Player 1

Chapter 26 Level 2(5)
Yes, for the past six months I've been like a ball rolling between my two self-confessed best friends, only to get further and further away from them.

I switched to Edge's H-TV channel, where a WWF [80] match in the late 114s was in full swing, between Hook Hogan and Andre the Giant.I didn't bother to check Dayto and Soto's channel - The Day Soto Show - because I knew they had the Seven Samurai movies on all the time and the brothers hadn't changed anything but this one.

Months after our unhappy first meeting in Edge's basement, I teamed up with Dayto and Soto to complete a side quest in Sector 21.That led to a little friendship between us.The group mission was my idea, I wasn't too happy with how the first meeting ended so badly, so I've been waiting for the chance to offer an olive branch to the two samurai.This opportunity arose when I discovered a hidden high-level mission, which was the original Ultraman mission on Tosho.Records show that this quest was only updated a few years after Halliday's death, so it can't possibly have anything to do with the easter egg contest.This Japanese language task was developed by the Hokkaido branch of GSS.I can use the built-in Mandares instant translation software in "Oasis" to try to complete this task by myself, but this is not safe enough, because Mandares often makes mistakes in the guidance and clues in the task, which will bring fatal problems. mistake.

Daito and Soto's family is in Japan (they are now national heroes), and they are fluent in English and Japanese.So I invited them to study the hidden plot mission of Ultraman on Toshin.They were wary at first, but after I explained the uniqueness of this task and the possible rewards, they finally agreed to my proposal.The three of us met outside the special camera and entered the mission area together.

This task is a 1966-episode Tokusho TV series broadcast in Japan from 1967 to 39 - "The Re-enactment of Ultraman". s story.When Team Kurt can't figure things out on their own, Susumu Hayata uses an alien device to transform into an alien super-life called Ultraman.Then he'll be able to smack that monster hard with all sorts of kung fu and light attacks.

If you enter the scene alone, the player is playing Hayata, but because Daito and Soto are also there, someone needs to play the other team members, so we rotate the characters before the beginning of each episode.Like other tasks in "Oasis", forming a team greatly reduces the difficulty of completing them.

Even so, it still took us a week to complete the entire task, and we spent about six hours on this task every day.After completing the mission, we all got a considerable amount of experience and thousands of oasis points.But the most important reward is a very rare item: Susumu Hayata's transformation device, which allows the user to get a chance to transform into an Ultraman once a day, with a time limit of 3 minutes each time.

Since the three of us only got one shapeshifter, we got together to discuss who it should belong to. "Parsifal deserves it," Soto said. "He found out about this mission. If he didn't come and tell us, neither of us would have had a chance to see it, wouldn't it?"

Dayto, of course, objected, "He couldn't have done it without our help!" He thought it fairest to put it up for auction and split the proceeds among the three.But it is impossible for me to agree.The value of such an artifact is immeasurable. If it is brought to an auction, the "sixth person" must be the one who gets it in the end.Besides, I also thought this should have been a good chance to win over Dato and Soto.

"It should be yours," I said, "Ultraman is the greatest superhero in Japan, and his power should be controlled by the Japanese."

They were all overwhelmed by my generosity, especially Dayto. "Thank you, Parsifar-san," he bowed deeply, "you know what honor is."

After that, the three of us became friends, which I think is the best reward for my hard work.

A bell rang and I checked the time.It's almost eight o'clock, and it's time for me to start earning money.

No matter how hard I tried to make money, I still felt like I couldn’t make ends meet.I have several large bills to pay every month, both in Oasis and the real world.My real-life expenses are pretty normal, rent, electricity, food, water, hardware repairs and upgrades.The expenses in the oasis are beyond imagination: spaceship maintenance, transmission fees, energy batteries, and various weapons.I always buy ammunition in bulk, but the discounted prices are still scary.The monthly transfer fee is not a small amount, because of the nature of hunting eggs, I have to go to various places every day, and GSS is still increasing the transfer fee.

I've spent all my savings from ad revenue, most of which have gone into upgrading motion gear and buying asteroids.Now I have to subsidize my household every month by selling ad time on the POV channel and magic gear I don't need.I also applied for a full-time Oasis tech support job to make ends meet so that I wouldn't miss my last meal.

