The Experience Funnel
“……”
Of course, even normally awakened hunters could form groups and hunt together, but those were nothing more than personal gatherings with no system connection.
However, if a hunter who had reached Level 3 was in the group, that person could officially form a party through the system. Additional information revealed that the party leader could adjust several settings with their authority.
Priority rights for dropped items… adjusting the distribution ratios for points and experience….
The first function allowed the party to decide in advance who would receive specific items that dropped during automatic butchering. If a spellbook appeared, it would go to one person. If a weapon dropped, it would go to another. This prevented disputes later on.
Of course, they could choose not to set anything and simply sell the items later to split the money. But apparently there were quite a few people recruiting party members who declared they wanted only specific items and would take zero points or experience.
What caught Kang Tae-sung’s interest far more than any of that was the ability to adjust the distribution ratio for points and experience.
An official party. Impressive. There are real merits here.
Those who formed an official party avoided the experience penalty that came with hunting in random, unlinked groups. The experience one person would earn solo was simply divided equally among the official party members.
If official party members mixed with non-members, the system calculated the total headcount. Non-party members received penalized points and experience, while the official party claimed the remainder after those deductions.
When multiple official parties were involved, accumulated achievements could further alter the ratios. But what drew Tae-sung’s attention right now was the fact that the party leader could set the experience distribution however they wished.
If he preset everything to funnel experience toward a single person, he could safely push points and experience to his siblings without exposing them to serious danger.
The problem was that his siblings were still ordinary people who had not undergone Awakening. Civilians were not connected to the system and therefore could not join parties.
Still, he searched every corner of the community just in case and eventually found a post claiming there was a loophole that used the party system to funnel experience to non-awakened people.
Interestingly, the post had gone up very recently. As Kang Tae-sung read it, his eyes sparkled for the first time in a long while.
First, a hunter of Level 3 or higher creates an official party. You probably already know you need at least two hunters including the leader to form one. The exact number doesn’t matter—two people or more is fine.
After the party is formed, you have to set the experience distribution ratio in advance. This part is crucial.
Regardless of whether it’s the leader or anyone else, set the people who will actually fight to receive the minimum possible share of experience.
Right now the minimum is around 5 percent of the total. Set it that way, then dump everything else onto the remaining “non-combat” party members—the dummies you’re going to leave standing around.
For a two-person party, that means the fighter gets 5 percent and the dummy gets 95. Handle the point distribution however you want since it doesn’t matter as much.
Then you go hunting. The person actually doing the fighting moves together with the civilian who’s supposed to receive the experience—the outsider. The hunter playing dummy follows from far away.
The most important thing here is maintaining distance!
If you go more than 500 meters apart, the party may disband. Sometimes it doesn’t, but don’t rely on luck—control the distance properly.
Stay inside 500 meters but keep at least 300 meters of separation. Maintain a gap between 300 and 500 meters.
Why? Anyone outside that 300-meter range who contributes nothing to the hunt receives zero experience or points. The system treats them as excluded. It’s basically a safeguard against people who only fill seats and leech.
But when you preset the distribution like this, a kind of bug occurs. It conflicts with the party’s distribution settings.
The fighter is supposed to get 5 percent and the dummy 95, but because the dummy is too far away and has no achievements, they can’t receive their share. That 95 percent doesn’t flow to the fighter either—it just floats out of the party entirely.
Ah, this is premium information. I really should be selling this.
Anyway, that floating experience goes to the outsider fighting alongside the party. It doesn’t matter if they’re a civilian or an awakened person. It all flows to them.
This is how you can set up a dummy in an official party and bring a civilian outsider to funnel experience to them. Naturally, this can trigger an Awakening.
Of course, the danger of the hunt itself can’t be avoided, but that’s something you’ll have to handle on your own….
Pretty much everyone who needs to know already knows that several large guilds are mass-producing awakened hunters using this method.
Especially those rich kids running around lately saying “Anyone can awaken these days.” Does it feel good to buy your Awakening with money? Have some conscience. Some of us risked our lives to barely manage it.
Anyway, this is clearly not an intended method, so whoever runs the system probably won’t leave it alone forever.
If this were a game, it would be an obvious bug. A normal game would get patched.
I don’t know when that will happen, so let’s all suck up the honey while we can. They wouldn’t really roll back the server, right? I wish you good fortune.
Below the post, hundreds of comments had already flooded in within moments. People debated its authenticity, hurled insults, or simply jumped in as attention-seekers.
Yet after reading through the reactions, it didn’t seem like complete nonsense. There were users subtly urging the original poster to delete it, others trying to dig up personal information, and a few who openly admitted they had awakened that way with help from their acquaintances.
