In only a few minutes, the beautiful lake side is devastated with holes and meats scattering around. The grass smell is overwhelmed by the thick smell of blood and burnt meat. A number of headless or impaled corpses litter throughout the place. Part of the lake is now dyed with blood. Even though the other side is still clean, the girls do not dare to use it to drink.

“I have never thought that fighting only goblins can cause this much damage to the landscape. Did you do this on purpose? “ Yuuko asks.

“Sorry. There was too much thing in my head. I forgot that we came here to fetch water.” Makoto sticks her tongue out in sorry.

“Never mind that. Makoto, you must have figured out something, right?” Lexar asks.

“Yeah, quite a lot. Look over here.” Makoto nods then displays the status table to everyone.

Makoto Tachibana

Race

Human, (error cannot process)

Class

(error cannot process)

Level

3

Strength

40 (25)

Vitality

110 (80)

Resistance

30 (20)

Agility

60 (30)

Magic

???? (error cannot process)

Magic resistance

260 (200)

Skills

Analyze (max), Wind magic (Lv 4), Fire magic (Lv 5), Ice magic (Lv 4), Earth magic (Lv 3), (error data overflow)

“Let me start with the level up first.” Makoto points to level tab. While pointing at it, she also fiddles her fingers and a new small table appears next to it.

Exp

423

Next

577

Seeing that table, Lexar and Yuuko reflexively operates their status table to open the Exp tab, but fail to do so.

“It’s useless. You cannot open it. Only I can do so.” Makoto says.

“Does this mean this table is actually confidential information, belonging to a deeper level of the table?” Lexar relates it to information access level in organizations.

“Correct. This table belongs to a layer deeper than the information I have told you before. As I get stronger, I can access further down the information layer. Anyway, what I am going to tell you is related to how we can become stronger in this world. Did I talk about the program fusing with our body?”

“Yeah, you talked about how by combining with our bodies, the program allows the rules of this world to be applied to us.” Yuuko answers.

“Then to another common rule in the gaming world: fight monsters, get exp, and become stronger by leveling up. As the program fuses with our bodies, it turns our bodies into special depositories.” Makoto creates an empty can model in mid air, with some liquid inside.

“Every creature in this world is a container for a special type of data. Let’s call it bit. As the bit is poured inside the can, it changes its form adapting to the body and enhances it. In simple term, it is like a body eating the food, the food changing into nutrients then muscle cells, making the body stronger.” Makoto then points to a goblin carcass “However, when a creature kills another creature, a portion of the bit belonging to the fallen escapes from the body, reverts back to the original form, then gets absorbed by the victor, and becomes a part of it. The cycle repeats.”

Yuuko and Lexar nod in agreement with the explanation. They do not say anything as they know it is only from this point that things are going to be important.

“So what happens with the rest of the bit? Simple, it does not escape the body of the loser and remains in the corpse. To be specific, the gained strength still remains inside the corpse and does not change back to bit yet. Thus, the activity of harvesting the body of the monster and turning it into weapons and armors becomes meaningful.” Makoto continues.

“Wait. Then what does level up actually mean?” Yuuko cannot hold back from the curiosity and asks.

“Level up is actually a trigger. A trigger makes the depository become larger to contain more bit.” Yuuko says “When the accumulated bit reaches the capacity of the depository, a large portion of the bit helps expand the depository, strengthen it during process.”

This time, Yuuko and Lexar are confused. Then the only point to get stronger is to get as much bit (exp) as possible to get a level up. Why does she bother explaining it from a theory point of view?

Seeing both people’s expression, Makoto makes a smile, then asks a question “What do you think the depository is made of?”

“Our bodies and the … “ Lexar suddenly pauses like he realizes something “… program.”

“Yes, and what will happen when we leave this world?”

“Either the program is still together with us or it disappears. In the latter case, our strength will be much weaker than the strength we gain from this world. In extreme case, our bodies will be damaged as the program which is part of our bodies separates from us.” Sweat forms on Lexar’s head.

“Even in the former case, we will still weaken. Both the program and the bit that is supporting our bodies still need this world’s rule to strengthen us. Stepping out of this world boundary, both the program and bit will become useless, and even causes damage to us.” Makoto follows.

“Then we can’t simply defeat any monster that we encounter in the way. Doing so will risk us getting too much amount of bit, making a bigger potential danger when we leave this world.” Yuuko worriedly says.

“No. We can still defeat monsters normally and strengthen ourselves. There is a trick for it.” Makoto assures.

“How?” Both persons ask.

“Remember. We are different from those reincarnators and transmigators in those stories.” Makoto opens her palm. A white flame appears then suddenly expands and travels along her arm to the whole body.

The sudden development surprises Yuuko and Lexar. They immediately jump back out of reflex, because it is not their flame so it can be harmful to their bodies.

At that moment, Lexar notices something and points at Makoto’s exp table.

“Look! The number.”

Yuuko follows his gaze and sees an unbelievable scene.

Both the exp and next number change at a drastic rate. While the exp is decreasing, the next number increases, but that’s not all.

