Golden Experience

—Oh, I see now. I was wondering why there were humans in monster territory, but it turns out they’re just bandits, trash mobs for the starting area.

After ambushing the bandits one by one in the tunnel, once there were only two left in the big cave, Rare went and knocked them both out, then kicked the first two sleepers down as well. She didn’t think she hit them hard enough to kill them, but even after falling down, neither of them woke up from the impact.

Thinking back on it, if she had instead met a monster avatar in the monster territory, and everyone around her was the same kind of monster, if they were able to communicate properly, she didn’t think she’d be able to casually convert them all into XP. But if she had spawned near a human territory and run into bandits there instead, even if they were players, regardless of if they had a human or monster avatar, she probably wouldn’t have hesitated to ice them. Kinda makes you wonder.

Keeping the warnings given by the support AI from the tutorial in mind, Rare wanted to stop short of ending lives, just in case. She always could kill them later whenever she wanted, but NPCs wouldn’t respawn. Plus, even without killing, she could earn tons of XP just by successfully incapacitating them.

Actually, combat isn’t the only way to earn XP in this game. You can earn XP from crafting, and even in other ways such as stealing it and escaping somewhere no one can find you. The amount of XP received is based on the relative difficulty of the action taken compared to your current overall player status. If a player who hasn’t earned any XP at all picks up a craft, they’ll earn way more XP than a player with boosted stats and tons of skills who picks up the same craft. Obviously, succeeding in crafting items awards more XP than failing, so in that respect, when taking up a craft, it was most efficient to raise your success rate as much as possible.

Having not used any of the 100 XP from character creation, and in fact raising it up to 110, the system considered Rare lower than a novice. There was no point in holding onto XP without using it; it only had value in the form of improving stats and learning skills. But, looking at it from Rare’s standpoint, this was simply her play style.

Because of her family circumstances, she had mastered martial arts for self-defense. Their clan had built up a storied reputation of diligence, and it was expected of all children in the family to study hard. While they were constantly tutored, they also built up stamina, muscle, and dexterity, learning aikido and ancient martial arts, adhering to the Confucian concept of “Li,” and striving for the self-defense ideal of defeating an opponent without receiving a single scratch. This perspective dictated that muscles should not be taxed, so they did not go through typical strengthening exercises. For the children in this clan, what is paramount is femininity and beauty. Naturally, those who loved martial arts had scorned the school and long complained how they were obsessed with nothing more than an unrealistic ideal.

However, with the rapid advancement of VR technology, that perspective was flipped on its head. After all, it was now possible to train the mind as much as desired without training the body. It was now possible to defeat an opponent without using any of your own physical strength; this was the quintessence of “Li.” The mind could be disciplined perfectly, and the only thing necessary in reality was to align one’s body with one’s own mental image. As soon as Rare gained awareness, she was spending every free moment in VR training toward this ideal. For her own avatar to have low stat values was actually desirable.

The game was balanced around the assumption that the initial XP would be spent. That was what happened in the closed beta, after all. What’s more, the expectation that experience would be earned at the same rate as in the closed beta was what led to the idea behind this playstyle.

The XP compensation due to increased difficulty was huge; from “disadvantaged” to “same level” to “advantaged,” the difference in XP gained between each level was as high as a factor of ten. When gaining XP through combat, defeating a superior enemy could be worth as much as 100 times more XP than defeating an inferior enemy. However, this was ultimately only theorycrafting; in actuality, trying to fight an enemy worth 10 times more XP would usually result in death, and along the same lines trying to craft an item worth 10 times more XP would simply be a waste of materials.

Internally, Rare giggled in glee at the unexpectedly huge amount of XP she earned. Her actions just now were worth a total of 300 XP. Including what she had to begin with, she now had 410 XP. She wasn’t sure why exactly she had gotten so much, but for the time being she didn’t plan on using any, opting to think about it later while she tied up the unconscious bandits. They didn’t have any kind of rope around, so she stripped them instead. Since it didn’t seem like they were going to wake up any time soon, she bound their hands and feet with their clothes. She then rolled the bandits apart, giving them each space, and one by one tried to force them awake.

