4

"Okay, so why are there humans in the monster territory?" he thought. Turns out, they were low-level monster thieves in the starting area.

He attacked the thieves he found in the corridor one by one with sudden strikes, and finally, he attacked the remaining two thieves in the large room. He knocked them down in the corridor and kicked the two sleeping thieves there into the large room.

Although he wasn't supposed to kill them, no one woke up from the impact of the fall.

If he started with a monster avatar in the monster territory, he would be surrounded by similar monsters and wouldn't easily gain experience around if they could communicate with him.

However, by placing human thieves near the spawner, both players using monster or human avatars could freely gain experience. It was a good consideration.

Since Rare still remembered the warning from the tutorial support AI, he decided not to kill. He could kill anytime, but NPCs wouldn't respawn. Furthermore, even without killing, he had gained a lot of experience by successfully disabling them.

In this game, the way to gain experience points is not just through battles. Experience points could be earned through production activities, even through actions like sneaking into a place and successfully escaping without anyone knowing, without having to engage in battle or production.

The amount of experience points gained is influenced by the difficulty level of the action and the current abilities of the character.

If a player who hasn't allocated experience points to specific skills or parameters performs production activities, they could earn more experience points compared to players who have allocated experience points to grow their skills and parameters.

Of course, it depends on success; even if failed, some experience points could still be gained, but it's more efficient to take production skills to increase the success rate.

A unique case occurred when a player, like "Rare," who not only didn't use 100 initial points in character creation but instead increased it to 110 points, so systematically considered amateur in all fields.

Experience points have no meaning unless allocated to specific parameters or skills.

"Rare" took an opposite approach to that.

Initially, "Rare" acquired martial arts skills due to family circumstances, which was a noble family that had mastered martial arts for generations to protect family members. It was a lineage with a long history of training its members, especially for noble children, where they learned techniques that allowed them to defeat opponents without injuring them, using principles like aikido and other ancient martial arts.

With such a concept, usual muscle-building exercises were not encouraged. As members of a noble family, the primary focus was to be graceful and elegant.

Of course, over the years, martial players only talked about idealism, without taking action.

This school of thought has long been considered low.

However, with the advancement of VR technology, the situation changed completely. Now, exercises could be done without strengthening the body, just with as much practice as desired.

The core of the "theory" of how to defeat opponents without using one's own strength. These exercises were done only in the mind, by matching mental images with the physical body only in the virtual world.

Since childhood, Rare had been ordered to do such exercises with VR whenever there was free time.

Having a low avatar ability value was actually desired.

Originally, player experience adjustment at initial spawn was set assuming that the experience had already been used up. This was known during closed beta testing. Therefore, it was expected that the closed beta testing and experience mechanism would be the same, so starting with a build like this.

Experience adjustment based on this difficulty gap is significant, with differences of up to almost 10 times between equivalent level, higher level, and lower level.

In terms of battle, the experience efficiency difference between fighting higher, equivalent, and lower enemies could reach almost 100 times.

However, this was just a theory. In reality, if fighting an enemy that gave 10 times the experience, it would only end in death, or just waste production materials.

Rare felt secretly pleased with the unexpectedly large amount of experience gained. The total experience gained from this battle was 300 points.

Previously, with the existing experience, the total experience points owned reached 410 points.

Although it wasn't clear why so much could be gained, I decided not to use it immediately and would think about it later, so I decided to tie up the unconscious robbers.

Since the robbers didn't have rope, I temporarily removed their clothes.

Since they showed no signs of waking up, I tied their hands and feet with the removed clothing. I took turns rolling the robbers with appropriate intervals, and forcibly woke them up one by one.

Now it's time for the first contact with NPCs. However, sudden attacks wouldn't count as contact.

Although I was very excited for this first contact, the awakened robbers just tried to shout and struggle, making it impossible to talk.

Reluctantly, I took a polite approach each time the robbers started to get noisy. Since the situation was difficult to convince them with words, I used the most primitive and efficient approach.

After a few times, the robbers began to become more culturally accepting. Finally, the first contact began. However, the use of the approach wouldn't count as contact.

"Hello, first let's introduce ourselves. I'm Lea. As you can see, I'm an elf. Are you guys a beast race? Who's the representative? Oh, for the representative, I'll let them speak."

As Lea spoke gently, the previously noisiest robber reluctantly told his name.

"...G...Gerry.... That, that's my name...." "You? Weren't you taught how to speak politely? I'm sitting here, while you're tied up and rolled, so it's clear who holds the higher position, isn't it?"

"Sorry! Please forgive me! How should I address you? I wasn't taught by my parents about that!"

"Oh, I see. Your family doesn't seem to care much about education. That's unfortunate. A slightly more polite way to say 'you' is 'anata'. Remember that, so you won't make mistakes again. Oh, it looks like you're struggling to speak, do you need a healing potion?"

Saying so, Lea took out a Potion LP from the Inventory and placed it in front of Gerry.

Inventory is one of the system features that players can use from the beginning of the game, allowing them to store items. Although there has never been a story about a full inventory from closed beta testing until now, it's unknown how many items can be put into it.

The potion taken now is one of those already in the inventory from the beginning. There are still 9 more bottles.

During closed beta testing, there were only 5 bottles, but instead, there were weapons corresponding to the weapon skills obtained when creating a character.

Perhaps because initial skills weren't obtained, LP Potion had 5 bottles more.

But that didn't matter; it's better to have too much. Assuming there are 5 bottles more than usual, I wouldn't feel bad using 4 bottles for the 4 robbers here.

While staring suspiciously at the LP Potion, Gerry complained, "This... this is...? Poison...? You're going to kill us...?"

"It's impossible that you don't know about Potions, right? Is this common? Or only in this area? When I went to the city, I thought there were shops selling normal Potions."

"Yes, we only have clothes and food..." "So there you have it. This is a healing potion. Although it won't fully heal, it'll be enough to make you able to speak again. Now, drink up, and be quiet."

Lea opened the potion bottle and poured it into Gerry's mouth.

Gerry winced momentarily from the sting in his mouth, but soon looked at Lea in awe.

It was the first moment Lea considered the possibility that these four weren't robbers.

The armed dirty group living as if they were in a cave that might be a monster territory made Lea attack quickly without thinking, but now she began to consider the possibility that they were hired mercenaries to investigate or something related to the nearest village.

There's a possibility it's more peaceful, like if they were hunters stopping for a rest.

Conversations about small monsters around the spawn point are a very game-meta view, but now, in the context of this game, it's not so relevant. Although in the official announcement, this new system is considered a step forward in pursuing realism, there are rumors that it's a test of using a world simulator.

If those rumors are true, the different world simulation environments certainly wouldn't specifically cater to each player.

Nevertheless, with the current results, it's almost impossible for mercenaries not to know about the potion, or hunters never to have heard of it. Because they seem not too connected to communities like towns or villages, the theory of robbers becomes the more sensible choice.

"Alright, after the pain subsides, can you speak? Tell us about yourself, about your life so far, and what you're doing here."

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