When I created the identity of Bryce Lynch, I added a college degree, some abilities, and an employment record as an Oasis programmer and app developer.Despite all the great testimonials, the only job I could ever apply for was as a front desk at Happy Help.This company has a contract with Oasis, and I have to help those idiots fix their consoles and upgrade their gauntlet drivers.For this I worked an extra forty hours a week.It's all boring, but at least it pays off the rent.

I logged out of my Oasis account and replaced it with a character for work.After logging in, I appear in a virtual room, sitting at a virtual desk, facing a virtual computer in front of me, wearing a pair of virtual headphones.

This place is a virtual hell.

Every day Happy Help receives millions of calls for help from all over the world, perhaps as many as 7000, 65.Angry and confused idiot after idiot after another, without giving a slack, there are at least a hundred idiots crowded into the waiting queue at any given moment, and these guys are more than willing to wait several times for a solution from the technical front desk hour.Why bother looking up answers online when someone else is willing to think about your own problems for you?Why bother to figure it out yourself?

As usual, the ten-hour shift passed slowly.As the front desk, I can't leave here, but I have other ways to pass the time.Although the work account cannot open the web pages of the external network, I modified my work mask so that I can listen to songs and watch movies from my hard drive.

As soon as my shift was finally over, I logged out of my work account and logged into Oasis.Seeing thousands of emails show up in my mailbox, obviously something big happened while I was at work.

Artemis found the Emerald Key.

0021
Like every other hunter on the planet, I've been terrified of a change in the scoreboard, and to me, that means the "sixth man" has an opportunity to take advantage of it.

A few months after we passed through a door, an anonymous character released an artifact of extraordinary power at auction.It's called "Fantoro's Search Tablet," and its abilities will play a big role in the egg hunt.

Most of the artifacts in "Oasis" appear randomly. They are not cheap items that can be obtained at will by killing specific NPCs or completing tasks. These artifacts can bring certain powerful powers to the holders.There are only a few hundred of them in Oasis, and most of them appear in the early days, when it was mainly an MMORPG.Each artifact is unique in the Oasis.Usually, the artifact will only drop with a very small probability after defeating the boss of the advanced mission.Another way to get it is to kill a character who has the item, otherwise you'll just have to go to the auction house and gamble.

Artifacts are rarely put up for auction, and as such, the presence of such items at auctions always raises eyebrows.Due to their powerful abilities, some artifacts can even fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.The highest transaction record was set three years ago.According to the introduction, the artifact sent for auction is called "Son of Destruction", and it is a magic bomb that can only be used once.If it is detonated, it will destroy everything within its range, even its owner, and nothing can stop it.If you are unfortunate enough to appear in the explosion area, no matter how powerful you are and how high your defense is, you will be a dead end.

The one who bought the Son of Destruction was an anonymous player, and he paid a sky-high price of more than 100 million.So far, the bomb has remained silent, so its owner is probably stashing it somewhere for now, waiting for the right moment to be used.Some hunters will claim the Sons of Doom for a chance of escape if they are surrounded by enemies.But most people believe that the Son of Doom actually fell into the hands of the "Sixth Man", and they have more artifacts than this one.

The auction price of the Findolo search slate was even higher than that of the Son of Doom. According to the description, this thin circular slate can display the exact location of a character in real time.Of course, this thing also has usage restrictions. If you and the target are in different partitions, it can only tell you the partition number of the target and cannot display the specific location.After you follow the target to the sector, it will tell you which planet the target is on (or the nearest planet, if the target is in space), and only when you reach the target's planet or plane can it tell you the exact location .

As the seller pointed out at the auction, if the target is set as a character on the scoreboard, then such a thing will become the most valuable artifact in the whole oasis.All you have to do is watch the ranking on the scoreboard, wait for it to change, and follow the person who made the change to find where the key or door is.

So when Fendoro searched for the slabs to flow into the auction, everyone kept bidding like crazy, and several large hunter guilds even made a fuss.However, the auction ended with the "Sixth Man" buying it at a price close to 200 million points.Sorrento bid with his character, and he didn't open his mouth until the last moment to make a stunning offer.With it, the "sixth man" can track any one of the five tigers.

