“Use your ultimate!” I shouted. “Don’t stay in one spot or you’ll get pincered!”

I threw three daggers at FlickerFlacker’s nearest enemy, then did a double slash strike to kill off my own attacker. Moments such as this reminded me why I had left Vesperia. The game was full of poorly balanced quests and incompetent newbies. The Heart of the Forest was a perfect example: it was set for level seventy, so in theory, two ninety-nine level characters were supposed to complete it with ease. Instead, the devs had added a difficulty multiplier to “make the mission fun and challenging for players of higher levels.” And since someone didn’t know how to math, they had increased both the stats and the weapon effectiveness of the mobs, making them four times stronger for every five levels of difference. No wonder everyone left the game.

“Use a flare blind, then buff up with potions!” I yelled.

Playing with Flicker was like playing with a group of kindergarteners. He had no idea what he was doing, yet persisted using the same three skills and ignoring everything else. I’d seen six-year olds do better when I worked as an MMO babysitter. The pay was crap, but at least I'd had a lot of free time.

A barrage of light arrows rained upon the area, dealing mass damage to all enemies. It was annoying that he had used an ultimate attack for simple mobs, but the way things were going, I preferred this to the alternative.

A melodic chime filled the air, marking the completion of the second step of the quest. So far, so good. I opened my mission menu and went through the description. Fluff aside, it was a simple defend area objective culminating in a three stage boss fight.

“Stock up on potions.” I can’t believe I’m having to tell you these things. “When in doubt, heal and try to remain alive. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Okay,” FlickerFlacker said in his weird orcish accent. “Sorry, this isn’t my type of game.”

I could tell. He had roleplay written all over him, from the personalized player character to the out-of-character vocal pack. This probably was the toughest battle he’d experienced in his life. As much as I wanted to defend his lack of skill, I couldn’t. There was too much at stake. If Flicker failed, his life would remain unchanged; if I failed, I’d miss one if the few chances I had to escape my crappy existence.

“Don’t worry about it.” I forced a smile. “Just try to survive until the boss. Things will get easier from there on.”

“And you think the hint will appear after that?” Flicker cast a long term buff on his sword-bow.

“Yes.” I looked around. There was still no sign of any enemies. Most likely the step had a safe period for players to heal and boost up before the final encounter. “Or we might have to fight a second boss.”

FlickerFlacker didn’t say anything, casting additional buffs. From what I could see, most of them were pay-only.

“Flicker, how long had you been playing the game?” I moved close to him.

“Five years.” He swung his bow-sword about, adjusting to his fully buffed state. “Five and a half. One of my friends got me hooked. It started as a crapfest challenge.”

Crapfest challenges... I used to watch videos of those when I was younger. Streamers would go out of their way to find the most cringe-worthy games and spend a week playing, often providing funny commentary. Vesperia was a perfect perfect candidate for crapfests, yet like all multi-generation games—and because of the vast amounts the company put in PR—it was avoided. The only people who participated in the challenge were kids that decided to join as a group and be obnoxious about it.

“I liked the amount of game lore,” he looked at me. “It’s so much better than what they do nowadays. Even the story-heavy franchises are so terribly linear. Outside the characters, there’s nothing left. Just mechanics.”

Definitely a roleplayer. Personally, I couldn’t skip the cutscenes fast enough. “Is that how you found the hundred level quest?”

“Sort of.” He shrugged. “I just found the scroll. After that, I got curious.”

As good an explanation as any. Better than finding it because of dumb luck, at least. I wanted to ask him more, but Twinkle appeared in front of my face, waving his paws in warning. The final step of the quest had begun.

“Watch your health,” I said and drew my crimson rapiers.

The first wave was composed entirely of spiders. At their low level, even Flicker didn’t have a problem. As I fought, I did a quick web search. The Sylvan Spiders were a standard filler mob that caused no permanent damage. After two more additional waves, dark elves started joining in.

“They mustn’t get the heart!” a young female voice said.

I glanced in the direction it was coming from. An elf maiden, wearing princess regalia and virtually nothing else, had appeared sitting on one of the tree branches.

“Twinkle, camera!” I ordered, cutting two elf warriors in half with a double slash. “Focus on the glow tree.” There was no way I was going to miss free money. To be honest, I was surprised that the devs had dared put in anything uncensored. Vesperia had always been presented as a family friendly experience, even if it stretched suggestiveness to the legal limit.

“Sure thing, Sarah!” the AI companion said, not in the least bothered by obvious adult rating. “Do you want me to stream directly?”

“No, just video.” There would be plenty of time to edit and sell the footage later.

“Okay, Sarah!” Twinkle disappeared in a cloud of pixels.

“They’ll try to stop you,” the elf princess went on.

Crappy pseudo cut-scenes! Having someone distract you in battle wasn’t immersive, it was annoying. Most games had stopped the practice years ago, but Vesperia had chosen to “remain oldschool”. I quaked in anger, knowing that someone in a boardroom somewhere had gotten a ton of money for making such an idiotic decision.

“But I guess you don’t want to hear about it.” An annoying anime chuckle followed. “Do you, Sarah?”

“Huh?” Hearing my name, I briskly turned around, but the elf was gone. In her place was a glowing wooden statue—of inferior quality—carved in the tree itself. “Twinkle, replay me the video!” I ordered.

“Sure thing, Sarah,” The AI giggled and opened a video window in front of me. Launching one of my minor special skills, I rushed back to an enemy free-spot and started watching. At first, I’d only glance at the still scene, keeping an eye out for approaching enemies. A few seconds in, it hit me—the video scene was completely static. The tree was there, so was the stupid statue, but nothing more. There was no trace of the elf, none whatsoever.

