Literature / Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World

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Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World (異世界迷宮でハーレムを; Isekai Meikyuu de Harem o) is a fantasy harem novel series written by Sogano Shachi and illustrated by Shiki Douji. Starting out as a Web Serial Novel that was serialized online on Shousetsuka ni Narou from 2011 to 2019, the series was later picked up for publication as a series of Light Novels in 2012. It was adapted into a shonen Manga in 2017 with art by Hyouju Issei, which is serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Shounen Ace magazine. A 12-Episode Anime adaptation aired on Japan's adult-oriented ATX network from 6 July to 21 September 2022, and was simulcasted—in a heavily censored form—on Crunchyroll.

A severely depressed Japanese teenager named Michio Kaga goes online to find a way to commit suicide, and stumbles on an advertisement for a virtual-reality MMORPG. After logging in, he wakes up in the game, saves the starting village from a bandit attack... and discovers he can't log out.

Michio is informed by the village elders after a villager tries to steal part of his loot that the thief will be sold into slavery to pay for recompense, and takes him along to a nearby town. At loose ends afterwards, the slave trader, Alan, suggests that if Michio plans to make money as an adventurer, it may behoove him to buy a slave of his own as a battle thrall, and introduces him to a beautiful and buxom wolfgirl named Roxanne.

From there, the story continues on into Michio's efforts to come up the money for her purchase price and build a life for himself in his new environment.

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Tropes found in the work include:

• Achievements in Ignorance: For the entire population of residents in the New World. They're not aware that they're in an RPG Mechanicsverse, at least not entirely. What little they know about the world was discovered entirely by accident.
• Adaptational Consent: The heavy censorship in the simulcast version has the effect of making an already ethically questionable Hero's Slave Harem look even worse, since they actually bleep out the part where slave trader Alan explains to protagonist Michio that Roxanne consented in her slave contract to having sex with her eventual purchaser.
• Adaptational Curves: Roxanne and Vesta are both significantly bustier in the anime adaptation than they are in light novel illustrations.
• Adaptation Distillation: The recruitment/purchase of Miria, Vesta, and Rutina are relegated to the ending credits sequence of ep. 12. with how little context is given for each of them this could also be case of making sure that all the party members join just to not make the OP a case of Lady not appearing in this Series.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: The primary non-sexual method Michio and his harem show affection to one another is to rub each other's heads, ears, etc., and everybody loves it.
• Alternate Continuity: By the time chapter 22 of the manga rolls around, things begin to vary greatly from the original light novel source. True, the characters and their actions remain the same, but the timeline and context changes considerably.
• And You Thought It Was a Game: Michio is lured into an isekai experience by a website that proclaims he's signing up for an MMORPG. He loses consciousness once the sign-up process is complete, and that can be excused by the fact that he pulled an all-nighter getting his character just right, which any fan of a game with a character-creation system heavily dependent on a random-number generator will say is by far and large the norm. Once he's in the back-water village of Vale, it isn't long before the place is attacked by bandits and he gets a prompt saying "Tutorial Battle." While he does have some initial misgivings, the weight of his situation doesn't really hit until the battle's over and he's had a chance to cool down and really think about things. It is at this point that he realizes there is no "Log out" system...
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Michio's Analyze skill, as well as select abilities from various jobs, enables him to embody this.
• Badass Adorable: Michio's harem is staffed entirely by girls who are cute as a button, which is precisely why he bought them. Of course, each and every one of them is a mighty fighting machine, thanks to Michio's efforts.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Zigzagged. During certain chapters the girl will have detailed breasts, but in other situations her nipples won't be drawn (even when there's nothing to obscure them).
• Bathtub Bonding: The protagonist's second favorite "team building" activity with his slave Battle Harem. Justified by the fact that in the world setting, proper baths are something only royalty and nobility can afford, and it would be unthinkable for them to allow their slaves to share in that luxury. So being ogled and fondled (or in the anime, being asked for a blowjob) is considered a fair exchange for a level of pampering most can only dream of.
• Battle Harem: The protagonist works very, very hard to buy female slaves to be his fighting companions while conquering labyrinths. He also greatly enjoys said slaves in the bath and bedroom...
