"Ughー…"
Lifting my throbbing and aching head due to the hangover, I looked around the room.
I was taken by the spur of the moment last night. It wasn't good that I drank alcohol which I wasn't accustomed to, even under the cause of celebrating my reincarnation in a different world. This is not a game anymore, this is reality, so of course I'd get a hangover.
The time is… from what I can tell by the sunshine coming through the window, I suppose around 10 o'clock?
"Oh, that's right."
An idea suddenly popped up and I took a detoxification potion I had stocked in my inventory.
It's a really small bottle just as big as a thumb. I drank it in one go.
"Oh, oooh! "
It feels pleasantly invigorating! So, alcohol is treated as poison, huh…
It seems like I need to investigate which details are different from when this was an online game. Right now, I really have no idea.
You might wonder why do I need to do something so bothersome, well, that is because from today onwards, I plan to become the world's number one.
"Well, I'll think about my plans for the future while I eat breakfast."
After years of being by myself, I muttered to myself out of habit, then I went downstairs to the first floor.
"Oh, hello Second-san. Are you here for lunch? "
Is it noon already?
"Yeah, that's right. Rice curry, please."
"One moment, please."
After the awfully friendly waitress took my order, I went and seated at the counter. I became immersed in my thoughts.
For the moment, my first challenge will be to acquire "Essential Skills".
In Mobius, these are a number of skills that are also called mandatory. If you can't master them, rather than an adventurer, you will be called a beginner.
Therefore, my first priority will become "Earning Experience".
The game of Mobius consists mainly in a system based in experience gaining. You need experience to learn skills, and your cumulative experience value improves your stats. Your stats increase at the time of earning experience, and the required experience to learn a skill is approximately equal to the one needed to rank up said skill. The rate at which you learn skills and rank them up depends on the growth type of your character, decided at the time of creation. The way to earn experience is simple, either to defeat monsters or to successfully complete quests.
The skills include a wide range of close combat fighting techniques, long range fighting techniques, magic skills and production skills. Each skill has a rank from 16th to 1st, and furthermore, they are divided in grades, from the first to the ninth grade. Moreover, there's a special rank called "title" beyond that, but I think it's useless to think about it right now. Of course, a large amount of experience is needed to raise the rank of skills.
"Oh, speaking of which."
I opened the status window while I ate my curry.
Ahh, as expected. The growth type of 『Second』 is the same one as 『seven』, "All-rounder".
For an all-rounder, the stats growth from gaining experience is uniform all across, so some say it's not ideal for the world's strongest. Oh well, since I aim for the world's top rank by raising all the skills, I can say the all-rounder who can max out all stats is overwhelmingly better than the specialized type, where only some stats increase sharply. The tradeoff is that it's painfully difficult in the beginning.
――That being the case.
I got no choice but to use that method.
Saying "thanks for the meal", I returned the empty curry dish, and after paying the meal fee, I left the tavern.
My destination was the biggest potion shop in the capital.
"Can I have some 『Detox・Purifying・High Healing Potions＋＋』 please."
"Huh… HUH!? "
The store clerk was stunned, with a face that said "I don't understand what you are saying".
"Excuse me, I know it's rude, but they are extremely expensive…"
"How many do you have? "
"Erm… currently, 630."
"Alright, then I'll take them all."
"Ri-right away…"
The clerk nodded as he turned around with surprise showing in his eyes, and went to the back of the store. Probably he went to get them from the stock.
They are double-strengthened high potions with Detox, Purifying and Healing effect, each one was 120,000 CL.
120,000 CL × 630 pieces ＝75,600,000 CL
It's not a big amount.
It's a little discouraging that he only had 630 pieces, but I suppose it can't be helped.
"T-th-thank you very much for waiting."
I confirmed the items and thanked the clerk who brought the 630 potions while sweating. There's no issue with them. I paid the lump sum of cash, packed the potions in my inventory, and then left the store.
Well then.
Wondering what I'll do with these high-end potions?
This was called "Di-que strategy" in Mobius, it was an almost rule-breaking way to easily earn large amounts of experience in the early stages of the game.
The di-que strategy was a method of earning experience devised by referring to a trick that was present in an old 8-bit game called "Dinosaur* Quest" that's consisted in throwing an item that gave a fixed amount of damage to an enemy that had a high evasion rate in order to defeat it.