“Twinkle, shut down!” My panic level shot through the roof. If anyone had managed to hack him, they’d have access to all my information, including bank accounts,real life address, and all my bio data.

“Everything okay?” Flicker asked.

“Personal stuff,” I lied fighting the desire to log off. “Take the aggro for a bit.”

I manually opened the game’s mail system. For a moment, I felt as if I were in a dream, as if my mind were trying to find an explanation that would put it at ease. The proper term what was I was experiencing was cidysphoria—computer intrusion dysphoria, the minor mental breakdown that occurred once a person’s personal data was hacked. When I was a child, the term didn’t exist. With the increase of occurrences, the national medical body had quickly agreed to the classification and formed a whole new branch of psychology. Normally, I’d laugh at the notion, explaining it away as a part of life. Having Twinkle hacked put things in perspective.

I think I’ve been had. I wrote in the mail’s subject, then attached the video file. After a second hesitation, I added “Twinkle” in the message body and sent it to Claire.

“Sarah, I can’t hold them for much longer!” I heard FlickerFlacker shout. Right now, I didn’t care about the quest. If anything, I was seriously considering deleting my Vesperia account, when suddenly I got a response from my dark broker.

You’re fine. AI’s clean, but buggy. Buy a new one.

I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline, driving my mind out of its panic loop. It was as if I’d dodged a bullet. Something was messed up, but at least it wasn’t a hack.

“Sarah!”

“I’m there!” I shouted and used my ultimate. A thin line of destruction lashed out, destroying trees and dark elves alike. “How are you doing?”

“Not good.” FlickerFlacker triggered another buff. “My DPS is too low to stop them.”

Of course you can't, you’re a leisure support class. “Just stick close to me and get ready for the boss.”

The waves kept spawning. After about two minutes of warriors, elf elites started to appear. Normally, they wouldn’t be an issue, but thanks to the boosting effect they were as strong as a miniboss. Even with Flicker’s constant buffing, I had to constantly use special skills to slice them up. A greater issue for me, though, was the time it took to kill each of them. With Twinkle offline, I didn’t get work reminders every hour, but I knew I didn’t have too much time left.

I checked the game clock. We had started the quest sixty-three minutes ago—pitiful by any standard. At least we were nearing the end.

“Remember, be ready for a second boss,” I said, triggering all my protections.

A few seconds later, the boss appeared. The online guide described him as a fallen elf prince. In truth, he seemed more like a tree golem. Looking at him, I could already guess the basic behavior changes that would occur with each stage: the current one would focus on armor and brute force, the second on magic, and the third would be on speed and damage combinations.

“I’ll deal with the first stage.” I opened my inventory and linked the first row of health potions to a quick command. “When I’m done, he’ll start casting, so be sure to counter that.”

Getting a quick nod from Flicker, I triggered my ultimate and charged forward. My attack sliced through the poorly designed model, splitting off leaves, twigs and dust particles. The tree golem didn’t budge.

So, you have a trigger timer. I launched all my other special attacks in almost simultaneous sequence. Bosses with trigger timers usually followed an attack-and-pause pattern, not at all what the guide described. Then again, the guide was three years old.

“Twinkle, find me a new guide online,” I said out of habit. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. “Flicker, what’s its behavior?”

“Just a sec,” he shouted. Meanwhile, the tree golem raised its arms, started moving them down in my direction.

I didn’t waste time, jumping backwards. The giant fists made contact with the ground, making it tremble. A wave of wind pushed me back, tearing trees out of their roots and thrusting them into the air.

“Area damage and sweeps,” FlickerFlacker said, way too late to be of any help. “There’s a five to ten second pause between attacks, each one becoming ten percent stronger than the last. When you bring his health down to fifty percent, he enters phase two.”

Seven percent of my health bar had disappeared with that single attack. Not bad, though it would have been more impressive if the boss wasn’t twenty levels weaker than me. Based on the boss’s health bar, I had taken about a fifth of his health in total.

“What’s the area range?” I rushed forward, popping a health potion.

“Twenty feet,” Flicker said. “Or meters. I’m not sure.”

It had to be meters. Twenty feet was ridiculously small. Reaching the base of the golem, I started a combo attack. With a low level boss such as this, chained attacks were more efficient than my ultimate, provided I got a large enough number of sequential hits. With five seconds between strikes, I was most likely going to get somewhere around seventeen. Then again, if I took the damage of a few attacks, I could easily deal enough to trigger the second phase transformation.

“Give me some support,” I yelled to FlickerFlacker as I kept striking.

The boss raised its fists again, then sent them crashing down on me, but this time I didn’t move. The damage was greater than before, slicing a third off my health. Two healing potions, and my bar was at full. Meanwhile, I continued my attack, going into my thirtieth strike.

A barrage of arrows flew above me, hitting the upper torso of the boss. Not a bad choice. Flicker’s premium equipment came with a bonus against armor, which meant they dealt fifty percent more damage to golem creatures. The bug was well known, yet since it benefited paying customers, Vesperia devs had chosen to ignore it. Right now, this was to my advantage.

Ten strikes more and the bark cracked up. Green light emerged from within the golem as it made a few clumsy steps backwards in a deliberate stage-change animation.

“One down,” I said. The tree golem burst in a wave of tree fragments, revealing a tall elf lord in jade armor. “Two to go.”