Virtual Reality: Against the Flow

Li Huailin’s 5 main stats strength, dexterity, const.i.tution, intelligence and wisdom are all within normal range. The highest value for each stat for new accounts is all 10 points, although there’s n.o.body with all maxed stats. Li Huailin’s stats are just okay, they’re pretty much a bit above average. What he’s puzzled about are these racial gifts.

Racial Gift:

Knowledge: Intelligence-10%

Diplomacy: Besides main human cities, reputation with the main cities of all races-10

Li Huailin took a close look again. It really is Intelligence-10% and Reputation-10. What the h.e.l.l is this, shouldn’t it be plus?

Without a second word, Lin Feng immediately withdrew from the game and then picked up the home computer at the side. He immediately accessed 《Heart of Glory》’s official website. There is very little information on the official site, just descriptions for some races and cla.s.ses and simple novice guides. Li Huailin immediately searched for the information on human racial gifts given out on the official site.

Human Racial Gift:

Knowledge: Intelligence+10%

Diplomacy: Besides main human cities, reputation with the main cities of all races+10

“Weird, doesn’t the official site precisely say plus?” Li Huailin confirmed that his eyes didn’t see wrong. Sky Corporation is a big company, if there was a mistake on the official site they should be able to correct it right away. Right now the game has already been in service for 4 days, if there was a mistake it should have already been discovered.

“Could it be that there’s a punishment for self-made log-in equipment?” Li Huailin rubbed the back of his head and didn’t understand what was going on, he could only randomly guess.

Thinking for a moment, he didn’t have any ideas. If a regular person discovered something wrong with their character stats, they could definitely fix it by contacting the site customer support. But Li Huailin can’t, in the first place he doesn’t have the right to buy the capsule, yet he can log-in to the game right now. Once they investigate, customer support will find the problem, so he can’t find customer support to solve it.

“Sigh…. Forget it.” There’s no other way, Li Huailin ultimately gave up, “At the worst I won’t become a mage, I’ll just play a warrior. It doesn’t really matter if a warrior loses 10% intelligence. As for reputation with each main city -10, well I’ll just hang out in the human main city. I get the cold-shoulder in all of the other cities and the prices for items are 20% more expensive, I can’t stand it.”

Thinking like this, besides not having racial gifts there isn’t really any big problem, it’s acceptable. In the first place he is logging-in illegally, just think of this little thing as a punishment. At least he can still play, right?

After comforting himself, Lin Feng once again sat in the self-made game capsule and once again entered into the game.

Once again returning to the character screen, Li Huailin ignored that glaring racial gift and glanced at his current equipment. Sky Corporation didn’t make player’s born naked, upon creation there is a set of cotton clothes and a broken sword.

Cotton Clothes: Defense 1-1, Cotton Pants: Defense 1-1, Broken Sword: Attack 1-3

Li Huailin scanned his own money column. They’re so cheap, there isn’t even a copper coin. He really is penniless, besides the three pieces of equipment on his body there isn’t anything else in his inventory.

“Cheap… So d.a.m.n cheap.” Li Huailin grumbled, and then based on his previous online game experience he started looking for beginner quests.

The server has already been online for 4 days. Based on data given by the official forum, this morning there was already a person who reached LV10 and left the novice village. Right now it is already the afternoon, there’s probably also a ton of people who have already left the novice village. Even though right now there are still a lot of novices who have just appeared like Li Huailin, in general the human traffic in the novice village is still acceptable, not as crazy as the picture that “Launch day, this is a human sea” post posted on the forum a few days ago.

“Creatures of darkness have appeared around this village. Hero of the future, are you willing to help me exterminate some dark creatures? I will give you some rewards.” A grey-bearded old man said to Li Huailin.

System notification: Novice village’s elder has issued an E-rank quest, Exterminate Dark Slimes. Do you accept.

“Yes.”

E-rank quest Exterminate Dark Slimes: Kill 20 dark slimes. Reward: 200 EXP, 10 copper coins.

After looking around for half a day, Li Huailin actually only discovered this one quest. Other NPCs just kept chatting with him and didn’t issue a quest even after a long time. Thinking that he might only be able to receive other quests after doing this quest, Li Huailin didn’t think more about it and starting searching for the quest monster after leaving the village.

The outside of the novice village is a stretch of gra.s.sland. There are a couple of people here and there fighting black slimes, but this kind of novice monster only gives 5 EXP. It’s just a transitional monster so there aren’t a lot of people fighting them. The majority of people have already pa.s.sed the stage of fighting these and have run towards higher level monster zones.

Very soon Li Huailin saw a lone black slime and he slightly glanced at the monster’s stats.

Black Slime: HP: 30, Physical Attack: 8, Physical Defense: 4.

