The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 27: "Player Killer"

Including the first day, he spent about three days hunting Rabbits.

As a result, Wayne was finally able to replace all of his starting equipment. Perhaps due to all the Rabbit corpses he sold, the price of Rabbit Leather dropped, so he also got a full set of Rabbit Leather Armor. He didn't know what the low-quality starting short sword was made of, but he bought an iron sword with higher attack power to replace it. Cast-metal goods were also considered cheap, but the price of iron tended to go up, so it was an acceptable purchase. Because he funneled his income into improving his combat effectiveness, he still hadn't obtained a hatchet or any clothes suited for foresting; it was frustrating not to have made any progress on that front, but that was just how things went.

Apparently the nearby mining sites had fallen into monster territory, and they were currently home to all sorts of beasts. That was why iron was so valuable right now. In all likelihood, the early towns were fixed in ways like this so that they couldn't produce higher-quality goods. The NPCs all had sophisticated AIs installed, so regardless of the game administration's mandates, if they had the right materials available, they would make and sell better items on their own. There was no doubt that was why the ore supply was hit.

A mine recovery quest would probably go up sometime soon. If it turned out to be a large-scale quest, then it probably would even be announced on the official site as some kind of special event. He'd have to remember to look out for it.

Until now, Wayne hadn't seen any other players in this town, but it was possible there were some around, just that each of their playtimes never overlapped. Since Hiers was a kingdom that was attractive for new players, maybe they had added a lot more starting towns for the open beta. Back in the closed beta, a given city would have around ten players. If the number of starting spawn points had multiplied, perhaps it was feasible for a town to only have a single player. Plus, the city Wayne was in right now was quite a bit smaller than the ones he had seen in the closed beta. Given the scope of this city, he could believe that the starting spawn table had changed.

If a large-scale quest did get posted, it would be pretty hard to complete. A single player couldn't do much on their own.

Normally he'd have invited friends to play together, but, while it could have worked out during this vacation, on most days it was hard to find time to play with his VR friends, who all had work as well.

He still hadn't had a proper chat with any of the NPC sellswords, but thinking about it now, cooperating with NPCs didn't sound bad. Since NPC lives were rooted in this world, the sellswords who lived in this town shouldn't foolishly try to do anything criminal or fraudulent. That made them much more trustworthy than random players he had never met before.

Back in the closed beta, Wayne had a horrible experience with a PKer.

At first, this PKer pretended to be a NPC. When Wayne was having trouble, this NPC reached out to him and offered to lend an ear. They said that it would be best to speak elsewhere, led him by the hand to an alley, then, after ensuring no one was around, assaulted him and stole his stuff. No one could take what was in his inventory, but that conversely meant that anything not in his inventory could be stolen. Wayne found that he was too shocked to accept the system's offer of <<Would you like to respawn?>> Perhaps having anticipated that, the PKer stripped off Wayne's expensive equipment first, starting with his weapon. When he finally respawned, he only had his undergarments and some cheap gear left. The PKer had only stolen his equipment, but what he lost included his ability to trust other players, as well as XP.

Ever since that day, Wayne made every effort to determine if anyone he met was a player or an NPC. He never found another player dressed as an NPC, but he discovered a way to detect whether someone was a player through conversation.