Golden Experience

Chapter 2: “A Sour Smell”

The tutorial could not be skipped.

The support AI displayed an overview of basic game information that the player needed to know on top of an image of the game world. That was fine and all, but as mentioned, there was no way to bypass the tutorial, and it would periodically ask “Did you understand that?” to check that you were paying attention, so you couldn’t even zone out or daydream until it was over. You could skip the tutorial in the closed beta, so some tester must have run into some serious problems after skipping the tutorial for them to have changed it.

To summarize, the bits that were probably the most important were:

“The game system doesn’t treat player characters (PCs) and non-player characters (NPCs) any differently.”

“To the system, the only difference between PCs and NPCs is whether or not they can receive system messages.”

“The system does not differentiate between NPCs and monsters.”

“While the player is logged out, the avatar remains in the same spot in-game and goes to sleep.”

The tutorial had gone on for nearly an hour when the support AI made sure to emphasize another point: The AIs given to NPCs versus those given to monsters differed in terms of knowledge, but each individual AI was also unique.

When that came up, Rare interpreted it as an attempt to instill a sense of ethics or morality. In other words, you shouldn’t mistreat NPCs just because they’re NPCs, you shouldn’t callously massacre monsters just because they’re monsters, and you should try to behave with some amount of consideration, something like that.

After the unskippable tutorial ended, Rare spawned in some kind of gloomy, damp place. Seemed like some kind of cave or backstreet alley. There was also some kind of sour smell. It was weird that even though there were no lights anywhere, it wasn’t pitch black; maybe it was because this was a starting area. Glancing around, as far as she could tell, there were no enemies. No other players either.

When starting the game, you can roughly choose your initial spawn zone. There were six countries on this continent, and if you chose one of those countries, there were a number of predetermined locations you could randomly spawn at.

Normally, a newly created character would only spawn at a place with enemies of an appropriate difficulty, and an area without enemies would be near a town or village. Using that town or village as a starting point, you would steadily expand your area of operation and eventually move to areas with stronger enemies; that was the basic progression loop in games like these.

However, for those who choose goblin or skeleton as their starting race, being placed somewhere near a human settlement would be problematic. The six countries all belonged to humanity; one mostly had humans, one belonged to the elves, one had mostly dwarves, one mostly beastkin, etc. In the game’s world, they were all countries run by these so-called races of humanity.

Thus, under the influence of these countries, goblins and skeletons were targeted for extermination. Choosing to be a goblin or skeleton came with all that extra XP to help balance out this disadvantage. For this reason, if a goblin or skeleton were to start right next a town, there was a huge risk of the citizens finding and reporting it and dispatching an extermination squad. If they were to be killed, they’d get a death penalty on top of respawning at the same starting area again. And if soldiers were to patrol the area, they’d be done in again in no time at all. What do you know – a self-perpetuating death penalty-awarding system.

That said, the soldiers and citizens had rather sophisticated AIs, so if they noticed vanquished monsters repopping in a certain area, they’d set up cages or traps at the spawn location, resulting in an endless death loop that could never be broken without outside interference. No idea what would happen if a monster-race player were captured alive by the human races, though.

And so, to avoid those kinds of instant-checkmate situations, you can also select starting areas outside the six countries. The residents of the nations refer to these areas as “monster territory.” As a matter of course, there were naturally no havens of humanity in the monster territories. While it was hard to guarantee that you wouldn’t be attacked by someone of the same race, it was at least better than the no-questions-asked slaughter you’d face in the human countries.

Rare had chosen to spawn in one of those very same monster territories. She was an elf, one of the races of humanity, but she didn’t pick a spawn area based on her race. Naturally, she would have to take responsibility for any penalties or hardships incurred by her choice, since management’s policy was “well, that’s where the player wanted to be.” Even if a goblin were to be captured by humans, it was still possible to enjoy the game, unpleasant as it may turn out to be.

As an elf, and as someone given the Beauty characteristic by the system, it wasn’t too hard to imagine what atrocities Rare might suffer if she were to be captured by monsters. She might be forced to reenact one of those scenes only found in thin, self-published books, but the “official” game response is “nothing like that could ever happen,” and from a gameplay perspective she would simply have to reskill and she’d be able to keep playing. The AI for the monster races in the starting areas didn’t know how to deploy traps after all, unlike human soldiers.

The reason that Rare made this choice in spite of the risks was due to her innate characteristics. [Albinism] made her weak to the sun, and [Failing Eyesight] meant that open fields with good visibility would put her at a disadvantage. In all likelihood, this was a cave-type starting area meant for skeletons or something, but due to the random nature of spawns, a simple roll of the dice determined where Rare ended up.

Monster races don’t want to be involved with any of the six human countries, so since Rare didn’t choose a country either, she would naturally wind up somewhere like this cavern for her starting location. In which case, this place must be somewhere in the monster territories, but she wasn’t sure which country was the closest one.

For an elf like Rare, her surroundings were filled with hostile enemies. If this was a place that skeletons could choose as their starting location, then it stood to reason that there were probably tons of undead monsters.

In any case, her first order of business was to secure a base of sorts. She wasn’t sure if such a place could be found in this cave, but if she had been a skeleton, she should have been faced with the same problem, so it should be reasonable to find some kind of safe area.

As they say, don’t overthink, make a decision and take action. If this was actually an alley, then she’d be attacked and fall into an infinite reskill loop. Since Rare hadn’t learned any skills yet, she’d have to rely on just her character’s base athletic ability. If the starting enemies were the same difficulty as those from the closed beta, then she should be able to handle them barehanded with her current stats. If she could have her druthers, then she hoped they’d be humanoid enemies.

Sticking to the wall at the first intersection, she stuck half her head out and peeked around the corner. No one was there. Even though it was dark and she couldn’t see anything clearly due to her Poor Eyesight, she could at least tell that there were no moving objects. After waiting for a bit, still nothing moved. Leaving a mark on the stone wall, she moved over to the right side. Continuing down the path by hugging the wall, she could see a faint light coming from around the next corner of the cave.

If that was the entrance, then that would be sunlight, and leaving meant she’d take damage. However, it was still necessary to know where the cave entrance was. She cautiously walked toward the light.

As she got closer, she could make out the sounds of people talking.

—There are humans in this monster territory cave…?

She couldn’t be sure they belonged to the human races, though. Maybe they were monsters who could speak in human tongues. Either way, from the way the voices echoed, it didn’t feel like the entrance to the cave was nearby. If the entrance wasn’t there, then there was a high chance that someone purposely brought a light source to this cave. Monsters probably wouldn’t do that. In which case, they were probably humans. Maybe they were players who also happened to spawn in this place. In order to make sure, she’d have to discreetly verify what exactly was on the other side of the wall.

“I gotta go pee quick in the back.”