Chapter 2-12
Through a series of brilliant experiments conducted by Researcher Shelley, it has recently been shown that some fraction of a creature’s potential Essence is released upon its death. This demonstrates why killing a more powerful monster leads to greater rewards than slaying a mere pest.
The stronger the creature, the more it can impact the world around it – and therefore, the more potential Essence it has. To prove their hypothesis, Shelley began with a modest herd of giant spiders raised in captivity under identical conditions. They took the mature spiders and selectively crippled most of them, removing either two, four, or all of their legs. The spiders were then placed in cages surrounded by Illusion magic to make them appear identical.
A group of Mages was then asked to shoot a fireball into a series of cages and report on the strength of the Essence received once the spider perished. Remarkably, the Mages were able to reliably distinguish between the various groups of spiders based simply on the Essence returned, with less Essence reported for each leg removed.
The crux of Shelley’s hypothesis was simple: a crippled spider would have less capacity to impact the world around it, and therefore, less potential Essence, even though all of the spiders were of the same species, age, Level, size, and so on. Their study proved that anecdotal stories about lesser rewards for killing a monster previously wounded from another fight are likely true and based on the same phenomenon.
- Rufus Veres, Level 37 Verbose Historian, A Brief History of the System
At the bottom of the hill, I took out the two Level 2 mods with a big grin. The first one turned out to be the armor mod.