Retrograde Gaming

Chapter 2: What the Hell Is Wrong With My Character

Translator: Henyee Translations

Editor: Henyee Translations

Li Huailin

Race Skill:

Intelligence: Intellect -10%

Diplomacy: Apart from the main cities of humans, reputation in all other main cities of other races -10

Li Huailin couldn’t help but carefully examine it again. It truly was Intellect -10%, Reputation -10—what the heck? Shouldn’t it be positive?

Without any further ado, Li Huailin immediately logged out of the game. He then opened up the home computer by his side and immediately went on ‘Heart of Glory’s’ official website. There wasn’t much information on the official website, only the introductions on the Races and Classes, and a simple newbie tutorial. Li Huailin immediately rummaged through the information regarding the innate skills of the Human Race given by the official site.

Human Race Innate Skill:

Intelligence: Intellect +10%

Diplomacy: Apart from the main cities of humans, reputation in all other main cities of other races +10

“How strange… doesn’t the official website clearly state that it’s an addition?” Li Huailin had to make sure his eyes weren’t seeing wrong. Sky Corporation was a large company after all, if the official website had any errors, they should be able to fix it immediately. Now that the game had already opened its servers, if there were any errors like this, it should have already been discovered and fixed.

“Could it be that there are punishments for using homemade login equipment?” Li Huailin scratched the back of his head. Since he didn’t understand what was going on, he could only guess randomly.

After thinking about it, he had no way to solve this problem. If it were anyone else other than him that discovered there was something wrong with their character attributes, they could definitely solve this by contacting the customer support of the game. However, Li Huailin couldn’t do this. He didn’t even have the qualifications to buy a helmet to begin with, but now that he was in the game, an investigation would easily discover the problem. This was why he couldn’t seek customer support to solve his predicament.

“Sigh… forget it.” It couldn’t be helped after all, Li Huailin simply gave up, “At worst, I won’t change my Class to Mage, I’ll become a Warrior instead. It doesn’t matter if Warriors have 10% less Intellect. As for the minus 10 reputation for the other various main cities, forget it. I’ll just muddle along in the main cities of humans, the other main cities have all become distant to me. Things will also be 20% more expensive, I can’t bear that.”

After thinking of it this way, he could finally accept it. Apart from not having the innate skills of a Human, everything else really wasn’t a big problem. Since he illegally logged in to begin with, these little things could simply be considered as punishment, at least he could still play, right?

Once he consoled himself for a while, Li Huailin finally sat on his homemade gaming pod, and entered the game once again.

He then returned to the character panel again, Li Huailin ignored the unsightly description of the innate skills of a Human and checked his current equipment. Obviously, Sky Corporation wouldn’t let their players be naked upon their birth. Once their character appeared, they would be equipped with a set of plain cotton clothing and a broken sword.

Cotton Clothes: Defense 1-1, Cotton Pants: Defense 1-1, Damaged Sword: Attack 1-3

Li Huailin swept a glance at his currency box—the corporation really was too miserly—he didn’t even have a single copper coin. He truly was perfectly clean, apart from the three equipment on his person, there was nothing in his inventory.

“Cheap… how damn cheap,” Li Huailin complained a little. Then, according to his online gaming experience, he started to find his first quest.

The servers had already been open for four days. According to the information given on the official forums, a person had already reached level 10 and left the newbie village. Now that it was currently afternoon, there were probably many people who already left the newbie village. Although there were still many people like Li Huailin who were just born, but as a whole, the stream of people found in the newbie village was still acceptable. This was unlike the post, ‘On the first day of the open servers, you would truly realize what a sea of people means’, on the forums a few days ago. The sentence truly wasn’t exaggerated as shown on the photo inside the post.

“Dark creatures have appeared in the vicinity of this village, future warrior, will you help me exterminate some of these dark creatures? I will give you a reward in return,” a grey-bearded old man said to Li Huailin.

System Notice: The chief of the newbie village issued an E-rank quest, Exterminate Black Slimes, Accept or Not?

“Accept.”

E-rank quest, Exterminate Black Slimes: Kill 20 Black Slimes. Reward: 200 Experience, 10 Copper Coins.

After searching for a long time, Li Huailin finally managed to find a quest. The other NPCs only continuously conversed with him and didn’t even issue any quests after a long chat. It was probably possible that only by doing this quest, would he be able to accept other quests. Once again, Li Huailin didn’t think too much about what happened. He then left the village and started to search for the monster that the quest asked for.

Outside the newbie village was a large field of grass, there were people that could be seen fighting Black Slimes here and there. However, since these monsters were for newbies, they granted only five points of experience. This was only meant to be temporary, which was why not many people were killing these monsters. The majority of the people already passed this stage and ran to higher-level monster areas.

Shortly, Li Huailin saw a Black Slime on its own, he took a brief look at the monster’s attributes.

Black Slime: HP: 30, Physical Attack: 8, Physical Defense 4.

It simply appeared to be a black viscous thing. Li Huailin didn’t immediately attack it when he walked up to the monster, but instead, he let it attack him first.