Finally, it was time for her first contact with NPCs.

The ambushes didn’t count.

This was her momentous first contact, and she was pretty excited about it, but once the bandits woke up they just started wailing and thrashing around, rendering any attempts at communication moot. Rare had no choice but to politely placate them whenever they raised a fuss. It seemed like language wasn’t getting through to them in this situation, so she had to rely on more primitive, efficient methods of persuasion. This happened over and over again as the bandits gradually became more civilized. Finally, first contact was about to begin.

Once again, all this placating didn’t count.

“Hey, I guess I’ll start by introducing myself. You can call me Rare. As you can see, I’m an elf. And I presume you guys are beastkin? Who’s your leader? Ah, let’s say that only the leader is allowed to speak,” Rare said in a kind voice.

The bandit who had been the noisiest fearfully named herself. “…Id’s… It’s Kerry… Who, who da fuck’re…”

“‘Fuck’? Your mama didn’t teach you how to speak properly, did she? I’m the one sitting here properly while you guys are tied up on the ground. You should be able to figure out which of us has the power here without thinking too hard, yes?”

“Ergh…! Ah’m zor, I’m sorry! I din’ mean anydin’ by id! My parents din’ teach me!”

“Oh, is that so. Your household must not’ve been big fans of education. My misunderstanding. ‘Fuck’ is a vulgar word; it lacks elegance. I encourage you to take that to heart, otherwise you may experience avoidable injuries in the future. On another note, you seem to be having difficulty speaking, would you perhaps like a magic potion?”

Saying that, Rare pulled an LP (Life Point) Potion from her inventory and placed it in front of Kerry. “Inventory” is a function usable after starting the game for players to store things they obtain. During the closed beta up until now, there hadn’t been any stories of full inventories, so no one knew the maximum number of items it could store.

This potion was included in everyone’s inventories from the start; Rare now had nine left. In the closed beta, they only started with five, but players also received a starting weapon that matched one of the skills they learned; since she didn’t get a weapon, maybe that’s why she started with five additional potions. In any case, it was hard to say that she had too many. While normally you might think having five would be a lot, if she had to use four here on the bandits, it was hard not to feel the loss.

Peering at the LP Potion with uncertainty, Kerry let out a groan. “What’s… What’s dat…? Poison…? Are you gonna kill us…?”

“You don’t even know what a potion is? Aren’t they pretty common? Maybe just not in this region? During the clos— Some time ago, when I was in town, I’m pretty sure they could be purchased from all sorts of shops.”

“No way… Da only tings you can buy’re clothes and food…”

“Oh, really now. This is a magic potion that heals wounds. It can’t completely heal everything, but it should at least make it so you can talk more comfortably. Here, I’ll help you drink it, so don’t move.”

She opened the vial and poured the potion into Kerry’s mouth. Apparently the wounds in her mouth stung since she pulled a grimace for a second, but that quickly passed as she looked up at Rare in surprise.

It was then that Rare thought for the first time, maybe these four girls weren’t bandits. They were an armed group of dirty girls in a cave in monster territory. It seemed self-evident that they lived here, and they did attack her right away, but it was possible that there was a more peaceful explanation for their being here. Perhaps they were mercenaries who had been tasked with exploring this area. Perhaps they were hunters from a nearby village who just stopped by to rest. Assuming that the only things near a spawn point would be trash monsters was peak metagame mentality; thinking back on it now, this game more than any others wouldn’t conform to ideas like that.

When the game was first announced, they claimed this groundbreaking new game would push the boundaries between games and reality, and it was rumored to be a test of a working world simulator. If there were any truth to that rumor, then an otherworld simulator wouldn’t have separate special environments for each and every player.

Looking at the facts, there’s no way mercenaries wouldn’t know what a potion is, and hunters would have at least heard of them. It also felt like they only had weak connections to the town and village community, so the bandit theory was the overwhelming frontrunner, but…

“Now then, if the pain’s gone, let’s talk a bit. Tell me about yourselves. How you lived up until now, and what you want to do going forward.”