The Truth of Magic - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: High Level Teleportation
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

When Zhao Xu saw that post, he knew that this player was in big trouble.
To a player, they had just killed off an NPC and it was no big deal.
But all the NPCs in Arthur were real and alive, the players just didn’t know about that.
There were many people who even married characters in Arthur after they had transmigrated. 1
All these NPCs were made from flesh and blood, and you could even trace their backgrounds and they all had parents. They didn’t pop out from some rock or something.
That player thought that he had just killed off a piece of programming that would eventually revive itself. And he could only pray hard that he was really thinking about it this way, and just had itchy fingers and killed off an NPC thinking that the NPC would just revive.
If that was the case, then this player could just give up the account he had now and he would be able to restart his alignment. Otherwise, no matter how many characters he made, he would be stuck with an evil alignment.
And even after he transmigrated and wouldn’t have a chance to change his account anymore, the evil glow around him would follow him like a shadow.
Zhao Xu knew that the best thing this player could do now was to repent and compensate for his deeds and allow himself to be jailed for a period of time. It wasn’t really anything serious anyway. He could leave his character in jail and log out of the game.
Otherwise, the problem would only go away on the surface, and after the transmigration happened in one year’s time, this player who thought that he had just killed an NPC would really suffer for it.
The Detect Evil and Good spell was a Level 1 spell, so the requirements were just slightly higher than a Level 0 Cantrip.
More importantly, it was a class feature for Paladins, and sometimes it was even the way Paladins greeted other players. 2
There was nowhere for low-level evil players to hide in Arthur at all.
Pretty much all the human towns and villages cast out any characters with a Chaotic Evil alignment.
Those ambitious ones who were Lawful Evil were still willing to pull dirty tricks within the rules of the game, but when it came to Chaotic Evil rebels, nobody knew who they might kill next.
Avoiding evil was something that the players learned the hard way after further education.
Zhao Xu didn’t have the heart of a saint and wasn’t going to teach this player what he had to do.
After he had logged off the first time, he was still feeling lucky and so he had actually written a post on ‘Ten things Arthur noobs must avoid at all costs’. 1
But the other party clearly hadn’t read this post.
That post didn’t reveal any game secrets, and it was written more like some self-help book to tell the players what bad things they shouldn’t be doing.
Zhao Xu knew that more than half of the players entering the game right now would finish all their revival stones and end up buying a new account.
And that wouldn’t happen within a year. It was going to happen within a month.
But he still hoped that, as the luckiest person alive right now, he could throw a rope down and allow the other players to hang on to as much of it as they could.
The first thing on his list was to avoid evil.
But on the night he had posted that article, many commenters scoffed at how Zhao Xu had written a lot of things that went against the suggestions that most people had for playing games.
Some even looked through Zhao Xu’s previous posts and advised him to play more games and gather more experience before putting up a post like that. 1
Zhao Xu didn’t bother about that post after he had put it up.
After all, the players would eventually realize that he was right after falling into all the traps he had listed in that post.
After Zhao Xu scrolled down and didn’t find anything new, his incredible self-control started working again and he immediately returned to the game.
The other players were working hard without realizing it.
But Zhao Xu knew very well that he was trying his best to rescue himself.
If a player wanted to log off, they had to make sure that no battle was happening before them for five minutes before being able to activate the command to log off.
His body would then turn into sparkles within 10 rounds (1 minute) and disappear from the world of Arthur.
If you were in a hurry, it was fine if you didn’t wait for 10 rounds to complete. You could just find a safe place to log off.
But if you were unlucky enough to be attacked during these 10 rounds of waiting, then you would have to sacrifice a revival stone.
Most low-level players ignored the warning prompts from the system.
But after they had reached higher levels, everyone started to cherish their accounts more. So, even if they were in a safe town, they would all wait patiently for their bodies to vanish completely first.
But sometimes one had to log off very suddenly, like if someone woke you up or the system told you that there was a phone call coming in.
It was possible to forcibly log off like that, but the problem was that the player’s body wouldn’t disappear and would just remain unconscious within Arthur.
But, regardless of how you logged off, you always needed to wait at least 20 minutes before logging back into Arthur.
Many players would eventually complain about how this requirement created a lot of inconvenience for the players just so that the game could keep its traditional ways of communication.
But this part would remain the same until everyone transmigrated, and 20 minutes was exactly the time that Zhao Xu allowed himself to eat and scroll through the forums.
But, even so, with this ability to go online and offline multiple times, player A could receive a message in the game, go offline to pass the message to player B, and player B could immediately go online to inform his group. Many players eventually used this loophole in the system and became a communicator of sorts.
In fact, sometimes characters within Arthur would get the players to do this sort of thing to convey a message in urgent situations. But after too many people used this way of going through a middleman, it was eventually stopped by some organizations.
There were also times when players were bribed into passing on false information, and so everyone ended up adding a password to their messages after this went on for half a year.
There was a bright flash of light and Zhao Xu appeared back in his room within the floating city above Mystra.
Players would reappear wherever they last logged off, regardless of what happened in that area. There was a player who logged off next to a volcano, and by the time he logged back in, he realized that the volcano had erupted while he was offline, and so his body ended up dying from being crushed by the cooling lava. 3
After appearing back in the room. Antonya also appeared in a bright flash of light, and she was still wearing the same wizard robe that she had worn for the past few days.
Over three days, Zhao Xu had found out that this floating city covered a pretty large area.
Antonya had also installed a magic alarm inside his room. Once he appeared in the room, Antonya would get the notification and reappear as well.
Although the floating city was huge, Antonya wasn’t very far from his dormitory, but she was still willing to use a Level Teleportation spell to reach him instead of walking. 1
As for why she didn’t use an ordinary Level 5 Teleportation spell, it was because there was some difference in the two spells.
Zhao Xu had also asked why she didn’t just use the Level 9 spell of Otherworldly Gate.
The answer he got was that Mystra and the floating city had used all sorts of Legendary spells like mythals to prevent teleportation, and only people like her with a seal could get past them.
But even though she was spared, this sort of spell where she could travel across planes was still a sensitive one and she would end up on a surveillance list.
Antonya didn’t want others to ask her where she came from and where she went to every day, so she gave up using that spell.
Zhao Xu even stupidly asked one more question about why Level 7 Teleportation didn’t fall under surveillance.
The answer he got was that if you ended up on the surveillance list, you had to be checked, but since Level 7 Teleportation meant that you couldn’t cross different planes and you had to be familiar with your destination and start from the same plane as your destination, too many people used it and you didn’t have to be checked.
Basically, if they had to check even that sort of travel, then they might as well not allow teleportation.
Zhao Xu also suddenly realized why his friend who reached Level 5 Wizard stopped using his legs to walk after he had grasped the Level 3 spell of Phantom Steed. 1
Looks like laziness was in the genes of all wizards. 5