Grrr!

A giant brown bear, approximately three meters tall, roared aggressively and lunged at a man. This animal’s incredible strength was so overwhelming that it seemed as if a mountain were collapsing. Seeing such a fearsome bear would’ve instilled fear in any ordinary person, and most would simply fall to the floor as their legs turned to jelly. Yet, the shirtless, muscular man didn't retreat. With his feet firmly on the ground, he proceeded to make a frontal attack.

Wham!

Growl!

Then, something unbelievable happened. The impact broke the bear’s forepaws and all of its entire ribs. This would’ve been more believable if the bear ran into a dump truck, but it had hit a person half its size. As the beast tottered, the guy burst out into laughter.

"Bahaha! You bastard! My muscular strength is already 130 points! Besides, this is the Mountain Boring skill, the Saulabi's official technique! A creature like you can't withstand this attack- Eh?"

Suddenly, the laughing man collapsed. His arms dropped powerlessly to the ground, and his skin was cracked like a fractured turtle shell. Thick clouds of golden smoke continuously rose from these cuts.

It was a spectacular sight, but unfortunately, blood spurted from the man’s split skin. He realized he was fatally wounded.

"Eh? How can this be? I'm stronger than-"

GROWL!

Yet, despite the man’s confusion, the brown bear began to move again. Its forepaws and ribs were broken, but the bear could still attack, whereas the guy couldn’t defend himself at all. He could move his fingers, but his severe injuries stopped him from standing or even lifting an arm.

"What the hell! Am I already dying when I've just started to play the game?"

"Pfft, here’s another idiot."

Bam!

A man with a crew cut suddenly intervened and parried the bear's forepaw, brandishing the round shield in his left hand. Then, there was a flash of light! The injured man had plopped on the ground, blankly staring at the bear getting stabbed in its nape.

Thud!

The gold bear crashed to the ground with a loud thud before turning to gold ash and disappearing.

As he stood before the corpse, the crew-cut man asked, "How much EXP did you gain?"

"Eh? EXP... Here, I gained 13 Spirits."

"Hmm, so that's how it works. You earn EXP when participating in a battle, but the points aren't shared equally; it's basically just a small amount of experience you get by 'participating' in combat. Is it to prevent kill stealing[1]?"

What he just said was true, as he’d knocked down the bear but only earned one Spirit.

To prevent disputes arising from the EXP gain on a mob’s death, DIO adopted a system that gave all the Spirit to the initial attacker instead of creating a complicated structure. In other words, cutting in line or interfering with someone else's hunt would give no credits or rewards. If a player wanted to help someone else with monster hunting, it must be out of goodwill.

The shirtless man asked, "Oh, so the one who attacks first will gets all of the EXP?"

"It isn't that simple. You must fulfill a requirement,” replied the crew-cut man.

"A requirement?"

The crew-cut man explained, "At a minimum, the user must inflict a severe injury on the monsters. That person will get all the experience points."

"That's weird- ack!"

The shirtless guy grinned but soon stumbled as if he were dizzy. In fact, his entire body, his limbs included, had the ‘Fatal Injury’ status.

The man with the crew cut said, "Your wounds are too deep. This place probably has other monsters around, so let's get out of-"

"Ha, no worries,” the shirtless man sneered.

"What? But if this takes longer…."

"Stop that bulls**t and look! Hurr!"

The shirtless man raised his head and roared like crazy, shaking the air around them while the other user stared at him as he felt a stinging sensation on his skin. Right before his eyes, the shirtless man’s wounds recovered at an amazing speed.

It only took about three minutes to heal. Most of the player’s injuries were merely muscle strains or something along those lines, so taking a short rest was enough for the shirtless man to recover fully. Still, it was incredible that he had returned to normal so quickly without a Priest's Prayer or Healing Magic.

The crew-cut man exclaimed, "Wow! That was so-"

"Hold on."

The shirtless man lifted his right hand to stop any questions. Then, he opened his inventory and retrieved two loaves of flatbread along with well-done steak – it must’ve been overcooked from being placed straight into the inventory after the player grilled it. He also took out a bottle of water before enjoying his food in silence. He munched on the sizable meal and quickly finished eating.

The crew-cut man wondered, "What happened? Have you been starving?"

"No, I just replenished myself since I used too much stamina for healing,” replied the shirtless man.

"... I see. I'm not certain because I didn't choose ‘that power,’ but what you just performed was..."

"Yeah, it's called life force, and that was a technique that consumes stamina to maximize the user’s regenerative power,” the shirtless man said.

Life force was one of the seven powers a user could choose at the beginning of DIO. These seven powers were types of spiritual power, and they were internal energy, magic power, chakra, divine power, pure spiritual power, aura, and the life force that the shirtless man just mentioned. As soon as the users reached Level 2, they could choose either one or two of these powers and specialize in them.

The crew-cut man said, "That's interesting! I thought that there’d be few people choosing life force since most players admire martial arts or magic."

"Well, it's a matter of preference. Flying in the air and making sparks might be cool, but I don't have any internal martial arts within me. Neither do I have magic power, divine power, or aura. All I have is a powerful body and evolution on my side, and that’s life force,” the shirtless man responded.

