Meanwhile, in the level 3 monster zone.
Jack glanced at the flood of bootlicking messages in the class group, then killed his comms interface without a second’s hesitation. That kind of pointless social noise did nothing but slow down his draw speed.
He locked his sights on a Gray Wolf prowling up ahead.
He raised his bow, drew the string back.
The crude wooden arrow shrieked through the air and punched clean through the wolf’s neck.
-64!
A huge red damage number floated up. The level 3 Gray Wolf, which had all of 50 health points, didn’t even get a chance to struggle—it dissolved into specks of light on the spot.
With every kill he racked up, the gains from his “Infinite Plunder” talent snowballed in a way that was downright terrifying. Jack’s on-panel physical attack power had already broken past 60. A single ordinary auto-shot was dealing over 60 points of raw physical damage.
That meant he had achieved absolute firepower supremacy even in a level 3 zone. As long as his arrows landed, not a single level 3 monster could survive so much as one hit.
Face completely calm, Jack strode forward, scooped up the few copper coins the wolf had dropped, and moved on to find his next target.
…
At the same time, in the level 1 zone along the edge of the plains.
Pedro was leading his three-person squad on a slaughter spree through a pack of Longhorn Hares.
He swung his green-quality longsword with ease, cleaving a low-health hare clean in half without breaking a sweat.
In the backline, Chuck stared at the sliver of experience his bar had just gained, his expression darkening. He couldn’t hold back a complaint. “Pedro, the experience we’re getting is way too low, isn’t it? That Longhorn Hare just died and I only got 7 points of experience.”
In this world, partying up to hunt mobs did share experience. But the system also enforced a strict distribution mechanic. Higher-level party members automatically siphoned off a larger share. Pedro was level 5 while Chuck and the others were still level 1. That massive level gap triggered the system’s experience decay penalty, causing most of the experience these level 1 monsters provided to be lost into thin air before anyone ever saw it.
Peri, the Cleric, immediately frowned at her boyfriend’s complaint.
“What do you know, Chuck?” she shot back loudly. “Yeah, the experience per monster is lower, but with Pedro here, our kill rate is over ten times faster than before! Add up the overall leveling speed. It’s obviously way quicker than the three of us grinding away on our own!”
Pedro stabbed his longsword into the ground and waved a generous hand.
“Forget it. Chuck just wants to level up faster.” He pointed at the loot the monsters had dropped on the ground. “At my current level, picking up these copper coins is a total waste of time. Help yourselves to everything on the ground—think of it as making up for the lost experience.”
Hearing that, Peri practically lit up. She hurriedly crouched down to scoop up the coins, talking nonstop as she worked. “See? Following the great Lord Pedro around is not only safe, it makes you way more money. People would kill for a deal like this.”
Chuck stood there, at a complete loss for words.
His own girlfriend had been siding with another guy this entire trip, and it was making him lose all kinds of face. But one look at Pedro’s flashy gear and his overwhelming level 5 stats, and Chuck swallowed every ounce of his resentment. He didn’t let a trace of it show.
“This level 1 zone is a total bore. These mobs aren’t even worth warming up on.” Pedro pulled his longsword out of the ground and turned to look at the slope in the distance. “Come on, I’ll take you to the level 3 zone. Relax—even against level 3 mobs, I can one-shot them no problem.”
The three newbies exchanged glances and hurried after him.
They had barely set foot out of the plains when the communicator on Ginny’s wrist started vibrating nonstop.
“Check the class group!” Ginny let out a startled yelp.
Pedro opened his comms panel. In the class group, someone had forwarded a screenshot from the Professional's Guild forums.
The title screamed for attention: [Prospect City Outskirts Newbie Zone – Level 1 Legend Solos Level 3 Mobs with One-Shot Arrow!]
The screenshot showed a man’s back, slightly out of focus. He was holding a worn wooden shortbow, frozen mid-shot. Dozens of meters ahead of him, a level 3 Gray Wolf was caught in the instant of its one-shot death, dissolving as the lingering massive red damage number still floated above its head.
To avoid provoking the master’s ire, the photographer had deliberately avoided capturing his face. All that was visible was a common set of coarse cloth clothing.
The group exploded instantly.
“That’s gotta be a god-tier player! Level 1 one-shotting a level 3 mob? What kind of insane damage is that?!”
“Is that a white-tier wooden bow he’s holding? How the hell is he pumping out numbers like that?!”
“Got to be some absolute monster who awakened an S-rank or higher talent! Or some hidden class we’ve never heard of!”
“If I could latch onto a beast like that, I’d absolutely score an S-rank evaluation in the Novice Dungeon!”
