The first of two farming areas that Pickapart and Maybetasty visited was full of level four enemies, Angry Shrubs.

Angry Shrubs were a sort of unofficial mascot characters of the game; players made many memes about them, which started when someone had taken a picture of one and overlayed the face of a screaming baby on top with the caption “Angry Scrubs”, making fun of all the monstrous character players at the start of the game who did not know what they were signing up for.

These enemies were the bane of monstrous characters back then. Despite being only level 4, they had wildly unbalanced statistics, dealing less dps than level 1 enemies, but having a 90% resistance to physical damage and a 50% resistance to Toxic damage. This would not be too bad by itself, but they dealt Wood damage, which shut off the constant healing of Demonic Larvae. Furthermore, their attacks applied a movement slowing effect, meaning escaping combat from them at such early levels was not possible.

Still the difficulty would not be too high, but the key and most important mechanic was they came in an aggro group of six! Any players that did not know what they were getting into would easily die against these enemies. They were meant to teach newer monstrous characters the importance of working together if they were still larva, or alternatively evolving towards one of the common evolutions to overcome the challenge.

Their only weaknesses were vulnerability to Dark damage and their slow lethality. They truly were a tough enemy.

For scrubs.

For Pickapart and Maybetasty, they would become delicious exp.

Although the wood damage would shut off Maybetasty's in-combat regeneration and they would swarm, the basic Light Pulling Weave would constantly damage them while healing Maybetasty for the amount damaged. This would assist in sustainability against them right up until Pickapart began activating the full weave effects.

She planned for her first four weaves to be Light Pulling Weave, with her fifth being Gravity Binding Weave. This would activate [Light Escapes Gravity], which would grant a temporary buff to all party members in the AoE for the next five seconds, causing them to deal an additional 20% damage on all attacks and spells as light damage, and heal for the same amount.

It was to set up Pickapart's second full weave effect, [Dark Infusion], which was cast through three Light Pulling Weaves, one Gravity Binding Weave, and one Dark Charging Weave. This full weave effect added a flat damage bonus to all instances of non-dark elemental damage in the form of Dark elemental damage, 40 at level one, with an [E] force modifier, and also lasted five seconds.

The only two exceptions were the light damage from the Light Pulling Weave, and anything that itself procced from Dark Infusion's damage, instances of which were rare since Dark Infusion was one of very few damage-adding buffs which could trigger off other damage-adding buffs.

If Maybetasty used their ranged attack, Dark Infusion would apply twice per tick, once from the Toxic damage and again from the Light damage. It was possible to have both effects active at the same time for two seconds, which was two ticks of damage, and Maybetasty could have the DoT stacked twice. Ten toxic damage, two light damage, and - with the 5% effect boost - one hundred and sixty eight dark damage per tick for a total of four ticks, it was 720 damage!

Although Angry Shrubs had high effective health versus physical damage, their actual health wasn't great, it could easily kill them.

However, that would just be one kill in eighteen seconds - fifteen seconds of actual combat, since Pickapart would initiate with a weave - meaning five enemies would still be attacking the rapidly depleting health of Maybetasty. Chan Si would need to reduce the attackers by another one by having Pickapart and Maybetasty properly spaced apart, such that one shrub would target Pickapart instead, which she would be able to survive.

Three seconds later Pickapart could activate another Dark Charging Weave, triggering [Yin and Yang], which would deal 20 Light damage and 20 Dark damage as separate instances to all enemies in the AoE, plus 10%, meaning sixty six against the Angry Shrubs, plus another eighty four off Dark Infusion.

By then ending her weave early, all three effects would trigger at once!

Yin and Yang would deal one instance of dark damage, and three of light damage due to Light Escapes Gravity, then apply the bonus dark damage to all three instances of light damage, all boosted by 10%, dealing sixty six plus fourteen plus two hundred and sixty four, aka 344 damage in an AoE!

