It was quite a strange sight, the avatars Luon friends are using were more different than what Luon could have possibly imagined.
To suit his tastes Gizmo’s avatar was a female beauty wearing a long robe that cultivators and martial artists use. Her fingers were as delicate as jade which made Luon think, ‘how could he possibly play with such a delicate character.’
What surprised Luon, even more, was Tyron and Bendan's avatar choices. Luon thought the muscle-brain Bendan would be the colossal barbarian, but instead, he was playing the other female avatar. With a sporty feel to it, the character he played seemed like your everyday athletic female. According to Bendan he always wanted to enjoy the feeling of having a soft and delicate body compared to his muscular and robust everyday one.
Tyron, on the other hand, played the huge barbarian character was because he always wanted to stand out, but with his families code of conduct, he was still a silent character.
Looking at himself Luon noticed one even more significant fact other than an aesthetic change.
“Hey. How come you guys are already armed? The match hasn’t started yet, and you’re already equipped with some really nice things while I have nothing.” Luon asked.
Gizmo took a look at Luon’s equipment only to find that Luon just had the default set up. Gizmo than began to explain the preparations stages more to Luon.
According to Gizmo before any player versus player match begins, not only can teams can have up to 1 Commander and 4 Soldiers, but they can all be armed with the equipment they have offline with a total of 10 different items.
Soldiers and Commander are like the player version of heroic units so it made some sense that they should be armed the same.
To equip any items before that match, one would first have to go to the scanning terminal found in a separate part of Varz and arrange it so the system can create a digitized version of the equipment which is sent into the inventory slot when they go online.
Luon after hearing so wanted to equip some nice things as well, but then recalled that right now he doesn’t have anything important to use for the matches. He had just lost his only sword a few moments earlier.
After the explanation on the equip system Gizmo began to arrange the match set up.
“Okay, so we will be doing a 2v2 practice skirmish to test out Luon’s skills as a commander before our commander class tomorrow. I’ve already tested Bendan and Tyron and in no way can they be commanders.” Gizmo said staring at Luon.
From Luon’s perspective, someone like Tyron couldn’t be a commander due to lack of conversing ability, but he thought why would Bendan not be a good a candidate to be a commander? He was strong, and he perfectly knows the flow of the battle so he might be an amazing one.
Gizmo continued to explain the arrangements, “So the match set up would be on a common forest for my half, you should also do the same for yours for practice since you don’t understand the tactics behind setting up your own landscapes yet. The match would be me and Tyron versus Luon and Bendan. If you have any questions on how to use the commander perks while in game ask Bendan when you need to.”
With those words, Gizmo walked to one side of the lobby to arrange the tactics for his team while Luon received a lecture on the basic settings for a match.
Before a match begins, each team gets a total of 5 slots where they can decide to rearrange themselves in. Anyone can be the commander or a soldier there are no restrictions in between. After they are set and are ready for the match, the commander is then prompted to select the type for their half of the map. Some races prefer a certain terrain type to boost and debuff the fighting capabilities of their combatants.
For example, people from the Sea Kingdom would arrange their half of the map to be filled with water while the beast clans from fantasy systems prefer to use forests. After that was organized, the map is generated with half being one type and the other half the other.
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Of course, before having matches commanders can create their own preset maps to play on, according to Bendan there were quite a few teams which just made a single pathway on their maps and surrounding that was massive cliffs creating a ravine of death. Having terrain advantages was quite an important point for commanders after all.
Luon hasn’t created any map presets yet so he could only select the basic forest one with Bendan’s advice.
After the two were ready, Tyron and Gizmo were also ready, and the match began to countdown.
While Luon was waiting for the match to start, he asked Bendan why Gizmo thought he wasn’t suited to be a commander.
“It’s a little embarrassing to say, but every time I play commander I lose myself a bit. I get mad when a single qi cultivator I summoned from the Crypt of Heroes can’t fight an army of men by themselves, or I would be too absorbed with one portion of the map not realize that a group of enemies already be attacking the base.” Bendan who was playing with a female character shyly said.
Luon was speechless, he didn’t know if he should feel awkward for Bendan for being a muscle-headed commander or the fact that he’s not used to Bendan playing as a girl.
Before he could get used to it, the match began, and Luon’s surroundings digitized into a forest.
In front of Luon was the same table that he saw Belle operate when she first introduces the commanding system.
Covered in the fog he can only see a slight but black and gray outline of his half of the map, the other side was completely pitch black.
“As you may already know vision in this type of game is really important, even though half the map is something you may have possibly arrange all you get to see is the outline of the area. To make it more interesting, fog still covers it, and unless a unit reaches that area sharing his field of vision, it will still be registered as fog.” Bendan with his calm and soothing voice instruct Luon.
Bendan also began to teach Luon about the unit and items catalog which when Luon pulled it up it had a huge list of things he could possibly summon. From weapons to people there was an overwhelmingly large list with many different point values, one of the lowest among these values were normal humans.
Apparently, regular humans without combat training aka citizens or ordinary workers are one of the weakest things around. They could think for themselves, but since the AI factors in personality and other features, they get scared when fighting orcs who overwhelm them in strength and they aren’t as fast as elves making them useless. They could still do some simple construction though making them basic worker units.
With Bendan’s advice, Luon summoned a few drones to investigate and increase the fog of war on his side of the map, and then he summoned a falcon to scout the Gizmo’s arrangement out.
From what Bendan told him Gizmo likes big and robust units as well as beautiful and elegant units so he would most likely be playing with Orcs and Elves.
After a few moments of scouting Luon fog of war on his side of the map was uncovered, clear without a single blemish.
The Falcon at the same time found that Gizmo did not summon any scouts at all his forest arrangement was very similar to Luon and by the time the falcon found anything of Gizmo it was shot down.
From the last recording, it seemed that Gizmo was already building an army of Elven archers and he sat there admiring their beauty. The scene where a female cultivator staring intently at the Elven archers was displayed before them.
“So he didn’t send any units to scout? At least now we know he has elven archers.” Luon pointed out.
Bendan who saw the scene said. “He would more than likely push out with elven archers instead of using those cheap drones to scout like you did, elves have a better range of vision, and they can shoot down basic scouts. The only downside is that they are 5 times more costly than normal humans and having an army of fragile, quick archers that can be overwhelmed by an ogre and other large monstrosities.”
Luon slowly began to think what would his next move be. At this point, it sounds quite reasonable to summon a big monster, but Gizmo would probably have predicted that and is preparing to summon a counter for it.
He started to skim through the catalog and noticed that not only can he summon monsters, beast, many different humanoid races, and dragons, he was also able to recruit Inzektors.
There were many different Inzektors found on the list, many of which he had never seen before. The only time Luon had contact with them was during the first simulation, and his other ones never experienced them.
Luon realizes that with the number of different units that the tactics to use or counter them had millions of possibilities and with these thoughts, Luon smiled.
A game like this was interesting, and he began to operate the catalog to summon units and equipment.
Bendan who was right behind was surprised at his choice. A few minutes earlier he was explaining all kinds of tactics that other teams use, he said what was weak and what was strong, but none of these words mattered to Luon.
Was he deaf? Or ignorant? Bendan couldn’t figure it out as none of his words in regards to tactics entered Luon’s ears.
Bendan wondered what kind of thought process Luon had to come the conclusion to use this type of unit.