“You know what, Caro? I might have my hockey-playing character homeschooled, and then have him take advantage of the love interest to have her cover for him for whatever his hockey schedule doesn’t allow him to do” Capitolium comments on the tension that would create.

“And don’t forget the abuse of AI! It gets abused in homeschooling!” Lagado comments on how Capitolium plans to go around his part in the project.

If I had my MMC abuse AI, then the FMC’s role would be much more limited, but she might still have a role in covering for his academic limitations nonetheless. This means more non-academic interactions for the two leads, Capitolium jots down notes about the impact of AI on his MMC.

Caro starts one last sprint for the night, 10 minutes as with all previous sprints, and her word count for the day, while not yet at 1667, is cutting it close. My wrists can’t take it much longer, getting to 1667 better be worth it! Just a few more minutes, and I can stop for the day.

Caro then edges closer to the end of the chapter, but with her wrists hurting her at every extra word appearing on the Google Docs page.

Sure, she might not need to win every sprint, but since she lost every sprint for the night, Caro grows more desperate to show her viewers that she hasn’t lost her touch. I can’t let my viewers down, and I won’t go down without a fight! She thinks, while her hurting hands are making her job harder.

Even more so now, she feels like her hands are hurting. She even shakes her hands off the keyboard in an attempt to numb the pain. Which are telltale signs to her viewers that maybe she’s trying too hard to remain on schedule for the daily par cheevo.

“Time is up!” Caro signals to the viewers taking part in this writing sprint. “You have two minutes to get your word counts up!”

Caroline’s word count for the sprint was a staggering 398 words for a mere 10 minutes of writing, and she sighs when she enters the final word count of the day into NaNo’s system. She sighs, seeing that said count is almost 2000 words for today.

“I don’t think I can sustain such rapid writing rates for prolonged periods. Do you all have any hints to ensure that I don’t wreck my wrists by the end of the month?” Caro asks, feeling like she might not want to push herself that hard going forward.

Man, Caro really is a tryhard! Sampoong muses, upon seeing how fast she could write when she feels the urgency. Like she feels that every single day brings in new challenges, and new word counts.

“The big problem is that inspiration doesn’t come as a steady stream, and you shouldn’t rely on sprints alone to get to the daily par you obsess over!” Capitolium deadpans her.

Now I think I have an idea: I might want to write a short story, also by November 30, about how some romance book lover uses a passion for romance books to become a couples therapist, Glitter is made to feel that, while the ship has sailed for NaNo, she might want to attempt something smaller. Especially after seeing Caro risk her wrists on air. I’m aware that something’s gotta give when one writes stories one-tenth the length of a NaNo.

But Glitter keeps thinking that she always seems to fall short of any of the dispatch objectives of the quests she sent her own characters on in the game. She then takes what characters she has left on open-world battles so she can make up for the shortfalls.

Once the dispatch quests are completed, and her battle pass objectives are now considered accomplished for the week, her mind returns to this short story idea. I always hear about how, even without debt, some people who graduated from college were disappointed by the post-graduation life. So I could always start the story with my lead feeling tired of working an unfulfilling job that she works just to pay the bills, despite picking the cheapest option for college. Not the sexiest thing in the world, but even an escape from an unfulfilling career would be something some people could relate to. And perhaps seeing in a graduate degree some sort of silver bullet, too…

And yet, on Friday, Caro returns from work, realizing that she will need more than just comfort food to get through the weekend. She goes out, yes, to buy some frozen pizza, but her memories of the wrist pain she endured last night lingers. By now, I must ensure that I will have enough Bengay, which we previously didn’t have at home, to last me until November 30, as well as coffee, since I know I will need both to see this challenge through.

She’s now at the shelf, where analgesic heat rubs are present: Capzasin, Bengay, and in different varieties. At this point, she takes out her cell phone to look up which one is most likely to relieve the kind of wrist pains she endured last night, and also the scent. However, she doesn’t make much of a deal of the scent of such, since she also realizes that she didn’t see any material changes in the writing based on how the room she wrote stuff in smelled. And yet, I don’t want to be reminded of my wrist pains in any shape or form if I needed to use heat rubs, so I’m going with the unscented Bengay, she thinks while putting some tub of unscented Bengay in the cart.

