The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 4: "Civilized Communication"

—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.