The classmates showered the post with amazement and wild guesses about the mysterious player’s identity. Not one of them imagined, even in their wildest dreams, that this so-called “god” was actually the same Jack—the F-rank Archer the whole class had written off as worthless trash.
Pedro stared at the screenshot, his brow furrowed. Jealousy prickled in his chest, but he just sneered dismissively. “Probably just someone showing off with a one-time high-damage alchemical item. Nothing but attention-bait.”
While the discussion raged on, a red pinned notification suddenly popped up at the top of the class group.
The sender was their class career advisor.
“Attention, everyone! By order of the Professional's Guild’s highest directive, the following emergency announcement is issued.”
“A severe incident occurred yesterday. A team of two hundred level 30 elite professionals, while pioneering the large-scale group dungeon ‘Gorshak,’ suffered a total party wipe. There were no survivors.”
The moment that message landed, the once-boiling chat group plunged into dead silence.
Group dungeons—those were perilous domains that only high-level professionals ever touched. Out in the real wilderness and high-level instances, an empty health bar meant genuine death. Two hundred elite level 30s, completely wiped out. This was going to rock Prospect City to its core.
The advisor’s messages kept rolling in.
“In response to the increasingly brutal combat environment and to safeguard the lives of newly awakened professionals, the Professional's Guild has decided to comprehensively raise the difficulty of the Novice Dungeon. This adjustment will be implemented live this week.”
The Novice Dungeon had always been a special pocket dimension under the Guild’s direct control—a safe instance where data could be edited. Inside the Novice Dungeon, any otherwise-lethal damage a newbie suffered would not result in true death. The system would forcibly lock their health at the last hit point and teleport them out of the dungeon.
At its core, it was a proving ground built solely for training and testing rookies.
The advisor’s tone turned harsh.
“Over the last decade or so, the combat capability of graduating students has deteriorated to an embarrassing low. Too many of you rely on wealthy families to buy you top-tier novice gear straight out of preparatory academy. You coast through the Novice Dungeon on pure stat-checks and then mistake that for your own skill.”
“But when you later attempt to pioneer high-level dungeons, your gear stops being the best available. That is when your shortcomings in real combat technique and reaction speed will get you killed. Yesterday’s disaster is the perfect proof!”
“To force you to develop genuine fighting skills, the Guild has heavily buffed the monster stats inside the Novice Dungeon. Historically, the pass rate was around 70%. But according to internal sources, after this difficulty hike, the pass rate will plummet to roughly 30%!”
“This means that the majority of you may end up stuck in the Novice Dungeon for months, or even forever unable to earn your Guild Badge and never graduate. You had best take this seriously!”
With that, the advisor logged off.
After a brief moment of stunned silence, the class group erupted into a chorus of wailing.
“We’re so screwed! A 30% pass rate? We’re absolutely done for!”
“I barely have any combat experience to begin with. If it gets any harder, I won’t even make it past the first stage!”
“Don’t be so pessimistic, everyone. Our class is still pretty strong overall. Plenty of us have mid-tier talents or better. I’d predict at least 35% of us can still pass.”
Pedro watched the panicked chatter flood the group and saw this as a prime opportunity to cement his own status.
“The advisor said that too, but that only applies to people whose gear can’t keep up later on. I will always have the best available gear for my level. ‘Gear falling behind’ is not a concept that exists for me. People like us, with top-end equipment, can completely ignore this kind of notice. As long as your numbers are high enough, any ‘difficulty’ is just window dressing.”
Arrogant as it was, none of his classmates could refute it. In this datafied world, as long as you threw enough money at the problem, you could, in fact, bypass a lot of rules.
One of the boys who habitually sucked up to Pedro immediately piled on in the chat: “Exactly! Lord Pedro here doesn’t even need to worry about this. Honestly, that announcement is for the broke losers. Some people might not even hit the bare minimum level 5 requirement to enter the dungeon by next week—they’re the ones who really don’t need to worry about clearing it. Right, Jack?”
That pointed, mocking jab drew a burst of snickering. Everyone knew Jack was an F-rank blank-slate with no starter skill, and his family couldn’t afford to buy him experience scrolls. For someone with his pathetic attack power, grinding his way to level 5 in a single week was harder than reaching the sky.
But just as those mocking messages posted, the sidebar on the group chat interface flickered.
It was the level status update on the member list.
Under everyone’s stupefied stares, the dull gray number “1” next to Jack’s avatar suddenly jumped—and transformed into a softly glowing “2.”
The entire chat fell utterly silent in an instant.
In the class, Pedro had hit level 5 by dumping gold on experience scrolls. The second person to level up had been Campbell, the A-rank Ice Mage who always kept to himself. He had just reached level 2 half an hour ago.
And now, Jack—the F-rank Archer everyone had written off as completely useless—
had just become the third person in the entire class to level up.