My mother always said that stupidity was king in this day and age, and unfortunately, she was right. There was absolutely no challenge in fighting a swarm of creatures thirty levels lower than my character. To make things even more absurd, I was being rushed by waves of librarians—or Monk Scholars, as the game had chosen to name them—whose only weapons were giant books. With my current damage reduction, I could just stand there for five minutes straight and lose a quarter of my health at most. It was stupid, pointless, idiotic… and my followers couldn’t get enough of it.

“How’s my viewer count, Twinkle?” I asked, performing a circular slash in the middle of the hall. Eight librarians were sliced to pieces, only to be replaced by another wave.

“Five hundred and seventeen, Sarah!” Twinkle floated above my head. This was one of the rare occasions I let him remain visible in stream. Apparently, his presence made me look “cuter”.

“How much time left?”

“Forty-three seconds, Sarah.” The AI companion giggled as I used my Rain of Daggers attack.

Not enough. Even if I combined all my ultimates, I still wouldn’t be able to finish on time. The librarians kept pouring towards me—a wave of ten, followed by a wave of fifteen. Both were chopped to pieces almost as fast as they appeared. My instinct yelled for me to quit and wait for the waves to end. The adrenalin in my body didn’t let me.

“Send a message to the stream that I’ll be trying again in three minutes.” I gritted my teeth.

Five hundred kills in five minutes—a deceivingly easy task that I’d been trying to accomplish for the last two hours. Ten years ago, I would have done that without breaking a sweat. Now, my reaction time was half as good, and I didn’t have state-of-the-art gear to make up for it.

The town hall of Airmist was the simple type: a large structure with walls covered in tapestries and scores of NPCs all around. Judging by the low poly assets, the place must have been a remnant of the initial game launch, and while the city itself had been patched and upgraded with later updates, the town hall had remained in the sixty-four-bit era.

The moment I had set foot inside, the tapestries had started to glow, spelling out my objective in the most unsubtle way:

Go to the library tower and kill 500 scribes in 5 minutes, then return to read your clue.

It had taken me three tries to determine that the objective timer started once I killed the first librarian. After seven attempts more, I discovered that my average kill ratio was three per two seconds. One further attempt showed me that using any sort of buff or potion ended the combat sequence. The only way to succeed at this was to grind, and grind hard.

“How much have I made so far?” I asked as I killed the last remaining NPCs, well over twenty seconds after the deadline.

“Twenty-seven dollars and fifty-eight cents,” Twinkle cheered, ending in a mew.

Cheap jerks! I had hoped that at least some of them would drop a buck or two. “Make an announcement that I’ll be going for a full run this time,” I went back to the center of the library. “Also, be ready to cut the feed when I do.”

“Are you sure, Sarah?” The AI-companion looked at me with its default confused expression. “A few have said they’ll pay a bonus if you pass a thousand.”

“Are you using effects on my kill counter?” I ignored the question, waiting for my skill cooldowns to end.

“Absolutely, Sarah!”

“Good.” I took a deep breath. “Announce the start.”

The first phase was easy. All I had to do was to run around the library, while bumping into as many NPCs as I could. The game would consider the action as aggressive, forcing them to target me, yet since I hadn’t inflicted any actual damage, the event counter wouldn’t start.

Dashing between the bookcases, I sprinted up the inner staircase to the second floor to pull in some more librarians. The NPCs there were mostly for decoration; they wouldn’t respawn until the end of the event, but pulling them to the floor below would provide me with twenty additional kills.

By the time I had returned to the main room, about fifty librarians had gathered. So far so good. I climbed on the table in the center of the room and waited. The way the physics in the game worked, only eight NPCs could attack me at the same time. All the rest would pile behind them, until their aggro died out, forcing them to return to their original spots. The tricky part was to time my initial attack. The librarians’ aggro lasted about seven seconds. That gave me a very small window from the moment I bumped into them until my first kill. To make things even more annoying, the game’s pathfinding made some of the NPCs quit even sooner.

Forty-five. I reminded myself. If I managed to get that many with my first strike, I had a chance of completing the objective.

“Here goes,” I said for the viewers and triggered my ultimate attack, unleashing a circle of carnage around me.

NPC corpses covered the floor, waiting to be culled by the game system. A few groups of survivors remained, standing awkwardly. I rushed to the nearest and did a double slash. From here on, I had to kill them as quickly as they spawned until enough messed up for me use my ultimate again.

“A hundred kills, Sarah!” Twinkle announced, before the end of the first minute. A promising start that I’d been through ten times today. Sliding between the tables, I went to the back section of the library. Seven NPCs stood there, waiting for me to enter visual range.

“Crappy, glitchy code!” I hissed, killing them with a double slash strike before rushing back to the gathering point. A pesky librarian swung his tome at me, trying to block my advance. I instinctively did a somersault, striking him before I fell back on the floor.

“Four minutes left, Sarah.” I could see Twinkle float by from the corner of my eye.

