"Make sure you pick the juiciest fruits out of the bunch and avoid the rotten ones. They might make you lose exp… and remember, the golden balls are worth a lot."
The NPC farmer reminded Cane before going back to his own work. Cane got to his work as well and looked around the farm.
Farming was a future activity users usually acquired after hitting level 30+, and a user's farm was much more limited than an NPC's in terms of variety and quality. This was specifically kept like that to balance the game and to force players to be reliant on NPCs for certain things, like food.
Before players knew that, they often picked fights with NPCs and got alienated by them. As a result, a lot of beta players had died from a lack of basic necessities.
Cane had been one of those beta players who had tried to find loopholes in NPC activities to try and abuse them, and he had found a lot.
Unfortunately, none of those glitches would give him exp. For now, it was back to honest farming for him.
As soon as he stepped into the farm, the system gave him a list of what he needed.
[Mission objective: Pick fruits 0/50 exp
Harvest wheat stalks: 0/20 exp
Harvest herbs: 0/30 exp
Hidden objective: Find the golden balls]
There were three kinds of plants he needed to pick during this mission, and it sounded easy just reading it. But the problem was the exp threshold.
Usually, picking a single fruit would only give around 1/10 of exp. So for 50 exp, he'd have to pick around 500 fruits at least. Similarly, a single wheat stalk was only going to give him 1/50 of the exp needed. That was too time-consuming.
Not wanting to waste any time, he decided to go ahead and start farming for the herbs first. At least they had a 1:1 ratio in terms of exp.
Cane reached to grab the mint near him and put it in his basket. As soon as he did, the system gave him a notification.
[Mission objective updated.
Harvest Herb 100/30 exp. Secondary Class Modifier is applied. EXP Gained: X100]
Cane blinked as he looked at the screen with slight shock. Suddenly, this daunting farming task no longer looked too burdensome to him. It fueled his desire to hurry up and finish his work.
Within an hour, Cane was not only done but had exceeded the threshold needed to hit the exp limit. And that was also because he had been looking for the golden balls all this time.
"Hey boy, are you done?"
The NPC asked from the corner. The game was programmed to have the NPC react as soon as the player finished their assigned tasks. Even a glitched task must have had the same base code.
Cane had the opportunity to finish his task. He chose not to take that opportunity to finish his task. He wanted to obtain the hidden objective since the reward was usually worth it.
"Sorry, but I need a little more time."
He told the NPC, and the man looked back suspiciously.
"Fine, take more time. But you better not cause me trouble."
The older NPC told Cane as he went back to his own section of work. Cane let out a relieved sigh as he looked around the farm once more. This was a beginner-level area, so there was not a lot of detail around him.
That meant he could glitch out of bounds, and that way, he could erase most of the unimportant molecules from around him.
Since the golden balls were a hidden mission objective, they likely wouldn't be affected by his actions… or so he hoped.
First, he needed to find a place where he could clip out of bounds from. For that, a hole or something similar was needed. But the simple geometry of his surroundings made it a little hard to find that spot until he saw it — a rock with the smallest of openings around it.
Now all he needed to do was try and climb in and force his way through.
[Warning: You are leaving the safe area. Crossing the safe border will no longer guarantee your physical and mental safety. Please return to safety as soon as possible.]
"What the—"
The system's warning came out of nowhere, startling him enough to make him lose his balance. The hole swallowed him, and he went out of bounds.
The world around him had turned red and glitched. But unlike the half-loaded world he expected to see, this one looked like an almost perfect copy. Still, something felt off about this place.
"What the… is this the out-of-bounds area? I'm sure it didn't use to look like this before. Just where did I end up coming?"
Cane questioned as he looked around. The first thing to do in such a situation was to check up on his system.
[WARNING: USER HAS CLIPPED OUT OF THE SAFE AREA… AWAITING SYSTEM ADJUSTMENTS]
'Huh—! Even the system…! Has this ever happened before? This is… so exciting…'
It was both exciting and terrifying. The space around him felt a little heavy, and unlike the previous times he had been in this space, he could actually feel slight pain when he tried to move.
"Wow—! Did the developers find a way to make this game even more realistic? How did they do all this? Wait, I should find my objective first."
Cane wondered as he tried to look around for the golden balls. But his actions had not yielded the result he wanted.
Instead of making the environment simpler, it had ended up making things more complicated for him.
Luckily for him, it seemed that luck had not abandoned him completely. Between the dark red and black of his surroundings shined one golden light, causing Cane to head toward it… and what did he find? A golden ball.
The perfectly round and shiny object stood out from the surroundings.
[Hidd#@@!en Obje*&@&CTive AchiEVED…]
The system was still glitchy, but at least it was responding. Now, Cane just needed to get out of the glitched site.
________
Power Stones Please