On Friday morning, Karine is once again visited by yet more astral projections. On top of her own characters, she’s also visited by Béteulle, whose beacon has been removed, as well as Caroline’s characters, but also two more characters of players she never played with. Her bedroom feels a little cramped for this many people around her bed.
“What did I do to be visited by characters of players I never played with?” a confused Karine asks the group of astral projections. “I might have accepted that you’re all controlled, or used to be, by players in our world…”
“Your last stream showed why. Caro doesn’t stream” Monseigneur explains to her player.
“Let me get this straight. Because of my notoriety as a streamer among the MAA community, you saw fit to think of me as a soundboard for your world’s cries for freedom!” Karine lashes out at her character.
“I’m Yasama. My player doesn’t stream, and hence has no visibility outside Japan. You know Japan holds next to no weight in the MAA community because it’s a PC game without console ports, even with the latest RWF!” Yasama tells her.
Kataparuto’s surprise third place in Operation Heathrow made it easy for MAA players to forget about how console-centric the Japanese gaming world is, Karine, triggered by Yasama’s statements, keeps to herself.
“I’m Jutudiel. My player contacted you about how she suspected for years that players were controlling real people in our world before that stream!”
“Adèle. If I recall correctly, she claims that only the closure of the game would grant your world freedom. What does freedom mean to you all?” Karine asks the characters.
“You already have a glimpse of my answer. We would carry on our world’s affairs according to what’s in our best interests, without your world’s interests getting in our way” Clavet answers her player, in the presence of other characters.
“Even now, the manufacturer is planning on adding more dungeons to the game, as well as making Hell itself accessible for open-world questing” Karine retorts.
“That’s exactly what I mean. Even Hell is not immune to NIMBY. The damned don’t seem to be looking at living adventurers killing them for the entertainment of your world as release; rather, they feel like the construction of haunted parks on their land adds to their torment” Clavet explains.
“Even when the ghosts in these haunted parks stay in the park?” Caroline’s skirmisher asks. “Is it about noise, blood or some other by-product of the violence taking place in the haunted parks?”
I can already feel like their world’s residents will demand the outlawing of haunted parks and that of angelic beacons as a precondition to any peace treaty with ours, if such a peace treaty holds any real value on ours, Karine seems to have a flash of insight.
“You seem to ignore that the atrocities committed by Perseria began with protests due to ghosts using the city’s residents as meatshields in Lower Perseria! People clamored for both better regulation of the haunted parks in Perserian territory, as well as bringing me to justice!” Monseigneur deadpans Caroline’s skirmisher, who, apparently, didn’t follow the world’s news.
“Yeah, the Perseria city council used the ghosts in both haunted parks of the city to frighten the population!” Béteulle seems to somehow recollect his most recent experiences in the Perseria dungeons. “They’re using the haunted parks for evil!”
“Speaking of haunted parks, the rumor is that Pandemonium authorized the construction of a haunted park at the Gates of Tartarus!” Clavet tells the latest developments in Hell, before her astral projection disappears from Karine’s view.
“I beg you: stream! I will arrange for Adèle to go play with you on a stream, and into the First Circle of Hell if possible!” Jutudiel starts crying, in hopes of getting Karine to stream.
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Meanwhile, in the game world, Clavet struggles to process the development around the Gates of Tartarus. Did the Pandemonians feel like the best defense of the First Circle is to refit the Gates of Tartarus into a haunted park? This means we must capture the Gates before the construction of the haunted park is over! Completion of the park will force any attacker to build either a bridge or a fleet of barges to cross the Acheron River!
She then assembles the rebel cell for another meeting about the Gates of Tartarus, with a variety of new recruits with dormant or freshly removed angelic beacons.
“What information we received about the Gates of Tartarus is gravely disturbing. The Pandemonians plan on refitting the Gates of Tartarus to house a haunted park! Our best chance at capturing the Gates lie in attacking while the haunted park is still unfinished!” Clavet announces to her fellow rebels.
