Chapter 5: Escape Game
"Kill rewards, huh?" Ian nodded. "This will indeed increase players' incentive to kill other players, but... not by much. Killing a player is only 4 points—even if you killed them all, it's only 400 points, which is a huge gap from the 10,000 points required for victory.
Moreover, the benefits of non-personal kills are halved, which will also reduce the attractiveness of the killing mechanic to players. After all, except for the early stages, the possibility of a player personally killing another player is almost negligible, unless they're confident enough to order their men to capture them alive."
"Go on, AI." Ian waved his hand, his intuition telling him that the real kicker was still to come.
"The second is the alliance mechanism. After entering the game, players can form alliances face-to-face through the alliance function of the auxiliary system. Each alliance can accommodate up to 4 people.
Players who kill allies while in an alliance state will not receive kill rewards, nor can those kills be used to complete tasks."
"Let's skip that for now. I don't have any allies anyway." Ian chuckled, shaking his head helplessly.
"The third is the points system," Annie moved directly to the third item. "Points are the game's most important strategic resource. They can be earned by completing system tasks, defeating other players, achieving milestones, and performing exceptional actions. Each player starts with one point.
Points are used to purchase items in the Points Store, to rank on the points leaderboard, and to declare victory."
"Points leaderboard? What's that for?"
"This game has a reward and punishment system based on player point rankings.
Starting from the first day of the game, the leaderboard is calculated monthly.
On each calculation day, the top three players with the highest points will receive generous rewards corresponding to their ranking. In the event of a tie for the top three, the corresponding rewards will be shared equally between the tied players. For example, if two players tie for first place, the first and second place prizes will be divided equally between the two players.
Starting from the second calculation day, the bottom three players will face attacks from the Faceless Men of Braavos, the Sorrowful Men of Qarth, and local assassins.
If there's a tie for the bottom three players, the assassination targets will be randomly selected from those tied for last place. If there are fewer than three players tied for last place, the remaining assassination slots will be filled by randomly selecting from players tied for second-to-last.
When the number of surviving players falls below 20, the leaderboard will be cancelled."
"Fuck!" Ian cursed immediately after hearing Annie explain this third mechanic.
Originally, Ian had been wondering why such an obvious territorial conquest game was called a "Battle Royale," but now he understood.
Isn't this just another form of battle royale shrinking zone mechanics?
Strictly speaking, it's even more brutal than a shrinking zone, because no matter how hard players try to score points, there will always be a bottom three.
This meant that players who wanted to escape this mechanic had no choice but to engage in a frantic internal struggle.
It was a nightmare.
"Continue."
"Beyond that, there's nothing else regarding the core mechanics. You can now close your eyes and enter the auxiliary system in your mind to review and familiarize yourself with its functions."
Ian heard this and immediately closed his eyes and entered the system.
The entire system interface was very simple, with only 8 tabs arranged at the bottom: Tasks, Alliance, Profile, Achievements, Mailbox, Backpack, Points Mall, and Leaderboard.
He first clicked on the Tasks tab, which had a small question mark icon. After clicking it, a note appeared.
[Task Function: In view of the player's ordinary starting conditions, the system will provide tasks to help players develop.
Note: There is no penalty for failed tasks]
There were three sub-tabs under the Task tab: Main Quest, Bounty Quest/Public Quest, and Optional Quest/Trigger Quest.
Because the game hadn't officially started yet, the task list was completely blank at the moment. Ian just glanced at it and exited, then clicked on the next function.
In the Alliance function, only the [Face-to-Face Alliance] button was lit; the others were grayed out and unclickable. Clicking [Face-to-Face Alliance] also showed a blank screen.
Next to the button was a small question mark, which revealed a note: Two players must simultaneously click this function within three feet of each other to access each other's information.
Skipping over the uninteresting [Profile], [Achievements], and [Mailbox] sections, Ian entered his backpack.
[Backpack: A storage space that can be accessed at any time.
The backpack starts at 1 cubic decimeter, and can be expanded fourfold with every 10 points spent. This can be purchased up to four times.]
Clearly, this backpack provided by the auxiliary system was utterly tiny compared to typical video game inventories. That measly 1 cubic decimeter couldn't even hold a Big Gulp.
But considering this was a real-world experience, this pocket dimension magic did have some practical uses, such as storing money.
Players would likely travel across Westeros trading without a permanent base, so carrying several pounds of gold on their person at all times was definitely not advisable. Furthermore, the system needed a way to distribute rewards to players, and the mall needed a way to deliver goods to players.
A small backpack like this perfectly fulfilled that function.
After exiting the backpack, Ian clicked on the mall.
[Level 1 Mall:
Small Purse (Contains 300 Silver Stags): 1 Point.
Large Purse (Contains 20 Gold Dragons): 5 Points.
Current Points: 1]
300 silver stags weren't particularly useful for either trading or equipment, but if used to buy food, they'd probably last a decent while. It was perfect for players who had chosen a background that was completely min-maxed for attributes and started the game broke.
20 gold dragons was a considerable sum for the early game, but 5 points seemed a bit steep.
Ian thought about it, then flipped to the next page.
But what appeared wasn't the next-level mall, but a notification box.
[Level 2 Mall: Preview opens after you have 10 points.]
It's probably full of expensive items, Ian thought dismissively.
"Ding!" Two sharp chimes exploded in Ian's mind one after another, startling him.
"What the hell?"
"That's the sound of missions being issued. The three hours of preparation time has passed, and the competition has officially begun."
"The missions are here?" Ian nodded and quickly opened the task bar.
[Main Quest 1: Road to Honor.
Quest Description: As a hedge knight, you have been away from honor for too long. Gold has blinded your eyes and made you forget your original oath. Now go and reclaim your honor.
Quest Objective: Win a formal joust held in one of the five major cities.
Quest Reward: 5 points, 3 attribute points, 3 skill points]
[Accept] [Change]
"A joust in one of the five major cities?" Ian grimaced. Such a quest was simply hell-level difficulty.
(End of Chapter)
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