However, after putting in the Bengay in the cart, and the coffee, she knows that, if she is to buy some coffee enhancers, not only she feels, that as with the coffee, the total quantity must be sufficient to last the family until Nov 30, she must consider her parents’ tastes in such. She texts her dad:

Caroline: Je suis à l’épicerie, quelles saveurs de crème à café vous voulez? (I’m buying groceries, what flavors of coffee cream do you want?)

Caroline’s dad: Mocha menthe poivrée pour moi (Peppermint mocha for me)

One bottle of peppermint mocha for dad, another one of maple latte for mom, and Southern butter pecan for me, Caro grabs her 3 bottles of coffee enhancers but makes for the cashier immediately since the frozen pizza has a shelf life.

Upon returning home, she prepares her coffee, along with the frozen pizza, so that she gets ready to go write and eat on air. Which she does and, as per usual, she feels like, by day 8, she must brace herself for the road ahead.

“Welcome to tonight’s stream. Today’s daily battle pass quest will be over quickly, and once that ends, I will eat dinner on air. A little hasty, though, since I still have so many words left to write for the day” Caro starts the stream, as she starts playing the game.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Speaking of the daily quest, Sampoong has resumed playing that game for the first time in a few days, claims the daily login bonus before trying to complete the daily battle pass quest. And, of course, the beginner’s quest chain. Which, for him, means that he must complete chapter 3 of the main campaign, since he already cashes in the reward for the first sub-quest. But before then, he must set up stuff for which he asks for Caro’s help in voice chat:

“Before I can advance any further down chapter three of the main campaign, I would like to know how I can confer blessings on my characters or make them learn new skills” Sampoong asks about these things because he feels these are much faster to deal with than completing chapter 3 of the main campaign.

“What Sampoong is experiencing is one of the more confusing things new players often face in this game. What I encourage new players to do is to familiarize themselves with the game’s sub-menus. For blessings and skills, there’s the Upgrades button on the main menu, which brings up all the possible ways to upgrade characters”

I have the feeling that there will be more systems I need to familiarize myself with if I want to keep playing this game. Yes, a lot of Korean games are accused of system bloat, and now I have a better idea of why Caro so diligently sends her characters on quests: these systems’ benefits feed into each other! Sampoong starts realizing that maybe this game starts to get more tedious than he would like.

Luckily for him, some buttons are grayed out, which make it easier for him to locate what he needs to do for the quest. And read all the new skills he has access to with his chosen character’s knowledge budget.

Speaking of which, Sampoong looks up a guide on the game’s knowledge mechanic. Units gain knowledge by performing actions in battle, as well as sending them on quests, he keeps reading about how fast each method yields knowledge, but the warning at the very top of that chart tells him that using experience crystals on units will not make them gain any knowledge.

“Oh, the guide for this game’s knowledge mechanic told me about experience crystals. Are there times where it’s more advantageous to use them?” Sampoong then has one of his primary units learn a passive inspiration ability providing additional attack and defense to the player’s units up to 2 tiles away.

“The only time I’d recommend using xp crystals is when you’re within ten percent of a level up” Caroline advises Sampoong while he’s looking at the experience crystals menu.

Good, I earned over 8,000 crystals and I wonder how fast I’ll drain my budget, he muses as he checks against his characters’ leveling status, while Caro finishes up playing the daily battle pass quest. He ends up spending 599 crystals to round up his characters’ levels. And it is then that he resumes his road towards Ch3 of the main campaign.

When Caro is done with the daily battle pass quest, she checks on the frozen pizza and then brews her coffee, as well as take the tub of odorless Bengay with her. Once the food is ready for her to take to her room:

“For those watching tonight, and also take part in NaNo or any of its alternates, I strongly advise you to have analgesic heat rubs, such as Bengay, on hand, especially if you feel regular sprinting is the way to go for you to get to the daily word count target” Caro explains to her as she starts eating the frozen pizza.

