Resist

Gah! You really wanted to but you know you shouldn’t. Using all of your willpower you take a deep breath and stand up, leaving the heroine on the ground. It was time to go. You leveled up, scored some loot, and had a bit of fun. By far the best day of your existence so far. Walking away, you find a tiny side alley mostly obscured by shadows. Pretty much nobody but the Alley Thugs know about these. You had to suck in your stomach, but you manage to slip past into the safety of the back alleys.

After a few minutes of shimmying and switching alleys, you slip out of the cramped corridor and take a seat on a stray barrel inside the hidden alley to think about what to do next. Your discovery of leveling and the possibility of actually beating some of these heroes has really shaken the foundation of your usual way of operating. Which was essentially not operating at all. There was no point. But now... you had an end goal. You just needed to keep leveling up and soon none of the heroes in this city would be able to fight you. Meaning you would have all the gold and women you could ever need. There was a minimal risk after a certain level too because heroes eventually leave town for the rest of the continent. Nobody ever came back to Tel Adrel. What’s more, the city only ever expands. Every day there are more and more heroes and every day the city grows just a tiny bit to accommodate.

So now we had a goal: Gain levels.