As one tended to do at night, I fiddled with and touched a certain thing: my System. It was nice being in a warm and soft bed. My pillow was fluffy. The gentle light from my bedside lamp aided me in fighting off sleep.
While lying in bed, I scrolled through menu pages. I’d always chastised my nieces and nephews for using iPads and tablets before sleeping, but now I sort of felt like one of them.
[Name: Yarm] [Age: 45] [Level: 15]
[HP: 90] [MP: 25] [XP: -10,267] [LP:0] [GP: 1115]
[Body: -1] [Mind: 7] [Soul: 2]
[Titles: Villain, Lockpicker, Charmer] [Skills: Cleanse, Spare Monster] [Items: Soundless Pick, Boots of Lesser Minor Speed]
I used the XP formula to calculate the amount of XP I needed to increase my level to 16. 12,800 XP was the number to achieve so I needed exactly 3942 more. Wait, no… Well, it was a big number; that was all that mattered.
After this big jump in XP, I would only need 800 more to jump up to level 17. And only 800 more again for level 18. The gap between 15 and 16 was so much bigger than 16 and 17. It was strange that every 5 levels there was such a large difference in XP required.
Earlier, when looking above people’s heads, I saw a few people stuck at level 25. No one had surpassed that point. I figured out the reason through some more calculations. They would have to get 40,000 XP just for one level up.
I was far to the left of the bell curve when it came to levels. I hadn’t yet seen someone lower level than me among the Earthlings. Since a significant portion of people were still in the main party, they levelled up together. That meant they couldn’t get left too far behind. It also meant that they couldn’t get too far ahead, which is why so many people left.
The difference between me and them was that I couldn’t kill monsters to get XP. I had to spare them. That would be fine if I weren’t tragically weak. I had trouble with monsters half my level. I should’ve been wiping the floor with them.
The monsters I could spare, only gave me minimal XP. Goblins for example would give me approximately 100 XP. I rolled in my bed. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. Befriending them gave far more XP. Perhaps I could focus on that.
I thought back to yesterday. I almost died to the half-demon and then to the giant rat. It was only by sheer luck that I survived. I didn’t think I was ready to go and confront monsters again. Not alone, anyway.
The word ‘alone’ echoed in my mind. Wait, why was I doing things alone? Oh right, because the others were bloodthirsty killers. Perhaps I could hire some help or find some like-minded individuals.
There was another way to get XP wasn’t there?
My fingers found their way to the quest menu. I still had the awful Hero and Villain quests which told me to kill. As much as I hated my fellow Earthlings and the inhabitants of this world, I still didn’t want to kill them. Neither of those quests would be completed any time soon.
The lockpicker quest still told me to ‘unlock the door to someone’s heart’. Whatever that meant.
There was a new questline from the Charmer title that I hadn’t seen yet.
[Charmer Questline]
[You cannot change the world alone. Add a human to your party.]
Why was it giving me philosophical advice now? Thankfully, this quest seemed easy. After thinking about it for a second longer, I realised it wasn’t. If I did invite a human, they would immediately see that there was a mimic in my party. What was worse was that they could track it down and kill it. I didn’t want my little woodland friend to die because of me.
I would need to find someone that didn’t believe in genocide for monsters. Hold on, hadn’t I already found someone like that? I met a prince in the correctional class I was forced to take. I could work together with him to better understand monsters and end all this needless bloodshed.
I decided that tomorrow I would recruit him.
I then realised another problem. Would I have to open my System to invite him? If I did, what are the chances he would snitch about me being a villain? High, probably.
I went into the settings menu to look for a solution. “Oh, hello! Would you look at that? You’re new,” I whispered gleefully to myself.
[Privacy Mode (Villain Exclusive)]
I clicked it.
[Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides. When this toggle is activated, only the user can see the System interface. It becomes invisible to others.]
“André, my old friend, I could kiss you for gifting me this from beyond the grave.” I smooched the toggle to turn it on.
With my System thoroughly examined, I went to bed. I didn’t set an alarm so I could get a full night’s sleep.
When I woke up, it was around 9AM. I could hear the hustling and bustling of my fellow Earthlings. I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself breakfast. Some people tried to ask me how I healed the husband, but they still refused to accept my condition for answering.
I made myself some beans on toast and sat down on an empty bench table in the canteen. To my dismay, my nemesis Loftus sat down next to me. “Morning, bestie.”
