???

Have you ever heard the difference between the places made within The Deathworld Game and real space?

The best metaphor I've heard is that The Deathworld Game's world is like a bunch of movie sets which all surround the champions and inhabitants.

None of it is actually 'real' in the traditional sense, everything within is a projection until you get close enough to it, in which case they generate a facsimile using stored data... unless the object is a real thing like an inhabitant of course.

Champions are given a false body so that they won't actually die when it's destroyed, and so the Gamemasters can manipulate different aspects of it for fun.

This whole process is incredibly intensive on modern hardware, which is why it requires so many people to do, as well as someone working full-time to make sure the data doesn't desynchronize... someone to 'bind the world' so to speak.

All of these things come together to paint a picture of why it's impossible to create an experience like The Deathworld Game in a real space, and why so many laughed at me for trying.

They decided that funding would be pointless... especially for a military purpose, I mean it's 'just a game' right?

Well... not anymore.

All those who refused to recognize the potential of the technology will be forced to see.

All of you will finally see.

----------------------------------------

Andrew

"I. AM-" Uluriq began.

I put my hands up in a placating gesture. "Married, I know and I respect that, but are you sure you're not willing to at least consider Jandrilis?"

"If I have to be around that vile creature for a day, let alone the many weeks that the previous game lasted for, I will likely kill her myself."

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At that moment, Oligog came through the door.

I sighed. "Please tell me you have some good news."

Oligog chuckled. "Actually I do... I've secured your first Gamemaster."

I did a double-take. "Wait what? I thought you were recruiting Champions."

Oligog nodded. "Indeed. I was in the middle of interviewing Hilrk when this weird thing holding a beer can walked in. He asks me if I'm 'in charge of the fun times', and tells me he wants to sign up... I think his name was Baroph or something like that."

I leaned back in my office chair-like thing. "Just him, or did more from his round volunteer?"

Oligog gave me a complicated expression. "He volunteered his friends, but he seemed like a bit of a deadbeat to me, so if they actually follow through is yet to be seen."

I laughed. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

Oligog looked at his tablet and then bowed. "It looks like it's time for my next meeting, I will see both of you later."

"Make sure to rest sometimes Oligog." I called after him as he left.

He turned his head. "Make sure to work sometimes Andrew."

I grinned.

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Grigory

The first thing I learned about my new mask was that I couldn't keep it on forever.

Having it on for more than ten minutes caused me to slowly become out of breath, worsening over time.

Luckily for me, we had bandages ready for when we got back to camp.

As I rested however, I found that I needed to put a bandage over my eyes to keep out debris.

I had never even considered the idea of my eyelids being eroded, so I had no idea if such an injury could heal, or how long it would theoretically take.

A few creatures looked as though they were going to invade our camp, but as soon as they were maybe thirty meters from us, I could see they were labeled as 'low threat', and they immediately ran away.

We finally had the peace necessary to finish some of our more pressing tasks for surviving in this place.

It certainly still isn't comfortable to sleep on rocks and eat food covered in dust, but we won't die anytime soon because of exhaustion or starving to death.

For the first time in a long time... I found myself smiling.

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Clarissa

I made a second breakthrough.

When I made the ball of gaseous iron, I can significantly reduce the size of the blast by changing the percentage of iron and replacing it with nitrogen, or some other similar gas-at-room-temperature thing.

But not oxygen, that doesn't help.

Almost burned off my eyebrows trying that one...

That said, the fuel-air-explosion variant was really helpful when random creatures started crawling through holes that showed up in the ground.

It doesn't happen often, but it startles me every time it does.

Speaking of discoveries though, I found out my Adjustment Point maximum went up by five hundred, and after I poked around in the menus for a while to figure out why, I also found something called 'Adjustment Burst'.

[Adjustment Burst]

[Triples your Adjustment Point maximum for thirty seconds, but causes you to only have half as many for three minutes afterward.]

Man I wish that it explained things like this to me beforehand! This could have been really useful!

I sighed as I continued walk.

Life would just do this to me wouldn't it?

Well, I'm not just going to roll over and let life do whatever it wants!

That's when I spotted him.

[Ghrush The Berserker]

Danger Level: Certain Death

I won't run away again.