• Beast Man: Roxanne, Michio's first slave, is a beastkin with floppy dog-like ears and a tail.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: All the protagonist's slave harem happily has sex with him, because he shows them through words and deeds that he truly treasures them, far beyond what slaves in this world could hope for.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Michio's entire harem, including himself, are some of the most gentle, humble, and submissive people you'll ever meet in fiction or reality. Antagonize them at your peril.
• Bounty Hunter: While not a professional one, Michio engages in spots of bounty hunting via the 'magical ID' mechanic (see Price on Their Head below) when he needs money.
• Breather Episode: After an intense couple of episodes where Michio fights several foes, including massacring a couple of bandits in their sleep, once he purchases Roxanne, an episode is devoted to him and her just hanging out and then having sex for the first time without any fighting.
• Censor Box: The amount of female nudity and sexual content in the series rivals World's End Harem. Unfortunately, this means Crunchyroll's simulcast is virtually unwatchable at times, with half the screen routinely blocked by censor boxes in the form of pop-up error messages.
• Chekhov's Skill: To the point of recurrence. Many of the things Michio, as a Japanese teen, learned in home-ec, chemistry, or even his one and only visit to a beauty salon with his mother prove very, very useful in the new world, like cooking or making soap from scratch.
• Circular Reasoning: The reboot explains why Michio was bullied in Japan. He "got into plenty of fights" in elementary school, while defending himself from bullies, so he must be a delinquent. Since he's a delinquent, interacting with him in any way, even if a teacher compels you, turns you into a delinquent too, ergo social isolation. Since he's isolated by his school-mates, he must be an anti-social loner that needs his "bad attitude" beat out of him, with daily beating into unconsciousness. Since he arrives in school badly beat up, he must still be a delinquent, with a tendency to get into fights!
• Cool Sword: The holy sword Durandal, the bonus weapon he started off with at the expense of most of his bonus points. It has a 5x attack power boost, restores Michio's HP and MP by draining it from enemies he kills, and hitting an enemy spellcaster with it will interrupt their incantations, forcing them to start over or try something else. It's worth noting that in this world, a weapon with two skills is incredibly rare, and this many is unheard of. It can one-shot most non-boss mobs. Thanks to his Character Reset ability, he can reallocate his bonus points to make it disappear without taking up space in his Item Box, or level-adjust it into weaker weapons if he's in a situation where he doesn't want to one-shot enemies.
• Crapsack World: Played with. While this New World has a great many disadvantages, there are aspects that are superior to modern society on Earth. Crime of Self-Defense does not exist, and slavery, as an institution, is universally viewed as a Last-Second Chance for people who are in terrible straits to redeem themselves and make a better lot in life than they were given.
  • On the other hand, the protagonist believes the term applies to modern society in Japan where he lived before stumbling on the "advertisement" at the suicide websites he was perusing, not only because of the bullying he received, but the fact that the only place he found refuge was run by a Buddhist priest that only ran a kendo dojo so he could molest teenage girls.
• Crutch Character: Durandal and Ring of Determination is very powerful for a starter character like Michio.
• Dark and Troubled Past: All the main characters, without exception, though they're not all revealed.
• Darker and Edgier: The original novel only mentioned that the Japanese teen that transmigrated into Michio was bullied by his peers and father, since elementary school, but did not elaborate. The reboot has a prologue that goes into exquisite detail in regards to the bullying involved. Michio was attacked by his classmates and fought back, so the teachers labeled him "a delinquent". Once that happened, the bullying switched from physical violence to social isolation, as if delinquency is some kind of contagious disease, where every time the teachers would forcefully team him up with a female classmate, said classmate would act as if she was sexually defiled! Then when his mother died, his father took to giving him daily beatings to the point of unconsciousness while screaming "YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL! I'M DOING THIS FOR YOUR SAKE!"
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The moral compass of this new world is quite different from any modern country on Earth. For example, instead of imprisoning criminals, they are sold into slavery. The merits and demerits of this system are spelled out by the protagonist in the light novel.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The truly impressive jobs are really twitchy to get, especially for the natives of the new world that can not see levels, aside from the glaringly obvious explorer job, and can only switch jobs at a temple through a special crystal, and simply booking an appointment is crazy expensive. Michio manages to discover the unlocking secrets to the Master Smith, Saintess, Assassin, and several others, because he can swap around jobs on the fly and see people's levels in every job, as well as having a harem of lovely slaves who let him experiment on them.