I'm not sure who was the weirdo who discovered this, but as a matter of fact, the potion that combines the effects of Detox, Purifying and Healing deals a fixed damage to undead-type monsters.
The 『Detox・Purifying・High Healing Potions＋＋』 I bought today give a fixed amount of damage to undead, that being 1,200 damage.
That amount of damage is enough to knock off the HP of the intermediate monsters called Viper Zombie, which give a comparatively juicy amount of experience among the undead-types.
In simple terms, by throwing this thing on a Viper Zombie, even a beginner can kill it.
It's wonderfully easy, quick and efficient way to earn experience, but this method was only done by alt characters of some lazy people.
The reason being, it costs a lot of money.
In order to earn the experience needed to get the skills and stats of what one could call a mid-level character using the Di-que strategy, one would need at least 10,000 pieces of this potion. In total, that's 1.2 billion CL. The only ones able to prepare such large amount of money were those who had a main character.
In addition to that, the amount of experience earned when defeating monsters varies depending on the amount of accumulated experience a character has. In other words, the experience value obtained from a weak monster becomes less and less as your accumulated experience grows. That means, if you become stronger than the Zombie Viper by raising your accumulated experience to the point it becomes a small fry, this Di-que strategy becomes meaningless.
Therefore, the Di-que strategy is quite excellent (unless you cared about money) as an early-game experience earning method, but it can't get you past the mid-levels.
But in the end, this is nothing more than a trick to get stronger as quickly as possible.
"To think that the day I'd do this would come…"
In front of me was a large cavern behind the mine that was two hours away by horse from the capital. This was supposed to be a famous hunting ground, but there was not a single soul in sight.
Probably, the Di-que strategy hasn't been discovered yet in this world. Or is it that the potion is too expensive for anybody to try it? Or maybe the number of beginners is too low? It's a mystery, but the fact that I have this place all for myself remains. Lucky, lucky.
After advancing for a while, I noticed something. The inside of the cave was strangely dark when compared to the time this was a game. Taking out from the inventory the lantern I bought from the general store, I advanced while holding it in my left hand. Because I bought the highest price lantern, the insides of the cave got quite brighter.
"…Wow."
There is was. Finally found it. Wriggling Viper Zombies. It was a disgusting monster similar to a snake with a length of over 1 meter. The rotting smell was hideous, even their sticky mucus as they rubbed against each other made a terrible sound, to say nothing of their appearance, they truly had the very worst appeal to my five senses.
I want to get this over quickly, so I sneaked up on my target and threw the potions, one at a time.
With a 'bajuu bajuu' sound, one you wouldn't expect coming from this potion, the Viper zombies evaporate one after the other, dying instantaneously.
Ah… this somehow feels good.
After wiping clean the place, I moved to the next hunting ground. When I came back to the first hunting place, the enemies had respawned, so I repeatedly wiped them out back and forth.
Then, without taking any breaks, I diligently kept throwing the potions until I finally threw all 630 pieces.
The amount of experience I earned, well, let's give it a passing mark. Like this, it seems like I'll be able to get all the Essential Skills soon, and rank them up a little.
"Crap, is the sun setting already?"
As I came out of the cave, the sun was barely visible.
It was darker than I expected. Moreover, I can't find the horse I just bought. I became uneasy since it was quite expensive.
"Buhyhyin."
…Or so I thought. Because the black horse blended quite well with its surroundings, I couldn't see it at first. Oo, good boy, Seventh Teiō. You got it hard with your black mane. But say something sooner.
"Ah, right, right."
Then, I suddenly remembered. Since I got a decent amount of experience, I decided to acquire the horse-riding skill. The condition to acquire it has already been cleared since I've been riding a horse for more than five minutes. Furthermore, I ranked it up from 16th to 9th class all at once.
Acceleration, precision, and jump stability is increased by the 9th class. Because the amount of required experience is small, its common sense for most people to stop at the 9th class in the early stages of the game.
"Alright, lets return home, Seventh Teiō."
I rushed on my journey back, mounting Seventh Teiō. The road from the mines to the capital is one I've taken back and forth many times since the Beta version of the game, so I could even do it with my eyes closed.
After a while, I got to see the street lamps. The capital at last. Let's quickly eat and drink, then sleep after taking a bath!
"Stop! Who the hell are you! "
...Oh god. I have a bad feeling...