Tanaka takes out the scroll from the inventory and rip it into half, the way scroll works in the game is to rip it in half and it will trigger the effect on the user. Tanaka mutter to herself about why would someone create such a barbaric way to use a scroll and why not just trigger the effect on reading it, suddenly she realizes she just said something that she never had an issue with before and she wonders if this is affected by the sudden change in gender.
As the ripped scroll vanishes into pixels, Tanaka starts to dematerialize into the air and materialize again in the beginner town of Gaia. The town still looks the same as ever with the constant new player logging in and accepting quest around the area, she summons her inventory and tries to take out a weapon, however, she just remembers that there is nothing in her inventory beside the scroll that she just used.
"The system didn't leave me with a wooden sword? Guess I will have to buy one from the beginner shop keeper."
Beginner items are practically free because they only cost around 6 gold for each gear, every new player will be given 200 gold when they start a new character. She goes to the store and enters it, she then opens up the shop menu and tries to purchase a wooden sword.
*Beep beep* An error voice is heard and a small red notification pops out in front of her.
[Error: You can't afford the item!]
[Wooden Sword: 0/6 G]
Tanaka stares at the notification in disbelief, a new player will never even see this in their first time playing as most items are below 30 gold in the beginner town. She wonders if this is a bug and opens up her inventory and check at the bottom right corner where the currency is shown.
[ 0 G ]
"You got to be kidding me...is this even necessary?" Tanaka complained about the petty system, she then thinks about how to earn gold in the best way. After a minute of figuring out the best way of earning money, she has finally come to a solution. She has decided that killing blue slimes will earn her the minimum required gold for the wooden sword, the blue slimes have a 1 in 6 chance to drop 1 gold upon its death so she just has to kill around 60 slimes with her barehand to be able to afford the wooden sword, it would also be a way for her to grind some exp while doing so, win-win.
"The only problem is the effort needed to kill a blue slime, a blue slime can withstand about 6 hits from a wooden sword, considering my STR that is only 10...this might be harder than I thought."
During the time when Tanaka first played Gaia Life, her stats is not an average of 10 but a mix of 16 STR, 12 AGI, and 12 INT. The system has allocated only 10 points to every stats of Tanaka forcefully, preventing her from having the ability to allocate her starting stats with the usual 40 points. She wonders how many attacks can a blue slime takes from a 10 STR unarmed attack, just thinking about it makes her sigh a little.
Tanaka leaves the safe zone of beginner town and enters the training forest, she hides in a bush and waits for a blue slime to wander into the area or spawn into it. About 30 seconds later, a small blue slime wiggle waggle its way toward an apple on the ground, it slides the apple into its body and the apple slowly dissolves into it, it wiggles its body showing a sign of happiness. Tanaka almost didn't want to kill the cute slime but she thought to herself that if she doesn't kill it she will be stuck here forever.
"Hmm? This doesn't feel right, back then I didn't even blink as I slaughter them all for fun, must be the female hormone kicking in."
Tanaka snaps herself out of the thought and dash toward the slime, the slime shocked by the surprise attack of Tanaka tries to wiggle away, but alas it was too late to respond to it, Tanaka fist smashes onto the body of the slime, and a rippling wave formed around its slime body. The slime however starts to calm down, it realizes that the attack has done almost no damage to it at all, it then bounce in anger and launch itself toward Tanaka, Tanaka has a lot of experience dealing with slime so she easily avoided the attack from the slime.
"Normally a slime would have shrunk a little when damaged, but I see no change at all on this slime, darn it!"
Tanaka complained about her lack of weapons and strength, she then continues attacking the slime relentlessly with her bare fist without a pause, the slimes started to shrink smaller and smaller and it starts to panic, it tries to jump away but it was too late, Tanaka fist finally pierce into the slimes weakened body and smash the core apart. The slimes vanish into pixel and a single coin drops on the ground, however, as the slimes vanished and the exp notification shows up, her face looks extremely grim.
[EXP +0.1]
"Right... I can only gain 10% of the total experience." She gives off a big sigh and continues hunting for slime.
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After killing about 48 blue slimes, not including the first slimes, 4 of them dropped a gold coin, she is one coin away to obtain a wooden sword. Right as she finishes off the 50th slime, an annoying looking notification once again appears.
[Blue slimes slew: 50]
[Blue slime will now have 10% increase in physical resistance against your attack and an increase of 10% in HP, however, rare drops rate has been increase by 1%]
Tanaka stares at the notification, she almost yelled out in anger but when she saw the last part, she got a little excited about it.
"Rare drops increased by 1%, that's such a good benefit! Even my ascended +15 Fortune Lady Necklace that I used to wear only gives me an increase of 3% on rare drops!" She closes the notification with a smile, starting to think that there's a way for her to use the increase in rare drops to her favor.
