The Honey Event Map
The problem with neutral NPCs, unlike monsters, was that the experience they dropped was all over the place. It was an unavoidable quirk of the experience-gain mechanic itself.
Experience, experience—people threw the word around, but all it really was, was slaughter energy converted into spiritual power. More precisely, a warped form of spiritual power that my Twisted Spiritual Root could devour.
That Twisted Spiritual Root was my innate talent—the Status Window—and ordinary spiritual power simply wouldn't cut it for growth.
So how, then, did the experience-gain boost on my unique talisman, the Eye of the Earth Dragon, actually work?
It twisted the spiritual power left in a kill's body into slaughter energy I could use, and raised the efficiency of that conversion. That efficiency scaled with how much killing intent the target had carried in life.
Which was exactly why NPC experience was so wildly inconsistent compared to monsters. The more blood an NPC had on their hands, the more experience they were worth.
And then—
◈ Restriction: Qi Condensation or higher, Foundation Establishment or lower
◈ Qi Condensation use: Level +1 ~ +5
◈ Foundation Establishment use: Level +1
A pill that aids Foundation Establishment. Effective only from Qi Condensation through Foundation Establishment. Grade varies by ingredients, recipe, the alchemist's skill, and the refining tools used.
"Is this a Strange Candy?!"
After I'd killed the field boss and finished terrain scouting, the minimap showed a treasure-chest icon—an event spot with a hidden item. Among the consumables I'd pulled from there, one was blue but still lit up under the item filter, so I checked it. And there it was.
The moment I realized this Foundation Establishment Pill was a consumable made of spiritual power refined so thoroughly that even my Twisted Spiritual Root—the source of my innate talent—could absorb it, I swallowed it on the spot.
You have raised your level with an item!
Crafting Window unlocked!
"Crafting Window?"
Required materials range from Common to Legendary grade. You don't need every material—only a set quantity. Lower material grades and smaller quantities produce Common-grade consumables.
The Crafting Window opening was great and all, but was the Foundation Establishment Pill really the only thing I could make?
"Do I need to find recipes or something? No—wait. The one I just ate got registered, so maybe if I use other stuff it'll register too?"
I had more useless Common and Magic consumables than I knew what to do with, clogging up inventory space anyway, so I started popping them one by one to see if they'd register in the Crafting Window. Simple test.
"So what do you intend to do with this body of mine, Slaughter Demon?"
"Tsk. How am I supposed to deal with a neutral NPC who doesn't even get a hostile marker when I hit first…"
Inside the Samjong Sect cave—the one marked by the minimap's treasure-chest icon—there had already been neutral NPCs waiting. Auto-Battle had wiped the rest, but one man hadn't shown up as a red dot, and he'd survived. His yapping was starting to get on my nerves.
"Why won't you kill me?"
"Why won't the hostile marker stick? I already slaughtered his entire party, and he's threatening me like this… Is he a quest NPC?"
If not, he was just a plain neutral NPC—killing him would give almost no experience, no loot, and only tank my alignment further.
"Not that my alignment can drop much lower at this point… does it even matter?"
I'd barely managed Evil Alignment 100% even during concept playthroughs.
No matter how many mods you installed, this game was never supposed to be drowning in neutral NPCs like this. Originally, you only hit that number by deliberately running evil-alignment quests and massacring most of the neutrals.
"What was the Evil Alignment 100% penalty again…"
Alignment applied modifiers to attack, defense, HP, and mana. Good Alignment raised every stat with no penalty; Evil Alignment boosted attack and defense but penalized max HP and mana. Something like that.
In the game, it was a factor you never really had to care about. Doing quests raised Good Alignment, and Evil only climbed if you failed quests on purpose for a concept run or went out of your way to murder neutrals.
A wet crunch, like a biscuit snapping—and the neutral NPC died, swallowed by red slaughter energy wearing a mask of spiritual power.
Evil Alignment has reached 100%!
Demon modifiers are now at maximum!
Good Alignment has reached 0%!
Good penalties are now at maximum!
"Did a mod mess with the alignment window too?"
The bonuses and penalties had clearly changed.
Except no matter how hard I mashed the interface and shouted at it, not a single scrap of information popped up!
"What the hell is it, then?! At least tell me! Goddammit—this absolute dogshit trash game!"
