Monstrous Compendium Ch3 bit – Calculus

~ crossovercreativechaos

A/N: Weather last night. And news reports on ransomware, gack.

A few hectic minutes later, Kirito retrieved his throwing pikes. He tucked them away, reminding himself to check them for subtle damage later. Right now, it was time for Salve to clean his wounds, just as Issin and Harry One were doing with the rest of Fuurinkazan. You never knew if undead were carrying Filth Fever. It wasn’t as bad as lycanthropy, but feeling like you wanted to throw your guts up for a week made it very hard to fight.

Calling up his map again, Kirito studied the arc of the Caller’s dead zone. Should be enough. “This only works with territorial monsters. It’s no help with level bosses or random mobs. But….” He touched the curve, opened the Map Extras, transferred the data, calculated the radius, and added another calculation of his own. “There. Stronger monsters hold a larger territory. That should give us a rough idea of how high its level is compared to the rest of this level.”

…Why was everyone staring at him?

If I could go back in time, I’d grab myself in that field and shake me into asking more about how Kirito was really doing with the Black Cats. Damn it. Klein glanced at the setting sun as Fuurinkazan plus one waited by the cracked mausoleum, relieved to see they still had a few minutes. According to the Snow Springs villagers, sunlight was fatal to a Caller. The way he looked, when we asked him to explain how he pulled that equation out of thin air….

What had followed had been a hesitant, downright shy explanation of some of the common algorithms games used to decide mob behavior. And a somewhat more animated story of a few creatures he’d tested his guesses on, complete with one spectacular underestimation of how it might work for Giant Wasps that had left a chagrined Black Swordsman breathing through a reed as he hid in a lake.

Then it’d been back to almost prying words out, as Kirito admitted he hadn’t had good math to base his first equation on. Just a feeling of what might fit right. Further refined by experience since, sure. But just a feeling. Not something you could really rely on. And the territory equation only gave you a rough estimate of power level. It could be off a level or two either way. It was not something you could count on.

You don’t want anyone counting on you, Klein concluded. You could be wrong. And then they could be dead.

12 thoughts on “Monstrous Compendium Ch3 bit – Calculus”

  2. I wish we got to see more of Kirito’s programing skills in canon. Math has always been my worst subject so anyone who has cool math skills is always impressive

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    1. While math is important to programming it isn’t as much of a help as some would think. I mean I’m pretty good with math, but I’m shit at programming. A lot of it is knowing how to /apply/ the math and…that’s not always as easy as making the numbers dance.

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      2. There is math-logic and coding-logic. Most people can only do one or the other, but the few who can do both are doomed… *dramatic ominous music* to be programming engineers…

        I love it when you take a characteristic and expand on it like this, there really isn’t a lot of time spent on Kirito’s computer skills outside of a convenient way to explain things to the audience. Can’t wait to see what happens next! 🙂

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  3. And Klein discovers just why Argo used Kirito as one of her regular sources. And Kirito is going to find Fuurinkazan even more interested in shanghaiing him.

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  4. Are there any missing scenes in other chapters? I remember that from my writing process. And I’m still working on installments to the universe that The Hot Place is set in.

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  5. That Kayaba likes to throw in surprise factors to monsters, bosses, etc, that may or may not follow the previously established formula probably doesn’t help. He changed things from the beta to the launch that caught the beta testers just as off guard as the brand new players – my evil-minded bunnies think that it would not be out of character for him to change those kind of parameters after a certain amount of levels to help keep things unpredictable. Or to add another level of difficulty to the higher levels. He might be even excuse it under the heading that the players need to be adaptable . . .

    And Kirito, your best guess tends to be a heck of a lot more useful and accurate than a lot of peoples. Also you actually tell people the margin of error. You don’t tell them “It’s absolutely Level X” when you know it could be Level Y or Z – you tell them it’s probably X but it might be Y or even Z so keep sharp.

    And you explain, as best you can, how you reached that conclusion.

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