A rusted iron door screeched open in front of Max, causing his ears to cry in protest. As if in response to this, the guard grabbed his ear and dragged him through the doorway while chuckling.
“Heh. You know, even the drunkards at the tavern have more believable stories. A level 8 fighting off two trained level 50 assassins from the Thieves Guild... to save an elf girl? Hahahaha.”
Without warning, Max was pushed from behind, sending him stumbling into a dark room. A metallic clang resounded behind him.
*Cough* Max coughed as a plume of dust rose from the floor. “Sir, there had to be over a hundred witnesses; I’m really telling the truth here.”
“And I’m also a dragonslayer.” The guard didn’t believe him. “Here, come over to the bars.”
...Although his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the low light yet, Max decided to just do as he was told and followed the voice. When he reached what felt like metal bars, a hand tightly gripped his arm, followed by a tinny clicking sound. Shortly after, his wrists came loose as the guard unshackled him.
“You’ll be staying here until you feel like telling the truth. Don’t worry, we have plenty of spare cells here, so you won’t need to worry about giving up your room.”
“Wonderful...” Max responded.
After a jangling sound, the guard retraced his steps back to the iron door, dragging it closed after him with another painful screech.
“...”
Max felt incredibly wronged at this moment.
Ring! Ring!
He didn’t even look at the caller and just pressed ‘accept’.
“Gun! What happened? I came back and you– no, everyone was gone! My chat says you got arrested??”
“I was arrested for fighting some assassins.”
“Huh? Assassins? Dude, I left for like 2 minutes.”
“They were very fast assassins.”
“...Right. Well, what should I do now? There were a bunch of city guards in the bazaar, so I snuck away. You didn’t commit any crimes, right? Have you been released?”
“No, no crimes but I’m in a cell anyways.” The interface lit the room up enough for him to see a patch of mould growing along the side wall. “A very smelly cell at that. Musty...”
“Why weren’t you released?”
“The guy thinks I’m lying.” Max looked at the other wall and found that the mould was even more pronounced, reaching the ceiling. “He’ll probably release me after he questions more people...”
“But you could miss the meeting by then! Is there anything I can do?”
“To get me out?” Max thought for a moment. “...Actually, there is. Parker should be at the royal barracks. If you tell her I’m here, she might have a way... connections or whatnot.”
“Alright, I’ll try to find her. Hang tight!” Beep.
Lemonade ended the call.
‘Hm? He hung up?’ Max expected to be badgered for details, but he terminated the call suddenly. ‘Mm... reminds me a lot of-’
Ring! Ring!
The caller was Rone.
‘Think of the devil.’
Max picked up the call and instantly heard suppressed sniggering on the other end. “S-so uh...” Rone’s voice transmitted through, “how’s it going? I thought you would be grinding levels, but it seems like you’re taking a-rest now?”
“...”
“Why aren’t you saying anything? You can always confide in-mates.”
“Stop.”
“Why? Are you in a bad mood? You succeeded in that mission, so it should be time to cell-ebrate.”
That was true actually. Horrible jail puns aside, he received a mission to save that elf girl, and he’d at least succeeded in doing that. He brought up the description to take a look:
Proximity Mission: Save the Girl
Difficulty: Very Hard
Description: An elven child is running away from murderous assassins nearby. Protect her!
Milestone 1: Keep the girl alive until she leaves combat state (Complete)
Reward (Contribution-Split): 2000 gold. Greatly increases favour with NPC ‘Velia’.
Mission has been fully completed. Claim rewards? Y/N
Max pressed ‘yes’ and claimed the rewards. Was the little girl’s name ‘Velia’? He had no idea, but it was unlikely that he would ever meet her again, so it didn’t really matter much.
This was his first ever ‘proximity’ mission. There were two mission types in the game: ‘assigned’ and ‘proximity’. While an assigned mission would be given to players by an NPC or other in-game character, ‘proximity’ missions were given by the game’s AI, usually to respond to emergency events nearby. According to game lore, proximity missions were assigned by the Goddess of Life herself, Lucia, who watched over her subjects from an unknown place and set incentives for players to aid them through the interface.
