3.10

“Sixty-seven. Never enter any sort of deal with Greater Fey. Ancient identity changing techniques are not worth selling your name for.” - Excerpt from [EXPUNGED]’s Enchiridion of Encounters.

I habitually wiped away a tear, despite my earlier outburst my mind was still rational. To think someone could learn about that stupid thing. I don’t believe I have ever told anyone about it.

That idiotic and childish dream of having something worth doing forever.

Dave began wiping the monocle with a napkin, I did not miss the fact the monocle only did something after it was removed from that eye crevice. A strange condition of the item or were my suspicions about my races’ ‘eyes’ true?

“You are stranger than I expected, but why do you call that dream idiotic? It is an admirable goal even if the reason for it is… depressing.”

My eyebrows furrowed, “Do not refer to it as a goal,” I asserted with a hardness in my voice. “A goal has measurable and achievable steps towards making it, if it does not have it, it is a dream.”

Part of me stepped back as I said this, examining my mental state and deemed anger and frustration as useless as all the other times I felt those emotions. Thus, I took a deep breath and calmed down again.

“A dream is just a nice way of saying a delusion,” I explained as a teacher would to a student, “all dreams are idiotic because of that. Mine is not any different.”

“A dream to work towards can be a good thing, it helps people be motivated as I see with you.”

My eyes narrowed, mind reading is such a goddamn hack, or is it memory reading? “Just because something is a good thing doesn’t make it a smart thing.”

“I would argue that having a beneficial thing is intelligent in itself.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, thinking of no rebuttal at the moment, “but you cannot just pretend that what you chose was idiotic, no matter how much it works.

I am not against having a dream, a vague objective to work towards. But I would not pretend that dreaming is anything other than flailing around in the dark hoping you eventually hit your objective. It was contingent on luck and any strategy that relies primarily on luck is just lazy.”

“But didn’t you try to do something like that with that druid?” Dave continued.

“Of course that is stupid,” I said, looking at him as if he were an idiot.

Dave looked surprised for a moment, though his face returned to that of a pleasant merchant just as quickly. Interesting, a limitation on mind-reading or is he just pretending there are limits?

“Oh, I won’t deny that the whole capitalizing on the injuries of a sudden PVP event for quick bucks isn’t a stupid idea.”

‘Especially since no one came by even though we wasted so much time at a single spot,’ I amusedly thought.

“However, you have this misconception that idiocy is an inherited bad thing,” I said.

Dave raised an eyebrow, “Hoh?”

“It is just a thing,” I stressed, remembering Noam, “there is no good and bad about it. If you were to call idiocy a bad thing then you might as well call the better part of the world and yourself a villain.”

He didn’t react for a moment, before sudden realisation came to him, “Did you just-”

“Yes, I just called you an idiot,” I affirmed.

Now how would he react? Anger would be disappointing as it always was. Any negative reaction would be disappointing to be honest.

Instead, he just mirthlessly laughed, the sound sounding very normal despite the fact he was the same race as me. “You are quite the character, sorry for taking up your time.”

Didn’t address it, instead moving the topic back to me. Calculated or not? Regardless, I raised my evaluation of him.

“There are questions on your mind aren’t there,” Dave said as I pondered about him, “for taking up your time, you may ask one and I will answer freely.”

I looked at him, then carefully moved the pile of assorted trash the Wisps bought towards him.

Dave looked back at me curiously, then left eight unminted gold coins on the counter. The miscellaneous pile disappearing beneath his arm.

“How does the levelling system work? I thought the bugs would’ve been enough for me to get to level four but that clearly isn’t the case. I want specific and exact numbers.”

The system did not show me exact numbers for my EXP, only percentages. Even after killing what must’ve been thousands of grubs, I was still at sixty percent experience. Even if they were trash mobs, the amount of them made them something I doubted most people could have handled. I barely managed it with three hours prep. Especially at this level, in what should be a starter area. At the very least people should’ve needed a party with a majority of AOE damage dealers.