  • For example, arguably the most convoluted job is the Hero job, which can only be unlocked by defeating criminals in your first battle.
• Dirty Old Monk: A Buddhist priest who runs a kendo dojo so he can molest teenage girls definitely qualifies. Sadly, said dojo was the only place Michio could find refuge during his days in Japan.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Michio, when receiving his reward for helping save Valle from bandits, noticed that somebody had swapped out the Bandit Chief's bandana. When the culprit was found, he was sold into slavery at the price of 33,000 coins, half of which went to Michio, under the terms of the local law by the Village Chief. It's a bit more justified in the manga when the bandana is revealed to be worth 20,000+ in the right market, but in the light novel, it was worth only about 500 coins.
• Dramatic Irony: It's only after Michio buys Roxanne and has her in his party that he learns about mana crystals he could have bought for cheap then used to get the money he needed to buy her at considerably less risk than going after bandits with a bounty. He face-palms at the revelation.
• Driven to Suicide: Not only did the protagonist start the story searching suicide websites so he could kill himself quickly and painlessly, but this is the fate of any slave whose master dies unless the master prepared a will beforehand stating otherwise.
• Dungeon-Based Economy: Keeping labyrinths docile is such a daunting task that cities are often built around them, explorers sell passage to the upper floors, and sometimes, gate-keepers even collect a fare for adventurers to enter. There's also the fact that dropped monster loot can either be used for mundane tasks, like being cooked as the family's dinner, or sold on the open market...
• Enemy Scan: Michio relies on his Analyze skill for a lot of things. It can tell him a person's name, age, gender, job, level, and equipment. Being able to tell at a glance if a person is a thief or bandit is very handy. Knowing their level before seeing them fight helps him decide how wary he should be of them, and it's eventually revealed that most people in this world don't even have a way to measure their own levels.
• Fanservice: The manga has two chapters dedicated to Michio and Roxanne doing adult stuff. It is pretty much expected since Hyouju Issei is an active doujinka and adult mangaka.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Just picking up an item that isn't yours without permission in the RPG Mechanics 'Verse gets you permanently marked with the Thief class, which Michio only gets away with on his first day because he's able to edit his class list to conceal it. Try to escape from slavery? You get the Bandit class. And a single level in either one means you can be enslaved, robbed, or killed at will without penalty.
• Food Porn: When the main characters get to cooking their daily meals, the process reads like something you'd watch on The Food Network.
• Foreshadowing: The manga has silhouettes of Sherry and Vesta appear when Michio decides that labyrinth diving is getting to be too much for just Roxanne and himself.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Defied. As part of his pitch to sell Roxanne to Michio, the slave trader specifically spells out that beings of two different races cannot produce children.
• Happiness in Slavery: Invoked, lampshaded and often discussed. Michio goes so far above and beyond his duties as the master of his slave harem, that his slaves consider themselves living in the lap of luxury, and reciprocate in trying to make Michio as happy as they can, even going as far as to make themselves look as sexy as possible to him, which he really, really appreciates.
• Heroic BSoD: Michio had a brief one when realized that, not only did he actually kill those bandits, but he can't return to the 'real' world. Also, running out of MP nearly paralyzes him with negative emotions. In the anime, he gets another BSOD when he realizes that he had just murdered some more bandits, a few in their sleep, just to get their bounties, one that couldn't be shaken off even with full MP.
• Hero's Slave Harem: Of the Sex Slave variety, with Michio being a Harem Seeker to boot. Fortunately for the girls, they have final say in whether Michio can have sex with them or not. On most occasions, they're the ones who seek out the sex, not vice versa.
