Chương 3: Making friends

It doesn't take me long to find other people, once I start heading into town. There still aren't bodies, still is a lot of blood, and still are lynxith wandering around. But near the exit to the next apartment building down the street, I see someone else fighting. They've got a hammer in each hand, and seem to be battering a giant mantis to death. When I look at the mantis, I see that it only has 15 hit points left. I don't even need to sneak up on it to do that kind of damage.

If I'm lucky enough, I'll do that with a single hit. I debate letting the guy with the hammers do the job, letting him get his kill and not stealing it from him. But there's an important reason why I decide to go ahead and kill steal. I need to know if the experience goes just to the person who killed the monster or to everyone involved in the combat. Basically, I need to know if kill stealing is an actual thing. If it is a thing, then there's not a good reason to fight with other people.

At least, not as good a reason. You have to make sure that you get the killing blow as often as possible, which means less working together and more just working side by side. It means one person can get a whole lot of levels higher than another. It does mean that it's easier to help someone else level up, though.

If the experience goes to the killer, then I can weaken a bunch of monsters for someone of lower level than me, let them get the killing blows, and make sure they get all the experience, which will help them level faster. It's called power leveling. Of course, if kill stealing is not a thing, power leveling still works. It just doesn't work quite as fast.

If we split the XP for each kill, then I can just make sure that he hits the monster once in every battle before I kill it, making sure he gets the same experience that I do. That'll help him level up, but crucially won't penalize me. I know I'd prefer kill stealing not to be a thing, but I have to find out, and the best way to do that is for me to slip behind the mantis and chop it down while it's distracted fighting the guy with the hammers.

I do take it out with one hit, and I find that I only get ten experience, whereas before I got twenty for killing the mantis. That means we split the XP, which I'm totally fine with. It also means no kill stealing. Or it means less kill stealing. The only way to know for absolute sure is to see if I got credit for my quest to kill these things and he did not. Then kill stealing might matter, but only a little. And either way, it means we can work together better than we work apart.

"Thanks," hammer guy says as the mantis dies.

"Nice sword." I wish I'd brought more than just the one. It didn't occur to me that I'd run into someone who didn't have a sword of their own.

"Thanks," I say.

"Hey, if you want it, I've got an axe I took from a hardware store too. It's heavy, but it'll probably do more damage than your hammers." He laughs.

"It would have to," he says.

"These things only do five damage each. And I think part of that is from my strength, because they used to only do four." Okay. That means he's leveled up at least once, and put a point into strength while he was at it. That's good. I don't know if I'd want to protect someone who was still level one. I mean, I would; I'm not just going to let someone die because it would be mildly annoying to protect them for a while. But I don't have have to worry about that, because he's at least level two.

"I'm Vince," he says to me.

"Vinny."

"Caleb," I say, shaking his hand.

"You a gamer, Vinny?"

"Yeah, but usually the call of duty type. I don't suppose you've seen any guns randomly lying around?"

"Afraid not," I say. He sighs.

"Yeah. The one in my apartment was gone. I'm starting to think there aren't guns in this new world."

"That would make sense," I say.

"Most game worlds that have giant monsters don't also have guns. If there are going to be guns, usually everyone has one. I've been out and about for a while, and I've yet to see one or hear a single gunshot." That seems a bit weird, now that I think about it. If there are monsters running around, there should have been gunfire everywhere. I mean, this is America. There are more guns than people. Or, at least, there used to be.

"Well," Vinny says, "I guess we should maybe travel together. Better fighting two on one than the other way around, right?" I agree, and suddenly his name appears in a little list in my HUD. It's the friends list, still open from when I cycled through it earlier in my search for the quest tab. I'll figure out how to close it if the HUD ever gets too cluttered. For now, it's just fine, and I can see Vinny, level 3.

"Level five?" he asks, looking impressed.

"That sword must've saved you a lot of time. I keep having to wait and heal between battles." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. As he says that, it occurs to me that my arm isn't hurting anymore. And when I look at my health bar, I see that it's full. So we do heal over time. Probably not during combat, but that's okay. I'm just glad I don't have to level up to refill my health bar. And I don't have to wait weeks for a cut to heal up.