“Levelling works by the Learning system, it tracks the experiences you have accumulated and converts them to a value based on how new- no that isn’t the right word,” he interrupted himself, “How… unique that experience is relative to all the others gained in this body.

When you fought the bugs, the bulk of the experience you gained wasn’t from killing them, but from discovering their habits and function. Once you figured the trick to it, you gained a one time packet of EXP. But due to the fact that you killed the bugs in a repetitive way, you stopped gaining experience after a certain point because it wasn’t a unique experience anymore.”

My eyes widened as he dropped this revelation, but he wasn’t done talking.

“As for the specific amounts of EXP required to level, it is actually really simple. It is the same for three levels, then on the third level the EXP requirement is multiplied by ten. You began with one hundred EXP needed to level from one to two and from two to three, but from three to four you’re gonna need a thousand EXP. Then from six to seven, it would be ten-thousand.”

I closed my eyes- no I don’t have eyes, I closed off my vision as I considered this. The latter half wasn’t difficult to consider, an exponential curve for levelling up EXP wasn’t something new, in fact how uniform it is was more surprising, but that in combination with this unique EXP gain system was… “Achieving even double-digit levels would be a great achievement huh,” I muttered in realisation.

Standing in a single spot grinding for levels was impossible. Killing the same mobs for EXP didn’t work either. This single revelation shut down the most reliable method of gaining EXP in MMOs. “The only way to reliably level would be to continually explore,” I breathlessly said, “to continually learn new things and to experience the world.”

Eve must’ve designed this system with this very intention in mind. I almost had the urge to applaud at how she made the very levelling system work towards Giles’ dream if I hadn’t cursed in annoyance instead as I realised how this would affect me moving forward.

When I researched in that library, I kept a specific eye out for locations that continually spawned out monsters as potential grinding spots. Knowing the right place to grind in MMOs sped up levelling greatly. I had located five such places in total. This just invalidated all of- ‘No.’ I thought as I habitually brought my thumb to my mouth, but instead of nails, my teeth chewed on bark.

The downsides of unique experience only applies when killing the same mob over and over again. The method seems to matter as well, but this also means that if the zone could consistently spawn different monsters then it could still work as a grinding spot.

That removed the Silent Bastion, where the spillage from the Revenant King’s death was still causing undead to rise even seven hundred years later. Only a few variants of undead rose from them, all of them well documented. Which made it a safe spot for the Western Kingdom nobles to train soldiers and Guild mercenaries but meant it was a horrible place for long-term grinding with Travellers.

Then I removed the ones that are practically impossible to get to. Demons would’ve been a good choice as they came in infinite different forms but the only stable Hell Gate was under the ocean in a ravine so deep that it rivalled the Mariana Trench. The Tritons have already called dibs on it as well.

The Oasis… I shuddered as I remembered the details about that location. That place was freaky enough that Cultists and Devil Worshippers turned the land around it spanning several thousand kilometres into an uninhabitable desert just to prevent that corruption from getting out. An act that caused fucking Crusaders to pat them on the back and let them build a nation nearby. Sure they were probably thinking of using the City States as a meatshield in case the Oasis ever spilled over, but the fact that Holier than Thou Crusaders took one look at the Oasis and determined people who regularly practised live human sacrifice to be the lesser of two evils was…

I shook my head. My body wasn’t suited for traversing an artificial wasteland anyways. I had yet to test the upper limits of what sunlight I can endure even with my protections.

That left either Shadesmar or the Underdark Gobbler. The Gobbler was always on the move which made it hard to track, but that could be a good thing in a system for exploration. Though it had a habit of disappearing for up to months on end, not a reliable source. That left Shadesmar. I could operate nocturnally there and though the Lanterns have kept a good lid on that location they are always looking for more help, there was a constant flow of jobs from the Merc Guild as well.