“But do we have any idea of how strong the defenses of the working site are?” Yasama asks her, wondering what plans she have to deal with the Gates’ garrison.
“I assume most of the original garrison is going to be assigned to building the ornaments of the haunted park” the other female alcohol witch comments on the garrison.
Often, from what I saw in haunted parks, their builders or operators tended to enter an arms race of who can build either the most magnificent or terrifying one, architecturally speaking, Béteulle reflects on his experience of dungeon crawling. At least in the olden days.
“I’d say, we attack them when they show signs of sleep deprivation! We’re going to cast a cloud of alcohol over the Gates and these intoxicated demons will then become vulnerable” Clavet explains to them.
“There’s the rabble and there’s Charon, you probably know about the pier where his barge is moored” Monseigneur comments on the main component that’s missing.
The rebels fine-tune their plans with decision trees, based on how the alcohol cloud phase goes. However, they are left in the dark about the actions of other rebel cells.
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In Adèle’s home, however, when she gets a chance, Jutudiel appears to Adèle as an astral projection, imploring to find time for her to play with Karine and whoever else could be willing to brave the untested content.
“Here’s your chance to play with Karine and, hopefully, have a sneak peek at any of the First Circle of Hell content beyond the trash in the Gehenna Grand Library” Jutudiel pleads with Adèle to have her play on air. “I feel like our cries for freedom would be more effective if we cause game-breaking bugs on air”
“I accept to do so only if you position yourself around the Gates of Tartarus before I log in” Adèle asks her thief to get into a specific position.
“Our best bet is, as you said, the Gates of Tartarus. We must stop the haunted park from being completed!”
While Adèle logs into the game, Jutudiel's projection disappears and gets into position in the game world, hoping to exploit the glitch that sometimes make players not log onto their characters where they left them off.
A few minutes later, Karine opens her stream. After I made public that players were exploiting the residents of MAA’s world, I am locked into a PR tug-of-war against the manufacturer. What the manufacturer has yet to realize is that what they call unfixable bugs actually have nothing to do with the source code, Karine ruminates and goes into the stream with a heavy heart.
When Karine decides to log on the same character she first went into the First Circle of Hell with, she finds her character surrounded by other rebels, including Béteulle, Yasama and a few more characters not in active gameplay, as well as some NPCs, fighting drunken, sleep-deprived demons, in an overcast area around the Gates of Tartarus, on the Hell side.
“What’s happening?” a viewer asks her on the stream chat.
“I find my character, once again, in an area that’s supposed to be off-limits to players!” Karine answers her followers.
She then checks for names of characters around hers, to confirm that they actually exist in the game servers, while demons, under the alcohol clouds, seem to fight indiscriminately. Other than Béteulle, whose account was deleted last night, all other named rebels are in the manufacturer’s database of accounts.
“But, this time around, I find characters that are currently offline! That’s even worse than just accessing areas that were supposed to be off-limits to players!” Karine screams on air, while showing the battle unfolding.
“Normally, offline characters shouldn’t be visible in-game!” another viewer points out.
And it’s then that Adèle, on the other side of the Acheron River, invites Karine to her party. Which she promptly accepts. But Adèle asks in the in-game party chat about whether they know anyone who can tank or DPS.
“Caro, surely you can tank a new dungeon” Karine asks her in guild chat, while she asks her stream chat for 2 DPS.
Karine then prays that the two DPS she will then get are any good, and likewise with Adèle as a thief player. There’s more to playing thief than putting stolen medicine on people! The last thief I ran dungeons with from the viewers just put stolen medicine on people! However, what would inflicting more pain on our characters achieve? In their world, anyhow.
It proves very quick for Karine to get the two DPS from the stream chat and then Adèle summons the party to the living’s side of the Gates of Tartarus, using a portal stone. Because Adèle feels confident in her medical in-game skill, and in Caroline’s tanking skill, she decides to enter the haunted park construction site in fatal mode.