“-x? Maaaxxxx? Are you ignoring me? Well, that’s rude.”
“Hm, how strange. I could’ve sworn I heard a voice just now.”
“Don’t ghost your editor!” Rone harrumphed. “You should be thanking me, since I’m the reason you’ve-...” he trailed off.
“I’ve what?”
“...Nothing; you can find out for yourself. You should at least finish your own sentence first.”
“Huh? I wasn’t talking though?”
“Not that kind of sentence.”
“What? ...Oh.”
“Hahaha!!” Beep.
Rone hung up.
“...” Max struck the cell gate with his fist, making it shake and rattle. “I hate him so much.”
Ding!
[Cyclone_Rone: btw, I enabled donations on the stream, so you can shamelessly beg viewers for money now]
Max’s eyebrows raised at the message. He’d only given Rone administrative permissions to his DiveLive stream this morning, but he’d already set up a donation account. ‘Diligent!’
Rone’s account went offline, indicating that he wasn’t planning on doing any gaming. Max was left without much to do, so he decided to just read his stream chat.
—That cell has nearly as much mould as my rental
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
—They couldn’t even give him a window? Poor Gun
—I feel claustrophobic
—ESCAPE! ESCAPE! ESCAPE!
—Those puns made me break-out laughing...
—Do not fret Gun, the Lemon will save you <3
—This is some thrilling gameplay
—Prison stream lets goooo
It was all just a bunch of nonsense. However, what was surprising...
[Current Viewers: 837]
Eight hundred and thirty-seven people were watching him languish in a dark cell and hadn’t left the stream yet. He needed to entertain them somehow...
“Let’s look at the forums.”
Max decided to finally check out the game forums. He’d looked at them once previously to see how people went on the archery class test, but he hadn’t yet looked at any of the trending topics. It was about time he did, as he needed to stop always relying on Rone for information.
Trending:
1. Virtek holds press conference; apologizes and announces compensation for the registration lockout bug...
2. Not sure what class to choose? We ranked them from best to worst:
3. Guide to skills and subclasses – Don’t see yours? Add it below!
4. Congratulations to this archer player for the fastest starter dungeon speedrun!
5. List of titles, their effects and how to acquire them:
6. Which mage element is the strongest? In-depth breakdown:
7. Virtek Executive flustered upon learning only 2% of players are archers (Funny lol)
8. Anyone else notice the NPCs are way too realistic? It’s kinda scary...
9. Here’s why you can’t change your body shape/size in character customisation:
10. Plea to devs: Fix the archer class test!!
Max scanned through the forum posts with wide eyes – there was a lot of good information here! He was interested in nearly all of these topics.
One post in particular stuck out to Max: ‘Only 2% of players are archers? Crazy!’
There were only 5 classes in the game, so each class would average 20% of the playerbase. 2% was a whopping ten times below that average.
‘I knew that people struggled, but to think it was this badly...’ Max attributed this to the difficulty of the class test, which was unfriendly to people who had never practiced archery before. His theory was supported by the plea three posts down, which petitioned devs to make the test more manageable.
The other main post to catch his interest was a congratulatory post uploaded by Virtek themselves, praising an archer player for achieving the fastest speedrun of the starter dungeon. Max had very little knowledge of who the top archer players were, both in the real world, and in dive, so he was very curious to see who his competition was. He opened the post.
“...IT’S ME?!?!” Max’s pupils quaked.
The post contained a link to the video Rone had made:
[ Gun’s Starter Dungeon Speedrun - 2:47 (Current World Record) ]
Opening the video, Max’s eyes nearly rolled back into his head.
[ Views: 2.1M ]
“Wh-what the f-f*ck???” *cough* *cough* Max inhaled too much dust and entered a coughing fit. “No, that... really...” *cough*
He couldn’t believe it. Although Rone told him directly that he held the record, Max never believed him and had forgotten about the issue until now.
“The fastest? No, I wasn’t even...”
It was unfathomable. Max had never even been aiming for the record; he didn’t think he stood any chance of obtaining it. After all, millions of players would’ve entered the starter dungeon.
Max recalled his first dungeon run, where he just ran in a straight line while shooting goblins down different hallways. He even dawdled at the start and did nothing for the first few seconds.