That with the damage already done by the first Yin and Yang with Dark Infusion combo, and the continued Light Pulling Weave effects, would wipe out the aggro group and secure the duo a total of 1845 experience for the mere cost of one hundred and thirty nine mana from Pickapart, twenty five mana from Maybetasty to tank, and twenty one point five seconds.

Activating those three full weave effects in precisely that order was the strongest AoE damage option that Dark Weavers had access to. One could even squeeze even more damage out of the full routine by weaving three more instances of Dark Charging Weave, as this activated [Absolute Oblivion], which debuffed enemies for five seconds with taking 40% more Dark elemental damage.

The damage would not be as a high as it was against enemies without Dark vulnerability, but when applied to many enemies at once, it would still be very good. That didn't even factor in how all allies would be buffed with great effects for five seconds at the end of the routine!

If it were not for the long set-up time, reliance on group play, and overall complexity, Dark Weavers would be a highly dominant class.

In any case, the duo would need to perform this feat six times in a row to hit level 2. With the 850 mana Pickapart had, minus the three hundred she had spent casting Grasping Shadow on Maybetasty, she had enough mana for four farming sessions back to back after accounting for her passive mana regeneration, only half, and would even need to begin waiting 55 seconds after the first two for Maybetasty's health and mana to restore for tanking.

The reason she chose to fight these over other enemies that Maybetasty would be able to handle with fewer issues, was because they exclusively dropped common potions, including mana potions!

It was like everything about the Angry Shrubs was perfectly designed to enrage monstrous noobs, right down to having useless loot. It was practically worse than having an empty inventory slot back in those days, because there was literally nobody and nothing nearby one could sell them too.

Monstrous character had to travel a good distance from their starting area to find their first NPC merchant, and further still to gain access to player trading hubs. It was very opposite of the starting areas for humanoid characters.

Pickapart and Maybetasty farmed the shrubs until they were level 2. The largest downtime was the 55 seconds between each combat for Maybetasty to restore his mana to use another instance of Stinking Cloud. but once the duo was level 2, Pickapart could safely add another full weave effect into the combat routine without Maybetasty dying.

The effect was [Full Compression], the result of three Light Pulling Weaves and two Gravity Binding Weaves. It applied a strong taunt effect on all enemies inside the AoE towards all allies inside the AoE, save for the Dark Weaver. Pickapart could cast this by making her first and last of the first five weaves the Gravity Binding Weave, and then by casting another Light Pulling Weave, entering into the damage routine.

This allowed the duo to do two combats in a row before needing to rest for Maybetasty's health to restore.

At level 3 they moved back to resting after every single combat, but because they were now pulling two aggro groups at once. Furthermore, the time spent in combat actually decreased, as the natural level-based damage scaling on Pickapart's full weave effects was now high enough to allow her to skip the Light Escapes Gravity part of the routine, as the damage bonus from Dark Infusion was now 80, and the base damage on Yin and Yang was 40 each, which after the shrub vulnerability meant activating just these two would deal 282 damage, then 286 expiring the weave, it could kill the shrubs.

Eighteen point five seconds to kill twelve enemies one level higher, seventy three point five after downtime. It was nowhere near Gearme's farming speed, but an early game Ballista with Chan Si's strategies was an anomaly of power, this farming speed by the duo could still be considered very good.

They continued to farm even past level 4, as the benefits to killing increasingly large groups of enemies was immense, especially as the shrubs were so small that the limits on DPS due to enemy density were higher.

Pickapart's health was even a respectable 400 at level 4, as GTO had a 'minimum viable health' mechanic where, if your health after all bonuses was less than your level times 100, your health would instead be that amount. This allowed the squishier classes to avoid being one-shot by the majority of appropriately leveled enemies, but didn't take away their incentive to put on pure health gain items to survive more difficult encounters.

===

Gearme offloaded his unimportant items onto the player market where they were quickly snapped up by a combination of collectors and dissemblers. He even sold the Gooey Grabbers, as the overall DPS gain was small considering the short duration of the buff, and Chan Si's group still had many uses for the climbing gloves.