• Hotter and Sexier: Amazingly for a story that openly features sex-slaves, the manga and anime are even more explicit than the source material. While the original light novel only hints at the fact that Michio has sex with his slaves, even barely giving any details of the girls' anatomy when Michio openly ogles them, the adaptations have Their First Time and other sex scenes on screen in chapter 7 and later chapters between Michio and Roxanne. Some chapters also show Roxanne's breasts in explicit detail. The only thing seemingly keeping the adaptations out of the hentai section is the fact that Michio and Roxanne are under a blanket for most of it, and the rest of the time, their more delicate areas are either out of view or hidden behind a Censor Box.
• Innocently Insensitive: When Michio acquires Sherry and showing her around her new home with him and Roxanne, he barely notices Roxanne's subtle displeasure with the attention the new slave is getting as it could risk her position as Michio's top slave. Michio does catch himself a few times to remember to treat Roxanne first, like serving food, but when they are getting ready for bed Michio kisses Sherry before Roxanne. Michio quickly realizes how this breech of slave-ranks pushes Roxanne into full Tranquil Fury at this perceived usurpation of her position as First Slave. It is only when Michio hastily explains that for their sleeping procedure newer slaves come first so Roxanne will be the last one he kisses before sleeping and so the first one who kisses him awake, does her anger abate and she is happy once more.
• Interspecies Romance: Michio is a human, while none of the girls in his Battle Harem are, yet they have sex with each other, in a mutually loving commitment, on a regular basis.
• Job System: While Michio can shuffle around his jobs with relative impunity, ordinary people doesn't seem to be able to do the same. Michio can adjust Roxanne's jobs but she seemed to be astonished about this, suggesting that such ability is rare.
• Leaked Experience: Abused and exploited. While some nobles abuse the "party" system's shared exp pool to level their children while keeping them out of labyrinths, Michio exploits it by having the bonuses of his jobs and his harem members stack, giving them all a major boost in their level grinding, accomplishing things in a matter of days, if not single battles, that most of the population couldn't do in years.
• Life Drain: Durandal can do this and Mana Drain, enabling Michio to stay longer in the dungeon, with mental exhaustion and carrying capacity as his only limiting factors.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: The protagonist adapts to this new world, and buys his first Sex Slave in less than two weeks.
• Little Bit Beastly: The "Beastkin" races all have subtle animal traits like animal ears and tails.
• Living Structure Monster: The "labyrinths" are actually living beings. They remain docile only as long as adventurers go inside them to hunt monsters, and they feed on anyone who dies inside them. If adventurers don't go inside labyrinths for an extended period of time, the labyrinths send out monsters in the surrounding area to seek out and attack people. In fact, adventurers strong enough to clear an entire labyrinth (50 floors minimum), thus killing it, are so legendary as to become local lords, and the last "Hero" to do so became the local emperor.
• Loot Drama: Discussed In-Universe. When Michio hits his limit for solo dungeon diving, Alan, the slave merchant, specifies that this is indeed a common issue, even leading party members to fight to the death over unique drops, but since a slave owner legally owns all the loot, and slaves can't betray their masters without dying, using slaves as a party would be a great way to avoid this happening to him, and is a primary reason Michio buys Roxanne, and goes on to build himself a slave harem.
• Male Gaze: The manga can be pretty blatant about this, sometimes even using an angle that gives the audience a view of a female character's butt when Michio is talking to her face-to-face.
• Medal of Dishonor: The Thief, Pirate, and Bandit jobs basically force whoever owns them into a life of crime. They can be stolen from, attacked, or even killed without consequence. The only two ways to gain protection are to either join a powerful gang, and deal with everything that comes with that, or become a slave and gain legal protection in exchange for becoming little more than livestock. The worst part is that these jobs are disturbingly easy to acquire. Michio gained the Thief job by equipping a pair of abandoned sandals in the barn where he woke up and Mira gained the Pirate job by catching and eating a fish that she unwittingly followed into a church's water reserve. Michio managed to escape consequences by hiding his Thief job with his unique ability to equip multiple jobs, and Mira winds up in Michio's slave harem as a de-facto bride.
• Merchant City: In addition to the Dungeon-Based Economy, there are cities built exclusively to market unique products. The most famous is Palmasque which specializes in glass-artistry, especially their mirrors. The city requires merchants, traders, and visitors to enter at their Adventurer's guild and then pass through a border check-point where a small toll is placed, just to go in and browse. The citizens and artistes require a special permit to leave, even if it's just for a short time, so that the city doesn't lose its talent or monopoly on its exquisite works.
