1. Hard-Light Hero, part 1

  My duel with the ice-elementalist had been flawless. Of course, I had certain advantages. She was just an NPC, of course, while I was … whatever it is that I am. She was an ice-elementalist, and I was Shadow and Flame aspected. My flame aura countered most of her slowing effects, while my [Shadow Walk] and [Shadow Whip] abilities allowed me to kite her effectively while the rest of the raid focused on killing the boss.

  This wasn’t how the fight was supposed to go. You were supposed to kill the elementalists first. If you didn’t, then they harassed the raid from their platforms and usually caused a wipe. Meanwhile, killing them would grant those on their platforms certain buffs which assisted in dealing with the abilities that the boss gained once they were dead. The order you killed them in mattered, as killing them gave the boss abilities, and also gave the raid buffs to counteract those abilities. It was widely considered one of the most difficult and most fun raids in the game.

  We had just cheesed it by killing the boss first without killing the adds.

  It was boring, I was annoyed, and I hated it.

  Once Jamie, our raid lead, called out that the boss was dead, we turned on the remaining elementalists with a fervor that we should have given them from the start. Nobody assisted me, of course. Spiking [Adrenaline Rush] to maximum, I stepped around the elementalists attacks as they passed by in slow motion, stabbed her in the heart with my [Orihalcum Daggers] and channeled all of my mana into my favorite spell.

  “[Heart Flame],” I whispered, because using the verbal command with the mental and physical activation increases the effect of the spell by up to [45%] compared to using any of them alone. The mana Flared, and my opponent dropped from [4% HP] to [0%] in an instant. They weren’t supposed to be hard to kill in the first place. If anything, they were hard to keep alive.

  “I could have done that nine minutes ago,” I grumbled to myself, “but some asshole said ‘hey, you know what would be a total cheese? If we did the fight without killing the stupid adds.’”

  The way we figured it after it had been suggested by that asshole (cough cough), there were only two adds which actually had to be killed, and those were the healers. The rest of the adds could be kited, tanked, or healed through, as long as someone was on their platform for the entire fight. Which is what we did. Which meant that a boss who was supposed to be killed by a twenty-five-man team was instead killed by a nineteen-man team. There are fourteen recognized elements in the game, but you only ever get six adds in this fight. The elementalists could be linked, or they could be random. It was the randomness and the unpredictability which was supposed to make the fight fun.

  And we cheesed it.

  I sighed and sat back to watch as the rest of the raid killed the other platforms. I had been the only pure DPS kiting an add. Susan, our [Blade Dancer], a lightly armored swordswoman who focused on mobility, was kiting the lightning elementalist, but she had donned so much resistance gear for the challenge that her add had been at [87%] when the boss fell. The fire mage was being tanked by an actual tank, the arcane mage by another, and the earth mage was being held off by one of our healers who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

  It was all so … cheesy. With all of the adds still up, none of the fun mechanics had kicked in. We were supposed to use the buffs that we got from killing the adds to help us kill the boss, but instead we simply brute forced it with sheer DPS. I wondered if the rest of the group realized that the only reason this strat worked for us is because half of the group was working as semi-pro, and the other half was hoping to sign on with a workshop once they had enough experience in a feeder guild.

  Part of my frustration was that nobody had been focused on me, I admitted somewhere to myself. I had been flawless, but nobody was watching my platform! I hadn’t even registered the pinch of a single hit, and with my aura counteracting hers, the fight had been entirely one sided. But nobody realized that except myself.

  “Great job tonight, everyone,” Jamie announced once the other adds were down. “How’s everyone doing on burnout?”

  The question prompted our screens to pop up with the relevant information. Due to EternalRealms’ time dilation mechanism, you could get more subjective time in game than what you actually spent playing. It took adjustment to trick the brain into working like that, but most players adapted up to an average of [5X] in about a month of steady playing, with semi-pros and pros going all the way up to [8X]. Unfortunately, in order to play with someone who wasn’t on your level in that regard, you had to sink down to theirs. We were running at about [5.5X], I noticed, which meant that someone was struggling to keep up. When your brain starts to get overtaxed by the time dilation, it’s called burnout. Best case for burnout is that you get knocked down into normal time for a few hours. Worst case is you visit a hospital and need medical clearance to return to play, but the safety settings kept anyone from ever getting to that point.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Okay, it looks like there’s a few of us approaching the safety limits, so we’re calling it for the night. Returning to [2X] for loot distribution and discussion. If you don’t want to stick around for that, your time is your own,” she announced.

  I almost pulled up my menu and summoned the portal to my [Pocket Dimension]. I should have, especially after I checked the drops and saw there was nothing I needed. But I decided to stay. I had things I needed to say, even if my stupid mouth was going to get me in trouble again.

