusting spiders no longer posed any psychological pressure for him. In his eyes, they were nothing more than chunks of walking experience.
Now that he had Punishment, his monster farming speed had increased significantly. In fact, it was the slow respawn rate of low-level monsters that was limiting his leveling speed.
It had taken him just over six hours to reach Level 14—he could consider today’s goal accomplished ahead of schedule.
From deeper within the cave came weak, intermittent screeches. Zhang Cheng paused for a moment, then recalled something from the forums about the spider cave: someone was probably tackling the dungeon’s final boss. He’d skimmed the boss info before—it was supposedly a mutated spider lord about the size of a grown adult.
Zhang Cheng was intrigued. He had once been a serious gamer, back when a certain ARPG co-op game had taken the world by storm. Even though he hadn’t touched a game in over two years, the thrill of fighting bosses still stirred some excitement in him.
Zhang Cheng was a lone wolf, but thanks to his decent skills, he’d earned a bit of a name for himself in the hardcore community of that game. Whenever elite raid groups were short on people, they’d often call him in to fill the gap at the last minute.
But that was all in the past. He chuckled wryly at the memory. At 22 years old, he was already considered a veteran in that old game’s hardcore scene. Besides, full-dive VRMMORPGs were fundamentally different from traditional games, and the old strategies might not apply here.
The cries from the depths grew weaker and weaker. Shaking off his nostalgia, Zhang Cheng picked himself up and headed in the direction of the noise, hoping to sneak in a few assist hits for bonus experience.
The path was clear—likely because the small fry monsters hadn’t respawned yet—so he wasn’t stopped by a single spider along the way. That meant he reached the cave’s end in less than a minute.
At the end of the cave was a circular chamber, only slightly wider than the passage leading to it. Torches were mounted in pairs on the walls, brightly illuminating the entire space, as if deliberately emphasizing that the monster ahead was no ordinary foe.
At the center of the room was a hole, and the sounds of battle were echoing up from below.
Zhang Cheng leaned over and looked down into the hole. Around a dozen players were currently locked in fierce combat with the spider boss.
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