Dragon X Powerleveling

As I emerged from the alley alive and hopefully still sane, the fear and dread the Exile had instilled in me gave way to a newfound sense of pride and accomplishment.

Her potions had still been double the price of the potions sold by the NPC shops – but that was still cheaper than what the resellers were charging, and after drinking one of them to make absolutely sure it wouldn't kill me on the spot, I could see why.

Just as I had first realized, she wasn't selling standard healing potions – but she was selling greater healing potions. Just one of these would be enough to fully refill my HP bar, and even if I was down to my very last HP when I drank it, some of the healing would probably still be wasted.

Basically, I'd gotten a product better than I even needed, at a price that was cheaper than its standard counterpart.

To be honestly, I actually felt like I was ripping her off. I mean, after I wasted one of the potions by drinking it, she had even given me the Antidote for free as a replacement... although she might have been glaring at me from under her hood as she did so.

I guess she took my paranoia personally. Still, she had seemed relatively pleased to finally make a sale, even if I questioned how she wasn't operating at a loss. She'd told me to come again as I departed the alley, too – so this freebie probably wasn't just another type of poison disguised as an Antidote to trick me into killing myself.

...Probably.

Emerging into the main square, I opened my friends list to message the other two – but before I could finish typing, a voice called out from behind me.

“Kei! There you are!” Gray greeted cheerfully, strolling up with an irritable looking Dairoku in tow. “We didn't see you in the shops, so Dairoku was beginning to think you'd left without us.”

“Nah,” I answered, motioning to where I'd just come from. “The apothecary didn't have anything, as expected, so I was just buying potions from over there.”

Dairoku followed my pointing finger, only to stop and do a double-take as his eyes at last fell upon the Exile and her supremely shady shop. Or, not her shop, but rather...

“A golden eagle insignia with three strikes... A Velkhan player-killer...?”

...the icon over her head. Right. I was wondering what that meant.

“Eh? For real?” Gray asked. “How did she make it all the way here from the Empire already? I didn't think anybody had found a way through No-Man's Land yet.”

I was going to ask what they meant by that, but ever since Gray had called out to me earlier, the Exile seemed to have been staring at us. Or, well, I think she was – it was hard to tell, what with the hood, and with her spacey disposition. But regardless of whether she was paying attention or not, it didn't feel right to talk about someone who was sitting right there, so I decided to change the subject.

“So,” I interjected. “I've got seven healing potions and an actual sword now. So, how about you guys let me in on the details of this plan of yours?”

“Ah. Right,” Dairoku said, Gray nodding along as both of them seemed to take the hint. “Glad to see you're eager to get started. Come with us – I'll explain as we walk...”

- - -

Passing over the lush green plains of the starter areas, I had seen various newbies in patchwork gear similar to my own, all locked in “deadly” combat with all sorts of “fearsome” creatures – like rats and shrews, and maybe the occasional wolf. This seemed to be the intended rate of progression: getting the player used to hitting small targets without much threat of reprisal, then working slowly up to bigger and more dangerous foes.

In hindsight, I might have appreciated the warmup.

Unfortunately, it was a little late for that, as I was now running for my simulated life between a tightly-packed thicket of trees, ducking under the branches as no less than half a dozen snarling reptilians bowled their way through the underbrush behind me, wood cracking and boughs falling in their wake as the sounds of their storming footfalls grew closer and closer.

Too close. I ducked not a moment too soon, as a wicked claw tore through the space my head had just occupied. Forget wasting a healing potion – these <<Feral Lizardmen>> were 20 Levels higher than me. If I took even a scratch to a critical area, I'd probably be dead before I could blink.

Tumbling through a shrubbery, I only narrowly managed to break my fall, doing an improvised combat roll back to my feet at the center of a small clearing. I turned around, drawing my sword out of habit – not that I was going to have a chance to use it. Already, all six of my enemies had burst out from the treeline, beginning to fan out around me, forming three distinct groups.

Pack hunters, just as Dairoku had warned me. One was going to charge me head on, while two pressured me from each flank, and one moved to encircle me from the rear. I would have been impressed, if this level of effort were even remotely necessary – but I guess the lizardmen's AI didn't know the difference in our strength yet. They were still treating me with caution... not realizing I wasn't the real threat here.

“I've got them right where you wanted 'em! Gray, you'd better not miss!”

