FB: Chapter 13 – Increase Speed, Maximum Overdrive

After an hour the first blood flower crumbled, and I placed a second. The horde just kept on coming. I made a loop around my platform clockwise, killing two zombies per side. Each kill took about five seconds, which included moving to the next zombie.

I wasn’t worried about my stamina either. With a basic weapon and using a basic attack, I consumed one stamina per attack. I was regenerating one stamina per second at level 1. Running would also consume stamina, but one couldn’t run in the Murk Swamp so that hadn’t been an issue.

My main concern was running out of zombies. In the future no low level zone would be completely uncontested like this place. Each zone could support a certain number of monsters. This was normally based on the size of said zone. This number wasn’t a hardware or software problem, but a limit imposed by the game design and QAI.

Monsters would only respawn into the zone so quickly and they wouldn’t respawn within a certain radius of a person. Most people speculated that this was to hide the fact that QAI was just creating them. But with luring, that no spawn radius was much smaller than my pulling radius. Which meant the horde just kept coming and coming. The mist of the Murk Swamp also helped in this regard, making the no respawn zone around me smaller than it would normally be since my visibility was limited.

If there were other people, they would be killing these zombies or interfering or pulling them away. But in the Murk Swamp, the worst beginner hell zone, there was only me. I also needed to shard the monsters with super critical attacks so they would respawn more quickly and not create an obstacle or ramp by my altar.

If the zombie soldiers weren’t being sharded then instead of instantly going into the respawn queue, their remains would only vanish when I moved on, limiting the usefulness of this strategy unless I destroyed the corpses. There were skills that used corpses and harvested ingredients from them. But these monsters had nothing useful. Sharding monsters with super critical attacks was so high level players could just rush through a low-level area without disrupting the spawn rates too much.

But it was also effective for this type of mass luring strategy. I honestly got into a rhythm. Stab, step, step, stab, step, step. It was almost like a dance. Just with barfing zombies in a horrible smelling swamp. While this kind of tactic was known in the future, it was hard to pull off for a long period of time, since other people would interfere. Once again, I thanked the Trinity for making the Murk Swamp a beginner hell zone and keeping people away.

After nine hours of stabbing, I didn’t put out another cursed blood flower and slowly finished off the zombies in front of me. It took another hour for the horde to diminish, since it was large enough to pull zombies from around the area. Thankfully without the cursed blood flower, the zombies pull range greatly decreased, which lowered the pull rate.

I checked my ear count as I left the altar and raced back to town. I had killed 7,157 zombies in 10 hours. That was 1,789,250 experience. That was far more than I had first assumed. I had been hoping for 2,000 zombies a day optimistically. I had underestimated this strategy. I was glad I had my pack on which gave me extra inventory slots and set up bags to automatically take in the zombie ears. The trick was to put one ear in each bag, before putting each of those bags in one slot in my inventory. I had put in ten bags thankfully.

It was also nice that I finally had money flowing in. With equipment and the cursed blood flowers, I was going to be earning around 6,200 copper per day, or 62 silver per day. That was 124,000 dollars per day at 20 dollars per copper coin. I had checked the exchange rate and it was holding around that point still.

I wasn’t going to convert the coinage but save it up instead for now. There would be a use for a lot of coinage in the future. I could earn money faster by keeping the coinage in game, rather than moving it out of game. If there weren’t transfer fees and other expenses for moving money, I might have considered moving some of my wealth out of game, but for now it wasn’t worthwhile.

I made my way to the Town Hall, which also offered as the central guard station for the town. “What do you want?” the guard at the counter asked me.

“Got grabber ears to turn in. Quite a few from clearing out the Murk,” I said.

“Put them on the counter,” he said.

“Command remove seven full bags grabber ears,” I said. Seven bags appeared on the counter and the guard’s mouth twitched a bit as he looked them all over.

“A lot of ears and they are all fresh too. That would be 70 silver for all seven bags,” he said and pulled out a runic plate. I put my hand on it to get my money. After that he quickly put the bags beneath the counter.

I then made my way over to the Traders Union. “Welcome back Foxy Blight,” the clerk said. A much friendlier reception since I had already done a lot of trades through here. I was a rank 2 member, which had boosted the friendliness of the NPCs working for that organization towards me, with the largest impact being the clerk in this town since all my trades had gone through him.

“I need to place an ongoing order for cursed blood flowers. I need ten every four days,” I said. Since days in-game were six hours long, I needed to word the request like this. “Or for shipping purposes a stack of a hundred every forty days.”

