"Sorry son," the elderly NPC merchant said, "That's worth little more than dirt."

"What?!" Mark lowered the rabbit carcass and the pouch full of copper coins. "Are you serious?"

"I'm afraid I am," the NPC said. "Why, did you think it would be that easy to earn money? Hah! Those rabbits are everywhere. Anyone who wants some rabbit meat just has to walk like 5 minutes and get it without much trouble."

Mark was getting nervous now. He didn't think about this.

"What about all these copper coins?"

"Same thing," the old man puffed on his pipe. "Goddamned monster drops. Ever since beasts and monsters started to leave coins behind upon their death, inflation hit the whole country. Those coins are worth less than pebbles."

"F*ck!" Mark swore. How was this possible? Inflation?! Where are the game masters when you need them?!

He turned around, then shouted, "Hello, anyone out there?! GMs? Admins? Moderators?!"

The only answer Mark got was strange looks from the townspeople.

"Alright," Mark turned back to the old man after he calmed down. "What can I do then?"

"Hmm, I can give you a quest. Those rabbits have been pestering us for a while now. Eating the crops, and the like."

"Of course!" Mark exclaimed. "A quest! I'm so stupid, not thinking about this earlier. How many should I kill for you? 10? 100?"

"Why, all of them, of course," the old man said. "It wouldn't make sense otherwise. They would just have offsprings, and would be back in numbers in no time."

[Quest received - Kill All Rabbits around the town of Transmere!]

Progress: 0 / 134573

Reward: Dinner and a place to sleep. Oh, and XP. Don't forget the XP for your levels.

Mark facepalmed himself. "Are you serious, old man?"

"I'm afraid I am," the NPC said. "Why, did you think it would be that easy to earn money? Hah! Anyone could go out there and kill 10 or even a 100 rabbits."

"But I don't have time to kill more than a hundred thousand rabbits!" Mark exclaimed. "Surely there is an easier way to get food!"

"Well, there is," the old man said, nodding sagely. "Prepare the rabbit meat for yourself."

"Hmm, that's actually a good idea," Mark said. "But I don't know how to cook."

"That's why you players have the [Cooking] skill," the old man answered. "So that any imbecile without a grain of survival skill could stay alive."

Mark ignored the insult (for plot convenience) and focused on the interesting detail instead.

"Cooking skill?" he asked. "I didn't receive any cooking skills."

"That's strange. No level 1 [Cooking] among your menus?"

"No."

"Hmm, it could be a bug," the old man said.

Great, Mark thought. Must be because I was reincarnated in this world, instead of logging in and creating a character properly. Where are the game masters when you need them?!

He turned around, then shouted, "Hello, anyone out there?! GMs? Admins? Moderators?!"

The only answer Mark got was strange looks from the townspeople.

"Alright," Mark turned back to the old man after he calmed down. "What can I do then?"

The old man shrugged. "Beats me," he said, then moonwalked out of the scene.

"No! Wait!" Mark said, but was helpless against this move. The old man soon disappeared from sight.

"F*ck!" Mark swore, well, not really swore because it was censored, but he was upset nevertheless. "I guess I'll just have to hack the system, then. I have to find the glitch in the matrix."

It had been mentioned earlier that Mark was a gamer. A geek. And what self-respecting gamer doesn't know how to hack? Almost every gamer protagonist knows how to hack into various systems. With how much time they spend in front of the monitor, it's ridiculously easy for them to learn coding and hacking! It's only logical. A true gamer may spend most of their day (and night) playing games, but somehow they always find time to educate themselves in the ways of cyber-security.

Mark was no different, being a professional hacker ever since he was little. Very little. About 3 years old? Yeah, that sounds right. He learned hacking first, talking later. That's why he is such an antisocial guy. And that's also why he is shouting so much nowadays. He is trying to make up for those lost years when he couldn't speak.

But knowing how to hack wasn't enough. What was a pianist, without his piano? That's right, nothing! (This was just an irrelevant metaphor.) Mark needed an interface through which he could connect to this game's program code. He stuck his index finger into his left nostril to bring up the menu.

"Hey, last time it was my tongue," Mark complained, already crying for the old system. He had been complaining back then when it was his tongue, but now... well, he should consider it lucky that he didn't have to stick other body parts elsewhere.

"That's what you said last time too!!!" Mark raged with three exclamation marks as emphasis.

But Mark didn't have too much time to complain. He found a totally randomly placed input field within his menus, and he began to type furiously. (With one hand, because the other was occupied.) He did an SQL injection to get to the administrative data of the API of his personal GUI, then wrote his own callback function and passed a reference of it down to the public method that was doing a dependency injection of the constructor of Mark's skill list. After that, he set the global variables to—

"You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?"

Actually, the narrator did know what he was talking about. It was complete bullshit, of course. But the narrator had hoped to maintain an illusion for those readers who are less well-versed in programming. That is, until Mark had to chime in, deriving from the script for the hunderth time.

"Come at me, bro!" Mark said, puffing out his chest. "I'm ready to accept your stupid punishment!"

If narrators were allowed to sigh, this one surely would have done so. Alas, it was simply not meant to be. It was pointless to punish Mark when he was like this. The revenge for his misbehavior should come in a subtler form. Like, after he managed to hack into the system...

"Hell yeah! I'm in!" Mark smiled, not suspecting what was awaiting him.