Even back in the game this kind of thing was common. To figure out the numbers, you had to tank hits on purpose and feel out what had changed with your character's body. Now I had to run the experiment on myself?!
After a lot of grumbling, I eventually holed up in a low-grade spirit vein I'd found on the minimap and started self-harming with slaughter energy. Defense and attack had gone up exactly the way I remembered. As for HP and mana dropping—I had no clean way to check. My HP regen was absurdly high, and the slaughter energy that stood in for mana was already piled sky-high.
"So in the end, what even were the bonuses and penalties."
Filthy, lingering unease.
Anyway—I'd more or less stripped everything worth taking from the Samjong Sect map. Time for the next one.
[Stone Mountain] · [Hwasan] · [Great Mountain]
"Samjong Sect is called that because there are three mountains? Goddammit, why are all the maps like this."
Stuck under that absolute garbage system constraint where I had to finish terrain scouting before I could move on no matter where I went, I took one look at Hwasan—which looked like I'd roast to death if I set foot there—and Great Mountain—which would take an eternity to scout—and naturally picked Stone Mountain.
"Yeah, not that I ever expected this piece of shit to be easy either."
Stone Mountain was a mountain of stone, all right—and just like the Wasteland, it had zero spiritual energy to speak of. That usually meant an empty map, a low-level beginner zone, or…
…something at the center of Stone Mountain was devouring every scrap of spiritual energy in the area, same as last time in the Wasteland.
And given my luck—and more importantly, given this godforsaken game—the last option was overwhelmingly more likely. Even with a full cultivator sect right next door in Samjong Sect, something unmanageable was obviously sitting inside that mountain.
Above all—
Transferring regions…
WARNING! WARNING!
—the crimson warning messages that slammed onto the screen the instant the loading window closed backed every one of those guesses.
Punch through here and I'd hit the Gangso Castle map, but if I died to something ordinary while terrain-scouting—before even reaching an event Eok-kka—that would be a problem. I bounced straight back to the Samjong Sect map and started wringing my brain for all it was worth.
Work, damn you, brain!
Brain: Just kill me…
"Urgh."
I fretted hard enough that steam practically rose off my skull, and in the end I picked Hwasan over Great Mountain.
A map with a built-in penalty would be harder, sure—but that also meant less Eok-kka, right?
Transferring regions…
This region has a regional penalty!
"…Huh?"
Instead of the magma-scorched mountain, acrid smoke, and fire spiritual energy I'd expected, what filled my eyes was a mountain plastered wall-to-wall in flowers—so dazzlingly brilliant it hurt to look at.
"Status Window."
I opened it immediately and checked the regional penalty.
HP and spiritual energy are drained by 1% per second.
"So if I just stand still, I'm dead in a hundred seconds."
Brutal penalty, no question.
"Ohh."
Watching the flowers packed across every surface suck at my spiritual energy and HP, then spit it back out like they'd bitten into something inedible, I got it. This penalty had nothing to do with me, did it?
My spiritual energy was slaughter energy wearing a spiritual-power mask, and my HP refilled through slaughter energy's auto-regen—so the regional penalty's effects simply didn't apply. That was the structure.
"Trash games gonna trash-game."
What else could you expect from a broken mess where a HP curse and a vitality buff tangled in the code and blew the whole client up? Still—this was a pretty welcome glitch.
"…Wait."
The flowers blanketing this mountain had tried to drain spiritual energy and HP.
Spiritual energy was the power of heaven and earth that cultivators gathered.
Anything that held spiritual energy was a cultivator.
"…Then these flowers are—"
Tudduk. I yanked a nearby flower up by the roots and snapped it. Even wrapping slaughter energy around my hand to cut down something that was, at best, a plant, a surprising amount of slaughter energy and experience poured in.
Almost like killing a sentient neutral NPC—or a monster a few levels under me.
And at the same time, the minimap flooded solid crimson as killing intent began to rise from the flower-covered mountain. Killing intent so vast that most cultivators would have fainted on the spot.
Feeling the slaughter energy in my body squirm and drool in answer to that vast killing intent, I swallowed hard myself—and let out a cheer.
"Yes! That's more like it! I don't have to just sit here and take the Eok-kka every damn time! Fuck yeah!"
This right here—this was a goddamn honey event map!