When the exp reaches 0, the exp table slightly shakes and the number changes one more time. With the exp becomes 100, and the next is 0.

Both number then repeats decreasing and increasing perspectively, until the exp reaches 0 again. And the cycle repeats with number 10 and 0.

That change in number also affects Makoto’s table.

Makoto Tachibana

Race

Human, (error cannot process)

Class

(error cannot process)

Level

1

Strength

46 (40)

Vitality

125 (110)

Resistance

33 (30)

Agility

73 (60)

Magic

???? (error cannot process)

Magic resistance

280 (260)

Skills

Analyze (max), Wind magic (Lv 4), Fire magic (Lv 5), Ice magic (Lv 4), Earth magic (Lv 3), (error data overflow)

“My god, you are not only a cheater, but a damn hacker in this world.” Yuuko says in awe.

“Mind you that I play game fair and square.” Makoto retorts “Anyway, there is a portion of bit used by the program, so I can only strengthen a few extra value.”

“Wait, Makoto, what was that just now? Did you just burn the exp to enhance your body?” Lexar hurriedly questions.

“Exactly. You have perhaps wondered why we always get stronger after we defeat those monsters made of black liquid. I also don’t know why but I figure we also get this exp system with our own white flame, though I don’t know much about it. Each time we killed a monster , the black liquid was burnt by our flame, and became part of our strength. However, such thing does not apply here though.” Makoto disperses the white flame on her body “These goblins are real living creatures, not those vicious beings made of black liquid.”

“And to my second important discovery, the power of white flame. Follow me.” Makoto leads everyone to an area where there are craters. There are some burnt tracks and roasted goblins lying around.

“There are two types of fire here.” Lexar examines the scene “One of which had very high degree, leaving nothing but black coals and fire in the way. While the other was surprisingly weak comparing to the other, these goblins were only burnt on the skin surface, not reaching the internal organs. This is exactly like the case with that Jerome’s clone.”

“Un. In fact, when I attacked using the positive power, this was the supposed damage of my attack with the amount of energy used.” Makoto nods.

“Supposed?”

“At that time, my expectation was to completely incinerate them, assuming they had the same nature with the monsters in our world. However, the flame only displayed the intensity same as the fire in my imagination.”

“You meant the damage and effect of our attack based on positive energy is actually amplified toward the monsters made of negative energy, but not toward normal creatures?”

“Yeah, my ability can replicate the phenomenon as I imagine without any problem. However, if I want to use it as attack spell, I need to think with a stronger intensity and spend more energy , meaning a change in fighting habit.” Makoto says.

“I see. Even though I and Lexar use melee attack, we also need to take that into account. For my weapon creations, I need to imagine them with sharper edge than usual, or I cannot cut as well as I expect.” Yuuko understands Makoto’s concern.

“Well, luckily enough, we don’t need to be worried about exhausting our energy. Remember our magic status.” Makoto says.

“Yeah, it’s strange that our magic resistance is known, but magic is not.”

“Magic resistance is our body ability to resist mana and magic, while magic represents the amount and power of mana in us. The reason behind the error is that the system cannot measure the white energy inside us in term of mana. And the term mana, you all should be familiar with it. It’s the energy used in fantasy world for the magic stuff.”

“Do we have mana inside us?”

“The answer is both no and yes. No, because our bodies themselves do not contain any or make any mana naturally. And yes, because we can convert the positive energy into mana.” Makoto extends her hand which has a small white flame on it. The white flame flutters a while before changing its color to transparent blue and expanding its size. From a small size about a ping pong ball, the blue flame grows up to the size of a soccer ball.

“Beautiful.” Yuuko mutters.

“Back when I first initialized the first “magic” by creating the white cloud, the program notified me that I learned “Air magic” skill. However, that was only its assumption, basing the analysis of our ability. When I channeled the positive energy and manifested the phenomenon of white cloud and controlled it, the program judged that I used “Air magic”, also at the level 3 on top of that. The reason the program gave out such result because it wanted to reduce the burden it needs to spend on analyzing us.

Thanks to it, I was able to obtain these Magic skill without having to learn them. The moment when I learned these skills, information about them was transmitted inside my head, gaining me knowledge about magic as well as mana.

I’d like to explain how the skill works too, but it is quite a complicated topic, involving the information in deeper layer, so I will leave it to another time. Anyway, as I learned about mana, I was able to gasp what it is. I unconsciously turned the white fame into mana, and used the same attack. The result is the track you see there. The goblins along the way were incinerated into ashes in fraction of second.”

“Is the expansion in size of the blue flame related to how tremendous difference between two attack?”

“Correct. Although the measurement may be incorrect, one positive energy can be converted to ten times the amount of mana for replicating the same phenomenon. The contribution of the skill also affects the rate though.”

“How can we use mana? We don’t have the ability to analyze and understand thing same as you.” Yuuko asks.

“Don’t worry about it. Mana is public information, not hidden in the deep layer of program. When you perform a skill using positive energy, the program will register for you a skill and through that, you can know about mana and how to create it. The next time monster appears, you two should fight to gain some skills and exp.”