A Greeting and a Slaughter Stone

Among the emotion expressions available to players, [Greeting] was recommended and [Disappointment] was not. Outside of DLC, only five base emotion expressions existed at all — and the reason those two made the cut was simple: rack up ten thousand of either and you unlocked an achievement.

The number of people who had ever completed those two achievements? Seventeen. Which, of course, traced straight back to the game's chronic problem: total player count never even cracked ten thousand. This was a garbage fire of a game that literally would not launch without mods installed.

So how, exactly, had seventeen people managed to farm achievements in a trash heap whose worldwide daily active users never hit a hundred?

The answer: they took [Greeting] and [Disappointment] — each of which only counted once per target per day — and rotated them for decades. And when that still wasn't enough, they hijacked the accounts of players who'd already quit and kept grinding the same two expressions like a bot farm.

"…Karma just accumulated. Hee-a, what did you just do?"

"A grateful [Greeting]."

I'd only recommended her for pulling a Dharma Treasure for me. Apparently it worked on prisoners too. Neutral NPC flag, maybe? Or the reality patch?

"That just now — small as it was — was unmistakably karma! The kind you need to form a Primordial Spirit!"

"So that's the lore."

"N-no! You have the power to make karma register? A lower-realm cultivator, not even from the upper realms?! That makes no sense! Even if the stars are watching you!"

"If the setting is that they locked level-ups behind achievement grinding, that doesn't really concern me. I finished all the achievement farming ages ago."

"Don't you ignore me, Yu Hee!"

I sighed inwardly. No way to emote a reaction, so I just looked down at Cheon Nan-cho thrashing and protesting in midair.

"I don't need a noisy help tip. Release prisoner."

A help tip you couldn't skip and couldn't dismiss. I was already suffering enough in this dumpster fire of a game — I did not need this on top of it.

"Who said you could?!"

"This doesn't work either? Goddamn reality patch."

A prisoner refusing to be set free! Fine. If that was how it was going to be—

"You need to listen. This is a far more serious problem than you think, Yu Hee."

"…?"

No skip button ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meant I couldn't just tune her out. So was the help tip throwing a warning window at me right now? Tips and advice that popped out of the help system were usually useless, inefficient, or outright maliciously wrong — but warnings were the one thing you could never ignore.

Which meant this trash game was grit-toothed warning me about something real.

"That 'power to make karma register' you're talking about is [Greeting] and [Disappointment]. Once a day per target. [Greeting] is positive, [Disappointment] is negative."

"So you can shave karma off as well as stack it?"

"Maybe. Never tried. I should test it."

"Eek! Don't you even dream of testing that on me!"

Cheon Nan-cho flailed in panic, then wilted under my flat stare, cleared her throat with an awkward little cough, and started talking again.

Mm. Good.

"So basically: use [Disappointment] on a neutral NPC and you get real debuffs — intimidation, forced provocation, weakening, mental shock, that kind of thing. Use [Greeting] and you get ally buffs, even permanent enhancements!"

That was a two-line summary. Had there really been any need to ramble for three solid hours about upper-realm heavens this and lower-realm cultivators that? I'd been an idiot for sitting still and listening on the off chance it mattered.

Reality-patched or not, if this was the same absolute garbage fire of a game I knew, this was how it worked.

Cheon Nan-cho was staring at me with a look gone completely cold, gearing up for another lecture, so I tried to slap her with a [Disappointment] — only for a message window to pop up saying I'd already used [Greeting] today and couldn't. Slaughter karma drained for nothing. Hollow.

Anyway. I'd successfully shut the help tip up. Time to move to the next map.

"The fuck?"

Every escape route sideways had been swallowed by the late-game eok-kka map — the Abyss. Event encroachment only, so ducking into another map and coming back would restore the originals… but having the options collapse down to a single choice was still a sentence of pure shit.

The fact that Mumo Castle was still standing proud through a misfortune event meant it was a map so godawful it rivaled the vanilla max-level zone, the Abyss. And even so — compared to the Abyss, which overflowed with even more eok-kka events — Mumo Castle was the only option even remotely worth entering.

The second the map loaded, I checked the minimap first.

No red dots nearby. No regional penalty. No system warning window — so it wasn't a late-game map with a catastrophic level gap either.

That didn't mean I could relax. The fact that it had surfaced through a misfortune event already had my threat level cranked all the way up. Unreasonable eok-kka and pure bad luck were guaranteed to be waiting.

"…?"

A monkey clad in rock-scale armor appeared. I confirmed the gray minimap dot marking it as a neutral NPC — and in that same moment, Cheon Nan-cho shoved just her face out of the inventory of her own accord and launched into TMI like it was her turn.

"Hairless monkey — that's a Mumo Castle native. A beast cultivator you almost never see in the lower realms. They grow stronger by hunting cultivators, and they're known to be seriously powerful. Among other beast cultivators, though, they're famous as barter merchants!"

Species: beast cultivator. Hostile to anything that wasn't one of their own, then.

"Okay, but why isn't it turning red? I'm human."

"Something reeking of blood this thick and ominous could never be an ordinary human! Well met — I am Tan Seon-rim of Mumo Castle!"

"Ooh, he's scared! Of the slaughter karma and killing intent Hee-a's putting out!"

Ah. The power of a full hundred-percent ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠evil alignment. Looked like there was a favorability correction for evil-aligned NPCs.

"Hello, Mister Tan Seon-rim. I'm Yu Hee."

First time using [Greeting] on a proper neutral NPC. Unlike Cheon Nan-cho's violent reaction, Tan Seon-rim barely flinched — just grinned wide enough to split his face ear to ear.

Favorability was climbing. That much was clear.

"I see. Little miss — anything to trade?"

Oh. A personal trade ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠request from a neutral NPC carrying rare-or-better stock. I'd scored a low-grade Dharma Treasure this way before. Of course, once you were wrapped head to toe in unique-or-better gear, rare-tier equipment started looking a little thin on value—?!

Red effects. Purple effects.

Red meant unique items. Not prefix-rolled options — special fixed options. There were uniques you needed to build specific characters around regardless of level bracket, but in practice most of them were trash.

And purple meant epic. Even if gear was consumable, epics took long enough to burn through that you could get real mileage out of them.

The problem: reds stacked high and an epic sitting right there, and — as Cheon Nan-cho had said — trade with a Mumo Castle beast cultivator was pure barter.

"How about these?"

"Consumables and weapons tailored for humans… not really."

"Then these!"

"Spirit stones of that grade won't cut it, child."

No gold. No rare consumables or gear. Fine — what about these?!

The useless unique junk I'd stashed because I couldn't bear to throw it away!

"As I said. Human armaments don't interest me."

Not even those?

"Hides, claws, bones, and eyeballs from other beast cultivators don't particularly appeal either."

"Mumo Castle natives chew spirit stones, after all."

I shoved the help tip back into the inventory mid-unsolicited lecture and went back to thinking.

Rock scales. Did they actually eat rocks? Metal was out. Bone was out. So… a rock would do? Was that actually true?

"How about this."

I held out a pebble into which I'd permanently carved off a portion of my own slaughter karma.

He took it, sniffed it, scraped it lightly with a claw — then swallowed the whole thing in one gulp and nodded, satisfied.

"Worth two items, little miss. Pick what you want and take it."

Wait, what? I'd been planning to duplicate Slaughter Stones and trade them on loop — it's single-use? Fair enough. Something you just poof into existence probably couldn't become infinite trade stock. Epic gear was locked in either way. Time to look over the uniques carefully.

"Huh? Wh-whaaaaaat?!"

Sitting right there on the trade list, plain as day, was the single most broken unique in the game.