This kind of regeneration is way more powerful than anything I can expect in the real world. Another gamification point. Thankfully, there's a lot of reason to still feel immersed. Because immersion is the biggest enemy of gamification. When you gamify something, you make it less realistic. Banging a hammer against my sword made it sharper and more deadly somehow. That shouldn't be. It's unrealistic, and that can serve to remind you that you're in game, and make things feel less real.

But pain is the great immersifier, I suppose. That's not a word, but you get what I'm saying. You never feel more immersed than when something hurts. It works with paintball to make it feel like you're in a real firefight, and it works with fighting a lynxith that gets a lucky hit off on you. Pain makes you feel immersed even where regeneration makes you feel less immersed.

It also helps that there's no bounds to the screen, I can smell the blood all around me, and I can feel the wind in my hair while Vinny and I stand outside his building. Little sense data that doesn't apply to the game, that doesn't say I'm in a game, helps me stay immersed. Helps it feel real.

"So where to?" Vinny asks me. I point over my shoulder.

"There are about fifteen monsters wandering around the parking lot of the shopping center over there if you want to try to kill them all," I say.

"But I don't know if just two of us is enough to do that."

"The quest says we need five friends," he says.

"That sounds like a full party of six of us. Two isn't going to cut it. Let's go searching for someone else."

"Anyone else survive your building?" I ask him. He shakes his head.

"I didn't see any bodies, but there was a lot of blood. Not as much as you've got on you, though."

"It's okay," I say.

"It's not mine. It's lynxith blood, and it makes them not see me as a threat. I can sneak up on them better this way."

"That's wicked. I haven't unlocked any special abilities or anything yet. I keep hoping I'll unlock something that ups my damage, but no such luck. Have you found anything?"

"Just sneak attacks that deal double damage," I say.

"But that's not like a special ability or anything. I think it's just the way the system works."

"I was really hoping that by level five you'd get something to change the game." He sighs.

"Well, maybe it'll happen for us as we find other people. There isn't that much tutorial in this tutorial level; seems like we have to figure everything out for ourselves."

"Do you have any quests for classes?"

"Fighter, barbarian, and rogue," he says.

"Nothing all that creative, really. Oh, and mage, but I don't have anything even close to qualifying for that."

"Yeah, I got the mage one too. And the fighter and rogue. I wonder if those are available for everyone."

"Those are usually the basics. I think I started qualifying for barbarian mostly by taking hits and fighting with the hammers." We chat as we walk. Vinny is a teacher at the local high school, where he teaches math. That's cool, and means he'll have a nice mathematical mind. Maybe he can figure out the way experience works. I'm not sure what level has to do with XP, but I'm hoping that the different classifications of monsters are worth more experience, and it's not just based on level.

That said, I hope that part of it is based on level. I don't want to find out that fighting a level 50 common basic monster only gives ten experience points. Not that I want to fight a level 50 anything right now, but still.

"Maybe it's based on relative levels," he says.

"Maybe something is worth more points if it's a high enough level difference. Two levels doesn't make much difference, but maybe three or four will. I'm sure it will all even out over time."

"Still, aren't you curious?" He shrugs.

"Like I said, it'll even out over time. It'll make sense when we have enough data. Right now, we're just drawing conclusions without enough data. We're jumping to conclusions, and that's bad."

"Yeah, I suppose so," I say.

"I just want to know how things work so that I know what the best course of action may be in any given circumstance."

"I understand that. That's the gamer in you. But you have to be logical, or you're going to make assumptions that are wrong, and you're going to act on them and get yourself killed."

"Speaking of which, do you think we can get killed? Like, do you think we come back if we die?"

"I don't know how to test that," he says.

"Short of one way that would be really bad if this is just like real life. In real life, you can only die once. Let's assume that's the way of things and not risk that life unnecessarily until we find out otherwise."

"Good call, good call." It's the same idea that I've had. I don't know why I expected him to say something different. It's not like I could in good conscience kill him to see if he respawned, and I sure as hell wouldn't let him do that to me. If we can respawn, we have to find out the organic way. Which hopefully won't happen in the first place. I really wish there was more tutorializing in this tutorial. Tutoring? Am I just making up words constantly? I guess I am. But the point remains.

I wish there was more telling me how things work, or what things were, in this tutorial section. I've got two days and nine hours still to go, but all I've learned about this world I've had to figure out on my own. The only thing that the tutorial countdown has done for me is confirm that this is a tutorial, meaning there will be levels after this, and provided me with a clock I can follow. It's going to get dark soon.