“Well you haven’t violated the contract you signed. And there is word around town that you brought in a lot of grabber ears. It shouldn’t be a problem. That would be 105 silver then for the first shipment, and I will pass on word to reserve an ongoing amount for your purchase.” There was the sign of QAI playing tricks with the NPCs. However, if I asked, I would find a chain of people had shared this information between each other, creating a believable situation where the NPC didn’t just get this information from nowhere.

“I would prefer if we could lock in the price with a guaranteed payment for the next 1,200 days,” I said.

“That would mean 3,000 cursed blood flowers, which would be worth 30 gold, not counting shipping costs. If you couldn’t pay you would be considered in debt. Failure to repay that debt would see you sentenced to the Penitent Mines,” the clerk informed me.

“I know the risks. But I also need a stable price and supply of these cursed blood flowers. Also, this would be a huge boost in trade for this town,” I said. That last bit was to help persuade the NPC. Clerks for the Traders Union wanted to increase trade in their area. Something about getting promoted up through the Traders Union. It was one of those things people said helped while speaking to these clerks, but I had never seen factual proof of this. Still, it didn’t hurt to try.

I soon signed two more contracts. The first was for the order in general and that I would pay for what I ordered. This was standard for ongoing orders and would resolve once I paid in full and got everything I was owed. The second contract was between the clerk and myself, to front the 40 gold needed for the first contract and an additional 5 gold fee.

There was a set repayment schedule, which I wasn’t worried about. Since I could easily earn 70 silver every 4 in-game days, that meant it would take around 260 in-game days to repay the loan I was getting in game. I had 1,000 in-game days to repay the loan, which was more than enough time. If for some reason I didn’t meet the deadline, it was possible to negotiate an extension based on how much I had already repaid. QAI acting through the clerk would make a determination if they thought I could repay what I owed and how friendly I was with them.

The last bit of good news, was that such a large order had pushed me up to rank 3 with the Traders Union. Any higher rank would require massive trades in platinum. This was for the ultra-rich or for the purchasing agents of large guilds. After I was done in the Traders Union I went back to the inn in town.

“Welcome back,” the inn keeper said without prompting in a less gruff tone. That was a sign my favorability in the town was improving. Turning in all those sacks of zombie ears created a ripple of fame along with spending a lot of money in the Traders Union here in town.

“I would like to keep information about me quiet, if that is possible?” I asked the inn keep and handed over 1 silver coin.

“Not a problem. No one will hear a word from me.” I smiled at that. Once your favorability was raised, NPCs could be paid to keep their mouths shut about you. I would have to bribe the guards and some of the clerks I had interacted with, but anyone looking to purchase information on me would be paying in gold not copper now.

It wouldn’t slow down anyone truly determined to dig out my secrets, but it would make it a lot more painful on their wallet. All the top guilds did this once they entrenched themselves into an area. Often they had an NPC relations manager for their guild who worked with counter intelligence.

The standard rule for getting all the intelligence out of an NPC was a hundred times what the blocking bribe cost. Favorability could increase or decrease this multiplier. Often guilds would have their intelligence agents grind up favorability in a location before counter bribing the NPCs for information to make the price cheaper. The targeted guild would keep an eye out for something like that and grind up their favorability and bribe the NPCs more if they really wanted to keep something a secret.

None of that mattered if you were willing to pay enough. But at core locations, the NPCs were bribed with a gold coin, meaning it cost a platinum coin to get anything from them. Platinum coins were strategic levels of money and couldn’t be used on bribes willy nilly.

I wasn’t that rich yet, but bribing the local NPCs with a silver would ensure that no one could cheaply get information about me. A gold coin was 10,000 copper or 200,000 dollars at the current exchange rate. The ultra rich would just hire people and buy more capsules rather than throw that kind of money investigating a person in Murk Town.

The reason I was preemptively spending the money, was due to how good the altar was. I hadn’t really considered it before, but it was too good to let the secret slip out. Tomorrow, I would bribe the rest of the NPCs I needed to.

While they were all technically different people, bribing an NPC during one portion of their work shift would transfer the effect of that bribe to all NPCs in that position. Otherwise, it would be too much of a headache to counter bribe.

The major cities had information brokers instead who could handle this kind of service as middle men for an extra fee. The headache there was finding them all and preemptively bribing them. Just one more piece of information jealously guarded by the super guilds in the future. The nice thing was that a bribe to block information lasted forever or long enough I wasn’t worried. No need to pay for upkeep.

After logging out I took some time to rethink my grinding plan. Initially I had wanted to get 150 million experience in ten months. But now ten months would get me about 360 million experience. I considered how I could make the killing process go even more quickly.

