As they delved deeper into the territory of the Slane Theocracy, the number of patrolling normal wyverns in the sky became increasingly frequent, making it clear that Ellie had made the right gamble this time.
The Slane Theocracy should have the "Ranch" mentioned in the letter, and with the help of the Death Knight mounts summoned by Sir Xia Na, everyone traveled through the wilderness for nearly a week.
Finally... they saw what appeared to be a "city."
During this time, the most gratifying thing for Ellie was that, although it wasn't obvious at first, as she used the wooden stick given to her by Sir Xia Na to deliver more and more finishing blows to monsters, Ellie was pleasantly surprised to find... her level had increased!
This was not an illusion, and Sir Xia Na had confirmed it when they were on night watch together.
Her MP and HP had both significantly increased. According to Sir Xia Na, Ellie's MP was now almost in the range of a level 20 player, and her HP was close to that of a max-level player. This was all thanks to the "newbie" wooden stick Sir Xia Na had given Ellie.
Originally, Ellie thought that after her transmigration, she would inexplicably gain experience, but that wasn't the case. Ellie couldn't gain any experience without using that wooden stick for finishing blows.
Ellie didn't quite understand the specific principle. After discovering this, Ellie asked Sir Xia Na to appraise the wooden stick with a high-level appraisal tool. Only then did she realize that this stick, which originally had only a simple +1 attack power attribute, had now significantly improved in performance. According to Sir Xia Na's speculation, this wooden stick was likely a "cursed" equipment, one that absorbs experience to grow.
Generally, according to Ellie's understanding of RPG online games, equipment that grows with the player, while often not the strongest, is definitely the most convenient, isn't it?
Isn't it great not to have to frequently change equipment during the leveling process?
However, according to Sir Xia Na's explanation, this type of equipment was classified as trash in the game Yggdrasil, otherwise it wouldn't be called cursed equipment.
One must know that in the game world of Yggdrasil, even max-level players... needed to constantly farm experience, because many powerful skills in this trash game were cast by consuming experience points. If too many experience points were consumed, there would even be a phenomenon of level reduction.
However, this series of cursed equipment, once used to farm monsters, would cause the player's gained experience to be absorbed by the equipment.
That is to say... players would not get that portion of the experience, and the proportion of experience absorbed by this series of equipment varied.
Some equipment would even absorb ninety-nine percent of the experience, giving only one percent to the player. Therefore, this type of equipment was rarely used in the Yggdrasil game.
Even players who weren't max-level wouldn't use this kind of equipment that would slow down their leveling speed. Although some bored players had experimented, intentionally farming experience for these cursed pieces of equipment to make them grow, they found that this type of equipment also had a growth limit.
While the specific growth limit varied, most cursed equipment tested in this way did not have high growth potential. A "cursed" equipment nurtured with a large amount of time and effort ended up being completely inferior to normal equipment, which is why it was disliked by players.
Based on Sir Xia Na's explanation of the wooden stick, Ellie had her own theory. She had always believed that her inability to gain experience and level up was due to the unique nature of her constitution, as she was neither a player nor an NPC created in the game.
Instead, she was a product created by NPCs after transmigrating to this world, and thus excluded by the game rules. More accurately, she was judged to be a native of this world!
Therefore, she should not be constrained by the game rules of Yggdrasil, just as she could use equipment of any profession without restriction.
As for being able to use skills without restriction, Ellie couldn't explain that. However, the natives of this world actually don't have the concept of levels like in online games; the only distinction is the concept of dividing into domains.
The Heroic domain... if converted into levels, would be level thirty-five in the game. It is very difficult for normal natives to break through this domain, no matter how hard they train.
Of course... there are also quantifiable units of strength in this world, which is "difficulty." In the original work, it was mentioned that the natives of this world would assign a difficulty rating to difficult monsters and creatures.
For example, for a level thirty-five Death Knight, the Slane Theocracy gave a difficulty rating of exactly one hundred. Although this was judged based on the standards of the natives and had no reference value.
Returning to the main topic, Ellie deduced that the reason she gained experience and grew, rather than needing to grow through training, was because this wooden stick was brought from the game, and thus was constrained by game rules. However, Ellie's own growth followed the growth rules of a native.
Then, when the two mixed, a bug appeared. Although it's unknown how much experience the wooden stick in Ellie's hand absorbs, the remaining experience is distributed to the user according to game rules.
However, Ellie, as the user, doesn't adhere to these rules, so the distributed experience points were forcibly given to her.
Even if she normally couldn't gain experience from killing monsters, which was confirmed by her inability to gain experience without delivering finishing blows, Ellie made this judgment. As for whether this explanation is correct, only heaven knows.
In any case, even if some experience was split off, from the results, being able to gain experience at all was already something to be very happy about.
Therefore, Ellie now regarded this wooden stick as a treasure and even gave it a very chuunibyou name, "lævateinn," which is the name of a world-destroying demon sword in some mythology.
Although it's a stick and not a sword... she also told Sir Xia Na that even if she was the original owner of lævateinn, she wouldn't return it to her. If she wanted it back, she would have to take it from her corpse! This shows how much Ellie valued lævateinn. Fortunately, Sir Xia Na had no intention of taking it back.
So, thanks to lævateinn, by the time Ellie and her companions saw the so-called "city," Ellie had also grown, and her other teammates were aware of this.
After all, they had fought so many monsters; not leveling up would seem strange, wouldn't it? Initially, Ellie had prepared an excuse, saying that this world might not be affected by the game world's leveling rules or something, to fool them, but it turned out she didn't need it.
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