Questions? I have a few.

  What’s the gauntlet like now? What are we up against?

   I’ll answer this one

   We’re on stage 3 of gauntlet 5. There are 5 groups of 6 barbarians each for a total of 30. They swarm around in a circle, constantly rotating out to make it hard to focus fire.

  That’s quite a lot

  Last time there was only 10 and I still failed. No wonder they’ve given up. It’s so unfair!

  So what has been your plan so far?

   Since there are so many to kill and so many to defend from, we’ve put our efforts into finding the best possible AoE and Healing blessed gear. Other than that, we don’t have much else.

   To test is difficult. Die before understand special skill of item.

   Earlier, when we first discovered blessings, we committed to manufacturing as many things as possible to try and gather an understanding of they could do. And that was fine for a while, but now that this gear gets so weak in comparison to the AI’s attacks, its become impossible to test. The gear breaks before it gets a chance to activate its blessing. You can imagine our repair costs!

   Yes, it’s really slowed us down.

   And add to that the fact that the longer we wait, the more time the AI has to equip itself with gear stolen from our marketplace.

   Well, it is paid for. We should just be careful

   It is theft! The AI should not be ALLOWED into a human marketplace. Its just not right.

   Careful, Ness.

   That’s our situation, Pak. Numbers, information, resources, all of it is not in our favour. I know that you’re holding some ideas about how to approach this. Even if it’s only a small suggestion, we want to hear it.

   *bows*

   He’s got nothing, I bet

   Agreed. As I’ve said time and time again, we need everyone on our side, and working together. Only as a single entity can we liberate ourselves from this place. Or we die.

  Luke smashed his fist through the table, startling Yeung-Sung and causing Shirley to bounce in front.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered,” They can’t be quiet for one minute.”

  Yeung-Sung waved Shirley away.

  “It’s alright,” he said, pointing,” Just the chat.”

  With uncertainty, he plopped back down and crossed his legs, eyes firmly on the furious PM leader. I guess it wasn’t me he should have been worried about.

  Watching Luke draw his hand back, he asked, “Are you alright?”

  “Fine,” he responded.

  Only half-looking back at Yeung-Sung, he typed out a message elsewhere, using his unaccustomed hand like a stiff claw. Another PM member rushed in with a wet cloth and bandages, and began tending to him at once.

  Thanking her, Luke curtly looked back at Yeung-Sung and shouted, “Well? What’s your plan? You’re the one who said you could beat the gauntlet, not me. Quit staring and start typing.”

  “Alright.”

  [Direct Message: ]

  Make a distraction. I need him away from his phone for as long as possible.

   OK?

   emm, what will I do?

  He’s already lost one hand, just take advantage of that.

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  Shirley had already leapt towards Luke’s phone by the time he had leapt between the chat rooms. Is this a good idea? Let’s bloody hope so. Wil, I hope I make you proud.

  Kelly, how many items can you keep track of at once. Say if you needed to send a group of people to battle the gauntlet, how many could you equip?

   Only 1 player in gauntlet.

  {Yes, I know. Just_} He fought for the word for a moment.

  Yes, I know. Just humour me.

   This is just a rough calculation, but I guess we could equip about 200 players. Not that it matters since we lost most of them already.

   What is this about, Yeung-Sung?

  {MEDB has her own gear}

  Oh crap, I really almost submitted that! I have to guard my tongue.

  The AI has her own gear. Gear which is destructible. So, before we come at the gauntlet with our real strategy, we can disable her advantage by swarming her with players whose goal is not to try and kill the barbarians, but destroy their gear, or at the very least set off their blessings, to allow our strategy the best chance of success. It might even, if we’re lucky, stretch her mental processes enough that she might make less than optimal plays in some of those attempts.

   Like Indiana Jones. Set off traps at beginning.

   I can see the logic, but this will take a lot of organization to pull off. Your idea better work.

   A good start, but even without gear, there are still 30 of them, remember? We’ll need more.

   Also Amber, where the hell did that reference come from? Haha, you’re becoming cool, girl!

  Yeung-Sung smiled. Chaos ensued around him but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the screen.

  I can’t let them get side tracked. Next.

