The Training Ground Bug

"GYAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!"

My body! My body hurt like it was about to shatter into pieces!!!!

Even after I'd rolled around on a floor already ruined with rat blood and scraps of flesh, the pain was so bad I couldn't stay still for a single second!

With a blank face that couldn't express a thing, I kept pouring out something that was either an ugly scream or a raw howl, until I didn't even have the strength left to roll. How long I spent just twitching face-down on the ground, I had no idea — but by the time I came to my senses, it was already the middle of the night.

"Sta…tus Window…"

Only one remaining stat point left. That sealed it — the guaranteed event was officially out of reach. The thing only triggered if your remaining stats hit triple digits before level one hundred.

"Urgh."

I gritted my teeth and forced myself up, and from every corner of my body came a chorus of creaks and cracks, like the whole frame was screaming in protest. After a bit of basic stretching, I folded my arms, thought it over for a moment, and opened ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my mouth.

"Shop Window?"

So there was a shop mode too. Problem was, I was too low-level for it to open.

Which meant, in the end, I had to level up — and in a world this disgustingly vast, finding and killing enemies that actually matched my level was a whole separate problem.

Worse than that, though, was the fact that leveling up hadn't cleared my injuries or debuffs.

"Even in Ironman Mode, leveling up wiped the debuffs, you trash game."

This rat-dick reality patch, I swear.

I hadn't even been hoping for a full HP recovery, but the injury debuffs were still sitting there, and moving my body hurt like hell.

"…Skill Window?"

No response at all. Looked like that one hadn't even been applied. I checked the minimap and started walking more or less wherever my feet took me, and less than two days later I stopped dead.

Stuck unnaturally into the middle of the Wasteland was a dilapidated fence — one side collapsed, laid out in a vague L-shape that was barely fence-like at all — and the structure was so familiar it might as well have been a jump scare.

What the minimap lit ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up so clearly was simple enough.

"…The tutorial's only showing up now? What a complete garbage game."

A trash game so bad you had to go find the tutorial yourself.

And even if you went in, the Training Ground was just a place where you bashed level-one scarecrows to grind a basic skill's proficiency up to thirty and then left. Full-clear the tutorial and you could push one chosen basic skill's proficiency to sixty, plus a little pocket change — fine for a total newbie.

Problem was, I was already level fourteen, and judging by the Skill Window not opening, I didn't even have skills. And like every other mode, the money the Training Ground handed out in vanilla was useless here anyway.

What I was actually stuck on was something else.

"…Hmm."

Could a scarecrow be defined as a living thing?

"Enter."

Level-one scarecrows that gave experience in the smallest unit possible: one.

No matter how many thousands of times you smashed them, there was a hard cap on the experience, so leveling up inside the Training Ground was impossible.

But the moment I stepped in, as if free rides weren't allowed, the power rooted in the spiritual core inside me began to drain away, slowly and faintly.

And at the same time, a scarecrow holding a bamboo spear appeared at a leisurely pace.

Auto-Battle obviously didn't work in the Training Ground, but I tried it anyway just in case, confirmed it was locked, then set my stance and charged the scarecrow head-on.

A fist loaded with killing intent literally pulverized the scarecrow in a single blow — and with it, I felt a truly pathetic amount of slaughter energy settle into the spiritual core inside me. I couldn't help laughing like a maniac.

"Fucking piece-of-shit game!!! Absolute garbage game!!!!"

That wasn't a curse. That was pure admiration. In a dumpster-fire of a game where the modders dropped bug-fix patches every month and bugs still spawned anyway, I had just found a bug that was actually useful.

What a beautiful free exploit.

Yu Hee burying herself in the Training Ground was the obvious move. She was an abnormal cultivator who could only grow by killing things, so her growth had been walled off — and now she had an endless supply of targets that kept spawning forever.

But even if Yu Hee was a cultivator who had left the Mortal realm behind, at a mere early Qi Condensation stage, no matter how much she piled up slaughter energy, she couldn't keep feeding the Training Ground's upkeep cost forever.

"…They weren't kidding about losing track of time while you play."

I'd been locked in here for over two months just beating scarecrows to death. My sense of time genuinely felt broken.

"…Sense of time… wait… is the Double Speed Mod running…?"

I'd been so busy gleefully murdering scarecrows that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the thought only hit me once the whole thing had gone from familiar to boring to outright tedious.

Among the quality-of-life mods, there was a Double Speed Mod that cut down map travel time. Base two-times speed, scalable up to fifteen-times.

"Double Speed Mod."

"Wow."

Looks like I could keep using the Training Ground after all.

Killing scarecrows didn't raise my level. It didn't raise my stats. And it wasn't like I had a Skill Window so I could grind skill proficiency either.

So what did go up from using the Training Ground?

Slaughter energy built up, killing intent grew, and with that the spiritual core that ran on killing intent as its fuel grew stronger — which meant the innate ability that drew power through that core got reinforced!

At this point the grind wasn't boring anymore. It was something to look forward to. Waiting for the next system message to pop up somewhere in the middle of it all, I kept throwing fists loaded with killing intent at the scarecrows without stopping.

One strike — a scarecrow's head went flying.

Two strikes — a hole punched clean through a scarecrow's torso.

Along with each dead scarecrow, a little more killing intent filled me than what the punches had spent. That killing intent burned through the spiritual core, a new scarecrow appeared in place of the vanished one, and once again I loaded killing intent into my fist.

I repeated that process without end, over and over.

Honestly, this kind of grind was past familiar and into pure tedium. The bamboo spears the Mortal-realm scarecrows thrust at me couldn't even pierce the killing intent wrapped around my body — they just crumbled — so all I had to do was throw punches.

My max MP was duplicating itself!

Or rather, stamina — no, spiritual power, I guess I should call it. The force spent opening the Status Window and waking up the mods applied to the system.

Either way, a status that didn't show on the Status Window was climbing, that much was certain. I couldn't quantify the gain in real time, but I could feel it in my body, and that only made it more addictive.

So I really did lose all track of time grinding, until I finally hit the Double Speed Mod's maximum of fifteen-times — and even then, for whatever reason, the slaughter energy kept stacking, thinner than before but still flowing in without any blockage.

"How high does this thing even go?"

The second I saw the system message, I didn't look back — I just bolted for the Training Ground exit. I wanted to push it all the way, but there was no end in sight.

Besides, just learning that even a mod's own multiplier could grow and push its own ceiling higher was already a massive haul.

Fifty thousand hours — roughly six years and two months of awkward leftover time sitting right up against the usage limit — meant exactly one thing.

"My past life's playtime is the time limit."

The moment I stepped out of the Training Ground, the "fence" started collapsing in on itself and vanished ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠without a trace.

Watching the last leftover of this trash game disappear — a tutorial Training Ground that never went away no matter what mods you ran, the one thing that made you feel in your bones that this world was a game patched into reality — I said it out loud.

"It really is a game, isn't it."

I'd dumped my entire past-life playtime into the Training Ground. Calling it a bug felt a little off, but I'd still been training with bugs in the mix — and when I came out, my level and stats hadn't changed a single point from when I went in.

Man. Reality patches are terrifying.

Though me getting dropped into this trash game is even more terrifying!