That was the fastest??
He glanced at chat.
—LMAO
—HE DIDN’T KNOW?!?!
—so fake
—LOL no way
—Bro just set the world record by accident apparently
Checking the video more closely, Max noticed something strange.
[ Likes: 43K, Dislikes: 29K ]
There were a lot of dislikes for some reason. He checked the comments.
—This is fake
—Wow that aim is incredible!
—Is this a time traveller?
—Looks like Virtek propaganda
—Did they stick a camera to an NPC to do this?
—Wow!!
—Is he hacking?
—There’s no way this is real. It’s just Virtek trying to cover up how bad the class is LOL
—To those saying this is fake: skill issue
The comments were torn in half. One half of the commenters were full of praise, while the other seemed to think he was cheating.
‘They think I’m a hacker?’
Maxed had played video games for a long time, so he knew...
Being called a hacker was the greatest commendation a player could receive!
He grinned broadly.
—Why are people saying the archer class is terrible? It sure doesn’t look that way...
└ Only because a bot with aim hacks is being shown
└ Try using a bow and then come back
└ It is terrible. I’m an archer and got PK’ed today. A rogue just ran up to me in a strafe and I couldn’t do anything
—Did they stick a camera to an NPC to do this?
└ Obviously
└ No, this player is real; he does livestreams
└ He does livestreams, but the videos are probably fake
—Mathematical proof he is cheating: Base damage for bows is equivalent to draw weight. Since he is using the beginner bow of 80lbs, he does 80dmg per shot plus a 25% or 50% class bonus. We will say it is 50% so he does 120 base dmg. Then this is doubled for lethal damage so 240dmg per headshot. The dungeon boss has 600 health and yet he dies from just 2 headshots. There is a slight particle effect upon critical hits, which is absent here, so this is obvious cheating.
└ Yeah but he could’ve just had good titles giving him extra damage
└ If he needed a third shot it only would’ve cut like 2 seconds from his time...
└ He has a class which gives him a 100% class bonus! He showed it on stream.
└ It’s not possible to hack dive games.
“What the heck. The comments are like a warzone...” Max was astonished. Full-blown debates were being held in each comment thread. “Guys, how do I prove to them that I’m not cheating?”
—We already know you’re not cheating
—Stfu you’re using aim hacks
—People will realise after enough clips circulate
—Eh? You’re not cheating?
‘Even my own chat thinks I’m cheating...’ Max pondered with conflicted feelings. ‘...I’ll need to figure something out.’
He decided to postpone the issue for later.
Screeeeech.
Max’s head whipped around at the sound of the lockup door opening.
“Sir Gun, are you in here?” A woman’s voice called out.
“Parker?”
“Gun!” A black-haired beauty with a high ponytail ran over. Max’s eyes also saw wings and a halo. “Uh, where are you?” She looked around confusedly. “I can’t see; it’s too dark in here.”
Max opened his interface.
“Gun! Ah, what? Why is there mould in here?!” She turned to a guard by the door, whom Max recognised as his jailer. “Don’t you know mould releases spores? This stuff could kill people!”
“This-I’m sorry Lady Parker! We will remove the mould immediately!”
“You’d better, or I’ll contact your superior officer. How dare you treat my benefactor so disgracefully?”
“I am very sorry about this. It will not happen again.”
“It had better not,” Parker huffed. “Now unlock the cell.”
The guard hurriedly approached, fumbling his keychain.
‘Woah, subservient!’ Max was surprised. Parker must be from an influential family or something.
The gate rattled open.
“Gun, come, your friend is waiting outside. We need to hurry to the meeting!”
“Mm? Hurry?” Max tilted his head. “Isn’t there still a half-day before the meeting?”
“The prince came early, so the meeting is starting ahead of time. Quick, let’s go!” She grabbed his hand.
“Uh? Okay...” Max was led through the guard facility. “This- I don’t have any formal clothes to wear to the meeting, won’t that be a breach of etiquette?”
“Ah, you don’t need to worry about that sort of thing. The prince is, how should I say this... he’s a bit of an eccentric...”