Its appearance is just something like a pile of black glue. Li Huailin went up but didn’t attack it first and let it attack for a bit.

-3

-2

Its attack really is very low. He has 100 HP, he has to take around 40 hits to die, there’s basically no danger. Raising the novice broken sword, Li Huailin attempted attacking.

-5, -6

Calculating for a moment, he can chop one to death with about 6-7 cuts. Sure enough novice monsters don’t have any difficulty.

Randomly slashing a few times, with a “plop” the black slime turned into a puddle of black water and a copper coin jumped out from the black water.

Combat Log: You killed a black slime, -5 EXP.

“Yup, it really is like the forum said, 5 EXP…” Just finishing saying this, Li Huailin unexpectedly noticed that something was wrong. He carefully looked again at his combat log, “-5 EXP”, it was not +5 EXP.

Li Huailin hurriedly opened up his character stat page.

Name: Xiong Huai Ruo Lin

Cla.s.s: None (Yet to change cla.s.s)

Support Cla.s.s: None

Level: 1

Experience: -5/50

……….

His experience actually did become -5/500. At first Li Huailin thought that he saw wrong, who’d have thought that the system was actually serious. Now, apart from him not levelling up, his experience also became negative.

“Holy s.h.i.t, this… This works too?” Li Huailin squeezed out this line after half a day.

Without a second word, Li Huailin hastily ran towards a black slime not far away and cut it down again with a few chops.

Combat Log: You killed a black slime, -5 EXP.

Looking at his experience bar that had already become -10/500, Li Huailin was a bit speechless.

“Can this game be played? I can accept my gift becoming negative, but the experience actually also became negative, how do you want me to level up…” Confirming that he would indeed lose experience, Li Huailin really didn’t have anything to say.

Li Huailin feels that his character seems to have gotten stuck as a bug. Recalling the mismatched opening animation before, the disfigured novice receptionist and adding his strange character stats, the more he thinks about it the more he thinks that it’s very possible.. Afterall he doesn’t log-in using the company provided client and his self-made game capsule could also be considered to be in the beta testing stage, it’s possible for problems to appear.

“What should I do now…” Li Huailin was a bit stumped. The character data for 《Heart of Glory》 is stored in the company server. If he wants to change this bug character of his, he can only delete his character and then improve his log-in tool again and then try making a character again. But after a character is deleted, one month’s time is required to create another one. This is way too troublesome. What if after he makes his improvements it’s another bug character or he just directly can’t connect, then he can’t play anymore.

“I really will continue playing like this. I’d like to see what will happen when my experience reaches -500.” Li Huailin steeled his heart and was too lazy to care. Anyhow, it’s not like he’s playing the game to conquer the online gaming world and become some sort of invincible guy under or over the skies. He’ll just keep playing, if there’s bugs then so be it.

Li Huailin who was slightly depressed farmed black slimes for a bit. He finally killed the 20 slimes required for the quest and his experience also became -100/500.

“Hehe.” Li Huailin laughed helplessly and then looked at his HP, there were still 13 points. Based on his health regeneration rate he’s got to heal for quite a while. At any rate he’s already completely the quest, it would be better to directly die and return back. He’s too lazy to run.

He looked around him and then randomly drew two slimes over to hit him. Not long afterward Li Huailin’s screen turned grey, he died.

System notification: You have died, +50 EXP.

“Holy s.h.i.t.” Li Huailin who just revived at the novice village’s sp.a.w.n point couldn’t help shouting, causing the novices around him to all turn over. But very soon they turned back their heads, this young guy was probably killed by some powerful monster which is why he shouted like that. n.o.body paid him any heed.

Li Huailin still hadn’t returned to his senses. He looked at the system notification message again, he died, +50 EXP.

“How come dying gives experience?” Li Huailin confirmed his EXP bar, it really did become -50/500, which means that it really did add experience.

“Wait a sec, I remember 《Heart of Glory》’s official site say that if you’re killed by a monster, you’ll lose 10% of the experience for the current level. I’m LV1, I need a total of 500 EXP to level up, isn’t 10% exactly 50 points… I get it now, my character is bugged. All of the EXP I get now will deduct experience, but everything that originally deducted experience will turn into adding experience.” Li Huailin’s intelligence is not bad and he instantly determined what was going on, “So I can still play this game. If it’s like this then I just need to die 10 times and I can level up to LV2. Oh right, 10% experience is deducted from dying, like that doesn’t that mean that every 10 times I die I can level up one level. Holy s.h.i.t, I hit the jackpot, won’t my levelling speed late game be unbeatable?”

“I really am freaking awesome.” Seeing the hope of levelling up, Li Huailin also started to be arrogant.