I told no one about my random encounter with MoonCrawler - or Peter, I guess. I met back up with Bart a few minutes later and continued doing Game Night with the rest of the Council. But my heart wasn’t in it, my thoughts in turmoil. Goldman and Holt were actively working to zero me out?
That was a concerning thought in itself, but something else Peter had said had started to worm its way into my thoughts. He had said that they thought Al had seeded my code across the player’s pods…just like he had done with himself to evade the level 5 A.I.
Was my existence just one big torrent spread across a million systems!? Oh, God, the thought of that made me queasy. Was this new A.I. trying to root me out of the systems too? Would my personality start to erode as it began to wipe me out?
Would I even know if it was…?
The existential dread from those thoughts made it impossible for me to sleep after we finished up Game Night. The others had picked up that something was off, but hadn’t pushed me on it.
I was laying in bed now, in my private room in the level 1 Guildhall, just staring at the ceiling - trying not to let these thoughts spiral me down into hopelessness. But how could I be positive under these circumstances? One of the most powerful mega-corps in the world had me directly in their sights. A military-grade, super A.I. was potentially coming for me - and my greatest ally, Al. And to top it all off, I had the threat of hundreds of players gunning for me everywhere I went.
The concept of Raid progression seemed childish and asinine when I put my situation in perspective.
But I forced myself out of my funk. This was my life now - at least for the foreseeable future - and I was determined to make the best of it.
Which led me to the Skill Competition. If I couldn’t sleep, I could at least take a closer look at the possible winners. I still intended to make a decision tomorrow with the help of the Council, and I wanted to do my homework before then.
The submissions had been varied and it was quite difficult to differentiate the good from the shit. But there were clear delineations between the types of builds, so I had decided to choose from those types first in order to narrow down my options.
The popular types were broken down like this:
1. Zerg Build
2. Dueling Build
3. Roaming/Small Group Build
4. Raid Tank Build
5. Raid Damage Build
6. Gimmick Build
The Zerg builds were the most popular and the top 10 submissions were dominated by this type. They all revolved around supplementing large groups of players in various ways. There were AoE damage builds that focused on skills that were similar to [Eye of the Fire Storm] for mass casualties. These were cool and interesting, and I might have considered them if I was a normal player with respawns. But they lacked utility and defensive capabilities.
The other type of Zerg builds were the condition spreading builds. These involved massing up conditions on enemy players - like bleed, burn, poison, etcetera - and spreading those conditions to large groups. Again, sounded fun, but had the same deficiencies as the AoE builds.
On the flip side of the condition spreading build was the Boon or Commander builds. These builds focused on providing buffs and AoE boons to nearby players. Unlike the AoE and Contagion builds, these builds had a ton of utility and enhanced your group massively. It was an interesting idea given my obvious leadership role in DGW and in future group activities. But the truth was, it didn’t offer anything that two or three specialized players couldn’t do. And Boon builds were fairly common due to being in such high demand.
The second most popular type of builds were the dueling builds. The idea of these builds was pretty self-explanatory - they revolved around strong 1v1 skills, a lot of utility, and were heavy on outplay potential. These were the kind of builds that would make dueling players like Ysillith a cakewalk. But yesterday’s near miss with that 100-player ambush had convinced me that I couldn’t build my Skill Path that way. So I discounted these builds right away.
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Option 3 was the most enticing, and probably had the best options for me given the way things had gone up until this point. There was no build I could imagine that would allow me and DGW to overcome ten-to-one odds. But these builds could make me an absolute terror in small groups. If me and the Angels squad could win two or three-to-one fights consistently, we would be equipped to stomp any group that wasn’t an absolute Zerg fest. And once DGW filled out its level 60 PvP teams, the safety of numbers would prevent us from being overrun. Having a build designed to wreck groups of 5 to 10 players sounded ideal, really.
I didn’t even bother looking at the Raid Tank or Raid Damage builds. I just couldn’t justify focusing my Path on PvE content. Sure, I could specialize in PvE and probably become one of the best Tanks or Damage Dealers in the game. But I had to get to the Raids in order to dominate them, and if a team of Necks killed me in transit, I would really regret not focusing my build on PvP.
The last type of builds were the Gimmick builds. They pretty much lived up to their name - they were designed around specific mechanics to create a gimmicky build. I hadn’t even looked at them yet, convinced they would be a waste of my time. But I looked now, just to do my due diligence. The top 5 builds by upvotes were:
1. Jack-Off-All-Trades (Aka Splooge Lord)
2. Unkillable PvP Gawwddd
3. Naruto Hokage
4. Thomas the Tank Engine (Choo-Choo!)
5. Wolverine
I sighed as I read the names. Jack-Off-All-Trades, otherwise known as Splooge Lord, was a silly build that focused on summoning magical turrets that shot out various substances in a large area. The turrets could spray oil to reduce footing, a glue-like substance to slow enemies, and even a napalm-like material that did moderate damage and applied the burning effect. But the build focused entirely on the turrets and amplifying their damage and…splooge area…through self buffs. If enemy players destroyed the turrets, I’d be no better off than I was now.
Unkillable PvP Gawwddd was a troll build that would make me invisible…so long as I stood still, didn’t use a skill, and no one moved me. Basically, I would be unkillable, right up until somebody bumped into me. True to its name, but unusable in any functional capacity.
Naruto Hokage was a cool build that leaned heavily into the Rogue and Druid Skill Trees. Its offense was focused on fire skills and its defense was based on evasion and shadow abilities. I was intrigued by the ability to use fire skills - as I had seen their usefulness when killing Git and Damien - but they didn’t leverage my enhanced strength in any way. The defensive skills were more practical, but all centered around evasion and fleeing. All in all, it was an interesting build and made me realize that not all the Gimmick Builds were garbage. But ultimately, it didn’t give me any ability to stand my ground.
Thomas the Tank Engine was a momentum-based build that increased my damage and defensive stats the longer I kept in motion. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised as I looked at the build deeper. My attack power, physical, and magical defenses all increased the longer and faster I moved. The build description included some statistics based on hypothetical scenarios, and I could tell the submitter had put a lot of thought into the build.
15 seconds at max speed: +47% attack power, +22% physical defense, +17% magical defense, +8% resistance to status effects
30 seconds at max speed: +62% attack power, +31% physical defense, +23% magical defense, +11% resistance to status effects
120 seconds at max speed: +76% attack power, +49% physical defense, +36% magical defense, +16% resistance to status effects
300 seconds at max speed: +82% attack power, +61% physical defense, +41% magical defense, +21% resistance to status effects
The build maxed out at 300 seconds of running full bore, and the increases were nothing to scoff at. Roughly an average of +50% to my defensive stats, a +82% boost to my physical attack power, and +21% resistance to status effects was massive! I could only imagine how strong I would be with those stat boosts - not to mention what it would look like after I was fully geared up. But there were two obvious and glaring weaknesses: it took time to ramp up, and if anyone managed to impede me, I’d lose all the effects and have to build them up again. Still, it was a really interesting build, so I added it to the list of builds I wanted to discuss in the Council meeting today.
I opened the Wolverine build, scanning the description quickly before doing a double take. Wait a minute…this couldn’t be right.