Chapter 9: Transformation
Remember, a good game is never linear; this meant that even for riddles like these, there is never only a solution. After all, there are more than a single way to interpret a puzzle.
The archaeologist had killed himself, sliced his veins and arteries of his hands and let his blood flow aimlessly through the center of the city.
Although that is one way, I'm pretty sure the guy had thought of numerous number of ways but didn't want to take risk, so he went for the safest route.
When you are tight on time like me, every second is precious, therefore it is best to take a shortcut.
I took out my life ring, a ring that grants you a second life without getting penalised; a fail safe method to allow new players a second chance, before breaking into oblivion. Never to come to light once more.
The penalty for dying is 8 hours of offline time, a very harsh punishment considering the game's generosity towards new and casual players. Perhaps they just want you to be immersed in the thrill, every move you take, every consequence that was paid and very rewards that was reaped.
No matter how much I praise this game, I had always go against their penalty timer on death. It's not just me, even the community will feel the same, but maybe it's just their way of directing us away from their imperfectly perfect perfection.
No matter the years of life I have bleed through, one might think my wisdom would be pinnacle amongst the top. I strongly believe I am no more than a lost cause, roaming desperately to find answers to fill my empty questions.
A snap of a finger, a menu with 3 different options came out: unequip, dispose, dismantled.
Dismantle, I pressed firmly, refusing to move an inch. It was painful to understand the outcome of this fragile life ring on the palm of my hand. Suddenly, as if endless streams of lightning began to surge through the life ring, forming waves of cracks. After a few seconds, it slowly dwindles down.
Crack-
The ring broke into uncollectable fragments, collected by the incoming wind and disposition into the far lands. Considering the depth of this game, for where the far lands might be, some questions are better left unanswered.
In blazing fashion, I feel a noticeable difference in my heart beat rhythm. From a systematic speaker to a pulsating cannon; vasodilation occurs, my pupils starts to dilate vastly and I feel my body draining through fuel at an insane rate. Hyperventilation kickoff and I was stuck at a painful exchange of breathing and aching pain.
An attempt to scream was made in the midst of the crowd, but it was futile. There was no single wave that crashed through to the particles in the air. My muscles started to break down then it was rebuilt at lighting speed; hair started to grow, as if I became a werewolf then hastily reverted to my former self. A lost voice coupled with awkward movements, made the pain come to life. It was true torture.
The true pain was unable to express my pain, unable to scream, unable to crash my head against the wall. All alone, I was suffering against myself and there was no way to halt it's cunning progression.
I barely visualize the stream of a crowd flowing at the corner of my eyes; yet my eyes refuse to shut and the game refuse to force a restart. For a protective system to deliberately refuse to kick a player from suffering lengthy pain is a flaw, no matter what corner you view it from- still, it happens right here and now.
To experience this transformation would require very specific requirements, especially at this early stage of the game. This is to prevent unnecessary hassle on the players' side.
When you dismantle something as important as the life ring and has 70% sensitivity, the requirements are met. You will experience pain like you never had before.
Considering you can only have 1 character, everything is at stake here. For you to be wasting a chance at a second life, which is 8 hours, to test something is pretty ridiculous; especially in a competitive game like this where the leaderboard changes every few seconds.
If you were to accidentally dismantle it, you are most likely a newbie. This also means you most likely won't dare to have a sensitivity of 70%, unable to fulfill the requirements. The chance of a player meeting both goals and not wanting a challenge is pretty slim, the pain is just the cost to get there.
For what the transformation does, it makes the game more challenging. There is a mechanic called level scaling. In simple sense, the higher your level, the stronger the bosses would be; the opposite is true. To prevent the boss from growing infinity stronger, a min and max cap limit has been added.
As the true usage of a boss is to test a person's ability to overcome a challenge that is out of their comfort zone. It would be humiliating if a legendary boss you heard about for the entire game was smack dead in two hits by a zero life player, whom as funny as it seems, exist and need to be accounted for.
You can abuse the fact that bosses can be scaled downwards to your advantage, killing the boss before you are expected too. Unless there is a large portion of players abusing this fact, the exploit won't be patch. Therefore, it is better to keep new found knowledge a secret, but this is only true for competitive players. The social table, however, shares almost everything the find, which is useful for newer players and great for game devs but terrifying to competitive player. In simple sense they are the news media of the game, and competitive player has a love-hate relationship towards them.
When transformation occurs, every roadblock, like bosses, quest and so on, becomes twice as strong and gives double the exp but only 50% better loot than the norm. This can be a double edged sword; if you are unable to beat a major roadblock, you would need to take a whole new approach to find an alternative method and you would have already wasted hours trying to remove the roadblock. Contrary, if you were to succeed, you would have an edge ahead of those that did not. Sometimes, the double difficulty is just too much for even someone like me; I just understands my limit better than the others, which could come and bite me back someday.
Do not fret as the game is never punishing, just very challenging. This means you will be able to undo all the mistakes and even turn on off this transformation, at a price, of course.
{System: Congratulations for being the first absolute on this server, gain title
The sweet sweet title hovers over my name. A smile formed from the crevices of my mouth, a rainy had passed, but no one would understand my feelings, I'm over the moon.
Speaking of joy, memory shards are extremely rare fragments that will greatly boost my damage when synthesized to a crystal. That's for another time as it will take lengthy hours to find enough fragments to combine it whole. As for the realm shards? Legends say it is the key to all realms, but I am just as clueless as the rest of you on what that meant. After all, realms in this world are not physical area, just a state of breakthrough that we classify people with, but I digress, I should get going now.