I scowled at him.
“Not a morning person? I get it.” He dug into his hashbrowns.
In the coming moments, more people from our squad sat down until the table was full. The group discussed yesterday’s events and subtly hinted for me to reveal my secret. I was about to get up to leave when I saw a figure I could not ignore.
Hyde walked up to our table, and began eyeing all of us, one by one.
The discussion dwindled to whispers. “She’s back?”
“No that’s just a hologram… Of course she’s back, dimwit.”
“Aww man, I was enjoying having free time.”
Hyde dismissed the whispers and said, “You’re all here? Good. I’ve got bad news. The Demon King has somehow learned of the existence of you heroes.”
I started sweating.
“I wonder how that happened?” someone whispered.
I stammered, “Why are you asking me? I don’t know! Why would I know? I didn’t say anything to anyone about it!”
The girl who asked gave me a blank stare. “I wasn’t asking you. I was just asking in general.”
“Oh, I see! Well, just to let you all know, it wasn’t me.” I held up my palms in the air.
“Whoever let this information out needs to be dealt with severely. They’ve put all our lives at risk,” someone said after banging their fist into the table.
“Severely? We can be a little lenient, you know. I’m sure whoever did it, didn’t mean for the information to be leaked. It wasn’t me by the way.”
Loftus shook his head. “Don’t worry, Yarm. We know it wasn’t you. The culprit is likely one of the people who left this base behind to go off on their own.”
Hyde exclaimed, “It does not matter. The monsters were bound to find out eventually. It’s just a shame it happened so quickly.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead. I wondered what they would have done to me if they found out that I was the one who leaked the info. Nothing nice, that was for sure.
“Ms Hyde, it’s nice to have you back. What do you have planned for today?” asked Selsie.
“Nothing,” Hyde answered. “You all wanted freedom, correct? Congratulations, you now have it. I no longer have any orders for you to follow. I will be spending my time in my office at the barracks from today onwards. See me there if you need me.”
The table was quiet. “Is this a trap?” someone whispered.
“There’s no way she’d just let us do whatever we wanted is there?”
“Are we basically in sandbox mode now?”
I got up from my seat and shouted, “Woohoo! We’re free from her tyranny.” I tried to get the others excited. “C’mon! Why aren’t you all celebrating? This is a joyous occasion.”
Hyde walked over to me and grabbed the sides of my face with her hands. With ease she lifted my head into the air and stared up at me while my body dangled. “Except you. You are the only one who is not free.”
Her hands scrunched up my face and made it hard for me to speak. “Why not? What did I do?”
“You have a debt to pay. You are going to pay me weekly contributions towards that debt. Next week, you owe me 1000 GP.”
“1000?!” I said through my lips that resembled a fish’s, due to Hyde’s palms digging into my cheeks. “How am I going to get that kind of money?”
“I don’t care where you get it from. Take requests from the guild, sell your services, or beg on the street. It doesn’t matter. Just get me the gold by next week or you’ll be executed.”
“Ah! No! Please have some mercy. I only have 18 GP on me at the moment. It’s impossible for me to earn a thousand.”
Hyde shook my head in the air and my body along with it. The shaking caused my coin purse to fall out of my pocket. Its contents dumped out and a pile of 1067 GP formed on the floor. Hyde looked at it, baffled that I lied to her so plainly. “You know what? You don’t have to pay me 1000 GP next week. You’ll be paying me 2000.”
She dropped me to the ground and walked off. “No… my hard-earned money.” I scooped up my gold pieces.
Loftus helped me out. “That was quite the entertaining episode,” he chuckled. “Why don’t you put your gold in your inventory, Yarm? That’ll avoid situations like this.”
“Inventory? Am I some sort of 18th century merchant? I don’t have one of those.”
Yarm showed me his system wherein he had a menu called inventory. Inside he stored items. “This is something only us heroes have. You can store valuables in here.”
“How come I don’t have one?”
Loftus didn’t have an answer. “One’s Body level is equivalent to the amount of inventory slots they have.”
“Did you say slots?” I salivated.
“Not those kinds of slots. If your Body is zero, then you probably don’t have one. I think once you increase your Body, you’ll unlock the inventory. You can store anything you want in there.”
“Is that where you stowed away all your ethics?”
Though it was meant to be a rhetorical question, Loftus answered it earnestly. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Ah, so you never had any to begin with.”
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