Chương 96: B2 Chapter 4 - Forum Gossip

Dainv took our gold and backed off into the shadows like a drug addict having received his fix. He crawled into a hole in the shadowed wall of the cavern. Now would have been my chance to stop him if I had any problems with the deal. I did not. The soulshards' rarity and item type was marked as (???). That always indicated value in one way or another. The exchange was certainly worth more than the fifty gold I'd paid. I showed the item stats to Veyra.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"Good trade, obviously," Veyra said.

"If these are quest items, they're included in S-tier quests for sure. Doesn't look like we can cash in any rewards yet, though." Thinking, I leaned against the tree where Dainv had just been.

"We already have money and gold. It won't be useful to trade these for the top guilds. We need gear and stats." We'd of course both been looking at the auction to see if we could snatch good deals. Minor upgrades always popped up in the form of unique epics, but we'd need the perfect legendaries or mythic items for substantial upgrades. It really wasn't worth it to spend large sums on tiny improvements.

"We'll somehow have to convert these into a better mythic robe for you," I said. Veyra chuckled.

"Oh yeah, let's just casually turn fifty gold rocks into a million gold mythic robe. Any plans?"

"Dainv mentioned finding a soul collector or a bondsmith, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, his speech hinted that we'd need a lot more soulshards for anything crazy to happen," Veyra said.

"We'll need to find one of the collectors to learn what they actually do. I'd say you should start asking NPCs for info on where to find one while you're opening the map."

"Agreed. I'll ask for information wherever I can, and I'll search for a dungeon that looks doable for us to clear." Veyra nodded, but her eyes looked a little guilty.

"I'll need to get going now. Sorry again for playing so little. I'll help you starting tomorrow, I promise." I smiled, hoping to make her feel better.

"If it helps, I think you would have gone insane running around with me for the last two weeks. Opening the map isn't all that interesting. You chose a good time for a break."

"True enough," she said.

"I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Let's see what we can do with this event." My heart warmed with each of her words. Every time Veyra laughed at my jokes, or every time she said she actually wanted to do something with me, the comfort was indescribable. I gave her a goodbye hug, and she logged off. A lot of work to do, huh, I thought as I looked off at the cobblestone path leading to unexplored grounds. I considered continuing the journey right away.

If I could find a soul collector now, that would be a good spot to log off to have Veyra with me for negotiations. I glanced at the clock. It read 9: 31 AM. The game pod's health evaluation gave me yellow, indicating that I'd been logged in for an unhealthy eleven hours straight. Oops, I thought. Maybe it was better to log off. I was trying to keep myself healthy, after all, for the next time Veyra and I met. Key word on trying. Sleeping now had the benefit that I'd wake up roughly around the time Veyra did.

That fact made logging off an obvious decision. I exited the game, and prepared to wake up in the real world.

Doctors and health experts alike generally agreed that spending eleven hours straight in a virtual game pod was not a very optimal strategy for health. They'd regularly warned me about things like the "risk of isolation" or "future health problems." Isolation was the last thing I felt, and to be honest, I usually didn't even feel that unhealthy after long gaming sessions, probably thanks to the fact that I was only eighteen years old.

I had mostly just accepted that my lifestyle was unhealthy, while hoping that I was somehow immune to all the consequences that everyone warned me about. It turned out, eleven hours was too much for even my young body to handle. My legs felt sluggish as I climbed from the pod. A wave of vertigo hit me. My throat was as dry as the desert. All around, I felt concerningly awful. I sat down on my bed for a bit and opened a bottle of water. I would have loved to head to the bathroom, but there was a problem.

Despite being essentially a millionaire, I still lived in my parents' attic. My family was moving about downstairs, muffled conversation making it to the attic. Today was Saturday, meaning I couldn't sneak by while everyone worked. My family respected my career as a professional gamer a lot more after I started earning money, and especially after I won Worlds, but my personality hadn't changed after the win. I really didn't want to present myself to anyone in this state.

I could have easily afforded to move out, but renting was a waste of money and time, and buying a house was too much of a hassle. I spent most of my time in VR anyway. Virtual motels like The Cave were perfect for my lifestyle, but now that I was essentially a celebrity, those could be dangerous. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I would have loved to move in with Veyra, though. Be it Thailand or the US. I sighed and opened Wonderwind's forums.

Finally, after 2027 started, I'd stopped seeing my face while randomly scrolling. The constant montage clips of the three versus three tournament had slowed down, until they were eventually replaced by posts like, "What happened to Veyra and Assassin A?" I'd personally responded to one of them with, "We're playing the game lol," and now those posts had calmed down as well. Fans had either forgotten us, or were waiting for us to do something crazy again.

The new hot name on the forums was Veilshot: rank five on the global leaderboard, the last of the five gods, and co-leader of Eon Covenant, who had been banned from the game for a year after getting physical with FireBrand after losing a match in the one versus one tournament of Worlds 2025. Immediately after getting unbanned, he made a post titled, " 2026 was an embarrassment for Wonderwind. The Eon Covenant will take 2027. Veilshot has returned."

