"Is there a kill reward?" Ethan asked.
Ethan nodded. "This will indeed increase players' interest in killing others, but it won't help much. Killing a player only gives 4 points. Even if you kill them all, 400 points is still a huge gap from the 10,000 points needed for victory."
"Moreover, the income from non killing is halved, which also reduces the appeal of the killing mechanism. After all, except in the early stages, the chance of a player killing another with their own hands is extremely slim unless he's confident enough to order his men to capture someone alive."
"Go on, Annie." Ethan waved his hand. His instincts told him that the real twist was still coming.
"The second is the alliance mechanism. After entering the game, players can form an alliance face to face through the alliance function in the auxiliary system. Each alliance can include up to four people.
"Players who kill allies while in an alliance will not receive kill rewards, nor will those kills count toward completing tasks."
"We'll talk about this later. I have no allies." Ethan laughed sarcastically and shook his head helplessly.
"The third is the points rule," Annie continued, skipping directly to the next item. "Points are the most important strategic resource in this game. They can be earned in four ways: completing system tasks, killing other players, achieving milestones, and completing highlight operations. Each player starts with 1 initial point.
"Points serve three purposes: purchasing items in the points mall, determining rank on the leaderboard, and declaring final victory."
"Points list? What's it for?"
"This game uses a reward and punishment system based on player rankings.
"Starting on the first day of the game, standings will be calculated monthly.
"The top three players with the highest scores on each settlement day will receive generous rewards corresponding to their ranks. If there is a tie in the top three, the tied players will share all the relevant rewards equally. For example, if two players tie for first place, they'll share the combined rewards of first and second place equally.
"Beginning on the second settlement day, the bottom three ranked players will be targeted by the Faceless Men of Braavos, the Regrets of Qarth, and local assassins, respectively.
"If there's a tie among the last three, the assassination target will be selected from among those tied. If fewer than three tie, the remaining targets will be selected from those next lowest in rank.
"When the number of surviving players drops below 20, the leaderboard will be canceled."
"F*ck!" Ethan cursed as soon as Annie finished explaining the third mechanism.
Until now, Ethan had wondered why such an obvious lord style competition was called a [Battle Royale Game], but now he understood.
Isn't this just another kind of death trap?
In fact, it was even scarier than slow poison. No matter how hard players worked to earn points, there would always be a bottom three.
That meant players had no choice but to compete relentlessly to avoid death.
What a nightmare.
"Continue."
"Other than that, there are no further mechanical features. You can now close your eyes and enter the auxiliary system within your consciousness to explore and get familiar with its functions."
After hearing this, Ethan closed his eyes and entered the system.
The entire interface was very simple, with only eight toolbars: tasks, alliances, information, achievements, mailbox, backpack, points mall, and scoreboards, all arranged at the bottom.
He clicked the taskbar first. A small question mark appeared beside it, and clicking it brought up a comment:
[Task Function: Given the player's ordinary starting conditions, the system will provide tasks to help with development.
Note: There is no penalty for mission failure.]
There were three sub sections under the task toolbar: main tasks, bounty/public tasks, and optional/trigger tasks.
Since the game hadn't officially started yet, the task section was currently blank. Ethan just glanced over it and exited, then moved on to the next function.
In the alliance section, only the [Face to Face Alliance] button was active. The others were greyed out and couldn't be clicked. Clicking the active button opened a blank screen.
Next to the button was another small question mark. Clicking it revealed a note: Two players must click this function simultaneously within one meter of each other to exchange information.
Skipping the uninteresting [Information], [Achievements], and [Mailbox] sections, Ethan entered the backpack.
[Backpack: A storage space accessible at any time.
The initial space is 1 cubic decimeter. Every 10 points spent can expand it to four times its current size. Expansion can be purchased up to 4 times.]
Clearly, the backpack provided by the auxiliary system was extremely weak compared to those in typical games. A mere 1 cubic decimeter couldn't even hold a large cup of milk tea.
However, considering this was a real world scenario, such a "space magic" function had some practical use like storing money.
Players might travel all over the world without a fixed business or property. Carrying several kilograms of gold constantly would be unwise. Additionally, the system needed a method to distribute rewards or deliver goods from the mall.
This small backpack fulfilled that need.
Returning from the backpack, Ethan backed out and opened the mall.
**[Level One Mall:
Large Money Bag (contains 300 silver stags): 1 point
Medium Money Bag (contains 20 gold dragons): 5 points
Current Points: 1]**
Three hundred silver stags wouldn't help much with business or buying gear, but it would buy food for a long time. It was suitable for players who had spent all their starting attributes and had no money.
Twenty gold dragons was a good amount in the early game, but the 5 point cost seemed steep.
Ethan flipped to the next page.
But instead of finding the next level mall, a prompt appeared:
[Level Two Mall: Preview available once you reach 10 points.]
It must be for more expensive items, Ethan thought. No need to look now.
"Ding!" Two crisp metallic chimes rang in Ethan's mind, startling him.
"What the hell?"
"That was the mission announcement. The three hour preparation period is over. The competition has officially begun."
"The mission's here?" Ethan quickly opened the taskbar.
[Main Mission 1: Road to Honor
Mission Description: As a hedge knight, you've been away from honor too long. Money has blinded you and made you forget your original oath. Now go and reclaim your honor.
Mission Objective: Win an official lance tournament held in five cities.
Mission Reward: 5 points, 3 attribute points, 3 skill points]
[Accept] [Replace]
"A lance tournament across five major cities?" Ethan scoffed. This kind of quest was basically hell level difficulty.