Killing players was not actually a new experience to Aki, having received his game invitation through that.
{You have received a honor point. Total amount: 5.}
Said experience was exactly what led him to know that killing was ok as long as no rules were broken from your part.
{You have gained two honor points. Total amount: 8}
Don't use violence when you should not. Don't reveal information about the system. Don't get caught.
{You have gained two honor points. Total amount: 14}
All rules were made with directly perceivable punishments till now, so what was the punishment for attacking other players if there were so many people grouping up to try and kill newbies?
{You have gained three honor points. Total amount: 21}
Why, of course it was to lose everything you possessed and have a bounty posted over your head. Only if you got caught being the first to attack though.
{You gained access to Klarkson street 27th}
A whole squad of robotic policemen would go after you, their speed only a bit better than Aki's, but their numbers were ever increasing, and the higher your active bounty, the more would come.
{You gained five honor points. Total amount: 37}
Of course, the moment you retreated into your lobby you'd be safe. The system wasn't fair, it simply had rules.
It was around the twentieth kill that Aki noticed his tactics were not being so effective anymore. Not because people were getting better at sneak attacking him or resisting his damage tipes, he'd actually been monitoring the air currents around him, nevermind his ability of hearing someone pressing a gun trigger before the bullet was fired, and even taken down several rogues by using light slashes two or three times for each while immobilising people whose defense he could not penetrate with gravity and flooding their orifices before freezing their heads solid from the inside out. No, the attackers simply stopped coming at him after he left the third player lobby.
When killing a player he now gained a percentage of the points they currently possessed, determined by the amount of honor points he had, plus access to their game lobbies, where all their items were transported to after dying and becoming particles of light. Having the robots kill the offender did not reward honor points for vanquishing the bounty on them, but you still got the other rewards, though only one guy ever escaped long enough for Mr. Maniac to find that out.
Aki didn't consider for even one second that these people were not marked for death in real life either, the system was not like that. Even if they would not become brain dead the instant they died in the game, that did not mean something wouldn't happen later.
Gaining access to other player lobbies had another benefit by the way, as in you could store everything that was ment to stay in a lobby and put it in another one for free, the system would do the whole thing as if it was some kind of farm building game and it wanted to have you receive the most likes on your place. There were, however, some rather worrying things put as either decoration or
On more game related matters, Aki ended taking the train to the other locations marked on his new interface panel, which listed all of his real estate and their location on a blank map, though the coordinates were all he needed to insert in the train panel to get there.
He ended up taking a full cicle and going back to the auction house to sell even more items, none of them making it to the auction though, as the only things of real interest were maybe some material he did not know wether to sell or keep, a slightly better sniper than his own, a revolver that had good penetration and a few special rounds of ammo, most of which he could see himself even using immediatly.
Despite no item having sold by the time he got back to his own lobby, Aki was still 15,720 points richer. Not much considering his dungeon rewards till now, but still a significant amount for his common skills, which could be properly raised with points. Now that he had gone outside, maybe he would even spend his golden points too!
{Would you like to spend 82.600 points, 9 special points and 3 golden points to have Dodge (Common) be raised to Trancendent level of proficiency?}
"Well, fuck me, so that's why i get so many of them." He imediatly realised after telling the system to raise his dodge skill to max level. There was no way around it though, the skill was too useful for his continual survival. Sighing, Aki confirmed the purchase.
Imediatly, he noticed the change. His body was being slightly modified, though there was no pain as the system flooded him with energy and understanding, his movements themselves changed, as if it became an intrinsic knowledge to his body. He could now walk faster thanks to the wind resistance diminishing a bit, his elasticity and flexibility had increased, allowing for movements that would generally break or hurt his body with little to no trouble. Another thing of note was that he received three points on his perception stat, pushing it into C rank, and since the same had happened to his strenght as he roamed the town and ended leveling up his gravity magic, his lowest attribute was not a solid grade C.
[Dodging: Transcendent - You have transcended the art of eluding attacks.
1. You receive a three rank bump in perception and dexterity as you dodge attacks.
2. You are almost certain to sense unseen attacks.
3. Once a day, when you are about to be killed, your perception and dexterity receive a three rank bump.]
Seeing the advantages, Aki was simply unable to stop himself.