I used to worry that the Sixth Man would use it to track down the Fab Five and take us down one by one.But unless the Five Tigers are in the PvP area, it's pointless to do so.And we're not idiots who just stand around and wait.Since the slate can only be used once a day, risk tracking us may even cause them to miss the opportunity to track the changes on the scoreboard, so they have been waiting for the opportunity and never used it.

Less than half an hour after Artemis rose to the first place, the entire "Sixth Man" fleet flooded into the seventh division.As soon as Artemis' score changed, Sorrento immediately used the slate. Fortunately, they were not in the same division, so the "sixth man" was just searching blindly.

Thanks to their big move, the entire world now knows the approximate location of the Emerald Key.Naturally, thousands of hunters also entered the seventh sector, but there are hundreds of planets, moons and other small planes in the sector, so no one has found out the exact location of the key yet.

I was stunned for a long time in the shock of losing the throne.Open the webpage, the current news headlines are basically: Parsifal loses the throne!Artemis becomes the number one hunter!Or, "The Sixth Man" is in action!
I opened the scoreboard and stared at it blankly for three to ten minutes, blaming myself all the while.

high score list

1. Artemis 129000
2. Parsifal 110000
3. Edge 108000
4. Dayto 107000
5. Soto 106000
6.IOI-655321 105000
7.IOI-643187 105000
8.IOI-662167 105000
9.IOI-678324 105000
10.IOI-637330 105000
Who else can you blame but yourself?I asked myself.You let success go to your head.Do you feel like inspiration pops up twice?Why do you always ask you to find the clue of the emerald key first?You sit in the first position and feel complacent, but you put aside what you should do.But now you have to face the problem, idiot.It's all because you didn't put your energy into finding the Emerald Key, you gave up all of this with your own hands.You spend most of your time dating a girl you've never even seen your face in, and get fucking dumped.You are completely defeated by her.

Now... take it easy and get back to the game, idiot.Find the key quickly.

All of a sudden, my desire to win was stronger than ever, and it wasn't just about the money.I also want to prove my strength to Artemis.I want to end this game.That way I could talk to her and even see her real face.I really want to know what my feelings for her are, and all of this can only be seen after everything is over.

I turned off the scoreboard, opened the Holy Grail Diary, and flipped through the numerous materials in it.

At the top of the screen there is always a window displaying quatrains.Four lines of text, 36 characters.Because I stared at them in a daze countless times before, I now feel nauseous when I see them.

The captain hides the emerald key
it is stored in the forgotten place
only after collecting trophies

Only then can we blow the whistle on the other side

I know the answer is just a stone's throw away, and Artemis has already arrived.

I flipped through my notes on John Draper, the guy who used the toy whistle to steal his phone.I believe he is "The Captain" and "The Whistle" that Halliday wrote.But the rest of the quatrain baffles me.

But now I have a new clue - the key is hidden somewhere in Sector Seven.Opening the oasis map, I searched for the planet that I thought was related to the quatrain.I found a few planets named after famous hackers like Woz and Minik, but none named after John Draper.There are also many planets named after the news of the century in the seventh sector.One of them, called High Frequency Phone, sounds like it has something to do with Draper.But it wasn't finished until three years after Halliday's death, so obviously that wasn't the way to go.

I read the quatrain again, and this time the last two lines caught my eye:
only after collecting trophies

Only then can we blow the whistle on the other side

trophy.In the seventh division.I'm going to Sector [-] to collect trophies.

I did a quick search of the Halliday archives.As far as I know, the only trophy he ever received was the Top [-] Game Designer of the Year award at the turn of the millennium.The trophy is now on display at the GSS museum in Columbus, but there is a replica in the oasis, on a planet called Aguild.

Ajied happened to be in the seventh district.

Such a connection seems very thin, but I still want to check it out.At least this can give me a sense of progress for the next few hours.

I glanced at Max, who was dancing samba on the screen in the command center. "Max, if you're free, get Vonnegut ready, we're leaving."

Max stopped, smirked at me and said, "Okay, Mr. Gemancello!"

I stood up and walked into the elevator in the fort, which was modeled after the original Star Trek.By the time I got out of the elevator, I had already reached the armory under the fourth floor of the command center, where my weapons, armor, ammunition, and spaceships were stacked.Here, I enabled the "Paper Doll" [115] system, which allows me to clearly list the equipment and see how I look after the equipment.

(End of this chapter)