As he stood straight, his muscular body caught the other man's eye. He had solid and delicately toned pectorals, six-pack abs, and ripped obliques. This physique couldn’t be gained from a short period of workouts even though they were inside a game. Besides, working out like crazy wasn’t the only aspect of building a body like that. To attain that captivating result, the man would have gone through structured training programs, made efforts day and night, and had much interest in muscle gains.

‘This guy must have been working out even before he joined the game.’

With this thought, the crew-cut man said, "Well, thanks for showing me that stuff. Let me give you some advice then. When you reached Level 2, you earned all 80 points in muscle strength, right? Since you aren't feeling tired yet, you must have put the 20 remaining points in stamina."

"Eh?" The shirtless guy flinched as if the other user had hit the nail on the head.

The crew-cut man sighed. "When playing games, there are always people like you who put all their points in one stat. You might be thinking that a perfect defense will work, but unfortunately, DIO requires health for users to attack."

"Requires health to attack?" the shirtless man looked dumbfounded.

The crew-cut man explained, "Let's put it this way. For every three or, at most, five points, you must put one point in health to properly maintain the ratio of muscular strength to health. To give you a better understanding, could you clench your fist as hard as you can?"

"No problem."

The shirtless guy raised his fist immediately and clenched it tightly. Then, crack!

"Eh?"

His finger bones broke, his veins exploded, and his skin cracked.

The crew-cut man's eyes widened at the speechless situation. "Compared to your power, the durability of your bones, tensile strength of your muscles, and your skin elasticity are too weak. No matter how powerful you are, if your body can't endure, then it’s useless. And that's what's happening to you right now; you’re on the brink of death by unleashing a single attack. This also applies to magic power. If a user increases magic power without raising their magic resistance, they’ll get hurt by their own power since they can’t control it. Do you understand?"

"... I see... Geez, I should’ve carefully listened to the explanation before I came here."

The shirtless man heaved a sigh, regretting his hasty decision.

The crew-cut man continued, "Then, should we form a 'Party?' Use your strong offensive abilities to injure the enemies first before stepping away and taking a break. Then, I’ll advance and wrap things up."

"Just like what we did right now?"

"Uh-huh. Anyway, you’ve essentially been abusing yourself. While hunting is good for cultivating and dramatically increasing your health, you'll likely develop serious health problems. So, if you want to enjoy hunting for a while, you must go see a priest and get treated."

The shirtless guy was confused. "Eh? Didn’t you say that DIO’s system would only give me the experience points with that method? I’d be the only one able to train my abilities. Isn’t that unfair for you?"

The crew-cut man replied, "Aside from cultivating your skills, EXP doesn’t work that way. When you’re in a Party, we share the Spirits equally."

"What? Wouldn’t that cause users to carry[2] other players everywhere?”

"That doesn’t matter.”

The shirtless man was still hesitant. "But when it comes to the operators of this game…."

"No, it's none of their business either. You know we’re in a beta test, right?"

‘What does that have to do with this situation?’ Then, the shirtless man realized that leveling up in DIO only occurred after passing a test, not by reaching a certain amount of EXP. If he didn’t complete that test….

He asked, "Got it. So, you're saying that partnering with a high-level user and getting a huge amount of Spirits is useless, right?"

"Correct."

"Interesting. That’s one of this game’s traits, however…."

As if something crossed his mind, the shirtless man continued, "This game just opened a few hours ago, but you’re so knowledgeable nonetheless. Didn't we all start at the same time?"

"Although we began at the same starting line, that doesn't mean we’re on similar levels. Well, like you, my only source was listening to our beautiful Miss Mari explain things to me,” replied the crew-cut man.

The man seemed captivated somehow, which made the shirtless man’s expression stiffen.

"... Hold on, I just heard something hard to ignore," he interjected.

"What do you mean?"

"When you said, 'Our beautiful Miss Mari,' you weren’t talking about the Mari with snow-white hair and a slim but curvy body, right?"

"That's her, Miss Mari," The crew-cut man agreed without hesitation.

The shirtless man narrowed his eyes, grinning coldly. "Haha, then we can't be friends. Unfortunately, Mari is mine. Give up- Eh? Wait, how did you meet Mari? She was with me earlier."

"... Gosh, what kind of crap is that?"

"What?"

The shirtless man held up his fist, fuming at the man's smirk, but the crew-cut man remained cool-headed.

"Listen, Mr. Pure at Heart. Mari, a.k.a Marionette Hold, isn't a human. She’s an NPC. If there are a hundred users in this game, there are also a hundred Mari’s. If there are ten million users, then ten million Mari’s exist. She's a guide NPC."

* * *

Click.

The clam closed its mouth when Yongno tricked it by quickly putting his hand in and out of its shell.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk. You clam.’

Yongno laughed mockingly at the shellfish, but he didn’t have time to giggle since he was consuming his internal energy with every second that passed.

Swoosh.

He opened his inventory and put the clam inside. Although it had a powerful bite force, the clam was sucked into the compartment with no way to resist.

‘Okay! So, this is number twenty-eight!’

Using Enhanced Eyesight, Yongno was going deep into the ocean. He had been thoroughly examining the underwater cliff.