RETURN OF THE SHADOW

"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.

"Get me a comprehensive report of him. I need all the details whoever minor in the report sent in a minute," said Victor. "I need to sort out all the relevant information before the meeting today. There is a high chance that he could help with the development faster than expected," he thought.

"Sir, it was suggested to remove the special quests after the first upgrade, but an extremely small percentage of them had been triggered and almost everyone was concentrating on the getting into the city. If we remove it now, the few who managed to get them will be a lot more powerful and disrupt the balance of the game."

This put Victor into some thought. Though the main purpose of the game was different from many other virtual games, it is hard to maintain the game if it doesn't have a certain balance among the players which could cause people to stop playing. So, he had to do something about this.

"Just let it continue for about two weeks. Yeah, two weeks should be enough. The special quest would need to silently end by the 15th of February. Inform me if any other thing causes a spike or lag in these special quests at the beginner regions and cities. Anything else?" asked Victor after providing what he considered a decent chance for the players.

"About the reason for upgrade. Do we continue with the initially prepared one? We expected this to happen a few weeks later and at that time, implying the need to upgrade due to having an unexpectedly high number of player inflow was sensible," asked the team leader.

"How close are we to the target?" asked Victor.

"Sir, we reached 47% of it. The number which joined today were a lot more than the projected ones. There is a rumor going on that the game can be played by people who are good at any trade in real-life as the game was very close to real-life practices. This is being considered for the high inflow in the second day."

"Well, there you go. You already had the perfect reason for us. Let the official reason be that. Openly, inform that the similarity to real-life gathered players from different professions to the game. We don't need to be modest about our tech," said Victor waving his hand as he went back to his work.

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Back to the game, Shadow who had seen the notice was also surprised. He had heard that the first upgrade happened in the second week due to high inflow of the number of players. He never expected that the upgrade would happen so fast.

He didn't have any issue with the upgrade as he already knew the changes that happened after the upgrade. He told Slaine that as they had now been given time, it is best that they gather fruits sold at market as they would help with filling up the stamina, if they plan to spend long time in the Canterbury plains hunting for the quingols.

He knew that once Slaine would see the information about stamina bar on the website, he would immediately try out a fruit and most probably get hold of as many as possible before the others. This was the only thing he could do without suggesting prior knowledge of it.

He immediately logged out after that and after freshening up, went to the gymnasium. He was actually a few minutes early and decided to spend that time lifting a few weights. He was still quite thin and lean compared to how he used to be at the end of his previous life. So, he wanted to bulk up his muscles a bit.

In a couple of minutes, Robert came to the gymnasium followed by Salazar and Lucius. They immediately went behind the other two into the combat room.

"Balthazar, you are going to be first today and I have something special for you," said Lucius as he pulled him into the fighting ring. He pulled out a whip and a knife from a bag which he brought to the gymnasium. It was the whip that was according to the specifications that he asked Ellie. "I know you have asked for this from Leon. It is a hard to use which even I am not well acquainted with. You have already shown him using that new tech, but I just want to make sure that you could use it well in physical practice."

"How can you determine if I am good at it, when you don't know how to use it?" asked Balthazar surprised as he took the whip and the attachable knife from him. Leon did tell him that he could collect it from Ellie but didn't expect that he would get to use it so early in the morning on the same day.

"You can practice with the beast reared behind the mansion, the trainers there can help you. But to use this outside, you need a license until then you don't get to use this other than for practice. He already applied for one indicating you to be his apprentice" said Lucius pulling out an three 3-feet long sticks from his bag and attached their ends to one another forming a long pole that was 9 feet long. "Leon did tell you to practice with it a bit, right? I might not be able to use a whip, but I have had mock fights against Leon where he used various weapons including this."

"So, don't worry, I am quite good in handling you and am quite faster compared to you. Moreover, I am wearing a light armor, so without use of the blade, you can't injure me," said Lucius as struck the floor with his pole. "This shall be your practice. Come on," said Lucius beckoning Balthazar in a taunting fashion.

Balthazar immediately pulled the whip out unfurling it with a flick of his wrist and swung it expand behind him. "Let us have some fun," he said as he attacked Lucius with the whip. The sudden and quick manner with which he swung the whip, he expected it to land a full hit on Lucius' body as Lucius raised the pole to block it.

"Even if you block it, I can pull the whip in a manner that it will still hit you," thought Balthazar. He had intended to pull the whip at the exact time that it struck the pole causing the point of contact of the whip and pole to behave as a fulcrum. This would cause the part of the whip from the point of contact and the end not in his hand to swing much faster and strike Lucius

It was a good plan and required him to pull at the exact instant the whip hit the pole, but he was confident in his skill. Yet it failed as Lucius was much better than him. He had a lot of practice against Leon who was similarly good at using a whip. At the same time, that he struck the whip with his pole he deftly ducked causing Balthazar's strike to miss and once the whip made a circle round the pole, he rotated the pole pulling the whip from Balthazar's hand.