“Invisible mode,” I ordered, slicing another trio on my way onto the nearest table. A second later I unleashed my ultimate. There weren’t nearly as many enemies as before, but I had no intention of wasting a perfectly good cooldown; with a refresh rate of fifty seven seconds, I would have five uses before the end of the event, provided I didn’t mess up. As I had discovered the hard way, performing it too close to the walls would render the attack useless.

“Three minutes left, Sarah!” The high catlike voice rung in my ears. Not good. I hadn’t heard a two-hundred kills announcement. Or maybe I hadn’t noticed? Either way, there was nothing I could do but keep on striking. The librarians had started to spawn in groups of five. That helped a bit with the my kill count, though I had to rush between spawn locations to take full advantage.

I ran to a good spot and executed my ultimate. Five seconds late. Next time, I’d have to be a bit more precise if I didn’t want to lose my final use.

At the two minute mark, I still hadn't heard any announcement as to how many I’d killed. Twinkle had probably glitched again. Having him maintain my live stream, manage my game cameras, and work on solving the dragon egg puzzle was more than his programming could handle. If I managed to get through this, I was going to spend today’s earnings on AI upgrades.

“Final minute, Sarah!”

I used my ultimate before he could finish his sentence. This was it—the final stretch. The next time I unleashed that attack would mark the end of my attempt. The librarians had become a crowd, coming at me in waves. I no longer had to run around seeking groups to kill; instead my concern was not to get interrupted. As pitiful as their damage was, getting hit could cost me valuable seconds, more if I had the misfortune to get caught in an interrupt chain.

Wave after wave charged at me. I used all of my advance skills, on occasion throwing a dagger into the crowd. I almost wanted to ask Twinkle how much time remained, though the fear of jinxing my performance kept me from voicing the question. The moment any skill cooldown ended, I used it without hesitation.

“Come on, come on!” I glanced at the timer of my ultimate skill as more and more waves surrounded me. And then it hit zero. “Got you!” I performed the final attack. The waves had pushed me away from the central point of the library, but not far enough to have a negative effect. A thin line of particles shot from me, moving out in all directions, slicing through anything that could be killed. I rushed to the central table, waiting for more, but none came. Whatever bodies remained on the floor evaporated in a cloud of sparkles, leaving behind an empty room.

“Twinkle, how did I do?” I asked. No response. “Twinkle?” I opened my companion menu. The virtual window was unresponsive, filled with the universal Processing animation. So much for dependable multithreading. I initiated a reboot. The menu closed into nothingness then reappeared along with Twinkle’s default initializing sequence—him doing a yawn and a stretch; quite cute... if I were still ten.

“Good morning, Sarah!” The companion floated in front of me. “How are you today?”

“Twinkle, did I complete the challenge?” I asked, sitting on the table.

“You have no daily challenges, Sarah.” He tilted his head. His memory had been completely flashed, leaving me with nothing.

My stomach tied in knots. “Twinkle what’s the egg progress?”

“It will take me a few days to finish.” Twinkle looked at me with his saddest expression.

“Okay.” Hopefully it wasn’t a total loss. “How many views on stream?”

“Six hundred and twenty-four. You have also earned fifty-seven twenty and gained seventeen new subscribers. A lot of them are commenting that they want you to repeat the challenge.”

“Yeah right.” I blew a kiss to the camera, then manually ended the feed. “See if you can sell the video.” I headed to the main building of the town hall. “Nothing fancy, no exclusives under a hundred.”

“Sure thing, Sarah!”

I went to the main hall. A few other players had appeared—newbies loitering around in the hope of hidden items. I put on my invisibility cloak and approached the tapestries. When I got near, my heart skipped a beat. A new set of letters glowed within the fabric, forming a message.

The notes are always the key.

The moment I read it, my mood fell just as fast as it had risen. Two hours' grind for a fortune cookie? I felt like logging out and smashing my rig to pieces. What did that even mean? It wasn’t a saying, it wasn’t even a hint! Three hints and none of them remotely usable!

“Twinkle, if you get a memory upgrade, will you finish the egg puzzle today?” I needed to focus my attention somewhere else.

“You don’t have enough in your accounts for such an upgrade, Sarah.”

“Of course not.” So much for hoping. “Send the hint to FlickerFlacker.” I opened the map. Four markers indicated the areas of the areas of the quest hints. Flicker and I had three, which left the Sylvan forest. “Send it also to Claire.” Maybe the dark broker would be able to make something out of it.

“Sure thing, Sarah! Do you want me to try and find cheaper upgrades?”

“No, forget it.” If only I had the money. “I’ll log out to grab a snack and—“

A ping informed me I had received a response. Moments later my message icon started flashing.

“You have a new message!” Twinkle mewed happily. “Do you want me to read it?” I nodded. The AI-companion cleared his throat and started. “Sorry for earlier, Sarah. I will find the time to play. Thanks for not giving up on me and finding the hint. I’m still waiting for a response on the fifth, but... if you’re not too tired, do you want to try and find the Sylvan Forest one? FlickerFlacker.” Twinkle cleared his throat again, indicating the end of the message. “Do you want me to send a response?” He floated in front of my face.

“Yes,” I said as I selected a teleportation spot on the world map. “Tell Flicker I’ll be waiting for him.”