Escape Game

"Kill rewards, huh?" Ian nodded. "That would indeed increase players' interest in killing other players, but not by much. Killing one player only gives 4 points; even if you killed them all, that would only be 400 points, still a massive gap from the 10,000 points needed for victory.

And rewards are halved for kills not made personally, which will further reduce the appeal of the killing mechanic. After all, aside from the early stages, the odds of a player personally killing another player are practically nonexistent—unless they were confident enough to have their subordinates capture them alive.

"Continue, AI." Ian waved a hand. His intuition told him the designers' real trump card was still to come.

"Second is the alliance mechanic. After entering the game, players can form alliances face-to-face through the Auxiliary System's alliance function. Each alliance can hold up to four people.

"Players who kill allies while allied cannot receive kill rewards, nor can such kills count toward mission completion."

"We'll talk about that later. I don't have any allies anyway." Ian gave an awkward laugh and shook his head helplessly.

"Third are the points rules." Annie immediately skipped to the third item. "Points are the most important strategic resource in this game. They can be obtained in four ways: completing system missions, killing other players, earning achievements, and pulling off standout feats. Every player begins with 1 point.

"Points have three purposes: purchasing items from the Points Store, determining rankings on the leaderboard, and declaring final victory."

"The leaderboard? What's that for?"

"This game has a reward-and-punishment system based on players' point rankings.

"Starting from the first day of the game, the points leaderboard will be settled once every month.

"On each settlement day, the top three players in points will receive generous rewards corresponding to their rankings. If there is a tie in the top three, those tied will split the combined rewards for the relevant positions. For example, if two players tie for first, they will split the total rewards for first and second place.

"Beginning with the second settlement day, the bottom three players on the points leaderboard will respectively face attacks from the Braavosi Faceless Men, Qyburn's Regret, and ordinary local assassins.

"If there is a tie among the bottom three, assassination targets will first be drawn from those tied for last place. If fewer than three players are tied for last, the remaining slots will be drawn from those tied for second-to-last.

"When the number of surviving players falls below twenty, the points leaderboard will be removed."

"Holy shit!" After hearing the third mechanic, Ian immediately blurted out a curse.

Ian had originally wondered why such an obvious lord-conquest competition was called a Survival Game. Now, he understood a little.

Wasn't this just an alternative version of a shrinking poison zone?

Strictly speaking, it was even more terrifying than that, because no matter how players farmed points, there would always be a bottom three.

That meant that if players wanted to escape the mechanic's pursuit, they could only compete frantically against one another.

This was practically a disaster.

"Continue."

"Other than that, there are no more mechanics. You can now close your eyes and enter the Auxiliary System through your consciousness to examine and familiarize yourself with its functions."

Hearing this, Ian closed his eyes and entered the system.

The entire interface was extremely simple. Only eight tabs lined the bottom: Missions, Alliance, Profile, Achievements, Mail, Backpack, Points Store, and Points Leaderboard.

He first opened the Missions tab. There was a small question mark on it, and when he tapped it, a note appeared.

Mission Function: Given the player's ordinary starting conditions, the system will provide missions to help the player develop.

Note: There are no penalties for mission failure.

There were three sub-tabs beneath the Missions tab: Main Quests, Bounty Missions/Public Missions, and Optional Missions/Triggered Missions.

Since the game had not officially begun yet, the mission tab was completely blank. Ian merely glanced at it before exiting and moving on to the next function.

Within the Alliance function, only the Face-to-Face Alliance button was lit; everything else was grayed out and unclickable. Even after clicking Face-to-Face Alliance, the page inside was blank.

There was a small question mark beside the button. When he opened it, a note appeared: Two players must activate this function simultaneously while within one meter of each other to obtain the other party's information.

After skipping over the unremarkable Profile, Achievements, and Mail tabs, Ian entered the Backpack.

Backpack: A storage space that can be accessed at any time.

The Backpack's initial capacity is 1 cubic decimeter. For every 10 points spent, its capacity can be expanded to four times its previous size, up to a maximum of four purchases.

Clearly, compared with the backpacks in ordinary games, the one provided by the Auxiliary System was pathetically weak. That miserable 1 cubic decimeter could not even hold a large cup of milk tea.

But considering this was a real world, a function akin to "spatial magic" did have some practical value—for example, storing money.

Players would likely travel the world as merchants, with no fixed property to rely on. Carrying several kilograms of gold on them at all times was certainly inconvenient, and the system also needed a way to deliver rewards and store purchases to players.

This tiny Backpack happened to fulfill that purpose.

After leaving the Backpack, Ian opened the Store tab further down.

Tier 1 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 would not be much help for either trade or buying equipment, but if used only to buy food, they could probably last a long time. It was quite suitable for players who had dumped all their background choices into attributes and started with not a single coin.

Twenty Gold Dragons was a considerable sum in the early game, but the price of 5 points seemed a little steep.

With that thought, Ian turned to the next page.

But what appeared before him was not the next tier of the store, but a notification window.

Tier 2 Mall: Preview unlocks after obtaining 10 points.

Probably some relatively expensive items. Ian made a rather obvious judgment.

"Ding!" Two crisp metallic chimes exploded one after the other in Ian's mind, startling him so badly that he jolted.

"What the hell?"

"That is the sound of a mission being issued. The three-hour preparation period has ended. The game has officially begun."

"A mission?" Ian nodded and hurriedly opened the Missions tab.

Main Quest One: Road of Honor

Mission Description: As a Sellsword Knight, you have been far from honor for too long. Money has clouded your eyes and made you forget your original oath. Now, go reclaim your honor.

Mission Objective: Win an official Jousting Tournament held in one of the five major cities.

Mission Reward: 5 points, 3 Attribute Points, 3 Skill Points

Accept Change

"A jousting tournament in one of the five major cities?" Ian tugged at the corner of his mouth. A mission like this was practically hell-level difficulty.