My shout was answered not by words, but by a sudden breeze that swept over the treetops... carrying with it a shower of arrows. Each shot drifted upon the wind, curving and arcing to strike the arms and legs of my pursuers – then bursting in a flash of lightning, causing the lizards to rear backward, twitching from the shock. Even as I watched the red bleed from their HP bars, the cool wind turned downright frigid, and a shadow in black emerged from hiding in the treeline behind me.

“[Ice Weapon] – [Diamond Dust Mirror Step]!” Calling the names of two of his spells, Dairoku drew forth a silvery rapier from his belt, giving it a practiced flourish, then bounded forward, shimmering mist trailing behind him like the tail of a comet – a mist that, moments later, formed into two perfect replicas of his character, each mimicking his motions as he drove his blade into the exposed underbelly of one of the Lizardmen. Then, in the very next instant, his blade was free, and he was already bounding towards the next enemy – leaving three ice-encrusted statues in his wake.

But though their faces were still frozen in a silent roar, their HP bars weren't completely depleted.

“HAH! Witness my genius in action!” Dairoku cackled, dodging a blow from his next target before freezing it solid with a single slash. His already smug mannerisms ascended to levels of Chuunibyou hitherto unheard of as he swiped the frozen shards of blood from his sword with an exaggerated flick, a gesture which sent his bargain-bin Dracula cloak out billowing out behind him.

“See what I told you? So long as I remove some of my accessories and reduce my stats, I can easily cripple mobs of this level without actually killing them. Now, all that remains is for you to deal the final blow!”

“...Yeah, yeah, great move, you were really cool, thanks for leaving some for me,” I laid on the snark as thickly as I could, shouldering my sword and getting to work. What had begun anticlimactically with me tossing a couple of sharp rocks and then running for the hills ended no less disappointingly with me giving each lizard one good, solid whack – then watching as they shattered like glass, and the XP came flooding in.

If we had done this the normal way, I would never have leveled up from just one battle. But nothing about this “plan” had been normal – which is why I jumped up all the way to Level 4 in one go.

All because of one, simple factor: although Dairoku and Gray had done all of the heavy lifting, and thus should have received most of the credit – I wasn't actually in their party.

See, in any good multiplayer game, safeguards have to be placed to make sure other players can't interfere too much with your experience. As such, the system of SKO heavily weighted the rewards of battles towards the one who started the fight, and those immediately and obviously affiliated with them. But since my friends had only joined in after I had spent over a minute leading the Lizardmen on a merry chase through the woods, and weren't in a party with me, their damage was considered by the system to be an attempt at stealing my kills... Which meant that almost all of the XP was given to me, instead, to prevent these “unaffiliated” players from “griefing” me.

And while it was probably possible to do so much damage that you took priority away from the player who started the fight, there was absolutely no chance of that happening here. After all, I hadn't just started the fight; I had also ended it, dealing the final blow and confirming “my” kill in the process.

Which left the matter of my reward. Since the enemies I had defeated through perfectly legitimate means were 20 times stronger than I was, and I had been outnumbered 6-to-1, the amount of XP I had been awarded for winning such a “difficult” battle was utterly disproportionate to the actual effort I put in.

After all, the Lizardmen were a relatively clumsy enemy that even an under-leveled Dragonkin like me could just barely get away from if I used the terrain to my advantage – and they not only completely lacked resistance to the [Paralysis] status inflicted by Gray's lightning magic, but also had a massive weakness to ice-elemental attacks, which Dairoku just so happened to specialize in.

I unfortunately had to hand it to him. The plan had been basically perfect from start to finish. And as he lambasted us with yet another triumphant monologue while we marched deeper into the woods in search of more prey to artificially inflate my levels, I couldn't even find fault with his stupid boasts.

But I couldn't quite share in his enthusiasm, either. After all, though running for my life had been pretty exciting, and my levels just kept climbing and climbing after that... The “battle” felt more like a solved puzzle. Each and every pull went the same as the one before it, and apart from a few minor-slip ups which my supply of overly-effective healing potions easily compensated for, there was never even any real risk.

...But maybe that was just my dislike of MMOs talking. After all, I'd always been someone who preferred the sense of accomplishment I got tackling challenges by myself, without relying on others for help. But Dairoku had been the one to invite me, so I didn't want to keep him and Gray waiting for me to be able to join their party and actually contribute. Running off and doing things by myself when they specifically wanted to play together would just be selfish. And on top of that, I was the one reaping all the benefits here, so I really didn't have any right to complain.

But still...

This sort of “battle” didn't excite me at all. And if this was all that awaited me in SKO... well, I probably wouldn't be playing it very long.