-3

-2

The damage from the attacks were low as expected. Since he had 100 health points, it would take over 40 hits for him to die, there was basically no danger whatsoever. He raised the newbies’ Damaged Sword in his hand and started attacking it.

-5, -6

He did some quick calculations in his head. It would take roughly six to seven slashes to cut one of these monsters down, newbie monsters weren’t difficult at all, as expected.

After a few random slashes, the Black Slime turned into a pile of black water with a ‘pu’ sound. A copper coin popped up from the Black Slime’s corpse.

Battle Record: You’ve killed a Black Slime! Minus five experience.

“Yes, just as what was said in the forums, five experience points…” The moment Li Huailin finished these words, he discovered that something was wrong. Upon taking a close look at his battle records, he saw that it was ‘minus five experience’, and not, ‘plus 5 experience points’.

Li Huailin opened his character attribute box in a hurry.

Name: Open-Minded Like A Forest

Class: None (Not yet changed)

Supporting Class: None

Level: 1

Experience: -5/500

…

His experience actually turned into -5/500! Li Huailin thought he’d seen wrong at first, however, the system genuinely showed this. Not to mention, now, he wouldn’t be able to level up, and even his experience became negative.

“Sh*t, this… this was also possible?” Li Huailin managed to piece these words and uttered it out loud after a long while.

Li Huailin then hurried to another Black Slime not too far in the distance, he killed it with a few slashes.

Battle Record: you’ve killed a Black Slime, minus five experience.

After seeing his experience bar become -10/500, Li Huailin was truly speechless.

“Is this game even playable? I’ve already come to terms that my innate skills became negative. However, now that my experience also became negative, how do you expect me to level up…” Now that he really confirmed that his experience would indeed be deducted after killing a monster, Li Huailin had no words to say.

Li Huailin thought that his character seemed to have been jammed into a BUG. After recalling the displaced opening animation and the distorted newbie attendant, on top of his own strange character attributes, the more he thought about what just happened, the more he felt that this was really the reason why. After all, because he didn’t log in through the official gaming equipment provided by Sky Corporation, the homemade gaming pod he made was somewhat considered to be similar to a BETA testing phase equipment, it was possible for problems to arise.

“Now… what should I do…” Li Huailin was little down, after all, this game, ‘Heart of Glory’, stored its character data on the official servers. If he wanted to change his bugged character, he could only delete it and then improve his own log-in device before attempting to create another account. However, this was where the headache would start. After a character was deleted, one month was needed before another one could be created. This alone was too problematic—what if, after he made improvements, the character he created was also bugged? Or perhaps, he simply couldn’t connect by then, wouldn’t he be unable to play if that happened?

“I’ll just keep playing like this, I sure as hell want to see what will happen when my experience hits -500.” Li Huailin finally made up his mind, he didn’t care anymore. Anyway, his purpose of playing this online game wasn’t to conquer the online gaming world—to become some invincible being—he just simply wanted to play, if his character was really bugged, then so be it!

While slightly depressed, Li Huailin fought the Black Slimes for a while. He finally took down 20 of them as requested by the quest. His experience had also become -100/500 at this point.

“Hehe.” Li Huailin laughed helplessly, and then, he took a look at his HP, there were 13 points left. It would take a long time for him to recover just based on his health recovery speed. Since he already finished the quest anyway, it would be better to just die and spawn back in town—he was too lazy to run.

After looking at his surroundings, he randomly taunted two Black Slimes over to hit him. In a short while, Li Huailin’s screen finally turned grey—he died.

System Notice: You have died, received 50 experience.

“Sh*t!” Li Huailin, who had just come out of the revival point in the newbie village, couldn’t help but shout this. He attracted the attention of a few newbies, but they soon turned away and went about their business. They simply assumed that this youngster was probably killed by some impressive monster, which was why he shouted out like this. No one paid him any more attention.

Li Huailin, on the other hand, hadn’t come back to his senses at all. He took a look at the system notice’s message once again—You have died, received 50 experience…

“What? Dying grants experience?” Li Huailin confirmed this after looking at his own experience bar, it had truly turned into -50/500. This clearly meant that experience was indeed added this time!

“Wait, I remember that on ‘Heart of Glory’s’ official website, if one is killed by a monster, then 10% of the experience points of what was needed to level up would be deducted. Since I’m level 1 and a total of 500 points of experience is needed to level up, then isn’t 10% of 500, 50? I get it now! Because my character is bugged, what would originally deduct experience would now simply add it!” Since Li Huailin was quite intelligent, he immediately hypothesized what was going on, “It seems that I really can still play this game! This means that I only need to die 10 times to level up to level 2, right? Since dying deducts 10% of the experience required to level, then according to this logic, can’t I level up once for every 10 times I die? Sh*t, I’ve profited greatly, my leveling speed in the late-stage of the game would be unrivaled!”

“I’m wild, cool, and flipping awesome as expected.” After seeing that there was still hope for him to level up, Li Huailin started to feel arrogant.