• Morph Weapon: Durandal, Michio's sword, can be level-adjusted; it will morph into a weaker sword if set to a lower level, either because Michio is in a situation where he doesn't want to one-shot enemies or because he'd be better off reallocating his bonus points into skills rather than bonus equipment.
• Mundane Luxury: Sometimes combined with Simple, yet Opulent. The protagonist's harem is shocked and amazed at Michio's cooking and the fact that he bathes with them on a regular basis, in a large custom-made bathtub, because the concept of a personal bath is so ridiculously expensive that only nobility can afford it, and we're treated to a "personal bath" late in the story, a wooden barrel. In addition, many of the cooking ingredients, although common to the reader, are usually won from rare monster drops on high-level labyrinth floors, or boss monsters.
• Necessary Drawback: There's a very, very good reason wizards are rare in the world setting and people avoid using magic too much. Using too much MP too quickly leaves the unfortunate soul who did so feeling uncontrollable cowardice and suicidal depression. Furthermore, unlocking the wizard class requires making a person to cast a spell before they actually KNOW magic. The only method known by the population at large is buying an extremely expensive "medicine" that causes the person that takes it to explode in a Suicide Attack, and has a moderate chance of failing to trigger when taken by a small child, if the child survives then they unlocked the wizard class. Michio discovered this by accident when testing his "Mana Sacrifice" ability, and he noticed Sherry suffer it when she tried enchanting for the first time, and was suicidally depressed when she succeeded.
• New Life in Another World Bonus: Michio got a lot of bonus points to allocate as he saw fit toward various perks like bonus stats, spells, skills, and starting equipment. Thanks to choosing the Character Reset perk, he can even go back and redistribute those points whenever he wants, letting him optimize his build for specific situations, depending on whether his immediate priority is beating strong enemies, leveling up faster, maximizing valuables dropped by dungeon monsters, or negotiating prices with merchants.
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Defeated dungeon monsters vanish in a puff of smoke and leave loot behind. Nobody in universe understands how this works, or cares to learn.
  • When adventurers die inside a dungeon, their bodies quickly disappear, essentially eaten by the dungeon. All that remains is a pile of their equipment. If the equipment isn't picked up soon enough, the dungeon somehow collects it into treasure chests.
• Nobody Poops: Subverted. In chapter 38, one of the selling points for the house Michio intends to rent is that someone, somehow, managed to install a fully-functional, flush-able toilet. The user needs to draw water from a well and pour it into the tank manually, as there's no running water in the society, but the toilet itself works just fine. A second toilet was apparently planned on the second floor but the owner got evicted before getting too far, and this opening is where Michio has his custom-made bathtub installed, for easy drainage.
• Non-Indicative Name: While standard race and monster names used in high fantasy settings are present, their respective appearance doesn't always match (at least in the manga). For example, dwarves are simply small, petite humans with pointed ears rather than the usual depiction of being broad, sturdy, but shorter, humans. Another example are kobolds, who look like the common depiction of goblins rather than lizard-like humanoids.
• Our Elves Are Different: While their appearance and personality are mostly the same as in other fictional works, elves in this setting have lifespans around the human average. In fact, when an elf matron who has 107 years of age is introduced, she clearly looks the part of a centennial, and everyone wonders how she managed to stay alive so long. However, elves do retain their youthful appearances much longer than humans.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The manga plotline, while faithful to the source, does move the pace more quickly by removing a lot of what the mangaka considers superfluous. For example, Michio has 10 days to round up the funds he needs to buy Roxxane in the light novel, turning to bounty hunting on day 9, out of desperation, while in the manga, he only has five, and turned to bounty hunting on day 3.
  • The anime prunes things even more. Michio's Dark and Troubled Past is almost completely removed, with blink and you'll miss it flash-backs showing how he wound up in this new world, and Michio takes up bounty hunting to get the funds needed for Roxanne on day two of five that Allen sets aside to hold her for him, and even then, days 3-5 are all one scene exploits showing how Michio did his homework tracking down and eliminating the bandits he needs to in order to get the funds he's missing.