  “First up, a chunk of [Premium Orihalcum],” Jamie announced, and it was by far the most valuable drop that night. [Mastercrafted] weapons required premium ingredients, and [Orihalcum] weapons were currently the most valuable for their use in the latest dungeons to have been released. It had taken two chunks like those to craft my daggers, and a larger weapon would have taken more.

  I could bid on it. I could actually craft it, after all. Most of my money came from my [Mastercraft] products. But doing so would have taken away from guild crafters, who needed the experience, and a DPS who needed a weapon. Three quarters of the raid were still using drops, while I had eight sets of [Mastercrafted Daggers] of everything from [Cold Iron] to [Mythril].

  The bidding was fierce, everyone who didn’t have one wanted an [Orihalcum] weapon. In the end, it went to one of the tanks, who was planning on replacing his dropped sword with it. I sent him a quick note pointing him towards a promising blacksmith who was starting to turn out [Mastercrafts]. If the smith failed with it, he could always melt it down and try again, it wouldn’t effect the quality of the metal. You had infinite retries with metal ingredients in this game.

  The other items were regular drops. A tiara that had a slot for a spell gem. A hauberk. Greaves. Nothing I was interested in, most of my items had been crafted. The only interesting item I saw were the [Sandals of the Four Winds], which were not combat items at all. They gave a slight movement boost out of combat, and an active-use [Air walk] ability. If I didn’t already have a passive and active spell from my shadow abilities that did the same things, I might have bid on those sandals.

  Eventually loot was distributed, and Jamie called out cheerfully for the discussion to start.

  “Okay everyone, so, great job tonight,” she started out, like she always did after a raid. “Does anyone have anything to say about the new strat before I post about it on the forms? Because it felt like that was the easiest time we’ve ever fought that boss.”

  “That’s because you weren’t tanking it,” BrightenFlash objected. “His charges aren’t related to the adds at all, apparently, just the elemental pattern that he starts using once they start dying. Having only two tanks to pick him up after he charges into the raid is murder, Jamie.”

  “The heals were pretty bad because he would charge into the raid and cleave before the tanks could pick him up again,” Loreli, one of our healers agreed. “Which is in no way a criticism of our tanks, by the way.”

  “None taken. I said it was hard, didn’t I?” Brighten agreed. “I’m probably one of the ones who’s pushing burnout so hard, I had to keep [Adrenaline Rush] and [Rush to the Rescue] up for a large part of that fight.”

  “The fight goes way faster and is way more fun if you do it the right way,” I pointed out. “We were only able to cheese it because we have ten guys who are just waiting until they can go twelve hours real time at [10X] before they go pro. A regular group would have struggled with the enrage timer. We only beat the enrage by a little over a minute, in case you didn’t notice, when we’re usually at two or three under.”

  “But aside from the cleaves, the fight was easier--” Jamie tried to object.

  “For some of us. You’re ranged, Jamie, you don’t have to get cleaved in the face every time the tanks lose aggro,” I pointed out. “And you don’t have to change into a full set of resistance gear, of which you had to buy five sets of, just for this strat. Right Susie?”

  “Technically, you gave those to me for free because ‘I’m the asshole who suggested this asinine idea, so I don’t want you to pay for it.’ Which I think is completely unfair,” Susan pointed out.

  “It is. The guild will reimburse him,” Jamie said quickly. “He shouldn’t have done that without telling me in the first place. Luke, you know you’re not allowed to just hand out gear to everyone anymore. It’s one of your conditions of membership in the guild.”

  “Maybe I don’t care anymore,” I argued. “You can’t kick me out anyway, and you know it. Even if you could, not for this. It’s just cheap resist sets. It’s nothing special, just some [Lightning Weave]--”

  “Luke! Stop it. Nobody here wants you to get in trouble again,” Jamie said sternly. “The last time you crashed the economy they were talking about taking away all of your in game assets.”

  “So I’d have to start over from scratch, it’s not that big of a deal. And they’re not going to do that over a few resist--”

  “It doesn’t matter, Luke, and you know it. If you were just another player it would be fine, but you’re not. You have to follow the rules, Luke, and that means not just giving things away strangers.”

  “Susie is not a stranger, she’s a guildmate.”

  “And the conditions that you remain in the guild are that you obey the rules that the admin team put down for you to allow you to keep playing,” she reminded me.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get him in trouble. I don’t really understand why everyone is mad at us, he just --”

  “You’re not in trouble Susie, he is,” Jamie said hotly. “Look … don’t worry about it. I’ll shoot you a PM later and explain some things. Not everyone in the guild is in the know and we like to keep it that way. But Luke’s not allowed to just give his stuff away. There’s reasons for that that … I’ll explain later, okay? But don’t worry, the guild will reimburse him for the stuff he gave you and everything will be fine.”

  “Whatever, this is B.S., I’m going home,” I said, and I pressed the button to summon my [Pocket Dimension]. Stepping through the portal, I left my guildmates behind.