I could duel wield spears. Use half spears instead, which were just shorter pointy sticks. If the length was about from my hand to the ground, that would work for stabbing. Two cursed blood flowers at a time and then kill the zombies as they are climbing up onto the upper platforms.

It took them about 20 seconds to grab and pull themselves up. That would give me 5 seconds per side on my altar. I went to an empty part of my home and did the anticipated movement while mentally timing myself. It would take 4 seconds for two kills. So, I had a bit of lee way.

That would double my grinding speed again. That would be about 3.5 million experience per day, or 720 million experience by day 300. I felt unsteady at that. That was…it was too much if it really was possible. I was used to thinking in terms of the top people earning 20,000 experience a day. While that experience was used for leveling experience, it had been my mental benchmark. One couldn’t stockpile level experience, only skill experience.

I had blown far past that. With the set up I had, I could probably get to level 30 in two days’ time. But once that happened, I wouldn’t be pulling in the experience I needed to make all my skills personal skills that I had leveled up by myself. Those small percentage based boosts from increasing the rank of skills with experience I earned on my own were critical in my mind.

Then the money from the zombie ears. It would be immense. With the Luck based skill shards maxing out the ear drops, I would be earning over a gold coin a day after expenses once I picked up my grinding speed. In less than a hundred days I could have a platinum coin. I had never had one before.

While they weren’t the stuff of legends, they were insanely valuable. No one risked moving them outside their inventory and would often deposit them instead. Rich people and guilds measured their wealth by the number of platinum coins they had. A single platinum coin was a million copper coins.

It was estimated that a standard worker could earn 10,000 copper coins a day after expenses and their salary would be 5,000 copper coins per day a decade from now. It was a bit more complex than that, but it was the standard benchmark that was used when I had been crunching the numbers for the guild I had been working for. This was far in the future once the exchange rate had collapsed.

Besides upping the bribe amount for the various NPCs to gold coins, there was nothing I needed to spend money on. While tempting to buy better gear, the costs would quickly add up. All the high end equipment cost a platinum coin.

Like an eternal compass, full map set, and anti-identification pendant all cost a platinum coin each. Better to save up my money and use it to get more money later on. I would need every coin. Well not every coin, but the more I had saved up, the more I could grow my wealth.

Right now, people were still getting used to fighting with their bodies and not just hitting some keys or using a mouse. Actual combat was scary and hard until one adapted to it. There was also the learning curve about the world of Exponential. But once people started hitting level 30, that was when things would start really opening up. That was about half a year for the leaders and a year for the wave of people behind them.

In a year from now the leaders would be around level 38, which was when I would finish up grinding experience and shoot up to level 30 in one quick move. Level 30 was when people could enter cities on foot and use various services there. There were ways around that limitation but they were expensive and normally not worthwhile. It was simpler to just get to level 30.

A decade from now level 29 and below players were considered scrubs or noobs. A lot of guilds only recruited people at level 30 from outside their core organization. It was when a person could go beyond the beginner zones and actually do stuff.

Only the super guilds could monopolize one or two beginner areas due to the sheer volume of people. The amount of pressure at the lower levels was immense. Most people were traumatized after those initial levels and were more susceptible to recruitment drives. Even if the experience gained at lower levels was really good, it just wasn’t practical with how many people were constantly entering Exponential.

The benchmark of level 30 was a big one, since that was when people could enter a city by foot or carriage without being turned away by the guards. It was also the benchmark for being allowed to participate in the coliseum. That was a quick way to wealth and fame. Also, it would set me on the path for a very important title, which had the same bonuses as the Unstoppable Slayer, effectively doubling the boosts I would be getting.

Stat increasing titles were the best of the best and none of them were easy to get. Unstoppable Slayer was probably the most well-known and the one the most people earned. Even then, the people who had earned that title numbered in the thousands out of the billions of people who joined the game.

The physical damage boost of 15% alone was just too good for anyone to pass up, since it allowed them to hit above their level and would only increase in power as one’s skills became a higher rank. It made me wonder if there was a title above the one I had for killing 100 monsters over 100 levels.

The problem that I had been thinking long and hard about, was if there was anything I could kill at level 101 or higher. The Arch Mage Murk boss was only level 100 and there was just one of him. I needed something I could cheese like the Murk Oozes with an item and that I could get to and didn’t have other monsters around.

Those three requirements made it extremely difficult to come up with any suitable options to see if there was an even higher level title. Even if there wasn’t, there was a good chance QAI would adapt and come up with a title on the spot. That was the power of the adaptive artificial intelligence controlling Exponential.

I could only have three titles equipped, so boosting the ones I planned to get was very important. I just needed to think of a monster I could cheese, get to, and was alone.