“Everyone loves pretending to be you when they play at being adventurers. They all look so excited when they talk about how amazing and cool you are.”
I could tell Rose had that same glimmer of excitement in her eyes when she looked at me. “Do you admire adventurers?” I asked her.
“Huh?” She hadn’t been expecting that question, and she stiffened up a little. But then she relaxed and said, “I might just, now that I think about it.” She looked down at her own slender hand, then up at the distant sky and said, “I’ve always been fragile, even as a child. I imagine I’ll spend my entire life in this city, within the safety of my mansion. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found the lifestyle of those who get to freely travel between cities and see the world to be dazzling.”
As Rose stared wistfully off into the distance, I used Analyze on her.
【Rose】
LV: 1
HP: 50
MP: 50
Strength: 0
Vitality: 9
Intelligence: 34
Mind: 5
Agility: 5
Focus: 5
You can always tell when a character has story relevance.
Unlike randomly generated characters, important NPCs had their stats custom-crafted to fit their lore and background. You could always tell when that was the case since either their base stat spread was abnormal, or like Nirva they’d been given properly calculated growths and their current stats reflected what they should be at that level. There were also a number of characters who’d been adjusted to be stronger or weaker than they should simply to suit the needs of certain events. For example, if you had an escort mission, the character you were guarding needed to have at least somewhat decent Defense or the mission would be way too hard. On the other hand, if there was a former general who’d retired due to old age, they needed to have lower stats than a currently active general or it would be inconsistent with the logic of the world. Rex was a victim of this, since all of his stats were set to be 200 at level 50. Regardless, it was very easy to spot abnormalities in someone’s stats, which let you know if they were an important character or not.
And Rose’s stats? You could easily tell they’d been manually modified. Her HP and MP in particular mattered a lot during the progression of her event. As a result, both had been set to 50, which was an easy number to keep track of. Because of the curse, her remaining HP and MP denoted how much time she had left. If they were any lower she’d succumb too quickly for the event to function as an event. Of course, I always wished it was higher so I could...
Wait. A revelation suddenly hit me. It was a ridiculous thought, but I still felt compelled to try it.
I looked over at the girl staring wistfully at the outside world and said, “Why not experience that life for yourself then?”
❈❈❈
“Wow! I can see the whole city from here!”
“Yeah...”
Rose and I were standing on a small hill a short distance from Freelea. I shivered a little as I thought about how far from the game I’d deviated to do this while I watched Rose run around excitedly.
I can’t believe I was able to take her out of the city so easily...
In-game Rose’s dialogue implied that she’d never once left the city. I’d thought there might be some sort of spell or compulsion forcing her to stay there. But to my surprise she’d been able to pass through the city gates with no problem. The guards knew me so they hadn’t even bothered asking what I was doing. I’d told them anyway, saying I was going to show Rose some of the sights outside of the city, and all they’d said was “sounds good,” as they waved us through.
I guess I am an A-rank adventurer, technically. The people of this city probably trusted me more than I realized.
“Look over there! That’s the church I went to this morning! It looks so small from here!”
I looked down at Rose again. She was acting like an excited little child. I’d never seen her like this in the game, and after seeing her expression of pure joy I made up my mind.
In for a penny in for a pound. Now that I’ve come this far I’ll see just how badly I can break this fucked-up event!
I walked over to Rose, who was still enthralled by the view of the city, and took a few items out of my Inventory.
People in this world were divided into two categories. Adventurers who had high base stats and were born with a default class, and civilians, who had low base stats and no class. As far as the game was concerned, adventurers continued adventuring even when they weren’t on-screen, and so their levels steadily rose. On the other hand, civilians stayed at their default level forever. No matter how much time passed, they never got any stronger. That made sense, since unlike adventurers, who had an average of 20 in a stat at level 1, civilians had an average 6 in a stat at level 1. They couldn’t take down even the weakest monster. And the only way to level up was to kill monsters. The gap between adventurers and civilians was huge in this world. Today I was going to try and bridge that huge gap. I had no idea if it would work, but I’d prepared as best as I could.
“Just so you know, this is only the beginning,” I said.
Rose turned to me. “Rex?”
I presented her with a few enchanted rings, some armor, and a magic staff. She reflexively grabbed them, and I grinned.
“It’s time to let you truly experience what it’s like to be an adventurer,” I said.
Let the power leveling begin!