Chapter 115 - First Upgrade (1/2)
”Well, now we know that the easiest path to Grenadiers Heart is through his stomach,” joked Merlin looking at the way that Grenadier was behaving. He was talking with Sultan as if they had been best friends.
”Is he a light weight?” asked Shadow as he could see that though Grenadier seemed to overtly open once he had drunk the beer.
”Does that persist in the game?” asked Merlin.
”You do feel a bit of the effects, right? Who knows, the game has put so many things close to reality, it might have created the effects of alcohol too,” said Shadow.
With his plan to explore and possibly occupy the bandit camp gone to shit, he had nothing specific to do. He needed to log out within 20 minutes as it was close to morning. So, he had decided that he will get to the Canterbury plains and kill a few quingol bandits before he logged out.
As he followed Slaine towards their shop where they were assembling new members to attempt the mass quest. The Crimson Realm guild had prior experience in fighting the quingols which they were already advertising for recruiting more players by use of the mass quest.
They were assembling many players below level 10 along with some of the guild elites like Slaine who were at level 12. They wanted to treat it as a level grinding exercise. Lizzie had already advertised in the forums that there were level 12 players who had experience killing the quingol bandits and were providing a chance to quickly level up using them. The guild promised that the last hits would be reserved for the level 9 players and that they would be protected. The level 9 players could either join the guild or pay for this service in coins.
”Lizzie has been quite busy thinking up tricks to expand the guild,” said Shadow looking at close to a hundred players at the Blackrock town. ”Her advertis.e.m.e.nt seemed to have a decent effect on the populace of the town,” he thought.
”Yes. This is the second team. Brick had already led a team before this into the Canterbury plains. With the crossbows and a lot of arrows purchased from shops, he says it isn't that hard. Moreover, we are collecting the quingol heads,” said Slaine. ”It is a clever operation, but helpful. Quite a few players from other cities and villages are actually moving to the town because of this mass quest. We will soon have a lot of competition. So, this is the best time to make as many kills as possible.”
Just as they joined with the rest and were about to go towards the gate of the town a system announcement rang through the entire game.
System Announcement: The game will undergo its first upgrade in 10 minutes. The upgrade will take four hours. All players outside dungeons and special areas will be sent back to the locations bound to their hearthstones after the upgrade. Details of the upgrade will be uploaded in the website shortly.
”An upgrade? So early?” said Slaine in shock.
These words were repeated by many players in the game as soon as they heard the announcement. They checked the system log repeatedly to confirm the same. It caused a commotion in both the game and forums.
All guilds who had planned any activities started to delay them and all players attempting to reach the cities or any other towns or teleportation point were in a hurry all of a sudden. A number of players began to check the website to understand the details of the upgrade.
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At the same time in the offices of the Metis Technologies, Victor Constantine who was observing the game saw the system announcement and immediately contacted the team that was observing the adaptation rates of various players with the somnium technology.
”How come we have the first upgrade so early. Didn't we need a player to have at least above 90% compatibility consistently for that?” asked Victor angrily.
”Sir, the first player who crossed that rate had been maintaining that for some time already. We just found four others who managed to get that rate triggering the first upgrade. It was a preset condition and the notification went out on its own. There was nothing we could do about it,” replied the person heading the team.
”He has been maintaining that rate continuously?” asked Victor surprised. He had expected that some freaks would be able to do that and hence put the condition, but he never expected that this would be the condition to be fulfilled first. He was asked to do the upgrade by his brother and other superiors as soon as five players hit the 90% mark at least once, but he thought that would be hard on the game and added this special condition. Unexpectedly, the second condition had been the first to fulfilled and it failed its purpose.
”This is an entirely different kind of freak,” thought Victor. ”I must inform the others that he had already been maintaining the compatibility,” he thought. In fact, with experience they knew that more people would be able to maintain that compatibility as time passed, but they wanted to see how quickly could the people adapt to the somnium technology which was a primary concern if they had to use it in battle as this rate tends to fluctuate when the person takes damage.
”What is the highest value of compatibility that he had?” asked Victor out of curiosity.
”He had a 97% at a time, and 92% on an average. Even in times of severe damage or unexpected events, it doesn't go below 85%,” replied the leader as he was checking the statistics that they measured.