"If that's the case, wouldn't it be too shabby if my performance today was only rated as D-level highlight?" Jon pursed his lips. He didn't understand—he had gotten the first kill!
"The final score of the highlight operation is determined by multiplying the base score by the highlight coefficient. Your current highlight coefficient is too low, so you can only reach the lowest D-level standard."
"Highlight coefficient?"
"Positive comments from the audience outside the venue regarding your actions, as well as recommendation votes and monthly votes you receive during certain actions, will increase your 'highlight coefficient.' Similarly, negative comments about your poor decisions will lower your 'highlight coefficient.'"
"Oh." Jon probably understood what Hikaru meant, so he continued scrolling down.
[First day settlement report: Current number of remaining players: 98]
Only two people had died on the first day, both attributed to Jon. It seemed that just as he had expected, none of the players who had arranged to form alliances had managed to reach their meeting places within one day.
After reading the mailbox, Jon clicked on the taskbar again.
He had clearly met the conditions for completing [Golden Road] in the first main mission.
So he clicked Accept under [Golden Road].
Then a new message arrived in the mailbox.
[Completed main mission 1 'Golden Road'. Obtained: 5 points, 3 attribute points, and 3 skill points]
After claiming the rewards, Jon opened his data card.
[Jon Snow: Strength 23, Agility 19, Mental Strength 2
Skills: Basic etiquette, basic reading and writing of common language, intermediate swordsmanship, intermediate equestrian skills, intermediate lance skills
Attribute points: 6
Skill points: 6
Points: 14]
"Hikaru, what's the best way to allocate these points?" Jon was still confused about the world's attribute system, as he hadn't seen any clear explanation in the initial function description.
"I will not answer questions that are beyond my authority."
Hmm. It seemed that asking Hikaru to recommend point allocation might be considered 'organizer interference' with the competition's progress.
"Then tell me about the rules for allocating points," Jon asked differently.
"The rule for adding attribute points is one attribute point equals one point increase."
"That's the most ingenious design I've ever heard."
"Skills are divided into seven levels: basic, elementary, intermediate, advanced, mastery, master, and legend. It takes 1 skill point to upgrade from basic to elementary, 2 from elementary to intermediate, 3 from intermediate to advanced, and so on."
"What about going from 0 to 1? That is, what's needed to learn a new basic skill? Zero skill points?" Jon asked immediately.
"Players need to learn new skills by themselves or obtain special items for learning new skills. These items may appear in the points shop, and there is also a certain probability of them appearing in mission rewards." Hikaru answered according to established procedure.
After hearing this, Jon began allocating points on his data card.
He added six attribute points equally to strength and agility, then upgraded both his intermediate swordsmanship and equestrian skills to advanced levels.
What? Why didn't he improve his lance skills, you ask?
Since ancient times, lancers had notoriously bad luck. Jon didn't want to tempt fate, and he no longer planned to participate in knightly tournaments personally. He thought the likelihood of using lances was slim.
After allocating the points, the new personal interface displayed before Jon:
[Jon Snow: Strength 26, Agility 22, Mental Strength 2
Skills: Basic etiquette, basic reading and writing of common language, advanced swordsmanship, advanced equestrian skills, intermediate lance skills
Attribute points: 0
Skill points: 0
Points: 14]
After finishing, Jon felt dizzy as new memories of swordsmanship and equestrian training flooded his mind. Yes, just training memories.
This deepened Jon's understanding of the attribute system.
Strength and agility improvements were almost immediate, taking a few days at most to adapt, but skills required longer training to truly make them his own.
Therefore, hoping to quickly increase combat effectiveness by adding points was somewhat unrealistic.
After two minutes of recovery, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of his strengths, Jon clicked on the toolbar to view his core NPC information cards.
[Rohr: Strength 34, Agility 32, Mental Strength 4
Skills: Mastery in swordsmanship, advanced in horsemanship, advanced in lance, advanced in coaching, basic reading and writing in Common Language, intermediate reading and writing in Valyrian (Fornos dialect)]
"He certainly deserves to be an S-card. He can fight, work as a coach, and teach Valyrian." Jon couldn't help but sigh. "Should I give him three salaries? No, he's my religious warrior—I don't need to pay him at all."
Jon smiled and shook his head to rid himself of these absurd thoughts, then quickly opened Case's information card.
[Case: Strength 46, Agility 38, Mental Strength 2
Skills: Master of Swordsmanship, Advanced Equestrian, Mastery in Cavalry, Mastery in Longaxe, Basic Spoken Common Language, Basic Spoken Valyrian]
Obviously, if Rohr was a functional NPC, Case was a typical super soldier, with strength and agility statistics nearly double Rohr's, plus mastery of two weapons.
His performance in actual combat had been even more impressive. Case had faced three mercenary cavalry alone and cut down two of them in one encounter, without any apparent effort.
"But the question is: Rohr and Case are obviously in the same profession, so is such a large difference in individual attributes normal?" Jon asked Hikaru in his mind. "Case's strength is 12 points higher than Rohr's."
"The more advanced the occupation, the greater the difference in attributes. A difference of less than 15 points for S-level occupations is within the normal range," Hikaru explained. "Of course, it's possible to exceed 15."
"For example, when drawing from the Kingsguard pool, one player might draw Arthur Dayne, who could hold his manhood with his right hand while cutting down all the other Kingsguard with his left, while another player might draw Meryn Trant, who gets beaten by any boy with a stick?" Jon joked half-seriously.
However, Hikaru, devoid of emotion, remained as cold as ever and would not engage with Jon on matters unrelated to the game mechanics.
Jon shrugged off the lack of response and switched to the task system.
What surprised him was that although main mission one was marked complete, main mission two had not immediately updated.
Similarly, the interface for Bounty 2 remained blank.
"Hikaru, is there a bug in the system? Why aren't the tasks updating?" Jon asked immediately.
"After each main task is completed, there will be a buffer time of one week before the next phase of tasks is released. Bounty tasks will be released according to the schedule originally set by the planning."
Jon nodded upon hearing this and then exited the system.
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You can read the advance chapters here : patreon.com/Vigilante04