  @Ness Before, you were using amassing poor-quality materials for blessing, because they were easier to make, yes?

   Exactly.

  Times change. We need the best quality materials we can get and we can’t be stingy with how we acquire them. As Luke said, there are too many of them not to prioritize defense.

   But if blessing bad, equipment is not useful.

   You’re right! We need to be using the resources of everyone as best as we can, even with the AI risk.

  Hey, where is @Gobblin ?

  Never mind that.

  Here is my biggest suggestion. Amber, this is directed at you. How do you test a blessing?

  He must have caught her off-guard. Several seconds later she was still typing, so he relented and looked up.

  The once organized room had become a battlefield. Half the tables were upturned, a dozen PM members were either lying limp, limping or trying to restrain Shirley. Luke was struggling to rise to his feet, his good hand holding an icepack over his face.

  Good enough.

  Back in the chat, Amber had finally put together the necessary words.

   First I receive blessed gear from Crafters. They look different than normal, like shiny. I go to Gauntlet with these and use to block attack. Magic then release form item after damage, at 100%-75%-50%-25%. It is hard but possible to see the difference. I watch what happen after blessing work and put label to explain. Then I give to repairmen. Careful not to break to 0%! Or very expensive.

   It’s an arduous process, let me tell you. My favorite part is when someone tells you their object is blessed, yet it produces no resulting effects. They’ll argue its just a passive buff and I have to spend an unbearable amount of woman hours to figure out who is lying.

  An awkward system, but intuitive given they have no in-game info about blessings. How can I help them, what am I supposed to say?

  If Jordan designed it -or if Simon did- then there must be some logic here. Just because it is not shown does not mean it’s not there. Gravity has rules, as does the weather, even though it does it tell us directly, sometimes. Or, I guess it does, in its own way, if you speak its language. Wait! That’s it.

  Amber, I’m sorry to tell you this -I can tell that you work really hard on this, but I think there’s a much easier way to understand blessings. What if we learned the language that the blessings are in? If we read them directly?

   What are you blabbing on about?

  Teach us then, if you’re so smart.

  No, it’s not what you think.

  How do I explain this?

  Our avatars aren’t human, right? They are demi-gods with supernatural senses as well as their human ones. The blessings we receive after we pray, don’t we? So, our characters should be able to understand, through their spiritual connections what is effects are being put on the blessed gear. Try put it in Airgead a skill called “Identifying”. Learn that and practice, then we won’t need to test gear ever again.

   You’re kidding

   Right?

   I just tried it. I think he might be on to something. The text shows up as some strange script. Runes or something? I don’t know how useful this could be.

   OMG

  Try to learn to “translate” it.

   No freaking way is it that easy. Where the hell is @Gobblin ?

   Only 1 word became English

   But it undeniably works! It’ll take some time to train people up to start analysing blessings efficiently but it completely relegates the need for normal testing.

  A loud crack, the unmistakable sound of breaking bones caught Yeung-Sung by the ears. Time’s up. Getting out of his seat, he heard Luke make a loud error noise;

  Nuh-uh!

  “Sit back down! You’re going nowhere. Not after that display,” roared Luke, his blood seeping out from his face over the ice-pack.

  Shirley!

  His friend, knocked (forcibly) out was being carried out of the room by the shoulders. A few other PM members stayed back to start flipping back the damaged furniture and clean up the scattered packs of glass. Luke meandered through and held himself high, but highly red. He pulled out a chair with his foot and dropped himself in it.

  “We’re leaving. Give me Shirley and we’re getting out,” Yeung-Sung told him.

  Luke gestured at his phone. At the chat.

  What did he say?

  “I’ve given your people plenty of insight into Airgead. Isn’t that enough?” said Yeung-Sung.

  Horrified, opened the chat again.

   Our Friend here has agreed to stay in PM until we have conquered this Gauntlet. Make as much use of him as you can.

  After reading the sentence Yeung-Sung looked up, agape.

  “Otherwise, we’ll have to force it out of your friend,” Luke taunted him across the table. “I’m sure he can come to the same conclusions as you, given enough encouragement.”

  I’m as good as lost to the rest of the world -like Wil, but still I have leverage. I have knowledge.

  They need me.