His overall profit for this run was 5 platinum, 55 gold and some small change in silver and copper. Had Pickapart been there to dissemble the items herself, there could have been greater profits, but Gearme needed to make his purchase now. For nearly all of his money, Gearme could buy a level 12 Rare oversized bow, [Repeater].

It was another item that collectors enjoyed due to its unique effect, and was priced far above what it could be dissembled for. It actually had precisely the same statistics as Gearme's Starter Bow, but had a passive [Skill] attached that more than made up for its relative lack of absolute damage.

Every time the user made a basic attack with the weapon, the remaining cooldowns on all their [Skills] were reduced by 2 seconds!

To put it into perspective, if Gearme fired a Quick Shot which had a cooldown of 30 seconds followed by firing this bow five times, the [Skill] would be ready again.

This would not only increase his overall DPS, especially as his attack speed increased, but the bow could potentially assist in exploits. Its usefulness would continue to grow for Gearme as he equipped more gear with active [Skills], as well. If it were not for the low overall level at which the bow stopped scaling, it would definitely see play near the top for its [Skill].

Why not wait to buy the item and in the meantime buy an oversized bow that was more immediately suited for taking down stronger enemies, thus improving her overall farm in the short term?

To put it simply, once her group met up, Chan Si had an overall farming strategy in mind that would keep her group busy away from any major trading hubs for about thirty to forty levels, depending on various factors she could not yet predict.

If during that time she encountered optimizations to her farming method that could only be accessed through the Bow's passive [Skill], she wanted to be able to take advantage.

It was a choice that could end up speeding her up or slowing her down, depending, but Chan Si's goal was not just leveling!

She wanted to break the game!

Thus, she would make the decision that allowed her to collect additional information, even if it risked a light amount of inefficiency in farming. In fact, it could not even be considered an inefficient option when one factored in the criteria of breaking the game, rather than pure farming speed, as she would be doubling the time spent farming with time spent gathering information.

After making the purchase, Gearme spent more time leveling provisioner, collected several stacks of enchantments for later application to the gear of his party, and filled the rest of his open inventory slots with food items and potions for his party.

===

The life of an NPC guard was pretty good, all things considered.

Sure, you weren't actually a conscious being and thus did not know how good you had it, but let's pretend you were for a second.

You would spend twelve hours a day working and twelve hours a day resting. Work would consist of nothing special most of the time. Keeping a look-out, answering inane questions like “where is the blacksmith?" to players standing next to the blacksmith, and making equally inane remarks yourself like how you used to adventure despite your entire existence being confined to a five kilometer chunk. Life would be simple.

Even if you were a guard in some far-off, shitty location like a fortress made of bones, there were perks.

Sometimes players would get it their heads that they could just take any bones they wanted. They did not understand that some bones were special, they could not take them. When this misunderstanding occured, it would be your job to smooth things over using nothing but the sweet sound of your own voice dialed up to a room-shaking, “Stop, thief!”, twenty inches of bone sword, and your magical ability to teleport anyone you touched to jail.

These were enjoyable things.

It would not be your job to report the orc woman with a smug grin who was very obviously planning to take the special bones. Work had a strict policy against that. You could give her the stink eye, you could even tell her, “I'm watching you,” but you could not prevent misunderstandings. You could not even continue to actually watch her, as your patrol route was absolute and all allowed deviation from it were in the handbook that you don't remember reading, but did have memorized by heart.

Even when she got away, the chase was fun. The power in your footsteps, the absolute state of your rulership over all things Law, and the system-backed statistics to enforce that rulership. She might have gotten away, but she ran.

She had to run.

You were too great a force to oppose.

When the excitement was over, you would go back to your patrol route. When your patrol route was over, you would go back to your door. You would enter your door, lay down to sweet oblivion, and return twelve hours later to do it all again, but maybe differently.

The life of an NPC guard was pretty good, all things considered.

===

The speed of light was was many times greater than the speed of Sunshine, but Sunshine still reached her destination eventually. She, Gearme, and Ulna would meet soon, the all three now approximately equidistance away from a midpoint between them.