"Oh… You're asking me? I don't know how normal people does this but…"
The woman with long, lucious white hair wearing [Ranger] class hood bowed down to me at a right triangle. She then looked up at me with a bright smile, both hands together in front, accidentally pressing her chest together.
She didn't seem to mind the fact that I just did something unbelievable, which was nice, saved me a lot of trouble.
"My name is Hailie, same goes with my game username." She answered, "I am 21 years old, I was born on April 1st, I live on Balliverian street, every morning I have a breakfast of toast and egg with oysters, my family owns…"
"WOAH WOAH WOAH WAIT WAIT WAIT" I screamed, covering her mouth up, "What the fuck, is this your first day online? What's with the self-doxxing? I may be a pervert who will stalk people online and dig up their old Facebook posts if they sound cute but this is too easy for my liking!"
I let out a hugeeee sigh, as I placed my hand on the stranger's shoulder.
"You never, ever, give out your online information, alright, buckethead?"
Hailie tilted her head, blinking.
"Oh! But I thought we're supposed to introduce ourselves when we meet new people…"
I stared at her. Then stared some more. Then blinked really, really slowly like my brain just failed to load a texture.
She was serious.
"Jesus Christ," I muttered, rubbing my temple.
Still, I smiled. Because she was level 20 now. Because she was technically competition. Because she leeched off the experience I earned. And because she looked like the kind of person who'd get kidnapped in a tutorial quest if the devs weren't careful.
"It's fine," I said, putting on my best pleasant tone. "I forgive you. Really."
"Oh wow, you're so nice..."
"Inventory," I whispered.
A flick of my finger, and the Fool's Knife slid into my palm once more.
She was still talking. Something about her family owning a percentage of whatever-whatever? I didn't care. I slowly walked behind her, pretending to adjust my boot.
"Uh huh, that's a cool lastname." I said, not really paying attention.
Now, the thing about damage in Darkmoon Adventure is, it rolls a critical chance just before impact. The animation and startup don't matter, but I learned to spot the subtle pre-hit cue when the game predicted a crit… Just a microsecond of character glow. You could cancel your own attack animation if it wasn't gonna crit, and restart the swing.
Which is what I was doing now.
Swipe. Cancel. Swipe. Cancel. Swipe. Cancel.
She was still talking about oysters.
Swipe.
A soft golden shimmer danced around my hand, so I stepped in close, blade low.
Thwack.
The bottom of my knife, right at the base of her skull.
She dropped unconscious, not dead.
I crouched down, brushed a lock of her snowy white hair out of her face.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, almost sweetly. "But you looked too happy for someone who just leech-leveled off me. But I'm too nice to make you feel pain."
I pressed the blade gently to her throat, "It's not so bad, is it?" I whispered, giving her a dead body a kiss on the cheek.
Level: 20 > 25
I stood back up, stretching my arms overhead with a yawn like I just cleaned my apartment (worst choice possible, not recommended, too tiring and too exhausting).
"Thank you for the EXP~" I chirped, hopping in place once with a little sparkle in my voice.
Then I pocketed the Fool's Knife and turned toward the cavern entrance. There were more bosses to cheese. More exploits to abuse. And probably more walking serotonin farms to harvest EXP from.
"Next stop… Acquiring the [Holy God Knight] Class… God this will take a while with all these new players flocking around, urgh."