The city’s streets were beaming with life. People ran left and right even though it was freezing. Cain and the rest stood out like a flame on a flag by how diverse their cast was. Evan was getting back from the market after stocking up on the yeast. His mother’s bread was in high demand on those cold days.
As they reached the city gate, a group of guards stopped them. “You must be master Cain, The lord has ordered us to…” Before they could continue, Cain walked past them and said five words, “Sorry, you must be mistaken.” ignoring them like they weren’t even there.
“Hold up! There is no one other than you with white hair in the city. The lord has ordered us to keep you from going outside the city for at least a week! You need to recover.” Even if those were the lord’s words Cain didn’t care, William must be worried about Alice after seeing how Sofia ended.
“Has the Lord told you about her?” Cain pointed toward Zaleria, “He said to not stand in her way in any shape, hasn’t said why though.” They were surprisingly easy to talk with.
“We’re getting out, move away.” Zaleria seems to have caught quickly to Cain’s intentions. If she was the one to talk then they will have to let them out peacefully. Cain thought about it in his head. The lord could wait to see his daughter healthy, but now that she was, Cain had been taking her on deadly adventures daily. It wouldn’t be strange if his hair had started to fall.
After leaving the city and treading the white snow for a while they reached the area where Cain first hunted slimes after reincarnating. Seeing the blob monsters slither away in the snow made him smile.
“Let’s split up,” Cain said as he stretched his arms, it was time to level up.
“You do remember how did we end last time?” Sofia reminded him of when they split up and encountered the Crimson Cobra. Even if she has gotten a bit stronger, she could still see herself being killed by that thing.
“Don’t worry, We will properly divide our strength this time,” Cain said explaining their plan.
They will split into two teams, Zaleria’s team and Cain’s team. His team will only consist of himself and Selena. Zaleria will stay with the rest of them as she could easily protect them from almost anything.
“We will split like that and fight monsters in a one on one fights to level up,” Cain said looking at the girls.
“But we’ve been fighting all those days and we rarely leveled up.” Alice’s concerns were real, they did defeat a hydra and cleared a whole A-rank dungeon.
Cain thought it was important to explain how experience works so they can better understand.
The exp origin is hard to explain without delving into the theory of high magic so he skipped that part to explain the important part.
When fighting another being that isn’t the same race as you and killing it you get experience, most call it exp for short. In a standard one on one fight, the amount you get is 100%
There are two important numbers in exp, how much exp a monster gives (For example 100 points) and how much exp a person will receive upon killing it(100 if its a one on one fight)
Now let’s say two people are fighting it. The monster being cornered will give less exp (100/2=50 as two people are fighting it) so the two people killing it will gain that 50 experience and they have to share it so it becomes 25 each (50/2=25)
The amount of experience has decreased to a quarter by just having a second person join. Now to apply the same calculation to a party of four and well get (100/4=25 now 25/4=6.25 rounded down its just 6…) This was why they were leveling so slowly, the experience heavily favors solo kills.
Now there was another instance where the exp will decrease, it’s when you kill one of your own race. In that case, the exp gained with getting divided by a factor of ten. So if the party was four humans killing one human the exp will be (100/4=25; 25/4= 6.25; 6.25/10=0.625 rounded down it 0 they get nothing for murder) for them to even gain 1 point of exp they will need to kill a (1*10=10; 10*4=40: 40*4=160 exp) That decrease will only apply to the people of the same race so Selena, for example, can kill humans like Cain and Mary and gain the full exp.
People will usually give a tenth of the exp they need to level up, so for example Cain will give 1400 exp when killed, Alice will only give 270, and Zaleria will give 101000 exp.
“I can’t keep up with what you’re saying-nya, all I have to do is hunt alone right-nya?” Selena stopped Cain who was happily explaining the arcane truth of the world like it was common knowledge. In fact, most people didn’t even understand how the system worked and thought it was random.
Zaleria was in shock as she heard him explain it, it finally made sense in her mind. Why did dragons insist on the individual feats, and why her father was so hateful of group achievements. For a race that seeks strength, fighting in a group was inefficient. It also explained why most of the world’s religions treat in-race conflict as a great sin. The question in her mind now was how could this twenty-year-old human have laid his hand on such eldritch knowledge that should only be known to those who reached the pinnacle of the world.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Cain asked Zaleria who was staring sharply at him. “Nothing, I was wondering how come you know such things?” She asked directly.
“It’s common knowledge, isn’t it? I still have a lot to learn about the world.” Cain said. He didn’t know that what he learned from the dragons’ lord experiments and the elvish kingdom was a hidden knowledge as, by the time he got to explain them to people, he was already walking among the top fighters of the world.
“Do you think so? Then I will look forward to how strong you will get.” Zaleria gave Cain a weird smile that he has never seen from her before, it was that of a butcher fattening up his pig.
After the conversation has ended they immediately split up. Cain and Selena went off to look for a suitable monster while Zaleria stayed with the rest.
“You stay here and fight slimes, each one of you has to fight alone, don’t help each other.” Zaleria told them as she turned into her draconic form, “Gracie you stab their cores, Sofia use magic and Alice use your curse. I will be close hunting so you don’t have to worry about anything dangerous, now go.” Zaleria immediately flew away into the forest to eat her fill.
On the other side, Selena and Cain were running under the trees like the wind. Cain was barely able to keep up with her thanks to [Haste].
“So we’re hunting alone-nya?” Selena asked as she noticed that both of them has stayed close for a while.
“Not necessarily. We’re fighting alone, we can track the monster together and watch each other fight.” Cain replied quickly, “I do have some tricks and cool moves I want to test, it will be really helpful to have you protect my back.”
“Like what?” Selena asked, she had already seen a lot from him. “A combination of some spells; it will be spectacular to watch I promise. Look, there’s my training dummy.” Cain pointed out a moving bush ahead.
“Huh, that…” Selena’s ear tilted backward as her teeth emerged, her tail spiked and her claw greeted the outside world. That smell, that hissing, how had she not noticed such a thing?
“Cain stop, that thing is dangerous-gaw.” Even though she remembered Cain killing it before, this seemed to be a bit bigger. A Massive Crimson Cobra emerged from the thick overgrowth hungry for a meal.