• Price on Their Head: Dead criminals (usually people with 'Bandit' as a job) can be turned in to the local law enforcement for bounties. It's a pretty clean procedure, too: dead bodies will eject their magical 'identification card' some time after death and law enforcement only needs these cards to confirm the bounty. People with criminal classes aren't allowed to collect bounties, either.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The protagonist is the only one who's fully aware of it, as he can see the levels of everyone in his party, including himself. The rest of the population can only tell their professions, except for the "explorer" class due to its Item Box skill having storage capacity that visibly increases as they level up.
  • Deconstructed when the mundane aspects of the world setting would fit nicely into reality. Citizens of a nation still have to pay taxes, even the adventurers who go into labyrinths are not exempted, and simple healing medicines and magics only deal with light wounds; advanced medical care would be required for anything more serious.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Defied. The reason the protagonist starts the story searching suicide websites? He's been so viciously bullied that he's had to take up kendo and karate to defend himself since elementary school, and his own father joined in on the abuse. When he showed he was able to defend himself, everyone ignored him as if he didn't exist...
• Sequel Hook: The season 1 anime ends with Miria, Vesta and Rutina joining the harem ahead of the manga as a teaser of what's to come.
• Sex Slave: Downplayed but present. The protagonist buys his female slaves primarily so he can enjoy them, sexually. The slaves are all well aware of this, and happily consent, usually in advance.
• Sexual Karma: Michio, being a slave owner aside, is an inherently good and noble individual, and his harem has no complaints regarding the fact that he has sex with them. In fact, most of them actually approach him and seek the sex out, which he happily enjoys.
• Slow Life Fantasy: Though there are occasional labyrinth battles, and the series starts with two major clashes with a bandit clan, that happen to be fleeing bigger and meaner bandit clans, the vast majority of the story is Michio and harem enjoying their daily lives, with cooking, household chores, shopping, and of course, sexy-fun times.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Even in Japan's (where the story is written and initially takes place) notorious "don't trouble others" society which tends to ignore bullying and domestic or parental abuse, as long as nobody makes waves, when an elementary school student's father steps in to take the bullies' side and abuse the boy too, this tends to bring the entire wrath of the Japanese pantheon down on said father, in the form of every kind of legal and moral authority. In the story, the poor boy had to go to a kendo dojo and learn how to defend himself instead because nobody else would help him...
• Spoiler Cover: The anime OP shows scenes with all the girls in Michio's harem. It takes roughly 6 volumes of the light-novel to get to that point.
• STD Immunity: Averted. Prostitution is shown to exist in the early chapters, and Michio is specifically advised not to peruse such services by Allen, the slave merchant, precisely because of this issue. The manga even shows some prostitutes on-screen and they are clearly not healthy. This is one of the reasons why slavemasters are willing to pay so much for virgin sex slaves.
• Supporting Harem: Discussed, lampshaded, invoked, and justified. While it is true that Michio does not play favorites, in any way, shape, or form, Roxanne is his number one slave, which he lampshades on numerous occasions. As such, she has full authority to command the harem in his stead, should the need arise. The justification is that Roxanne has earned the position by proving herself the most skilled, talented, and experienced warrior, as well as the most devout.
• Time to Unlock More True Potential: Unusual for a seinen series, this is indeed the case. Michio is always looking to boost not only his own abilities, but those of each and every member of his Battle Harem. Every time he succeeds, the girls are awestruck and ecstatic.
• Trapped in Another World: The protagonist cannot return to Earth, though he was warned.
• What Might Have Been: In universe. Chapter 9 of the official storyline, in the light novel (and the anime's Episode 2), shows Michio what would have happened if he took the Village Chief of Vale up on his offer to "comfort" the widow of one of the defenders who was struck down by a bandit chief, said widow being the wife of a relatively high-ranked retired hero. Michio would have unknowingly sired a son, and the two would meet 10 years after the start of the story.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Reconstructed. The entire population of the New World where the protagonist finds himself is almost completely unaware of being in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse. The only reason they know that "levels" exist is because the explorer class's Item Box skill has a storage capacity that visibly increases as they level up.

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