Murr’s ears flattened, and he glared at the woman in a tight leather catsuit. “Damn it, Rava! I know what I’m doing.”
“You know her?” While I remembered him mentioning that she was his friend, friends didn’t normally kill-steal. I looked at the pink haired catfolk.
Rava smirked. “Know me? Of course he knows me. He hired me to teach him how to pick locks along with other roguish things he couldn’t figure out on his own.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “I never thought you’d actually become one, though. I always assumed you were just some rebellious rich kid hanging out with us ruffians because you thought it was a good time.”
“And I thought I’d repeatedly proven to you and the gang that I had what it took to be one of you. But I guess that didn’t matter.”
She scratched her cat ear and sighed. “It would have been better if you’d become a non-combatant merchant.”
“You’ve said that already, but this is the life I’ve chosen and my Destiny Reveal has acknowledged that.”
Her lips changed from a smirk to a melancholic smile. She shook her head. “We all told you to wait until you were twenty.”
“I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Can you say the same thing after you’ve lost eight lives? Being a rogue is dangerous.”
He crossed his arms and smirked. “A catfolk who reaches 300 can earn 90 more.”
She snorted. “Not everybody does.”
The bushes rustled. Everyone stilled and glanced toward the mass of leaves. Bradvin and the rest of his team practically toppled out of the bush and into our clearing. They appeared haggard, but all wore wide smiles... until they saw me. Then their faces froze.
Kimmi blew a leaf out of her hair and then smiled at me. It looked a little forced. “Hiiii, Samalrune.”
“Funny meeting you out here in the middle of nowhere.” I raised both brows at them. “I was worried when you didn’t return to the inn.”
“The thing is,” Kimmi said awkwardly, “we went on our first quest and it took longer than we initially thought. We’re only returning now.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me or leave a note?”
Bradvin rolled his eyes. “We went deep into the forest to fight level 5 monsters.”
“What?” They did that at level 1? Were they insane?
“We had to fight for most of the day and then on the way back, we ran into a few Three Horned Lions.” I knew about those. They were level 8. “In the end, we ended up gaining four levels from this single quest!!” Kimi practically vibrated with excitement.
My mouth dropped. What? But more importantly, “You fought a level 8 monster? Are you insane?!”
Bradvin patted the shoulder of the violet eye’d dwarf. “Between Olin keeping us all healed up and Dos tanking like a champ, we all came out of it fine.”
The dwarf grinned at Dos. “That was some of the finest tanking I’d ever seen.”
The golem smiled proudly. Considering what I knew about him, the praise was fully earned.
“How about you?” Kimmi asked.
“Well, Kron and I reached level four yesterday.”
“And I would have gotten to five if Rava hadn’t stolen my kills,” Murr glowered at the brown haired catfolk girl.
Rava scoffed. “Don’t be silly. No one can progress that fast without putting themselves in extreme danger like we did. These bees are what? Level 4? You’d probably have to kill thirty of them to go from 4 to 5.”
Murr placed a hand over his eyes and sucked in a breath like he was doing everything in his power to not choose violence. Considering that three bee-balls at a 10x multiplier would give the same experience as thirty, he had every right to be upset. With a few well-planted knives, Rava had ruined his chance for getting an easy level.
Bradvin pursed lips and his brow furrowed with concern. “Aren’t you progressing a bit too fast, Samalrune?”
“You know my situation.”
He sighed. “Yeah, but you have to realize that leveling so quickly isn’t healthy. Our teachers always reminded us that you won’t develop the necessary skills to succeed if you don’t take your time.”
Rava grinned, “You’ll also end up becoming kitten-adventurers — cute, dangerous looking, but not all that threatening.”
Murr, who had finally calmed down, scowled at her.
“Then what about you? You’re already level 5,” I point out.
“Our party is aiming for 160.”
Hearing that was like a punch to the ball sack. And, the worst part, I had to explain why using math.
The traditional way to level in the four years preceding the Destiny Test was:
Year 1 - 40 levels
Year 2 - 22 levels
Year 3 - 12 levels
Year 4 - 6 levels
And the average adventurer would break up the years into quarters, the first one looking like this:
Quarter 1 - 20 levels
Quarter 2 - 11 levels
Quarter 3 - 6 levels
Quarter 4 - 3 levels
If I graphed it out, it would look almost like stairs. Wait, that was wrong... It would be closer to a stupid-looking bumpy hill. Or maybe the reverse of a good movie’s rising-action zigzag.
Each quarter was 91 days, with an extra day at the end of the year to rest. Nearly everyone spent their first one attempting to earn a level every four to five days. Which was around what I’d have to do to steadily reach 300.
But, if Bradvin’s party wanted to aim for level 160, then they’d end up needing to level every 2.27 days... which was every 2 days with an extra day off at the end of every other week? Ooof. I didn’t know. Could someone do that math for me? I was a tank, not a mathematician. Where was a calculator when I needed one?
Regardless, what all this convoluted math meant was that, for at least the first three months to six months, my ex-party might significantly out-level me... and it also meant that I could have spent most of a year leveling with them if they’d given me a shot. And that hurt.
While I could just let it go, and focus on leveling at my own pace, I still remembered that Bradvin called me mediocre. Frankly, it made me want to prove how talented I was.
But, like Rava said, I’d also had to make sure my skills didn’t lag behind, or I’d become all hiss and no claws.
Actually, my situation kind of reminded me of a history lesson Professor Coltvins gave us.
In the past, before the adventurer’s guild started to strictly regulate the Combat-Oriented New Adults, there would often be very rich or powerful people who wanted it easy. They gathered parties of excellent adventurers to carry them to the higher levels. While their level and gear turned out to be top-notch, their skills were pieces of shit.
This would have been fine back in my old world, but in this one, if you were a combat class, that meant you were destined to fight. If you didn’t seek out a battle, they would come to you. By not developing their skills and practicing them until they were efficient, these rich kids only did themselves a disservice. Many ended up dying during their Destiny Test. Some, who barely passed, never lasted long afterwards.
To put it in different words from my past life, it was like these kids bought a high level character in an MMO and didn’t know how to play it.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
We couldn’t allow our boons to do the same thing to us. Just because we leveled easier, didn’t mean it was all good. Similar to how some genius children struggle as adults because they don’t form proper study habits when they’re young — if we weren’t careful, and took the easy route, we wouldn’t be prepared when shit hit the fan.
“Are you that shocked?” Bradvin said. “You might think badly of us, but even we aren’t brave enough to try for 300 in four years.”
“If you’d been willing to give me a chance, we could have leveled together for the first two quarters, at least. It’s not like parties never have members leave.”
He scowled at me. “Be realistic. We’ve both heard the statistics. Professor Coltvins beat it into our heads that we need a suitable group at the very beginning. It will improve our chances of reaching a higher level. And that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
“But we can help you find good party members,” Kimmi said. “We were planning on doing that, anyway.”
“I’m satisfied with my current team.” I nodded to Kron and Murr in appreciation. “They’re willing to work with me and our aim is 300.”
“You can’t be serious!” Rava’s ears flattened.
Our rogue sent her a smug look.
Dos raised both brows. “You’re going to need two more DPS, at least.”
“Unless we can find some that have boons like us, I don’t see that happening.”
“You received a boon?!” Kimmi’s eyes widened in excitement. “What is it?”