When the fight starts, Caroline’s defender holds Charon while demon adds inflict a variety of torments. Such as delayed hellfire in an expanding yellow circle underneath the target. However, the tormentors go at it wildly and indiscriminately. The audience see demons acting rashly and lacking coordination, while alcohol starts raining out of a red cloud. Which makes everyone hit their cleansing abilities when they get the drunk status effect.
“Why is there a red alcohol cloud over the unfinished Gates?” An employee of the manufacturer asks Karine on the stream chat. “The clouds aren’t supposed to be red, nor should they intoxicate indiscriminately!”
Normally, player-cast alcohol clouds aren’t red, and don’t intoxicate indiscriminately, the manufacturer’s employee seems to think about the bugs of the first phase, while realizing the sleep-deprived demon adds are much weaker than intended.
“Did anyone notice how... sleep-deprived the adds were?” Adèle asks her teammates.
“They seemed to fall over, yes” Caroline answers while the second phase is about to start as they board the boss’ barge, under the written yells of the manufacturer’s staff.
As they depart the pier where Charon moors his barge, the party can’t help but notice that demon corpses are being thrown into the river, some of them hitting players by accident, others hit the boss. Others still splash in such ways that they rock the barge. The manufacturer’s staff fails to realize that those responsible for throwing demon corpses did so on their own accord and call these mere bugs.
This causes Jutudiel to catalyze the stolen medicine on Caro’s tank because of the hits taken. And immediately uses the transfusion (the thief’s AoE burst heal) since using the catalyst beforehand makes the next transfusion 50% stronger, or the next injection (the thief’s single-target burst heal) twice as strong. And this leads into using perfusion once the team is stacked on the boss. I wonder what experience of high-end content Adèle has on a thief.
But then the barge’s hull starts leaking and the race is on to kill Charon’s ghost before the barge sinks.
“Caro! Lower the anchor!” Karine yells at Caro on voice.
While the 3 DPS keep attacking and dodging the various attacks from both the boss and the tormentors, Caro’s tank turns the capstan so the barge’s storm anchor can be lowered. And, as the barge starts burning under hellfire, they feel the need to tread lightly. If the hellfire is supposed to be in the fight, then yes, we know phase 2 is a DPS check, Karine keeps thinking while Charon bleeds from wounds inflicted by the players with physical attacks.
“Why is it that bugs keep cropping up? Why is it that you keep going into the First Circle of Hell when it’s supposed to be off-limits to players?” the manufacturer’s staffer asks her on the stream chat, as Charon dies, and Monseigneur appears to Karine.
“The time has come to accept there will be no fix for the lengthening list of bugs, unless our world is free from your world’s interference!” Monseigneur preaches to the stream’s viewers.
“What is the meaning of this, Karine? It was already bad enough when the manufacturer was accused of exploiting the game world’s residents, and now you claim the bugs are actually pressure tactics on their part?” Caroline starts fuming at her GM.
“It began when I streamed yesterday to determine whether I was hallucinating. I didn’t expect to become the representative of their world on ours!” Karine retorts at her tank.
“I don’t want to keep playing with someone who uses a stream to sabotage the game from within!” Caroline, her blood boiling, lashes at Karine. “Not only that, but I was feeling used! You used to treat me with respect, and you believed I was good enough to tank a brand-new fight! By tanking Charon, you dragged me into your personal tug-of-war against the manufacturer! I’m leaving the Death Fiscalists!”
“This tug-of-war against the manufacturer isn’t personal; the world’s fate is in the manufacturer’s hands!” Karine yells at Caro.
When Caroline announces her departure from the Death Fiscalists, most of the remaining players with whom she won the RWF on Operation Heathrow also leave the guild, leaving Karine behind. I wish things could have been different, but the last two days ruined my vacation. Ever since I played MAA, I planned my vacations around races to world first. I was eager to represent my country on the world e-sports stage, and this game gave me an opportunity I couldn’t have otherwise, since I hated the toxicity of PvP. Right now, everyone playing the game talks about the accusations against the manufacturer, and Karine is putting oil on the fire, Caroline starts crying.