The post was essentially a long rant about how everyone except Dragrath and a select few Zenith Protocol members sucked at the game these days. He went exceptionally ham on Annath and SoulShadow for losing to a pair of noobs. That was the same Veilshot I remembered. He was generally just toxic, always stirring up drama with everything he said. What separated him from the usual forum trolls was that he was genuinely an insanely skilled archer.

On the front page was a post with 8 million upvotes, titled, "Veilshot snipes Ducky2." The post included a video from Veilshot's point of view of him sitting on an underground cliff on the third level of the caverns. Ducky2 was like an ant in the valley below when Veilshot released a simple [Silent Arrow]. The arrow landed cleanly in Ducky's head, one-shotting him. Interestingly, I recognized the valley the clip had been taken from. I passed the spot a week ago.

If Veilshot and Zenith Protocol continued the same direction, they'd make it to Shaltar's bridge, the one I'd just passed. Veilshot was insane, both skill-wise and personality-wise, but I was much more concerned about facing Zenith Protocol's main team. FireBrand and his guild had absolutely crushed the Guild PvP tournament in Worlds, and their dominance continued in the wilderness of Caverns Of Creation. Merami, their support mage, was currently livestreaming with a simple title of, "Zenith Protocol Frontrun."

She didn't need to clickbait with capitalized letters or anything insane, because even with that title, her stream was the most popular ongoing Wonderwind livestream with 4, 198, 674 concurrent viewers. I opened the stream, and at the perfect moment, as Zenith Protocol was fighting a boss in a frozen cave. The blue crystalline walls reflected fire, making it difficult to see small details from my phone screen, but every famous name was present and more.

I saw GodWall, the best tank player in the world, Creator, the second best sword fighter player after Annath, Shiraeth, the best spear user in the game, and of course, FireBrand, the rank two player and the leader of Zenith Protocol. The boss they faced was just as monstrous. The Radiant Entity (Level 464) was a giant skeletal elk, its bones frozen and inflicting frost damage. Astral energy coated its antlers. Its health bar read 56%, probably just about to enter a second phase.

It charged GodWall like a speeding car. Merami cast [Fend], increasing GodWall's knockback resistance. The tank stayed in place, but his health dropped to 56%. Merami wasn't about to let it drop any lower. She cast her spell rotation masterfully, starting with [Arcane Enhancement], moving to [Wisp Of Greater Healing]. GodWall was back at a safe 95% health effortlessly. Merami was one of the few support mages who quick-cast their rotation of healing spells fast enough to weave an offensive spell in between.

She fired a [Shardshot] at the boss for some extra damage. At the pace that the fight moved in and with the insane damage the boss inflicted, keeping a tank alive at all was impossible for most healers. Casting damage while doing that was even more difficult. Merami made it look easy. To her right, fire magic burned the boss with infernos, bolts, spears of fire—just about every spell fire mages had to offer. Nobody could pump as much fire as FireBrand.

His spells inflicted utter violence to the point that his frontline was afraid to even approach the boss amongst all the flames. Creator and Shiraeth were instead fighting lesser monsters around the arena that tried to interrupt the boss fight. GodWall's sole purpose was to keep the boss off of FireBrand. The Radiant Entity tried to charge in FireBrand's direction to stop the flames multiple times, only for GodWall to stand in the way each time, supported perfectly by Merami. Slowly, the boss's health bar dwindled.

Until the boss decided it had had enough, jumping over GodWall and straight to FireBrand. I found myself leaning toward my phone as Merami turned to her guild leader. She immediately cast [Wisp Of Greater Defence] on FireBrand, who was standing still, continuing his spell rotation. Why isn't he running? I thought. FireBrand ran mythic gear, sure, but wouldn't a fire mage still get one-shotted by a boss of this level? The boss flicked its antlers violently at FireBrand, who still barely reacted.

He just held his staff for the block. That was when Merami cast [Arcane Parry] at the perfect timing and at the perfect location, staggering the boss from its own attack. I flinched a little. [Arcane Parry] was kind of like a [Perfect Block], except the spell was even more powerful and way more difficult to use. The timing had to be absolutely perfect, and her staff had to point at a specific location with laser precision for the spell to do anything.

If both variables were used accurately, the skill gave the most powerful parry in the game. If the spell failed, it did nothing. FireBrand would have been one-shotted, likely dropping a mythic gear piece. Yet, he fully trusted Merami without any words exchanged. With the boss staggered, every member from melee to support mage began pumping damage to the staggered boss, no words exchanged. Everyone stayed perfectly composed even against a level 464 boss monster.

No wonder they won the Guild PvP tournament, I thought. The Radiant Entity's health bar finally dropped to 50%. It shrieked, and its antlers glowed brighter. Astral energy rose to the ceiling, where it rained down on the battlefield as powerful rays of light. Zenith Protocol's formation switched defensive in an instant. FireBrand cast [Flame Wall] to protect his guild with GodWall blocking Merami. The boss's attack hardly did any damage. Out of nowhere, a slash came from Merami's left. The sound of a player dying.

Her head snapped in the direction. Griffin, one of their ranger players, had a wound through his heart, collapsing on the ground. Dark particles were left behind, the exact particles that [Shadow Dash] always created. A shadowed figure materialized in front of GodWall, wielding a dagger and a katana of purple moonlight. His nametag read, [Suburi] Dragrath.