Peter began jogging, with his current Endurance he had calculated he should only need to eat once every 40 hours, and sleep every 60. With his Intelligence not yet 10 he focused on one of the few public training regimes possible while running - the famed riddles of Linth.
“Five nobles have obtained 100 Fruits of Celerity and have to divide up the loot. The nobles are all extremely intelligent, treacherous, and selfish (especially the king).
The king always proposes a distribution of the loot. All nobles vote on the proposal, and if half of them agree, the treasure is divided as proposed, as no single noble would be willing to take on the king without superior force on their side.
If the king fails to obtain support of at least half his subjects (which includes himself), he faces a revolt, and all nobles will turn against him and commit regicide. The nobles start over again with the next senior noble as king.
What is the maximum number of treasured fruits the king can keep without risking his life?”
Pete had intentionally avoided learning the solutions, and could only rely on his newly advanced Intelligence to rationalize through the problem, hopefully without too much ease - so the classic riddle could still provide valuable experience.
He initially thinks the number the king can keep would be small, but his intuition is telling him something’s wrong with it. Pete was trying to ignore his internal bias against nobility… but then was thinking of the opposite extreme situation. Of course the other nobles wouldn’t accept 0 of the treasures, but as there are precisely five in this situation… the answer must be 98 Fruits for the king, with a single fruit for the most junior and the second most senior of the nobles. The king would reason it out to his subjects -
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“If there were just two of us, obviously I would simply propose myself taking all of them and would count as 50% of the vote, and would thus win. Now assume this situation is for the second and most junior of you. Noble 5 would receive nothing in this example, so you must have at least three of us surviving to hope to gain a single treasure.
Let’s then assume that myself and Noble 2 are killed, of the three of you that are left Noble 4 would get nothing as Noble 3 would simply make the distribution 99, 0, 1 - which Noble 5 must vote for as a single Fruit is much better than none.
The following situation would be then if only I were to die. Of the four left, Noble 2 would simply offer to give a single coin to Noble 4, with the distribution being 99, 0, 1, 0 - which means Nobles 3 and 5 would leave with nothing. So instead I propose that Nobles 3 and 5 each get a single fruit, leaving you to both live as well as gain a valuable treasure.”
Ding! Congratulations, you have reached level 5. You have five (5) unallocated attribute points.
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Pete spotted the gates to Junton 9 days, two sleeps, and three levels later. He looked over his stats before approaching the line entering in from the south gate:
Level 8, 27% (3727/13804)
Vitality - 0
Endurance - 32
Strength - 0
Dexterity - 0
Intelligence - 8
His Endurance had passed the point most only reached towards the traditional soft-ceiling of personal level 50. While his speed and health would impress no one, the organic assistance by leveling as a Strength variant had his legs putting impressive dents in the various boulders Pete had passed on his journey.
Confident in his plan, Peter approached the line of farmers, merchants, and other aspiring competitors.
As he approached the gate, a guard called out “Name, level, variant, purpose and length of visit”
“Peter Miller. Level 8. Empower Body - Strength - Legs. District tournament, as long as it takes”
The guard simply called “Next! Name, level, variant…”
Peter walked up to the first food stall he spotted, there was a woman working inside of it cooking some sort of delicious-smelling meat.
“Hello, can you please point me to the Paxton Training Center?” Peter asked.
“Gonna buy a hare?” The woman replied.
“How much?”
“18 copper a leg, 40 for the whole thing.”
“I’ll take a leg, and directions”.
“Southeast end of the inner district. Square brown building, look for the idiots throwing fire at each other.”