The Cost

I knew something was immediately wrong when after 3 hours of intense grinding my exp bar still hadn't even moved an inch.

Sure, levelling up in NetCore was pretty hard, but that didn't mean that this was normal.

"Okay then, i'll just go get something to eat and wait for Max to log on." I said.

That was one of the best things about the game. Eating.

The game was so well done that it could replicate every sensation, and someone like me who didn't always have the chance to try exotic foods, jumped at the chance.

I made my way to the restaurant, the Dejuner. It was one of the best restaurants in the entire game. "Kami, how are you!" the waitress Aless greeted me. Kami was my in game name and Aless was an npc. However you wouldn't know she was, cause from the way she acted most people mistook her for an actual person. "Yeah I'm good." I responded. "I've been having some trouble levelling up so I decided to drop by." I said. "Don't sweat it, a lot of people have trouble with levelling up. Anyway, we've introduced squid on the menu. Seeing as you like trying new things I figured you'd like some." Aless responded.

I thought for a while and decided there was no harm in trying it out seeing as I would probably never get to eat it in the real world and made my order.

While waiting, I had some time to think about why I couldn't level up.

"It's not normal, I killed that many monsters and yet I gained zero exp." I thought.

"I'm pretty sure though that it has something to do with my newly assigned "HERO" class" I thought.

Suddenly I heard a crash and saw a level 1 girl lying on the floor with three level seven's all around her.

Netting.

A cowardly tactic used by people with zero skill. They find players weaker than them and intimidate them with their level and force them to work for them.

However what these guys were doing was worse.

It was obvious that they had killed her multiple times and not even allowed her to play the game properly. She couldn't even fight back since she had no weapons and was literally defenceless.

Usually when netting happened it was up to the victim to see through the fact that the people who were netting them were all bark and no bite. However since she was level 1 it didn't matter and these guys were obviously employing a much more brutal form of netting.

I couldn't just sit by and do nothing.

I got up and went to the group.

"Leave her alone", I said.

"Huh?" one of them grunted. "Mind your own business, it's none of your concern" he said.

"Use ability: Amplitude knockout" I said.

It was a low level ability that wouldn't work on high level monsters or players but against these players would work just fine. All three of them got knocked out.

I was going to take all there weapons and send them back to the respawn point cause that's what they deserved but I was distracted by the sound of my notification bar.

"Level up: 12>>20" It said.

I was confused for a bit and at first thought that all my grinding had a delayed effect but that was impossible. I had only slain three monsters. At the very most I would have levelled up to level 15.

"Then was it because of knocking these three out?" I thought.

But that also didn't make sense, cause you don't get exp for knocking people out only killing them.

"Then how..." I thought before it suddenly hit me.

My mysterious class "HERO".

It literally meant it.

"This is the most stupidest class ever", I muttered.

Because I had to save people to level up.