It wasn't chickens that they had to kill, but rabbits. Level 1 animals, with a whooping 15 HP. They were everywhere, just like rabbits. It wouldn't be difficult for someone as skilled as Mark to kill a couple of hundred of them.
"Alright, Sebille. Just leave this to me, I'll deal with these pests."
Mark stepped forward, then activated
Mark was really cool. Such power! Such grace as he executed his moves! There wasn't much that remained from the rabbit, but Sebille saw Mark shake the rabbit-pancake and a single copper popped up into his palm.
"Cool, huh?" Mark asked, grinning at her. "I'll get enough money for the two of us in no time!"
Sebille nodded politely, and Mark went back to work. He jumped up, then did a triple front flip in the air before slamming his heel down on another unsuspecting rabbit. However, Sebille was more interested about the coin within these animals than Mark's acrobatics. Did these creatures eat someone's money pouch, or what?
She decided to try this out for herself. She walked up to a rabbit that didn't seem to mind her presence at all, and then kicked it, hard. The rabbit immediately flipped over, all 15 of its HP disappearing in an instant.
[Congratulations, you leveled up! - Level 2]
"Wow!" Sebille exclaimed, "What's this?"
"Huh?" Mark looked at her over his shoulder, being in the middle of incinerating a single rabbit with a huge fireball. "Oh, you managed to kill a rabbit? That's great!"
"No, I'm talking about this level up thing. What's this?"
She pointed at the floating message in front of her.
Mark's jaw dropped. "You... can level up too? I thought you were an NPC!"
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Sebille arched an eyebrow. "But you haven't been treating me as an NPC so far."
"Well, since NPCs are so lifelike that they are basically like living people, it didn't really matter. I didn't want to turn this novel into some kind of philosophical madness. It would take too much time to debate whether a very intelligent AI—or NPC in this case—is considered to be a real person."
"I see," Sebille said, behaving strangely accepting about the fact that Mark implied she might not be real. "Well, either way, you haven't answered my question. What does this Level 2 mean?"
"Ah, you see, as you kill enemies you become stronger. The level is an indication of that. You might say that it represents your strength, though it is not entirely true. I've been training for 5 years, but haven't killed a single thing. By the end of it I was level 1 and already very strong, due to my skills and techniques."
"But if Levels don't accurately represent strength," Sebille asked, "Then what are they good for?"
Mark was taken aback. "Uhh... I'm not sure... You get bonuses perhaps...?"
"Could it be that these 'Levels' are only good for self-gratification, an illusion of progress that makes you think you are becoming someone stronger and more important, when in fact it is just a number that's being slowly incremented through a convoluted program code?"
Mark gulped, thinking about his desire to reach max level and show it off to the world.
"You... could say that," he finally conceded. "Though there are gotta be benefits of leveling up. It actually makes you more powerful, you know."
"But you just said that you became strong even without leveling up. What's the point of levels if they don't represent someone's power level correctl—"
"Okay, stop!" Mark exclaimed. "Let's change topics, okay?! You're a princess, for f*ck's sake, you can't be talking about these things!"
Sebille snorted. "I think you only say that because you planned to level up as much as you can, and now I'm hitting too close to home. So let me just say that—"
"LALALALA, I'M NOT LISTENING!" Mark said, walking away and covering his ears with his hands.
Sebille watched him disapprovingly with her hands on her hips, but she couldn't really be mad at him. She was already falling in love with him, after all. When Sebille was done glaring and flipping off the narrator, she decided to go and kick some more rabbits.
It was ridiculously easy. What's worse (or better?), every rabbit contained a single copper coin! (For the readers' convenience, let's not mention where the coins came from.) Sebille was actually pretty good at kicking the rabbits dead, and soon caught up to Mark's kill count. The man of her dreams wasted a lot of time by executing his flashy techniques.
Oh, and Sebille also leveled up two more times too as well.
"Alright, that's a good day's work!" Mark said, whisking away about twenty rabbit carcasses into his inventory. "Let's head back to the town and see what we can get from this much money, shall we?"
(Spoiler: not much)