"Sir!" A young man in semi-formal wear shouted as he stood up in shock. Having never seen any spikes close to this in the readings before.

"What?" Complained a middle-aged man in a lab coat as he made his way over. He hated being disturbed when he was doing his experiments, but that was his job. At least it was for this month. None of those in the department really like doing the monitoring.

It was rather dull and mostly went by with nothing happening, this was the first case of something since the start of the game's release. Seeing as they could only monitor people they contracted.

"That High Elf player... The one Joren recruited." The young man quickly started explaining as he saw his boss glaring at him.

"What about him." The middle-aged man asked in haste, wanting to go right back to his experiment.

"Well, just take a look." The young man said, sliding himself to the side so that his boss could read what was going on.

"Go get the department heads! Quickly. And send him a new headset. Use the fastest drones, he must be in a really critical place in-game for this to have happened!" The middle-aged man shouted as he took the younger one's chair and started calling all the data they had gathered.

Totally worth it. Those idiots upstairs not wanting us to pull data. Idiots!The man thought as he looked at the readings, not even able to understand what the readings meant. He simply knew that they were like nothing before.

His actions were certainly hypocritical, as he always hated being on this shift. Now that something had happened, he did not want to leave. He stared at the readings in wonder as he also started calling up the monitor system and the third POV record system they had.

Using the former to guide the latter. Soon one of the screens showed what was going on. A river of blood, burnt corpses floating down with the stream.Despite this, there seemed to be still more beasts and orcs. The middle-aged man did not know what the beasts were, but he could clearly see that the NPCs were in a really bad place.

Only about four of the NPCs could actually fight against any of the beasts, however, there were more than thirty of those beasts. Half even having an orc rider on the.

Will it be in time?The middle-aged man wondered as the entire office started getting noisy as news of progress spread.

...

Desperately clutching the headset, Eldrian expected the worst. The headset would not allow him to log in. It did not give a detailed reason, only stating that there was an error and that it was being looked into.

This certainly was not good enough for Eldrian. He needed to confirm that everyone was safe, that they had managed to escape.

Not wanting to waste any time, Eldrian dialed Joren. Having gotten his number for emergencies when he had signed the contract. It took a couple of tries, Joren likely asleep as it was the middle of the night. Finally a tired yes came through the phone.

"Joren, my headset is refusing to work. When I try to log in it keeps saying that there is an error. It won't say why. What the hell is this!?" Eldrian asked, desperate to enter the game and confirm that everyone was safe. He did not even consider the fact that his avatar might be dead, he needed to get back in.

"Wait! What happened?" Joren asked, but before Eldrian could answer, Joren was interrupted as someone barged into his room. For ease of access, many of the employees of the company stayed at work 24/7. This might sound cruel, but they had really nice rooms equal to four start hotels in their communal area.

Eldrian could vaguely hear some of the conversation, however, he failed to follow it properly. What he heard did not put him at ease. The timing was just too perfect, it was likely due to him that things were crazy on that side.

After less than a minute,Joren came back, apologizing for the disturbance. "It seems that one of the interns monitoring your data saw the spike. It has been reported and we are working on it, a new headset is also already on its way to you. We have already confirmed that those you were with are alive. They are still fighting, so this is not guaranteed to stay true."

Eldrian was at first greatly relieved to hear that they were alive, though hearing that they were still fighting caused a rush of coldness to spread through him. I have to go back! I need to help them!Eldrian knew that Joren was not telling him just how bad the situation was.

"Unfortunately, the headset being sent is one of the newer models. We have not gone through all the tinkering, but it seems we can't delay in sending it to you. I will also send you a new contract for the increased risk."

"Of course, if you want, we can bring you an older model a bit later. Currently, we only have the new ones at hand and we believe you would want to get right back into the game as soon as possible. A repeat of this is also possible if you keep using the older models."

"When will it arrive?" That was all that Eldrian asked, he urgently needed to get back into the game. He cared not for the added risk.

Currently, it was 3 am, meaning it was 3 pm in the day. This did not mean much, but it meant that everyone was still in broad daylight. Any wandering group of beasts or orcs could easily spot them and he doubted they would be fine if that happened.

It was even worse if night came and they failed in setting up camp. Eldrian had no idea what would actually happen, but everyone treated night as certain death. He did not wish to find out.

"Well... We sent one of our drones, its details are still classified so do not go spreading news of it. It will arrive in ten minutes."

"Good, thank you," Eldrian replied, only slightly wondering how the drone could be so fast. He knew that there were no branches of Miracle Corporation in his city, or he just did not know of them. He highly doubted that even if there were, that they would have the new prototype models.

"In the meantime, you should go look at the forum. The HP update has been pushed through a few hours ago. Like always a reset per headset was required for it to take effect, hence you might not have experienced it."

"We are heading towards a more passive system approach."

Eldrian thanked Joren for the help and information. Going to his PC he nervously started it up and logged into the forums. Unable to calm down as he worried for Vivian and the others.

[HP Update, minor to major]

{We have come to the realization that HP in a realistic game can not function normally. Be that as it may, we do not want to remove it! Hence we worked hard to simulate HP as a realistic value for life.}

{We have never posted how damage and health worked, having hoped to keep the mystery for players. As we move to a more open game, the information will naturally become more available. Thus we have decided to make some of the basics a bit more accessible to everyone.}

{We also hereby announce the second beta phase, where we will sell another ten million headsets. Each at the price of 20 000 dollars. New and old players alike should think of buying them, since the new headset had no limit on playtime!}

After this, the post explained that a proper announcement for the second beta will be released in a few days. From which it turned from advertisement to information. Explaining to players how damage currently works, and the fix they had found for it.

{HP is currently determined by a few things. Firstly is one's constitution value. One constitution point equals one health point. This is only true for Tier 0 and when no special items are worn. This is due to the fact that higher Tiers increase your health by a flat percentage. Special cases will not be explained in this post.}

{An example of how Tiers work: Players who are Tier 1 in melee, gain a 10% increase in health; range gives 10% increase stamina, and magic gives mana. This is the first step in getting your health, and as mentioned, special cases will not be explained in this post. Naturally, with an increase in Tier, the percent addition also increases.}

{Damage is far more complicated. As all players know, there have always been two damage values given when equipping a weapon. The first is the weapon's true damage, in a way this can be called its sharpness. The damage value given after this is the damage you would deal to a zero armor target. The second value already takes into account your attribute contribution as well as other bonuses from passive skills.}

{But for actual real damage, this second value is of no use. You will never deal that amount of damage.}