{Would you like to spend 109.000 points, 15 special points and 3 golden points to have Dancing (Common) be raised to Trancendent level of proficiency?}
The changes on his body were softer this time, more subtle, but after walking around and experimenting with several attacks, Aki grinned after being proven correct, barely registering that his perception had been increased by three yet again.
His every move were now considered to be part of a dance, the air parting for him as he graciously kicked away, viciously grinned down on a imaginary enemy with his claws extended, twirled and bended to connect attack after attack, walked from one place to another... All the dancing benefits were active.
[Dancing: Transcendent - Your dance has transcended.
1. When dancing, +4 to dexterity.
2. When dancing your movements attract attention to you and others will be distracted by it if they don't pass a mental check with the difficulty determined by the sum of half your spirit score plus half your charisma score.
3. Your movements consumes a flat 15% less stamina.]
This kind of improvement had great potential. Be it from the fact his dexterity had practically reached S rank when in combat or the rewiring of his base state of action, the transcendent level was of great help.
Aki honestly felt like dungeon diving right then and there, fighting somewhere no gods could come and kill him. It wasn't to be though, He'd need to wait another week before he could go into the special dungeon, though he wouldn't have to wait another week before starting up the next normal dungeon.
He was stuck for now, and sleeping wasn't an actual option with his heart beating so fast. Well, now he could just log out and read some novels before taking a nap.
There wasn't much to do before the weekly auction, hopefully with enough money from his sales in three day's time, which he would be attending as he'd been unable to find anything that might be of interest in the market.
He also wasn't that scared of becoming hungry and going on a murder spree, he could still eat normal things, though his body needed more sustenance, both on the phisical and magical sense, sans the generaly high amount of blood related to vampire as his own body could make the transformation of energy into things he might need. It'd honestly come as a surprise he simply needed to pull energy from the surroundings to stave off his bloodlust though, he had even started to think of how to raid gang territories for cash, his umbra now able to manifest to an extent in the real world allowing him to pass through normal survailance equipment and simply feed on criminals until he could find someone that wouldn't mind selling their blood on a regular basis, by which point he should be set for a while.
Going to a hospital was still a no go in case of being wounded though, since his instinct was now to actually suck the energy and vitality of anything around him in case of starvation of either kind, nevermind his extra bits.
*****
Boring days passed quickly, Aki playing with his little siblings when they wanted to move about and researching surgery cases, recronstructing the hapenings like a story from a book as he read and watched success and failure one after another.
While he did know almost everything about the body, it was only through his own guesses and logical steps that he had reached any form of treatment method to be used with his expertise, nevermind he did not know all about the possible interactions with several compounds and even pure substances, so it was better to study like this even if he didn't actually intend to be going to the university to enter any such course as emergency or cirurgy. He'd be doing plenty of practice inside the dungeon worlds.
He was actually pretty close to leveling up the related skill when the time for going to the auction house arrived. Luckily, he didn't need to do anything as suspicious as going to a cafe again or the like, just go for a walk, say he was going to take a few hours on it, then make an underground bunker in an earthy area, making sure to have plenty of ventilation.
Magic was that awesome.
Reaching the auction, he noted there were a lot more players around this time, only a few scouting with eyes of a treasure hunter. He hoped some of them would come after him, they were sure to have good equipment and at the very least, his common skills would never complain about reaching trancendent level.
As someone with a menbership card, he didn't need to pay the entrance fee, so entering was quite quick, even allowing him on a more sophisticated area, though this made him a bit nervous, as he didn't want to deal with an asshole at the moment, but finding someone that might want to recruit him would also be a bother.
No one came to him before of the auction though, his seat on balcony actually being not so good maybe doing something for him?
The auctioneer was a hotie, and he honestly had more interest in his ass than in his speech, so when the first item was something good but useless to him, he decided on staring a bit more, his formal pants quite tight and making good of his defined posterior and lean legs. He wondered if he shaved though, which was a bit offputing, but otherwise he lost himself on his fantasies as things went on.
His own items ended up in the middle, the swords netting him 45K after the cut, and the very end, the ring giving him 79.2k, which had him at 147.820 points and 14 special points thanks to what remained from upgrading the skill before and some of the items that'd sold fast.
Now, for the more expensive part of the auction...