You have been frightened! All stats reduced by 5%!

You have been frightened! All stats reduced by 10%!

Arthur opened his eyes and they were glowing white.

‘I don’t get it…’ Weed thought as his stats were worsened by the fright effect. ‘Will this be the last battle?’ Weed was uncertain about it himself. There could be a hundred other possibilities. Part of pro-gaming was understanding how the game was developed. Elementarem Vim announced that each NPC was artificially intelligent to a degree. The next question that needed to be answered was were they trigger dependent? Triggered scenario’s are ones where nothing of significance happens in the game till the player intervenes and conducts an action as planned. Royal Road was a mix of trigger based game with NPC’s having a varied amount of intellect. There is no one specific action which the player needs to perform; depending upon the programmer there could be several options. Hence, understanding the game dyanmics makes it easier to solve stalled situations…in this case Weed was certain that there was something he needed to do to move to the next event or these two would fight each other till death (which was the least wanted scenario as hinted from the stalling).

‘But what is it that I am supposed to do…’ Weed was certain that there was no clue or hint that he had missed. He analyzed and reanalyzed his memories several times over but came up with nothing. Weed was completely stumped…Weed’s reasoning guided him into believing there was something that he should be doing at this moment but the circumstances indicated otherwise.

Richard and Arthur were exchanging fist blows all over again. It was the same attack pattern but the difference was perceptible; Arthur being the faster and stronger one. For every one punch that Richard managed to land on Arthur, Arthur hit Richard twenty five times. Weed looked around for anything that he could use but all the weapons and debris that lay around him had been reduced to low durability. Wind element had that effect on it’s surrounding; it wore out the durability of objects in the vicinity. The summary being; Weed knew that even if he picked up a sword and lashed at it against Arthur it would crumble into dust.

Arthur grabbed Richard’s hair and smashed him face into the ground. Richard was injured; his nose was leaking like a faucet with blood pouring out (luckily because of the in game age setting’s the video feed was edited for Weed to more a subtle tone). Time was running out…Weed knew he had to do something…anything to buy even a moment’s worth of distraction to give Richard an edge... Arthur was too strong and he carried an eerie feeling attached to him… it wasn’t an exaggeration to say Arthur began resembling a wrestler on steroids. His muscles were bulging out; ripping through his clothes and his pupils were no longer visible (the white light effect from the eyes had considerably diminished)…

Weed stopped viewing the fight and began looking around. ‘There must be a trigger item somewhere here…if I seen haven’t it then it only means I haven’t looked for it hard enough…’ Although Weed began looking for the trigger item desperately he secretly and maybe unconsciously also wished that he didn’t find any such item…trigger based games were one of the easier games to solve….if there was a trigger involved it meant that there was a predetermined story line for players. No player liked games where the plot was pre-decided. A trigger took away the power of free will from players.

After searching frantically all over the place, Weed finally found a carton of fireworks lying in the corner of the field. Weed smiled as he opened the wooden box to find it filled to the brim with rockets. Weed was happy for more than just finding the fireworks, he was also happy that this wasn’t a trigger item. How did Weed know for sure this wasn’t a trigger item? Weed knew it because he had requested for fireworks before the ceremony began. Weed reasoned that it was humanly impossible to know that whether a player would order fireworks or not. So the fact that he ordered fireworks and they happened to be lying here was just coincidence…Weed stopped for a second… ‘I sound like an idiot…’ Weed bit his lips as he held the lid open, this was no coincidence…his foe was formidable it was Lee Hyun. Weed was convinced that Lee Hyun may have anticipated players ordering fireworks and thus this box came to be where it was…

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There was a grim look in Weed’s eyes; the enemy was not Shadow or Arthur or some other player it was and always had been Lee Hyun. ‘So I am still dancing to the tunes of your finger like puppet…’ Weed thought as he looked at the box of fireworks. Most players would have rushed forward and aimed the rocket at Arthur. However, that would be the case of most players. This was Lee Jun’s Weed and he needed to imagine carefully the possibilities that arose from each and every action that he made. Weed had experienced this first hand in Elementarem Vim; when he began playing this game initially he made a “few” choices which would not be considered by a “some individuals” as the “best of choices”…the concluding result of those choices was his Dark Attribute and unique missions. ‘This game is alive…’ Weed thought as he closed the lid back of the box. ‘It reacts to everything everyone is doing…’ Although all VR games are such where player actions determine the next course of actions Weed felt this was different. Once again, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it but he knew that this was different…all though he couldn’t exactly put it into words Weed had always felt this game was bent towards making it harder for him to progress. His views weren’t his own; nearly all players felt that in Elementarem Vim however the subtly of the gaming dynamics camouflaged the more sinister plot in background.

Weed looked around and noticed a drain pipe dangling from the roof; it once served to drain rain water from the roof than letting it drip down from the tiles. It was slightly crooked from all the high speed winds that were blowing but that did not deter Weed.

‘I may not be able to completely change the course of predestined game but surely I can alter it.’ Weed thought as he picked up a worn out lance and began hitting it against the dangling pipe. It took a little effort but the drain pipe’s guard broke loose and fell to the ground just before the durability of the lance fell to one. Weed smiled at least good fortune was still with him…the drain pipe was now within his reach to grab and pull. Weed did just that, he pulled the pipe with all his strength and ripped off the entire length that was attached to the roof.

Weed quickly gathered the pipe guards which broke loose and fell to the ground. ‘I need to do this quickly’ Weed thought as he took out his carving knife and began cutting the pipe into smaller sections. As the durability of the objects around him was quite low Weed found no problems using his knife to cut metal pipes. Once he finished cutting the pipe into eight sections Weed quickly opened the crate of fireworks and began unloading the fireworks carefully. He gathered up a tattered cloth which once served as a curtain decoration for the party and began piling all the fireworks on it. ‘Well Mr. Arthur…no Lee Hyun…you may have thought everything will go according to your plan but you didn’t think this far ahead did you…’ Weed gave off a dark laugh as he held up his carving knife like a mad surgeon…