Was I missing anywhere? Hmmm… there were elemental rifts but my class should have a horrible matchup against pure elementals. Arcadia? The Fae Courts respawned and all grudges disappeared by the end of the Season. But I would be on the Fae’s homefield and I was not that desperate. The Hearth Jungle was apparently a good spot, but there were rarely Guild Quests there and it was a frontier location, so it would lack in luxuries. There was the ongoing war between Elves and Goblins, though apparently both sides contracted Mercenaries to aid them. So I would have to be prepared to deal with humanoid opponents. Something I’m not sure if I’m morally capable of pulling off so I’ll just ignore it.

“That really does just leave Shadesmar…” I muttered in thought.

The Wisps poked me to ask why I had gone still and I absentmindedly explained my thought process. Though the bulk of my processing was still on shooting grinding spots down.

“Word of advice,” Dave began, snapping me out of my trance, “you know of century-old battles but not of current ones.”

I wanted to ask him about it, but he just put his hand out, “You would have to buy that information.”

Not worth it, I could probably learn of current events pretty easily. The spread of information was surprisingly high in Indiri due to Wayshards. Though I heard there were still problems with transporting certain goods.

Still, I picked up a coin, “Do you always keep your word on purchases?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Then I’d like to buy the answer to one question vocally asked by me, answered fully and truthfully at whatever time,” I said, passing the coin.

Dave’s brow rose, but he took the coin. ‘Mistake.’ He handed me a receipt and I said, “Tell me the most useful piece of information I can utilise.”

Dave nodded his head, apparently impressed, “The Law of Limitations, is the innate law of this world. It states that all things must have a cost. The cost can be anything, mana, aura, lifespan, training, anything that can be considered a limit to something. It was implemented by Eve as a self balancing mechanism for the world passing singularity and she could not feasibly attempt to balance every spell, attack or defensive technique getting created. A simple example would be enchantments, a weapon enchanted with a curse is able to receive much more powerful enchantments. The longer a warrior spends training sword techniques the better they’ll be at it.”

I nodded, I will consider this later.

“I’ll save my question until later then,” I stated.

Dave appeared confused for a moment, before his eyes widened in shock.

“I never did ask a question,” I explained.

He gave me a lot of free information about himself, he was a merchant but he could give stuff freely, prices of items for one and stuff he wanted to tell his customers. My refunding earlier confirmed that he differentiated between vocal questions and non-verbal statements, though it was shaky ground to trick him. It wouldn’t be too great a loss even if he considered that my question, but I had the sneaking suspicion that the next time I came here, information would be harder to tease out of him than before.

Dave shook, and a sound like nails on a blackboard came from his throat. I realised he was laughing, it wasn’t the normal-sounding laugh I heard earlier, but a sound I thought more fit for a myconid.

“I will keep my word," he said, sounding both genuinely amused and impressed, "ask your question vocally whenever you want in my presence and I will answer fully and truthfully.”

“I did it because I assumed that information will be a lot harder to get out of you later on.” Something about when he said that word. Demand. That felt different. Like the word itself had power. ‘It was a hunch, would that hunch pay off?’ I thought but didn’t vocalise.

“You value few things higher than information,” he stated, “the next time you come here, I would’ve adjusted the cost for that,” he confirmed. “Indeed, I change the costs to match the customer and their needs, I am giving this information to you for free as well I guess.”

I smiled, “Thank you for telling me that,” I said, making sure that none of my words was a question. “You also give the prices of things freely, though it was a mistake to let me decide the price.”

“I am indeed open to haggling, but my guard was down… I should’ve noticed something when you made that incredibly specific request. Are you sure you were not misclassed?” he asked, “You would make an excellent Warlock.”

“I was made aware that Travellers are already considered Warlocks of sort,” I said, remembering my brief glimpse of that book of magic before I ran off to save Noam.

“Indeed,” he said with a jovial smile. “May I ask why you did it? Why antagonise this world’s equivalent of the cash shop owner? What is essentially an Admin?”

I matched his gaze and said, “Because I could.”

And because even when I antagonised Eve, she was reasonable. Now, I test if I can outright trick and be an asshole to one of them. And see their reactions.

Dave only laughed harder.