Tanaka opens up the Wikipedia pages of Gaia Life and looks for the rare drops of Blue Slimes.
[ Unknown, item yet to be discovered ]
[ 1% Rare Slime Whip ]
[ 5% Slimes Core ]
[ 16% 1 Gold Coin ]
She stares at the unknown item and thinks of how good the item can be, considering that it has been a year since GAIA LIFE release and yet still no one has discovered the item. She thought about it and spend some time thinking if she should try to farm for it, she then decided that she will farm for the item no matter how long it will take her.
"Might as well be geared up in the best gear to deal with the increasing difficulty of the hardcore mob." She convinces herself to farm for it.
Hour after hour, Tanaka has been farming the blue slimes in the training forest, she has already lost count of how many slimes she murdered today just for an item that she might never get. Right as she finishes off the slimes she is currently fighting, the familiar notifications once again appeared.
[Blue Slimes slew: 1000]
[Blue slimes will now have a 25% increase in physical resistance against your attack and an increase of 20% in HP, furthermore, Blue Slimes Knight will now patrol the area in order to hunt you down. Rare drops rate has been increased to 2%]
"Blue Slimes Knight!? Aren't they around level 30?" She opens up Wikipedia to search for information.
[Blue Slimes Knight]
Level range 30 ~ 34
Notes:
Heavily resisted against physical attack, an armor-piercing attack will help.
Extremely weak to magic, will often run away from mage.
Tanaka immediately climbs up a tree and hide, she knows for a fact that not only that she can't damage the blue slimes knight but it will also one-shot her, she then realizes something horrible, if the knight starts to appear around the area, what will happen to the other newbie? She looks around for any sign of other player and then she found a newbie, the newbie is wandering around the area and killing off the usual blue slimes, it was then Tanaka spotted a Blue Slimes Knight wiggle out of a bush nearby, the slimes wear a knight helmet over its body and it holds a knight shield and an iron sword with its tiny blob hand. The newbie approaches the blue slime knight and attack it with her sword, her attack bounce off the slimes and the slimes turn toward her, the blue slime knight then jump toward the newbie and plunge his sword right through the newbie body. It was an instant kill, the newbie stands no chance at all, her avatar perish into pixel and must have revived in the beginner town.
"That's...not good." Tanaka starts to sweat heavily on her forehead, she didn't expect her hardcore mode will affect other player around her as well. She starts to wonder if she should still stay in the forest and farm for the item, after a few minute of thinking, she decided to to play it safe by avoiding the knight and hunting down regular blue slimes that are isolated. She doesn't want to risk the one level she just gained from killing a thousand slimes.
Tanaka slowly climbs down the tree as she observe her surrounding, making sure no blue slime knight will stab her as she descend to the ground. She slowly creep around the bushed area and hunt for blue slimes, as she creep around she will often sees a group of blue slimes following a single blue slimes knight, as if the knight is escorting them around the forest. Sometimes when she is lucky she will find a single blue slims that alone searching for food, that is when she will tries to kill them as fast as possible, fearing that a knight will be nearby.
While Tanaka is farming the blue slimes, a new hot topic is being discussed at the forum of GAIA LIFE, numerous player has reported that they has been killed by a strange variants of blue slimes in one hit, the developer responded that this is a new update made to the game and player should now be aware of stronger creature roaming around hostile zone.
About 3 hour later, a golden glow appeared from a dead blue slimes, Tanaka drops down to the ground due to exhaustion, she crawls toward the glow and grab the item, the item vanish and is added into her inventory, she gives off a smile before her vision fade away as she lies on the ground unconscious. 6 hour later, Tanaka wakes up and the first thing she sees is a wooden ceiling, she gets up and looks around her surrounding. She immediately recognize the room as his personal room from the beginner town inn, turn out that her VIP pass from an event boss still works and every inn in the game will have a private room for her. She then opens up her status and prepare for the worst.
[Tanaka]
Level: 1
Class: Demon Slayer
HP: ████████████████████
MP: ████████████████████
STR: 10
AGI: 10
INT: 10
Perk:
Hardcore - Experience gain reduction 90%, level reduces by 2 on death.
Assimilated - Pain Tolerance set to 0, you will experience real pain that comes from injury and damage on your body depends on the intensity.
A privilege denied - Trading and Player Market has been removed from your feature.
The two level she gained from killing around 6 thousand slimes is gone, her level once again resetted to 1. She sigh but remembers that she has obtained the unknown item from her last slimes, she opens up her inventory and check the information on the item.
[ Legendary Slime Mallet ]
STR + 30
AGI - 4
This mallet can change size according to the user will, STR will increase base on the Mallet size while AGI will decrease as the Mallet grew larger. Mallet may not increase in size if AGI reach 1.
"This sounds amazing, I guess I can start hunting goblin now."
Tanaka gets up from her bed and stretch her arms, shes feels like she is starting to enjoy this hardcore mode.