“This reminds me: I exhausted the last of my Bengay last night, I need to get a new tub of it before I resume writing The Penalty Box of Passion!” Capitolium then storms off to the nearest pharmacy store to get one, along with other medical supplies.

“And here’s the first sprint of the night: unlike previous sprints, here there is a word target to reach within the next fifteen minutes: write two percent of your current word count. However, when reporting the result, please do so as a percentage of the old word count, and a shout-out will be given to the one with the highest percentage” Caro announces to her viewers.

For Caro, this means she must write 348 words for this sprint to be considered done, since she managed to sneak in a few hundred words during both lunch and bathroom breaks. As she starts writing this scene about how Gustavs asks for Emma’s future schedule, Capitolium left the voice chat.

Caro is about to discover why November is the month where I use Bengay the most. She already had a taste of it last night, Capitolium muses as he goes to the pharmacy store at which he has a loyalty card to buy a Bengay tub. He knows that time is short, however, as he is also falling behind the pace required to get to the daily par.

At the same time, Glitter is struggling to think of where to set her own short story even as she starts writing it on her very own Google Doc. What she could write, on the other hand, revolves around her protagonist’s passion for romance books, along with feeling like her job is a dead-end one.

Back in Charlesbourg, Caro continues to write about how Gustavs takes an opportunity to talk about limits to any future interactions after they exchange each other’s schedules. In French. However, driven by a fear of missing the daily target, she writes even faster than last night, but, in turn, starts getting cramps in her hand because of the high writing speeds she’s been writing at. One more word… stay on target! she starts thinking while the pain in her wrists begins to mount and more limits seem to come out. Do these limits sound like someone who is not ready for a romantic relationship?

The timer rings, and Capitolium barely makes it back to his home, with a tub of Bengay on hand. He returns to the VC and his book, while he sees Glitter, of all people, post a word count in the chat.

“Woah, Glitter, what made you decide to enter NaNo eight days after it began?” a surprised Caro asks Glitter, who enters the VC as the others post their word counts for the night’s first sprint. Caro also shakes her hands in an attempt to relieve the pain.

“I watched you struggle doing NaNo on previous streams, so I believe NaNo isn’t for me. So I believe a short story might be more appropriate” Glitter explains herself.

It’s then that Caro sees fit to open the tub of Bengay and apply it on her hands and wrists in pain. Directly in front of the camera so her viewers can see it. And, after that, drink some of her coffee.

Once she is done applying the hot rub on her hands, she announces the winner of that sprint. Even though Glitter started from scratch, and hence deriving any percentage would mean dividing by zero, she deserves it because Glitter managed to write even more than I did, coming in at 590 words to mine’s 589. The third viewer in the sprint didn’t write 589 words, nor did they write 3% of their previous word count.

“Glitter, you won this sprint!” Caro exclaims.

“You’re talking about boundary setting. I hope one of these gets broken, but in such a way that hockey could be blamed!” Glitter comments, while beaming, upon seeing the dilution of hockey content in Player Masher.

Capitolium, once the second sprint starts for the night, starts feeling the pressure to get as many words as he could get. His hands start sweating, as he feels, like Caro, the need to get to the daily par and hence keep his hopes for the 100% alive for this year. I won’t let Glitter steal my thunder this time around!

All four viewers approach this second sprint, which is more “regular” than the first one, as a race to get the most words out in a 10-minute span. However, Glitter is left wondering what academic background she wants her lead to have, as well as what marriage and family therapy programs she could target.

Which causes her to stop dead in her tracks about 200 words into the sprint, and about 3 minutes remaining. Even writing anything remotely resembling a short story isn’t as straightforward as I initially believed! Thank God for this writer’s block! My wrists would hurt more if I didn’t!

And yet, Glitter’s comments about her expectations for Player Masher gives Caro pause. The book Glitter recommended to me weeks ago made me feel like setting boundaries early in their budding relationship is a warning sign of controlling behavior, but wanting hockey to take the fall for breaching one seems like Glitter has yet to fully appreciate what I could bring to the table, the streamer muses, while, as Capitolium, she feels the clock ticking in on her to write the 1667 words for the day. While also remaining mindful of not hurting her wrists.