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Chapter 449
🕑 Added 2025-04-26 02:00:07 +0000 UTCAnton was busy leveling up his newly created Sorceress in the New Ladder Season for the Diablo II game all day. He knew he would need to conduct some research because apparently, some ladder season would release new powerful items. The only way for an offline character to receive them was to get them while a character was playing in the ladder competition.
Ever since he arrived in this world, majority of his time was consumed inside the World of Sanctuary and there were times that he would get tired of it and the only reason he truly did not was because he was entering the game personally which brought a brand new titillating gameplay, but because of this new update, he became excited again.
The fact that he was able to play with other players and was able to talk to them invigorated him, and he realized that this update would probably allow him to heal his grief a little. He would have to find a way to speak with his online party without alarming his father and sister, because if he suddenly started talking, they might think that he had gone nuts.
When he stopped playing to join Anders and Anna for dinner, his Sorceress was level ten. Anton realized that the leveling speed was mostly the same when he was leveling up alone. The only difference was, he wasn’t in the game personally but playing it as if he were in front of his computer.
“Father, Anna, there are some major changes in my bloodline magic. During the day, while I’m meditating, you will hear me speak as if I’m talking to a bunch of people. Just disregard it and be aware that I have not gone crazy.”
“I saw it earlier! I really thought that you’d gone crazy from grief,” Anna said tactlessly, but she did smile, and it was the first smile she wore after some time.
Anton suddenly realized that it was a mistake for him to tell his family that it would only happen during the day.
“Oh, sorry, my mistake. My meditation is not only going to be during the day but also at night. Since I’m not going to be able to sleep because I’m controlling the boat, I will spend that time meditating.”
After dinner, the three returned to their usual business. Anna had to cast a light spell so she and Anders could continue using their grimoires, while Anton went back to leveling up his Sorceress character. He immediately joined a party, but as usual, he was just following everyone. Since he had to split part of his attention between controlling their lifeboat and the game, he could not focus entirely on it. He rarely speaks, and at some parties, people would even accuse him of being a bot.
The excuse he provided to his party mates was that he was working while leveling up his character, which was not uncommon. One advantage of Diablo II, even in its remastered form, was that it didn’t require much mental effort to play.
By the time midnight arrived, he exited his party and reentered the game alone. He wanted to play alone for a while to test some things. The first thing he did was to retrieve a minor mana potion from the game and bring it out into the real world.
Anton would have examined the potion and asked Anna to test it out, but he noticed that his sister and father were already asleep. It was too dark for him to check the potion's details, so after ensuring that everything was okay in the surrounding area and that their lifeboat was maintaining its speed flying west, he returned inside the game.
He kept on playing, switching between playing solo and joining a party, but mostly, he played with others because he leveled up faster that way. He didn’t talk much and only did so when he was asked a question. Anton thought that his party mates might have spoken to him just to check that he’s a “real boy” and not a bot.
To be honest, he was enjoying playing the game with others because most of the time, the conversation between his party mates was truly entertaining. If this happened before, he would have been much more engaging, but because he was still severely sad and depressed because of what happened with his friends, even if he was interested in joining the conversation, he held himself back.
Anton knew that if there wasn’t a need for them to continue striving to survive, he would have curled up somewhere and focused on his grief. He did it before when his parents on Earth died, and it took him several weeks to gather the nerve to go out again, but mostly he had to because he didn’t have enough food to continue grieving. He remembered that during the first few days when his parents on Earth died, he even slept for twenty-four hours at a time, but this time, he couldn’t do something like that. His father and Anna were depending on him.
By the time morning arrived, his Sorceress leveled up to level twenty-four. With his nonstop playing, it meant that it would probably not take him a week before he reached the maximum level.
He exited the game and entered their tiny bathroom so he could do his bathroom routine and wash himself using soap and mana water. By the time he was done, his father and sister were already awake, and after they were done with their morning ablutions in the bathroom, Anders retrieved their breakfast from his spatial amulet.
After eating, Anton revealed the newly retrieved minor mana potion.
“What is that?” Anna said when he saw the tiny blue potions in Anton’s hands.
“The red one was the health potion. This one is a mana potion, and it was supposed to fill out your energy if it emptied because of non-stop spellcasting. Can you test it out?”
Anton handed the minor mana potion to his sister. The mana potion was as tiny as the health potion, which was only as big as a thumb. Anna didn’t hesitate and opened the cap and drank the mana potions. She then started reading her spellbook.
After about twenty minutes, Anna told Anton the result.
“It increased my spell memorization speed by 20 percent! This is on top of the bonuses that I received from your spells.”
“Remember to take note how long the effect will last,” Anton said, and Anna nodded.
“You said that you can only create one potion a day?” Anders asked, and Anton nodded.
“It think it would be best for me to just create mana potions instead of health potions and you and Anna can drink it on alternate days,” Anton said and his father just nodded.
Anders returned to perusing his book, and Anton, after checking out his compass and making sure that everything was alright in the surrounding area, returned to splitting his attention between controlling the boat and playing the game.
While playing the game, Anton realized that even though they encountered storms several times during the last few weeks, they hadn’t encountered any attacks from sea creatures. He knew that the sea monsters were lying low because of the Undead Coalition roaming the ocean, but he thought that the spell Cloak of Shadows was also hiding them from below.
Their lifeboat was not touching the water, and because of the Cloak of Shadows spell, their boat might have looked like a patch of shadow from below.