“Level 3, huh.”
It was a difficult level to reach through hunting alone. But with the government currently purchasing monster byproducts, earning enough points to raise it in one go wasn’t impossible.
The points required to reach Level 3 totaled two thousand. Still, he would gain some experience through normal hunting before then, so he wouldn’t need the full two thousand points exactly.
“No time to stand around.”
Kang Tae-sung quickly returned to the gym and gave his siblings a brief summary of what he had learned.
“Can we trust that information? There are so many bastards writing plausible bullshit these days,” Kang Han-sung said, looking skeptical. Still, there was no real downside for them, so he simply told Tae-sung not to overdo it and raised no real objections.
“But to earn two thousand points… even if we assume we’re just selling cores, we’d need to sell almost two hundred of them….”
It was commonly known that cores dropped at a rate of about one per ten monsters. The simple calculation that they would need to kill two thousand monsters made even Kang Han-sung, who had not opposed the idea before, shake his head.
“Bro, now that I think about it, this is too much. There’s no need to rush like this, right? Let’s take it slow. Slow and steady.”
“How are you supposed to kill two thousand monsters by yourself? That’s ridiculous… Should we bring Yu-ri noona to talk some sense into him?”
Kang Yeon-sung frowned deeply and tried to dissuade him, almost pleading. Two thousand monsters was an insane number even for a Level 2 hunter.
“I’m not going alone. I’ll form a proper party, so there’s no need to worry.”
“Hm? If you form a party, you’ll have to distribute everything. Won’t that make it even slower?”
“I’ll have to find people willing to take experience but not points.”
“Agh, if only I had awakened, I could go with you.”
“That’s exactly why I’m doing this—so I can awaken you.”
“I know, I know.”
Kang Han-sung smiled awkwardly and answered.
“Then I guess I’ll focus on personal training until hyung raises his level one more time. Don’t worry about things here and go on ahead.”
“Have a safe trip, oldest brother.”
“If anything happens, don’t face it head-on. Stall for time and contact us. I’ll check my messages regularly.”
“Okay.”
Having left the school alone, Kang Tae-sung ran at a moderate pace along the wide road leading toward the headquarters. Soon he spotted a car heading in the same direction and hitched a ride.
They all looked like hunters. From what he overheard, they weren’t part of any specific team and were looking to recruit more hunters for a hunt near the city hall.
But even at a glance they didn’t seem particularly strong, so he had no desire to join them. Their goal also seemed focused more on cores and points than experience, so he simply told them he had business near the headquarters.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Take care.”
After getting out near the city hall, Kang Tae-sung watched the car disappear into the distance before turning his head to scan the many people coming and going through the central area.
The place was still bustling with crowds.
He glanced at the people entering and exiting the city hall and saw that the temporary trading post still seemed to be operating. Nearby and in various other spots, several groups were gathering equipment and boarding vehicles, apparently preparing to head out for hunts.
As expected.
The government-affiliated awakeners stationed at the makeshift trading post in the distance were surrounded by a clear yellow aura.
That meant they were higher level than him—at least Level 3.
So they had probably driven out the original headquarters awakeners and taken the city hall by force. Even if they were outnumbered, they overwhelmed the others with raw level advantage.
Only they know the exact details.
What was certain was that the city’s power structure had split in two. And ever since the government had taken control of the city hall, the distribution of rations to hunters had completely stopped.
Until now, everyone had been able to receive supplies periodically regardless of whether they had awakened.
There had even been complaints that giving rations to hunters who could hunt for themselves was excessive generosity. But because the core of the headquarters consisted of hunters, the residents had not been able to voice strong objections.
Of course, the hunters had the justification of protecting the city, so while people complained behind closed doors, no one dared voice their discontent openly.
But the government no longer provided rations to hunters.
Some awakened individuals had been living off those supplies without lifting a finger, and now even the hunters who had originally belonged to the defense force were either following the former headquarters leader or forming their own scattered hunting teams.
The local internet communities were filled with posts looking for hunting partners or announcing the creation of proper teams.
There were also posts from civilians offering to do any chore if they could join a hunt, and posts from women uploading rather attractive photos while searching for hunting companions.
Are they trying to hunt with their faces?
Kang Tae-sung shook his head and tried to look up the post he had seen earlier, but strangely the post was now blocked.
“……”
A pop-up appeared saying access was restricted due to some law or another. The related board was filled with heated discussion, but the atmosphere suggested posts were being deleted in real time.
“The internet really hasn’t changed at all.”
It seemed that among those currently benefiting from this method, there were quite a few people with real power.
That only strengthened his conviction that the contents of the post were genuinely possible.
Thank you.
See you next time…