Jinyang woke up with the sun shining directly at his face. It had been a long night, what with the 72 episode anime he had marathoned though the wee hours. It was the latest series to come out of Studio Sho, the regional mega company formed from the merger of 3 major entertainment companies from Korea, Japan and China.

It wasn't for fun though. His job was a reviewer for the news outlet AsiaNewsNow or ANN. He has taken it on as a part time thing when he was in-between jobs (a more polite way of saying that he was unemployed) and somehow it had settled into a lifestyle of sorts. It didn't pay well but it did pay the bills and it was enjoyable.

He had initially signed up for reviewing films but as the new guy, he was much too low on the totem pole to get what he requested if someone else also wanted that category. Fortunately, he was an avid anime fan and no one else at the news outlet was willing to take on reviewing "kiddie stuff" as a senior reviewer had said. And so he found his niche even though he was never credited name wise for any of his reviews.

The ensuing report had taken an additional 4 hours and it had been 7 am by the time he had sent the final report draft out to ANN.

“Ms Arisa Goto from AsiaNewsNow is requesting a audio line. Do you wish to take the call?" a soft feminine voice announced. His hand phone was a decade out of date but it still sported a functional, if basic, AI.

"That fast? I just emailed the report like five minutes ago. Alright, put her on."

"Jinyang, I’m putting you on the new Gamers’ Taskforce. We're sending over a VR capsule for the game of Royalroad. It’s not the newest thing in the market right now but the latest expansion seems to have revived interest in the game. We want you to take a look and write something up. You know the drill. You have 1 month."

"Call has been disconnected."

"That woman is an emotionless robot, not to mention a total lack of basic courtesy. I didn't even get a word in and she hangs up on me." muttered Jinyang. It was not the first time nor would it be the last for that to happen since she was his direct boss. Then again he wasn’t a likeable person either so maybe it was karma.

"Royalroad eh? Never played a VR game before. Oh wait, she said taskforce. So I’m not alone on this? I had better ask."

"Phone, login AsiaNewsNow. Bioscan authorised."

"Bioscan verified. Login confirmed. Response from server is as follows: Please state the nature of your inquiry."

"Search gamer taskforce member list"

"Response from server is as follows: Query found. Member list is as follows: Chen Jinyang."

"That's it? That's all?"

"Response from server is as follows: Please state the nature of your inquiry in an unambiguous manner"

"Oh whatever. Phone, close connection."

"Connection closed."

Jinyang began a full search on the supposed new expansion to Royalroad. It has been the hottest thing around when it had come out 5 years ago but competitors had popped up and things had evened out. From what he had read, apparently the new expansion was geared towards adding in more elements from Asia, South America and Africa as well as refining some of the basic mechanics of the system.

It was not too surprising since South America had been growing in economic strength over the last few decades while Africa had been rising strongly during the last ten years proper. The news outlets had even termed it as "Rise of Man’s Origins" in reference to the oldest human remains in the world being found in Africa.

No details on what the new elements were, however, as the company behind Royalroad, Unicorn, had said that they would leave it to player to discover all the new changes. They however issued a guarantee that existing players would not be impacted by any mechanics changes from the expansion if they did not wish it. Given the massive backlash that occurred when their competitor, VirU, had reduced the power of their extremely popular Mecha Driver class in their own VR game, it seemed to be a wise decision.

"One month... that's not a lot of time to find new stuff especially with these rules for newbies." According to the game play chapter of the game guide that he was reading, he would be trapped in a bounded location for a week in real time. That would only leave him 3 weeks.

Jinyang had never played a VR game before but he had reviewed some of the latest anime series that had used VR. Virtual reality was being used almost everywhere nowadays with even VR outpatient clinics being considered. The technology allowed the viewer to walk around, view and communicate in any desired manner. It would probably be similar.

He did have a leg up on a normal player as he had played in a number of older non-VR massively multiplayer online games before. Plus he was good at making logical leaps while also being lazy. On first listen, it would sound strange but when you realise that lazy people go out of their way to make things as easy as possible for themselves, such a trait would lead to a strong motivation to be a good min-maxer.

Since it had been 5 years since the game first started, a lot of guides were available discussing the best ways to build a particular character archetype. As per his normal practice, Jinyang skipped the first few chapters of each guide, which detailed the basic system, properties of VR and the usage of the interface, etc, given that he was confident he could pick things up fast.

Jinyang's experience with the genre had led to a single rule that he found applied to everything regarding online role playing games. It could be succinctly summed up as “stats, stats and more stats”. If stats were randomly determined, you should aim to roll at least 50% of the stats to be at the maximum level achievable while the rest should be at 80% of maximum. If you were given a fixed number of points to purchase stats, the best idea would be to find one or more “dump stats” where you could ignore that stat completely, putting in the absolute minimum the system required for that stat. Things like charm, beauty, sociability, etc were Jinyang’s top picks for dump stats. The reasoning was simple. If you were out in the wilderness most of the time, what would charm, beauty or being a social butterfly do for you?

Levels were not particularly important unless they were linked to gaining spells or such effects. In fact it was sometimes better to be low level. By finding the best reward to risk ratio, you could repeatedly do (or quest spam as it was called at that time) the same low level quest. Additionally, you would normally be lower on the enemy’s target priority list since your level marked you as a much lesser threat compared to someone, say, a hundred levels higher than you.

Stats were what allowed you to pull greater weight at the same level anyway and it was better to be a strong low level piranha in a small pond than a weak high level sinarapan in a big ocean. Skills were great because they were a common way to raise stats and most things like spells were linked to skills. From what he had read, that seemed to hold true for Royalroad too.

By applying his knowledge and gathering information about the game play, by the time the capsule arrived in the evening, Jinyang had already come up with a plan.