Peter closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Thank all the gods and goddesses! I don’t think I could have taken anymore of this. And yes, don’t tell anyone else. Now I need to rest for a bit. I don’t think my heart can take much more of this.”

Peter walks over to a nearby tree and leans up against it. Once he has gotten comfortable, he yells at the group, “I’m going to put up a sound barrier and take a nap. There shouldn’t be any monsters worth note nearby so we can continue once I have recovered.” Then he pulls out his shell and sets it down.

Back with the group, Jason shakes his head. “I didn’t even tell him my biggest secrets. I think my concept of normality might be a bit warped because of the locals I’ve been having to deal with.”

Rosha laughs at this, “You think? Just Andrew alone is like a fourth wall breaking comic book character already and from what I’ve heard of your time after the rest have just been even worse. While it isn’t rare to experience the higher level locals, you’ve met up with some of the odder ones.”

Courtney shakes her head, “I think we all might have a bit of a warped perspective honestly. I had heard of people getting more experience and so just assumed being able to do stuff like that wasn’t too out of the ordinary. With how Peter reacted, I am going to have to go back over the data. My original thought was no one bothered with reducing the amount received because that would be stupid for most people but there might be more to it. Maybe it is something people can’t do, at least in normal circumstances.”

Rosha raises an eyebrow, “And you aren’t going to look into that variant set thing? Don’t tell me you missed how he said it.”

Courtney rubs the back of her neck. “Well, I was going to look into it. If I had to guess though it is probably like a set of gear. Must be hard though because it didn’t come up in my research for the kitsune’s illusion variant.”

Jason shrugs, “Taking a long time to complete is honestly a good quality to have in NeoRealm. With who you are there is every chance you will be in here an easy five hundred years or more. A hundred years chasing something that will let you stand above your peers will be worth it. Especially since you never know what kind of life extension tech will be available in the future. Just look at the larger families in NeoRealm. No king from what I’ve seen will be less than a hundred years old.”

Courtney raises an eyebrow, “With how he mentioned it, I don’t think this will be a matter of just a hundred years. It sounded more like one of those fairy tales.”

Jason smiles, “But you’re missing a key element, we’re travellers! There are plenty of examples of other travellers getting previously impossible things just because we don’t stay dead. So many things require you to do things before specific bottlenecks that the locals can’t focus too heavily on. For those that go out and adventure, the gaining of levels is a matter of life and death. They can’t just not break a bottleneck because they want to farm achievements or some such.”

Courtney sighs, “You’re not wrong. There are people who spend over a decade at the second bottleneck just to maximize some specific rewards you can get. You can even find rumors of people in the early days who tried to never level up once. Ironically, you are the closest I’ve ever seen to that being a viable strategy. Though that brings up the question of if you could have throttled your experience gain down to nothing.”

Jason nods, “Totally could have done that. Though ten percent was enough for what I wanted. It would have been interesting to try if it wasn’t for the fact I can only have one avatar. If it wasn’t for the level suppression, which is harder on me I might add, I could see myself having no problem.”

Rosha looks up, “Why would you be hit harder by level suppression? Isn’t that just to keep a level ten character from killing some level one hundred dragon and other silly situations?”

Jason laughs, “What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve fought third break monsters before I had even passed the second bottleneck. Part of my reward for hitting level ten was a harsher suppression.”

Courtney sighs, “You’re still not having much of a problem hitting above your level.”

Jason shrugs, “You should have seen me when fighting the wasteland monsters. Though I honestly don’t mind the restriction that much. It honestly makes sense to me because what it does is protect the monster’s vital areas. With magic and what not, you have to expect creatures to passively have those areas protected. Plus it isn’t some omnipotent thing. My fist doesn’t hit a brick wall just because I try to punch a monster’s kidney.”

“Also, I think there is a secret to it. Have you ever thought about why travellers have an easier time fighting monsters? Some of the locals seem to be just as competent if not more so than us. Yet they all seem to be under the threat of death if they aren’t careful. I would have to watch some of them fighting monsters of equal or greater level than themselves, but I suspect it isn’t the System adding more suppression to me. Rather, I think it might be that the System no longer holds back the monsters as much against me. My increased suppression might actually be a matter of having less System aid.”

Courtney holds her chin with her thumb and rests her index finger on her nose. “Hmmmm, Hmmm, I’m going to have to watch a bunch of videos this next break it seems. Though this shouldn’t be something that no one has found yet? I don’t think so, at least. Then again, people might have noticed it and just thought it was a mechanic to suppress the locals instead of coming at it from the opposite direction. Scratch that video watching. I need to get a team on this because it could have quite the fallout. This might even explain a couple mysteries people have had about NeoRealm for a while.”